Hearts At Stake

chapter 22

Lucy

Sunday evening, later still

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” Nicholas muttered as we ducked into the corridor. “It’s a bad idea.”

“It’s brilliant,” I insisted with more certainty than I actually felt. The corridor was damp and cold and confining and hardly gave us an advantage in a fight. But the only alternative was the woods, which were swarming with renegade Helios agents.

Sometimes my life was just weird.

Nicholas stayed close, his arm stretched behind him so that his hand could grip mine. I tugged experimentally. He tugged back.

“I’m losing feeling in my fingers,” I complained. He relaxed his hold, infinitesimally. His eyes caught the glow from the torchlight, reflected it like a wolf’s eyes might. He wasn’t just the Nicholas I’d argued with since I was little, he wasn’t even the Nicholas that had kissed me senseless yesterday; he was another Nicholas altogether. The hunter had risen to the surface.

I should probably be worrying about the fact that I was about to walk into the vampire courts instead of staring at his butt. Staring at his butt made me feel less like hyperventilating.

“Breathe,” Nicholas murmured, sounding half-strained, half-comforting. “Your heart’s not meant to skip beats like that.”

I wiped my free hand on my pants, hoping the palm he was holding wasn’t as sweaty. I’d changed into a pair of Solange’s cargos, assuming they looked more like something a secret agent would wear than my velvet skirts and beaded scarves. There was clay all over the left leg. It made me feel like crying for some reason. I was trying so hard not to imagine the hundreds of horrible things that might have happened to my best friend. She had to be safe. Absolutely nothing else was acceptable. Nicholas’s thumb made small soft circles over my knuckles. I released my pent- up breath. My eyes stopped burning. We could do this. We had to, it was that simple.

“I’m okay,” I whispered.

“I—” He cut himself off , squeezed my hand once, hard. My heart stopped, then leaped into overdrive. I couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing in my ears and the drip of water, even though I was listening as hard as I possibly could. He sniffed once. I tensed all over; even my eyelids felt tight. He held up three fingers. Since he wasn’t speaking, not even a whisper, I assumed it was vampires.

Footsteps were suddenly audible and they were incredibly close. I reached for one of my stakes, wondering suddenly if I was really going to be able to stick it into someone’s chest. As a theory it worked fine; as an actual attempt to shove a hunk of white thorn wood through bone and flesh and heart, I wasn’t so sure. In any case, I didn’t have the time to consider my options. Nicholas pushed me against the damp wall. His hand fisted in my hair and tugged my head until my neck was exposed. He ripped off the Drake cameo I’d forgotten to take off. His eyes met mine, his lips lifting slowly off his teeth. His canines were sharp, long, and gleaming like pearls. I wasn’t quite as immune to his pheromones as I’d assumed. I was mesmerized, and he pressed even closer to me.

And then we weren’t alone anymore.

I could tell he knew the moment the hall disgorged the three vampires, but he didn’t turn or freeze or give himself away. He only dragged his mouth over the arch of my bare neck until I shivered. My crossbow was slung back, hanging behind me.

“Hey.” One of them snickered.

Nicholas kept his back to them—risky, but not as risky as giving himself away as one of the Drake brothers. His teeth scraped my throat. I shivered again.

“Busy,” he drawled at them. “Get your own.”

“No time to have a drink,” they replied. “Hunting the Drakes. Seen any?”

Nicholas shrugged one shoulder.

“At the farmhouse, usually. Second door around the corner will get you out into the woods.” And straight into the eager, waiting arms of Hope’s agents.

“Thanks.”

He only grunted, nibbling my ear. My hair fell over his face, veiling his features. We stayed as we were until even he couldn’t hear the receding footsteps anymore. He pushed away from me as if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. His jaw was clenched so tightly, the muscles in his cheek jumped.

“That was close,” he ground out.

I nodded, trying to catch my breath. “Thank God they were in such a hurry.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he whispered.

“Oh.” I stayed where I was, even as he leaned against the opposite wall, jerking his hand viciously through his hair. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just get this over with,” he growled.

“How are we going to find your parents?” I asked as we started jogging down the corridor.

“If they’re not already at the courts, they should be in the woods just outside. This way.” He pushed open a grate in the ceiling and made a stirrup out of his linked hands for me to step up into. I leaped, he threw, and I landed half in the dirt with my legs dangling. I scrambled out of the way. He shot up out of the earth, landing in a graceful crouch. He tossed his hair off his face.

“Let’s go.”

The wind was warm, pushing its way between the leaves, but there were no other sounds—not a single cricket chirping or a rabbit dashing for safety. I walked as carefully as I could, trying not to break any twigs to give away our location. The mountain crouched over us, solid and filled with secrets. I used to worry about bears this far into the wild, not vampire queens.

We ran for a while, until I had to stop, panting, and rest against an elm tree. My lungs burned and sweat soaked my hair. I pressed a hand to my chest.

“Just a minute,” I gasped. “Just a minute.”

Nicholas looked around, nostrils flaring.

“Nothing,” he said, his fists clenching. “I can’t smell them anywhere— it’s all Lady Natasha and her damned Araksaka.” He slapped at a low-hanging branch. “Solange doesn’t have any time left.”

“I know,” I said quietly. “But she’s stronger than you think.”

“Not during the bloodchange. She’ll be out cold.”

“Even then,” I insisted stubbornly. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“Lucy.” He looked beaten. “Listen, you have to face—”

“No,” I interrupted fiercely. “You listen. We will find her. We will save her. Period. Okay?” I blinked back tears, fighting a bubble of hysteria in my throat. “Okay?”

He stepped closer, and I had to wipe my eyes so he wasn’t blurry.

“Shh.” He touched my cheek very gently. “Okay, Lucy. Okay.”

I pushed away from the tree even though my legs still felt like jelly. “So we keep looking.”

He looked at me for a long moment and then nodded. “If Mom’s planning to attack the courts, she’ll do it through the side entrance there. No one ever uses it anymore. If they’re not there, we’ll leave a message for them.”

I armed my crossbow. He winced.

“Careful with that thing.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

We climbed through the brush, using tree roots as handholds, scattering pebbles underfoot no matter how carefully I stepped. The entrance was blocked with rocks.

They weren’t there.

Nicholas didn’t lose his temper again, only crouched and made marks on the rock with the edge of a broken stone. There were no marks already there, waiting for him to decipher. His parents hadn’t been this way after all.

“And if your dad was the one with the plan?”

“Then he’ll already be in there, talking treaties.”

“They might still be looking for Solange, might have found her and brought her home.”

“Maybe.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Plan B.”

I stared at him, the back of my neck prickling. “Plan B?”

He nodded grimly. “Royal guard, coming from the west.”

“Shit.” I fumbled for the set of handcuffs we’d found in the weapons room. We’d made sure to open the links in the chain that secured them together so he could break free if our plans went awry, which they already had. He held out his wrists and I snapped them shut. I, at least, got to keep all of my weapons, though he had made me hide my pink rhinestone stake. I added a swagger to my walk. I was pretty sure all Helios-Ra agents learned the swagger along with how to sharpen their weapons and the proper way to apply holy water.

“Why are you limping like that?” Nicholas demanded.

“I’m swaggering,” I informed him.

“You look like you’re wearing a diaper.”

Charming. And I had a crush on this guy.

Wait.

I had a crush on this guy?

“Now what?” he asked. “You’re making weird faces.”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Never mind.” One crisis at a time.

Speaking of a crisis.

Two of Natasha’s Araksaka came at us, quick as wasps. The insignia of Natasha’s house was tattooed over the left side of their faces: three detailed raven feathers. One was a huge oiled man who belonged on the set of Conan the Barbarian. The other was a petite black-haired woman whose smile was feral enough to make my palms sweat again.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I’m here to collect the bounty,” I announced, my voice cracking only slightly. I tossed my hair off my face in a way I hoped looked cool and nonchalant and not like a nervous tic, which it most definitely was. The woman sniffed, narrowed her eyes.

“Human.”

“Go away, little girl,” the man said brusquely. “You don’t want to come in here.”

The woman took a step closer. “Humans don’t collect bounties,” she snarled. “Helios.”

I moved the crossbow slightly, still keeping it at the level of her chest. Moonlight glinted off the dented sun pendant around my neck. “I’m with Hope, actually.”

Something flickered in their faces but I couldn’t read it. She jerked her head in a nod for us to follow. I poked Nicholas in the shoulder with the crossbow.

“Move it,” I ordered. He walked slowly in front of me and I tried not to look as if I was nervous enough to drop my crossbow and shoot myself in the foot. Which was a distinct possibility.

It took forever to climb down and around to the cave entrance. Two more guards waited at the door. They didn’t say a word, barely glanced at us. Halfway down a damp tunnel, a woman with long curly hair stepped into view, and several more guards came up behind us. They bowed, but only quickly, so I guessed she wasn’t Lady Natasha. I expected the queen of the vampire tribes might not pout so peevishly. But then I’d never met royalty, vampire or otherwise.

“Is this a Drake boy?” She sniffed once, disdainfully. “Pretty enough, I grant you, but hardly seems worth all the fuss.”

“Juliana, go away,” the female guard snapped impatiently.

Juliana frowned. “You should be more polite. I am the queen’s sister, after all.”

“Go away, my lady,” the guard amended. “Lady Natasha’s orders are to keep you safe.”

“I hardly think these children are a danger to me,” she said scornfully, but she eventually drifted away. The rest of the guards pressed behind me. The silence stretched, like a bowstring about to snap. I knew the rules: show no fear. And I couldn’t just wait around until they decided to rip out my throat.

“Look, are we going to stand around here all night staring at each other? I want my reward.”

“This way.”

Actually, standing around was starting to have some appeal.

The damp cavern gave way to an arched stone hallway lit with oil lamps set into deep crevices. The dirt floor became flagstone layered with Persian rugs as we went deeper into the labyrinthine caves. The Araksaka fanned out, three in front, three in back. I felt like I was in the middle of a particularly tense vampire sandwich.

Shadowed figures coalesced in the dark openings to watch us pass. Eyes and teeth gleamed menacingly. By the time we reached the central cave, which was surprisingly tall, with jeweled stalactites, a crowd of pale-eyed vampires waited for us. Quartz glittered in the walls between hand-embroidered tapestries showing various events in vampire history and lore. There was a lot of red thread. The furniture was an eclectic mixture of antiques passed down through the centuries. It was mostly old wood, with a smooth patina of age, accented with a few modern pieces here and there.

I was trying really hard not to focus on the hissing. Even growing up around the Drakes wasn’t quite enough to immunize me to that many vampires. The air was so thick with pheromones that adrenaline poured through my bloodstream. I felt a little drunk and edgy with it. More than one vampire licked his lips, staring at me like I was chocolate mousse cake. I lifted my crossbow threateningly. The vampires eased back, but only barely.

There were mirrors everywhere. There were massive ones in gilded frames, tall cheval glasses, small broken shards glued to the wall. And in the center of the cavern, there was a single throne made of white thorn wood, the kind that makes the best stakes, carved into dozens of pale crows. Every feather was painstakingly detailed, and their obsidian eyes glittered in the torchlight. Sitting on the throne, smiling faintly, was Lady Natasha. She was beautiful, of course, and dramatic, with long, straight blond hair. Her bangs were cut straight over arched brows and pale blue eyes so light they appeared nearly translucent. She was slender and as white as a birch sapling.

“And what have we here?” she murmured, sultry as a long summer night. Her voice held back the ocean of tension as if it were a cup of water. “Hansel and Gretel, lost in the woods?”

Soft laughter draped over us like fur blankets. I locked my knees together so they wouldn’t shake.

“I’ve come for the bounty,” I announced. “I’ve captured a Drake.”

“Have you now?” One of her guards handed her a glass goblet filled with blood. She took a dainty sip, dabbed at her lips with a square of lace. “And you are?”

“I’m with Hope.”

“I see.” She tilted her head. “Arrogant smirk, lovely cheekbones. Yes, this is definitely one of Liam’s spawn.”

“Go to hell,” Nicholas spat.

“And Helena’s spawn as well, clearly. Abominable manners.”

“The bounty?” I asked, my brain racing frantically. We needed to leave this main hall with its crowds of vampires, but I didn’t know how to get us out of there.

And then it went from bad to worse.

Much, much worse.

Kieran Black stalked toward us, trailing guards. His face was all angles, his smile sharp and insolent. In his hands he held a wooden box inlaid with pearls. Before any of us could move or even speak, he flipped open the lid.

Inside, a heart dripped blood through the iron hinges.

“The heart of Solange Drake,” he announced. “Your Majesty.”