Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 13



Solange


I’d never seen anything like the vampire woman who dropped down from a branch and landed right in front of me. She wore white, from leather pants so tight they looked like wet oil paint, to the hood drawn up over her head. Her sleeves ended above her elbows and the rest of her arms were covered in leather bracers set with slim silver stakes. There were more stakes on the straps that crossed between her breasts and at her belt, and a long slender sword in a scabbard at her back.

She made my mom look like a perfectly normal member of the PTA.

The really strange part was the way everyone else froze for a heartbeat, staring at her with the kind of fear that left a coppery taste in the mouth.

“A Seki.” One of the handmaidens gasped.

The animals in the forest fell back into the shadows, sensing a predator they had no hope of defeating. Viola was trembling inside my head. Seki looked directly at me, even though her irises were such a pale gray they were practically translucent, but the pupils were completely and violently red. Her fangs were out, glistening like bone needles, and she wore a pair of ornate silver-capped nose plugs.

I didn’t even see her jump: there was no whisper of displaced air, just the crack of her boot on my knee and the jab of the side of her hand on my throat when I fell to the ground. I flung to the side like a rag doll in a washing machine as she kept attacking me. She knew where I was going before I’d even moved.

I fought back because I was my mother’s daughter, not because I thought for one second that I could defeat her. But I was also my father’s daughter, born to an ancient family. I pushed up to my knees, blood dripping from a cut under my eye. “You can’t hurt me,” I said, forcing pheromones so intently that I pulled a muscle in my eyelid and my teeth ground together. I could taste blood from my split lip. Bruises throbbed along the left side of my body, from neck to hip. “You can’t hurt me!’

She didn’t look convinced.

I couldn’t compel her. Between the blindness and the nose plugs, she was as immune as Lucy. Constantine was on my side but we still couldn’t win this. The last time we’d been this outnumbered was when he’d saved me from Lady Natasha’s Furies and I’d had to save him from the Chandramaa. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I heard the soft beat of leathery wings and the very faint squeaking of nearly a hundred bats. They flew between the red pines, filling the meadow like storm clouds with teeth. They attacked Madame Veronique, who was just now stepping out of the shadows. They bit at the handmaidens but most of all, they bit and gouged at Seki.

And I did the only thing I could do.

I ran.

Seki released silver spikes like deadly rain while the bats gnawed at her hands. Three spikes scraped me at the same time and blood stung my left elbow, right hip, and ankle. I tried to use the trees as a shield, zigzagging so I made a less predictable target. My blood sprinkled the snow and Seki paused, as if sensing my new position even through the swarm of bats. One of the handmaidens threw her own dagger. I glanced over my shoulder just as Seki grabbed her by the throat and snapped her neck. I tripped over a root. The bats flew past me in a stream of dark wings and sharp teeth.

I barely got out of the clearing before a handmaiden tackled me, despite what happened to her sister. We landed hard, branches snapping under us like gunfire. I elbowed her in the eye, struggling to get free. The handmaiden’s eyes were as wild as mine were. I was bruised and scraped all over but I barely felt the pain. There was too much adrenaline sizzling through me. A bat fell next to us, wings torn by a silver spike. She kneed me in the stomach and I flailed, falling back to the icy ground. I pulled her hair because it was all I could reach. I yanked as hard as I could, overbalancing her so that she flew off me. I scrambled to my feet and kicked the dagger out of her hand.

“Where the hell are your guards?” My cousin London crashed through the bushes, incongruous in her gelled hair and super-modern tight black pants. She still had vicious red scars under the strap of her tank top from her encounter with a Huntsman and holy water. I gaped at her. “Shit, London! Run!” I shoved her so hard she stumbled.

Behind us, Constantine emerged from his fight long enough to hurl a dagger at the back of Seki’s head. She leaned casually to the side, avoiding it. The sound of so many bats made the forest shiver. Snow and cold water shook off the pine boughs.

“London, what are you doing here?” I asked, pushing her into a run again. Stakes pierced the air between us. A bat squeaked, pinned to a tree.

“I nearly got you killed last summer but you saved my life this week. I owe you.” She threw me a humorless smile. “Besides, I’m a royalist, remember?” She stumbled, and then shoved me back. “Quit pushing at me, what’s your problem? I can handle a few handmaidens and your weird bats.”

“How about her?” I asked, still pushing her to run faster. “Can you handle that creepy-ass woman?”

London glanced back, spotted Seki between the bats and goggled. “And what the hell is that?”

And then there was just no time left for talking.

Seki had shaken off Constantine and the handmaidens as if they were flies. Her blind eyes were focused intently on me. She slapped bats away from her. And I’d run us into a field of frost and dead grass, with no shelter or shield to speak of. “London, get out of here,” I begged her as we ducked another volley of stakes. One of them stuck in my thigh, jerking me back a step. Blood oozed instantly around the weapon.

I yanked it out just as Madame Veronique strode out of the trees with three more handmaidens, as if she were back at Queen Eleanor’s courts. She was dressed in silk and furs, gold glinting at her girdle and circlet and in her braids. Viola’s hatred and fear of her roiled inside me, making me nauseated, but I didn’t exactly have time for her delicate sensibilities.

Madame Veronique nodded at Seki respectfully.

The bats turned even more vicious. Madame Veronique eyed them balefully. London and I turned sideways, facing away from each other. It was standard defense formation—we made a smaller target and could protect each other’s back. Constantine charged to our side, vampire ashes in his hair. I threw the stake I’d pulled from my leg, still bloody, at a handmaiden. It slammed through her chest and dropped her. She turned to ash as she fell.

Madame Veronique didn’t lift a finger to help, not that Seki needed her help. She was perfectly capable of killing us all on her own. Still, the other handmaidens fanned out, just in case. The bats kept everyone busy. Their sheer number made them a formidable weapon, even to Seki. But they were dying too, whirling as they dropped like punctured seed pods. London looked at me grimly. “We have to—”

A stake slid under her rib cage with such force she crumpled, screaming. I grabbed for her but she was already falling. I flung my hand out, drawing a wreath of bats to hover overhead. The rest concentrated on dive-bombing Seki.

“Son of a bitch, that hurts.” London wheezed, plucking at the stake.

I tried to support her weight, even as I bit through the thin skin of my wrist so she could drink my blood. It had helped heal her before. There was a stake in the undergrowth near my knee. I reached down to grab it as London lifted my wrist to her mouth. Her eyes widened.

That was the only warning.

Suddenly she was yanking me forward and to the side, using the line of my elbow to guide me. At the same time, she swung herself around so that her back was to mine, so that she was facing whatever danger it was that she’d spotted over my shoulder. I didn’t know if it was a handmaiden or Seki or Madame Veronique. I didn’t know if it was spike or stake or sword.

I didn’t even have time to turn around before I heard the sound.

But I knew exactly what I was listening to, knew precisely what that wet fleshy sound meant.

A silver spike pierced her chest, sliding between her ribs and right through her heart. As I turned around, feeling as though my vampire speed was suddenly slow motion, I saw my cousin crumble into ash. Her clothes fell in a heap in the dried leaves and what was left of her body drifted in the frigid air.

London was gone.

I stood slowly, rising like fog off a frozen lake. Shock made me feel hollow and brittle. My triple fangs elongated until my gums felt raw. Bats dipped around me, nipping gently, as if they were trying to comfort me. The others started to screech, like a strange high-pitched battle cry. They gathered between me and the others, blocking stakes and spikes.

“Viola.” Constantine grabbed my hand, forcing me into a run. I let him drag me along until we crossed the river and headed toward the camp. The cold water slapping into my cuts, the snow falling and clinging to my eyelashes like teardrops made me stop.

Constantine turned back, gathering me into his arms. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head mutely. London. London was hurt. “Why did the Seki mark you?” he asked, his voice feral with anger.

“You know her?”

“I know of them,” he said. “Seki is the name of an assassin clan. They abandon all personal ties, give up their names, and their blood lineage to become paid assassins. They’re incredibly rare, and deadlier even than the Chandramaa. They all answer to the name Seki, if they bother answering at all.”

I swallowed, shivering. “I’ve never even heard of them.”

“You’re safe now.” He stroked my back. My cheek rested on his bare chest. “I love you, Viola,” he murmured into my blood-and-snow-tangled hair. He still hadn’t realized that I wasn’t Viola. She responded inside my body, my heart raced, my belly tingled. Viola wanted to curl into his body and purr. She smiled at him. So I punched him in the face.

“I’m not Viola, you a*shole.”

His head snapped back, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His hands fell away from my waist. “Solange,” he said.

There were so many emotions braided into his voice that I couldn’t distinguish between the threads. I could hear the whole of it, pulsing with pain.

I’d show him pain.

“You helped her possess me,” I said. Viola was trying to chew through my control. I shoved her back viciously. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck as I struggled to hold on. “Traitor.”

“Perspective, love,” he said sadly. “I’m not the villain here. I’m just a guy in love with a girl, same as anyone.”

“Not quite,” I returned.

“I didn’t kill your little hunter, did I? When I had the chance? Or your friend when she threw a stake at me? I’d say you owe me, pet.”

Ice and fire prickled through me and I was half-surprised steam didn’t vent out of my pores. “What did you do to them?” I asked, just before I kicked him right between the legs.

“You’re the hero of your story,” he insisted, though his voice was choked and his eyes nearly crossed as he grabbed at himself. “And I’m the hero of mine.”

I’d thought he was my friend. He’d kissed me. I’d felt guilty but I’d liked it too. I was every bit as much a traitor to Kieran as Constantine was to me. More.

“You’re not a hero.” I choked.

“Aren’t I? Didn’t I get myself changed into a vampire after Viola died? Didn’t I search the earth for eight centuries, waiting for her to come back? Consulting witches and soothsayers?”

“That’s why you became my friend,” I said angrily.

“I knew she’d come back, eventually. There were rumors of magic, and a dead witch at the castle. And her voice, always her voice. Where better than the precious daughter of the Drakes?” His eyes were practically indigo. They glittered like summer storm clouds jagged with lightning. He grabbed my arm. “There was magic when she died. But she was always stronger than everyone assumed. I knew she’d find me. We swore to find each other no matter what.” He smiled at me tenderly. “Can you hear me, Viola? Come back to me, love. No one can stand between us ever again.”

“Until now.” I jerked out of his grasp. I imagined the pheromones sizzling under my skin, felt them rise off me like steam. “Get away from me, Constantine.”

He just looked at me calmly.

“Did you hear me?” I snapped. I flicked my hands as if that would increase my pheromones. “Back off!”

He didn’t move. First Seki, now Constantine.

“What, are my freaking pheromones broken tonight?” I muttered.

He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Solange. I truly am. But I can’t lose her again.” He gripped my shoulders, yanking me up against him. His chest pressed against my thin, bloodstained nightgown. I tried to knee him again but he was ready for me this time. I’d wasted a good tactic by acting out of anger. My dad wouldn’t approve. My mom just would have kicked Constantine so hard the first time he’d have passed out.

“You need to take control back, Viola. Now!”

His mouth covered mine in a searing kiss full of longing and desperation and the kind of heat that burned all thought away. I struggled against him but I was distracted, pulled in two directions. Because the kiss awakened Viola and she clawed at her tethers with increased violence. I fought back frantically. The kiss slid through me like a drug, teasing away the sharp edges, the weight of logic.

A kiss to tell the truth from a lie.

“Constantine.” It was Viola speaking, but I was still me. The juxtaposition made me feel all bleached out inside, like the bones of the dead left in the desert. I was sunlight and brittle ash. A strong wind could blow me away entirely.

“Vi!” Constantine was still kissing me. His hands dug into my hair.

“She’s . . . still fighting me,” Viola said. I felt my larynx moving, felt the vibration of sound in my throat. But I wasn’t the one forming the words.

He pulled back slightly. “Hang on! You need more blood.” He tilted his head suddenly, nostrils flaring. “And I smell someone familiar nearby.”

He tipped my head back, staring into my eyes. “Solange. I can smell your little friend Lucy,” he said darkly. “If you keep fighting us, I’ll have Viola drink her dry.”