Christabel
Connor grabbed me in the hall and pressed his mouth to mine.
“Shhh,” he murmured against my lips.
“I didn’t say anything,” I murmured back, baffled. But as usual, the feel of his lips on mine was distracting.
He jerked his head toward the window. “Come on,” he mouthed. I followed him, peering down into the gardens. The tops of thorny rosebushes waved at me. Light from the conservatory spilled out onto the lawn in perfect yellow squares.
“That’s a two-story drop,” I whispered when Connor flung his leg over the sill and waited for me to do the same. “Last I checked, vampires didn’t sprout wings.” I stared at him. “We don’t, do we?”
He chuckled despite the solemn cast to his eyes. “No.”
“What the hell, then?”
“Keep your voice down,” he said. “We need to go. Now.”
“There are these new things called stairs,” I whispered back.
He shook his head. “You really are Lucy’s cousin. All of a sudden I can see the family resemblance. Will you please just come on?”
“Connor,” I said patiently. “I can’t jump out of the window and I’m a lousy climber. Just let me sneak out the back.”
He sighed. “Fine. But hurry. Meet me behind those cedars.”
“More cedars,” I muttered. “That can’t be good.”
Connor didn’t answer, just dropped out of view. I didn’t even hear him land. I heard some of the brothers walking around on the third floor. I went quietly down the stairs, peeking into the living room. It was empty. I snuck down the hall toward the garden conservatory. I felt like I was back home, creeping around so I wouldn’t wake my mother when she was in one of her weepy moods.
“Hey, Christa.”
I hollered, jumping a foot off the ground. Apparently, I’d lost my stealth entirely when I died. “Solange!”
She tilted her head, smiling. She looked less scruffy than she used to, wearing a flowing shirt and with her hair in a neat braid. But her irises were delicately ringed with blood. My eyes were bloodshot but I’d been assured that would fade. Solange’s were getting more pronounced.
“You’re sneaking out,” she declared knowingly.
Crap.
“Um. No?”
“Are so.” She waved her hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sneaking out, too.”
“You are? Where?”
“It’s not exactly sneaking out if I tell you,” she said, grinning. “You go that way.” She pointed toward the back rooms. “I’ll go out the front.” She leaned in and the smell of her, wood smoke and roses, made me feel fuzzy. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
She was gone before I could reply. I hurried through the glass-walled room, around potted orange and lemon trees with glossy leaves and banks of red lilies. Ivy trailed around the door.
The flagstones were littered with rose petals and acorns. I stepped onto the lawn instead and ran toward the cedars. Connor was shifting impatiently from foot to foot.
“This way.” He turned and darted away. I chased after him through the field. The grass was tall and damp. Birds lifted out of secret weedy nooks when we passed by. I was briefly distracted by my new ability to run fast and not lose my breath. I was grinning when we stopped on the outskirts of the forest. Moonlight percolated through the pine boughs.
“Do you know about the Helios-Ra?” Connor asked.
“Only that Lucy’s going to school at their academy outside town. Why?”
“They’re vampire hunters.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“Well, sometimes they go all survivalist wackjob in the mountains. Some of those guys found the ghost town, and they’re going in to take everyone out—not just the Hel-Blar but Saga, Aidan, and their people, too.”
“How’d you find all this out?” I asked.
“Lucy called me,” he replied. “She’s been at that school for less than a day.” He sounded impressed despite the worry in his shoulders.
“That’s Lucy,” I agreed. “Shouldn’t we tell your parents or something?”
Quinn emerged from the trees. “No. Mom will charge in, and Dad will be caught in some diplomatic trap. Meanwhile, the hunters will take out the Hel-Blar, we’ll get blamed somehow, Saga’s undead pets will be let loose, and then who knows what will happen? It’s bad enough the royal court had to negotiate with kidnappers. But we’ll send the parents a message when we get there.”
“That’s why we’re going in,” Connor explained. “But you don’t have to. Aidan kidnapped you, after all. You’re allowed to hate him a little.”
“But he saved my life, too,” I said. “Twice. And if he dies, I’ll never find out about myself. My new self,” I corrected.
“We could use you,” Quinn admitted. “You might have negotiating power. You’re Aidan’s bloodkin now.”
My blood ran cold. Aidan wasn’t my father, but he was the closest thing to it in my new world. The Na-Foir were basically an unknown, according to Connor and his family—according to Aidan and Saga, too. I wouldn’t get answers about my bloodchange from anyone else. “I’m coming.”
“I figured,” Connor said, rifling through the pack his brother handed him. He pulled out a handful of stakes and gave them to me. “Here. But stay behind us when we get there. You barely know how to use these.”
“Let’s go,” Quinn urged. “Lucy and Hunter might already be there by now. The hunters were trying to go in before sunset to ambush them at their weakest. We might be too late. Nicholas already left.”
“Do you know the way back?” I asked Connor.
“I left a trail,” he answered, zipping up his hoodie. “Between that and the GPS coordinates I got from the hunters’ bush plane, we’re fine.”
“Are we running all the way there?” I asked. I might not have to worry about wheezing myself into an asthmatic fit, but running would take too long. I remembered that much about finding our way back.
“We’ve got a motorcycle trail that will take us most of the way,” Connor said as we skirted the edge of the forest, leaping over ferns and fallen trunks. Startled and sleepy squirrels chittered angrily over our heads. We ducked into the woods proper, on the other side of a copse of birch trees. It was another few minutes to the bushes where Quinn had stashed two motorcycles. The engines shattered the forest quiet, rolling out plumes of exhaust. I clutched the back of Connor’s jacket with two hands and we rattled and bumped over the uneven ground. It wasn’t a trail so much as a way in unencumbered by broken trees or large boulders. When the thick undergrowth gave way to sparse red pine, we stopped the bikes and hopped off.
I could smell the faint taint of smoke even before we came out of the trees. We stayed in the shadows, circling around the crooked street of the ghost town to assess the situation from a safe distance. The charred remains of the maze were sad lumps of blackened tree trunks and burned barbed wire. The pen where Saga had kept some of her Hel-Blar was empty. There was movement, a shifting of shadows by the wooden houses. A window broke and there was a shout. Footsteps scraped the dirt. A door slammed shut repeatedly, caught by the wind.
Quinn’s phone vibrated in his inside coat pocket. I wouldn’t have heard it if I’d still had regular human hearing. He skimmed the text, then motioned for us to follow him. We went around back, aiming for a narrow alley between two houses. We met Nicholas along the way.
“What’s the word?” Quinn asked.
“Just got here,” Nicholas said. “Had some trouble with a Hel-Blar.”
“I’ll go this way.” Quinn nodded toward one of the alleys. He and Connor exchanged a look before he raced off. We joined Lucy, Hunter, and another girl at the end near the street. They were armed with so many stakes, they looked like porcupines. Nicholas rushed forward.
Behind us, a Hel-Blar jumped out from a pile of firewood. He clacked his jaws, grabbing Connor’s shoulder. Connor whirled, dislodging his hold. Nicholas turned back to help but Connor had already staked the Hel-Blar. Mushroom-colored ash drifted to our feet.
“You made it.” Lucy breathed. She was incongruous in her peasant blouse and crystals next to her friends’ military-style cargos. She hugged me tightly. “Are you okay?”
I thought about it. Not long ago I hadn’t even been able to recite my favorite poem. That had been the scariest part.
“ ‘One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize tonight,’ ” I quoted. “ ‘But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light.’ ”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Back to normal.”
“Whoa,” Chloe said. “You’re kinda blue.”
“Not Hel-Blar,” Connor explained. “Na-Foir.”
“Na-Foir? What the hell’s that?”
“A new breed of vampire,” he said. “Well, old breed.”
Chloe groaned. “Seriously? Like we don’t have enough weird names of vampire tribes to memorize for exams already?”
“The hunters had staked half the Hel-Blar by the time we got here,” Hunter said. “A whole bunch more were released after that. They’re everywhere, and the fight called the others hiding in the mountains.”
“And the hunters?” Nicholas asked, flattening himself against the wall and sneaking a peek down the road.
“Mostly on the rooftops now,” Hunter replied. “Where’s Quinn?”
“He went around the other side,” Connor replied. “Stealth mode.”
A war whoop and a mocking laugh belied that comment.
Hunter sighed. “He’s across the street, being a lunatic, you mean.”
“That’s stealth mode for him.” Connor threw us a grin before rushing out to help his twin. I watched him disappear into the saloon. It sounded like a bar brawl was going on in there, between the splintering of furniture and the breaking of bottles.
Hunter looked at Nicholas. “He’s not following any plan I’ve ever heard of.”
“Does Quinn ever?”
“We were going to do a quiet sweep.”
A Hel-Blar flew out of the saloon doors, rolled off the porch, and exploded into ashes.
“That’s Quinn’s version of a sweep,” Nicholas replied.
“The Hel-Blar are running loose, one of the hunters is dead, and the others are talking about setting the whole town on fire,” Lucy updated us.
“I nearly did that,” I said. “It could work, unfortunately.”
“They have the gasoline for it,” Hunter said. “There are jerricans down by what’s left of the maze there, and a big guy with a lighter.”
“Anyone seen Aidan or Saga?” I asked. Saga was more like Quinn; she’d have been shooting her way through the hunters with her blunderbuss. That she wasn’t meant she couldn’t.
Lucy shook her head. “Every time we move from this spot, the Hel-Blar think it’s dinnertime.”
“I was about to go out there and be the distraction,” Chloe said, “until Quinn decided it was playtime.”
“Aidan might be with Saga in that house on the right. The one with the blue hand nailed to the door.” I stepped out of the alley toward it.
Nicholas and Lucy yanked me back. “Whoa,” Nicholas said. “Hang on a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” I pointed out.
“And you don’t have the proper training yet,” he shot back. “So just wait.” He jerked his hand through his hair as Quinn let out another yell across the street. I hoped he didn’t get Connor killed. “Lucy, Christabel, and I can head for the house,” Nicholas suggested to Hunter. “Why don’t you and Chloe see what you can do about the gasoline. Don’t let anyone light it.”
Hunter nodded. She and Chloe snuck out the back of the alley, where we’d come in. Nicholas threw a stake behind them, catching the Hel-Blar who’d caught their scent and darted after them. The Hel-Blar clutched his wounded arm, turning to snarl at us. Blood oozed between his fingers. Lucy’s crossbow bolt hit him right in the heart. His blood was still dripping, caught in midair as he turned to ashes.
Nicholas crept out slowly, checking rooftops. When he waved us out, we followed quickly. Lucy had our backs with her surprisingly deadly miniature crossbow. The light glinted off all her silver jewelry. Down the street, the silhouettes of Hunter and Chloe grappled with a hugely muscled hunter. Even from a hundred yards away, I could see he was built like a bull, all neck and shoulders.
We couldn’t help them right now, though, not with three Hel-Blar suddenly on us. Nicholas staked one right away but the other two were quicker and more savage. They were chomping at the air, trying to get to Lucy. I kicked out but, since I wasn’t used to my recently developed speed and strength, I just ended up spinning myself around. Everything blurred as if I were on a merry-go-round. I spun back, trying not to be dizzy. Nicholas jumped in front of Lucy so quickly she stumbled back. She tripped, landing in the dirt. Her crossbow flew out of her hands.
A Hel-Blar grabbed my hair, saliva dripping onto my shoulder. I jabbed back with my elbow and heard his ribs snap. Whoa. Superstrength. I jabbed again, using the stake. The stench of mushrooms and blood was palpable. Nicholas threw his own stake, dispatching the Hel-Blar before his jaws could clamp down on my throat. He crumbled to ash.
The other one took advantage of Nicholas’s momentary distraction and punched him so hard in the stomach, Nicholas flew backward, sailed over Lucy, and landed half in an empty horse trough. He groaned, trying to get to his feet.
A Hel-Blar licked his lips at Lucy, teeth gleaming. She scrabbled wildly but her crossbow was out of reach. He shuffled closer, eyes so red even his pupils gleamed bloodily. Nicholas was too far away. My aim was nowhere nearly good enough. I threw a stake anyway, just to break his concentration on my cousin as his next meal. He batted the stake away.
Still, it was just long enough for me to kick the crossbow.
“Lucy!”
She grabbed it and struggled to reload it. I threw another stake, with the same relatively useless effect as the first one. The Hel-Blar ignored it and leaped on Lucy.
She lifted the bow and released the bolt just as he fell on her. She choked on ashes and dust, wiping them off her face. “That’s disgusting,” she panted, sweat fogging her glasses.
Nicholas skidded to a halt beside her. “Did he get you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, scrambling to her feet. She rubbed her knee. “Ow.”
He ran his hand over her head and her arms, eyes flaring silver. His touch was tender, but his voice wasn’t. “Stay behind me, damn it,” he said, as if there were rocks and whiskey in his throat.
“I was behind you,” she grumbled.
I bent to pick up a strap of silver stakes. Ashes dusted my hands.
“Oh no,” I said. “This was Emma.”
Someone screamed inside Saga’s house.
We ran toward it. Connor and Quinn jumped down from the roof and landed right in front of us before Lucy reached the door. Lucy whirled and nearly shot them. They were already tumbling out of the way.
Quinn’s smirk slipped. “Careful with that thing!”
Connor glanced at me. “You okay?”
I nodded, relieved to see that, although his hair was standing on end and his jeans were ripped, he looked unharmed. His fangs were out and his eyes looked like blue glass beads from Greece. “You?”
“Fine.” He looked at the house. “We’ll go around back.”
“Where’s Hunter?” Quinn asked sharply.
“She and Chloe are making sure we don’t all explode,” Nicholas said.
As he reached for the doorknob, a hunter came around the side of the house. Lucy leaped between him and the rest of us, even though he was holding a throwing axe and a crossbow of his own.
“I’m Helios-Ra!” Lucy shouted. When he relaxed slightly, seeing as she was all of sixteen, she darted forward and punched him right in the nose. “Sort of,” she amended as he reeled back, hit his head on the porch, and fell over. The stake in his hand clattered to the ground.
“Don’t you have Hypnos?” Nicholas asked, amused.
“Oh yeah. I forgot.” She shook out her fingers, knuckles already going red. “He had a hard nose, too. I might bruise.”
We heard another shout from the second floor and the recognizable sounds of a fight. A musket fired above us, showering splinters. I shoved past the others and burst into the house. The table was overturned and one of the jugs was on its side, spilling rum. I took the stairs two at a time.
“Shit, Christa, wait for me,” Connor called out, hard on my heels.
Chaos.
There were huge bullet holes in the walls; the window was hanging off its hinges. A human hunter lay in a heap by the door, her leg clearly broken. Connor bent long enough to relieve her of all her weapons.
Saga was standing on a bench, barefoot and waving her cutlass. She slashed at another hunter and sent him tumbling out the window, down the overhanging roof, and to the street below. She was as blue as the center of a flame, blue as spilled gasoline. Her teeth were sharper than her daggers. The smell of rot and mildew clung to everything. Two Hel-Blar circled her in the cramped room. She refused to move, even though there was blood on her legs. Her whistle, usually hanging by a braided cord at her belt, was gone. She was protecting Aidan.
“We got Hel-Blar down here!” Quinn yelled.
“So do we!” Connor yelled back.
“Well, you’re about to get more!”
Connor swore and rushed to the landing to stop the incoming Hel-Blar that got past the others.
Aidan was pinned to the wall behind the bed with a stake through his shoulder. He was bleeding profusely, but at least it hadn’t pierced his heart. He was trapped, though, and weak. He hadn’t fed. Even I could see that. I had to get him free.
“Christa, stay back,” he choked.
Too late.
One of the Hel-Blar slammed into me. My forehead bounced off the wall. Pain clouded my vision for a moment. He forced my head to the side. I struggled but I couldn’t get loose. Aidan clawed at the stake, opening his wound. I smelled his blood in the air. The Hel-Blar laughed and then licked me. Thank God all my scratches had healed already. There was shouting behind me but all I really heard were those snapping jaws and clacking teeth. I tried to kick back but the angle was all wrong. He bent my neck farther, nails like claws.
I had a stake, and even though I couldn’t reach his heart, I could reach something. I jabbed blindly, as hard as I could. He snarled but didn’t let go. I jabbed again. I got him in the eye that time and he howled, jerking back. The stake was still stuck in his eye socket. I kicked him and he hit the floorboards. One of them broke under his weight. He stayed where he was, still howling.
“Get him free,” Saga ordered me, leaping over the ashes at her feet and the Hel-Blar I’d blinded. “I’ll help the others.”
I rushed to Aidan, pausing just as I reached for the stake. I gulped.
“Um, how do I do this?”
He grimaced, pale under the blue. “Just pull it out. Fast.”
“Oh God,” I said, curling my fingers around the stake and yanking. “Oh God. Oh God.”
There was resistance, a faint sucking sound, then it released suddenly. I stumbled back a few steps. Aidan grunted with pain, shoving the end of the blanket over the hole in his shoulder. His eyes veined red. “Goddamn it, that hurts.” He pushed away from the wall. “I woke up as that hunter was stabbing me. I managed to kick her off enough to change her aim.” He winced. “But not her training.”
His steps were deliberate, as if they hurt. He kept his shirt fisted over the gash as he moved away from the bed, abandoning the blanket. He stood over the hunter, his lips lifting off impressive fangs.
“Hey, guys?” Lucy yelled up to us. “We kind of need to get the hell out of here! Like, right now would be good!”
“What now?”
“The town’s about to burn to the ground,” she answered, as if that were normal. “There might be dynamite, too. We’re not sure.”
Aidan stepped over the hunter and staggered out to the landing and down the steps. “Christabel, come on.”
“We can’t just leave her here!”
“She tried to kill me.”
“We still can’t … oh, never mind.” I knew it was a lost cause, especially when he still had a huge hole through his shoulder. I reached down to help the sweating hunter up. She screamed when her leg moved. At least she’d managed to splint it with one of Saga’s swords while the rest of us were fighting for our lives. She was hard to maneuver, like a huge bag of wet sand. She kept shifting, her eyes darting around frantically. She struggled as if I were going to bite her.
“Quit doing that,” I muttered when she accidentally kneed me.
“I’ve got her.” Connor was on her other side, holding her up. He looked straight into her eyes, leaned close enough that even I could smell the warm licorice and soap smell of him, and said, “Stop struggling.”
She stopped.
“Okay, now that’s a trick I need to learn,” I said as we dragged her down the stairs. Quinn was waiting for us in the doorway.
“Move it—I can smell the diesel,” he said tightly. He looked at the woman, disgusted. “Hunter’s going to want to save her, too,” he muttered. He grabbed the hunter from us, hoisted her over his shoulder, and started to run.
The wind was as soft as water when I ran so fast the world was just a blur of colors and scents: mushrooms, dirt, smoke, blood, sweat, the tang of gasoline, and something else I couldn’t recognize. The others were waiting for us at the edge of the forest, bruised and exhausted. Hunter had a black eye. Quinn dumped the wounded hunter at her feet and then wrapped his arms around her.
There was a loud rumble, almost like a sharp inhale and then a loud exhale. A cloud of fire and smoke and debris fountained out of the ghost town. It rained embers and dust. Buildings fell in on themselves. A tree caught fire on the edge of town. The ground trembled under our feet. Pinecones and acorns rained down.
Saga watched, her pale face furious.
“What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” Aidan asked, leaning against a tree for support while the violent light touched us all. His chest was covered in blood and ashes.
“She’s saving you,” Lucy replied, pointing at me. “The rest of us are averting a vampire civil war. You know, the usual.”
Nicholas gave her his lopsided grin, turning away from watching the destruction of the town. “I hope that damn hunter plane blows up, too—”
“Behind you!” Lucy yelled. A Hel-Blar ran at him, maddened by the fire and the blood.
Nicholas dodged but he was slow, taken by surprise.
His brothers tried to get to him, but they were too far away.
“Down!” Lucy added, fumbling with her crossbow.
Nicholas dropped.
Lucy fired.
There was a moment of stunned silence as we wondered what would be faster, gravity or the momentum of that sharpened bolt.
And then Nicholas straightened, shaking ashes out of his hair.
“Damn,” Quinn said. “Nice shot.”
Lucy grinned at him, then at Nicholas, who kissed her passionately and with enough tongue to make us look away. Lucy’s blouse was ripped and dirt matted her hair, but she looked as smug as only a girl surrounded by appreciative Drake brothers could.
“The fact is,” she said, “you Drakes would be lost without me.”