Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 1



Lucy


Saturday night


The Drake farmhouse was like the chimpanzee enclosure at the zoo when feeding time was late.

You know, if all the chimpanzees were undead.

And insane.

“Um, hello?” I said, though I was pretty sure even sensitive vampire hearing wouldn’t be able to pick out my voice from the chaos. “Solange and Nicholas are in trouble.”

As expected, no one heard me. They didn’t even notice Kieran standing right beside me.

The kitchen was crammed with dark-haired, fiercely scowling Drakes. Liam was drinking brandy, and beside him, Helena looked hollow with fury. Aunt Hyacinth had finally lifted the veil off her hat, and her scarred cheeks were pale. Uncle Geoffrey was searching through notebooks, and the brothers crowded onto the available ladder-back chairs. My cousin Christabel, newly turned, stood flattened against the wall, wide-eyed. Just a month ago she’d been human and unaware that vampires even existed. Then she’d been kidnapped and killed and turned into one—and the Drakes in this kind of a mood were still scarier than all of that had been. They were untamed, like thunder and lightning in a glass jar. You just knew, sooner or later, the jar would shatter into pieces.

Right now, exploding Drakes were actually low on my list of priorities. Not a good sign. But not exactly surprising, since I’d just been dragged into the woods by my best friend who, while wearing a crown, had ordered my boyfriend to drink my blood. Never mind that he’d been missing and we had no idea what had happened to him.

“Are they always like this?” Christabel stared at me. She was nearest to the door and was the first to notice me.

I swallowed. “No, this is something different.”

“What the hell happened back there?”

“You tell me.”

“Solange put on the crown,” Christabel said. “And then everyone around her flew back into the air. Like . . . magic.”

“Crap.”

“Lucy?” Christabel asked.

“Yeah?”

“Could you not stand so close?”

I slid her a glance. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, not since you got all fangy, and you still won’t hang out with me?”

She flinched. “I can smell the blood under your skin.”

“So?”

“So, it smells good.” Her eyes widened farther, until I was actually worried they might fall right out of her head and plop on the ground. “And it’s freaking me out!”

I edged away as she struggled not to throw up on her own shoes. Poor Christabel. She was so unprepared for the whole vampire thing.

“Hey!” I called out to the others.

“We can’t burn the forest to the ground,” Liam told Helena, his jaw clenching. “We’d never get close enough.”

“A couple of fire arrows ought to keep the damned Chandramaa busy,” she maintained. The Chandramaa were the secret guard who patrolled the encampment where the rare Blood Moon was being held. They basically killed any vampire who showed the slightest aggression. I assumed the only reason Helena wasn’t a pile of ashes was because they were pledged to serve the queen.

But she wasn’t the queen anymore. Solange was.

“We’ll call that Plan B,” Liam said.

“Mom’s right,” Quinn insisted. “We go in fast and hard now, before they have a chance to regroup.”

“It’s tactically sound,” Sebastian agreed quietly.

“Except that we have to split our focus,” Liam pointed out, draining his glass. “Nicholas is still missing. Besides which, Solange gave the order,” he added bleakly. “She’s not a prisoner.”

“But that’s not Solange,” I said. They still hadn’t noticed me, or even Kieran beside me, and he was a vampire hunter for crying out loud. The guards outside knew we were here since they’d let us pass, but Quinn, who was smoldering not three feet away, hadn’t seen me yet.

“We have allies in the camp,” Liam said over his sons’ arguments. “Best start there.”

Helena rubbed a hand over her face. Her hair was coming out of its severe braid. “Agreed,” she said reluctantly as her frayed temper cooled. “Much as I hate to just sit here, your father’s right. If we force her now, we might lose her forever.”

Quinn shouted his disagreement. Connor elbowed him to shut him up. Duncan glowered.

I hopped up onto the kitchen table in my muddy boots, trying not to brain myself on the chandelier. “I said, hey!” I gave up and whistled shrilly around my fingers, the way Duncan had taught me when I was twelve.

Vampire silence is like no other silence in the world. It’s like when the power goes out and the background noise of furnaces, water heaters, and pipes suddenly vanishes. The usual soundtrack of breathing and small unnoticed human movements was gone. It was only that throbbing silence of so many pale-eyed vampires, fangs gleaming. Even I, who was mostly immune to their pheromones, felt my stomach drop. Adrenaline flushed through me, just enough to make me feel nervous and jittery, as if I’d drunk three pots of coffee.

“Nicholas is back,” I repeated, my voice suddenly small and fluttery as a moth.

Liam had his hands around my waist and was lifting me off the table before I’d blinked. “How do you know?” he asked quietly.

“He bit me.”

That vampire silence again, only so much worse this time. Liam’s eyes glistened, and I was suddenly terrified he was going to cry. I swung my feet, still a few inches off the ground. “Can I get down now?”

He set me down with exaggerated care. “What do you mean, Nicholas bit you?”

I rolled up my sleeve to show them. The puncture marks were small and had already stopped bleeding. It just looked like I’d fallen on a barbecue fork. But I’d never forget the way he’d come out of the woods, covered in bruises and blood. Something had happened to him, something horrible.

“He didn’t say where he’d been or what had happened to him,” I said quietly. “But he looked bad.” I bit my lower lip hard to keep it from wobbling. I didn’t have time to wobble. Not right now.

“But he’s in one piece?” Helena asked.

I nodded. She lowered into a chair, as if she just didn’t have the strength to stand anymore. We stared at her. Helena never slumped. She was a force of nature, battering at the storm windows and storm cellars of the world. Liam grabbed her hand.

“Solange made him prove his loyalty by biting me,” I continued. Quinn swore viciously. “She called me his bloodslave.”

“Oh, Lucy,” Aunt Hyacinth said. “You know—”

“That’s not Solange.” I waved away the rest of her comforting speech.

“She’s gone darkside, Lucy,” Connor said. “She’s blood-drunk.”

I shook my head. “Look, I know Solange better than anyone.” Even if I’d spent the last few weeks wondering what had happened to my best friend. She’d changed, there was no denying it. “That wasn’t her. So we have to help her!”

“We will,” Uncle Geoffrey assured me, glancing up from his notebooks. “I’m sure there’s something here that I’m missing. Her bloodwork has been unique.”

“What, she has the vampire flu or something?” Duncan asked. He rubbed his jaw. I remembered Nicholas telling me Solange took him out just last week. “Hell of a flu.”

“I know this is difficult,” Uncle Geoffrey said. “But you have to accept that Solange has changed, Lucy.”

“No one changes that much, that fast.” I crossed my arms stubbornly. “And I know what I know. This isn’t her. I mean, I thought I caught a glimpse of the old Solange, but then she was . . . gone. She doesn’t even move like herself anymore, did you notice? She was all haughty and predatory.”

Logan pushed away from the wall, lace cuffs fluttering. “Isabeau said there was magic,” he said. “That’s what knocked us on our asses when she crowned herself.”

“Language.” Aunt Hyacinth clicked her tongue.

“Sorry. It’s why the Hounds took off so quickly,” he continued. “They were all muttering and whispering.”

“Find out what you can,” Liam ordered. “You’re our best link to the tribe.” The Hounds were decidedly reclusive and still might not help us. But Logan had been initiated as one of them, and, more importantly, Isabeau loved him. And Isabeau kicked all kinds of magic ass. “How did you find Nicholas?” he continued.

“He found me,” I said. “Well, us. Solange had dragged me out into the woods.” I shuddered. “I . . . it’s not her,” I repeated.

Logan put his arm around me comfortingly. “How did you get away?”

“Kieran found me.”

They finally noticed him, all at once. Helios-Ra training had his hand hovering over the stake at his belt. “Nicholas tagged her shirt,” he explained. “Probably while he was biting her. We had it worked out weeks ago so when the chip activated, I followed the coordinates.”

Helena looked impressed. “That’s my boy.” She almost smirked. “He’ll be okay.” She glanced at me. “We’ve had our own little plan, Lucy. Nicholas knew to ally himself with Solange if it came to a choice.”

“What?”

“We knew we might need someone to keep an eye on her,” Liam elaborated. “Though I admit, I could never have imagined it would go quite like this. He’s our best chance though. She’d believe he’d stay by her before anyone else.”

“Except for me,” I pointed out.

“Yes,” he admitted gently. “But the camp isn’t safe for you.”

My knees felt soft with relief. “Do you really think Nicholas will be all right?”

“Of course,” Helena replied. “He’s a Drake.”

She hadn’t seen him. I wasn’t so sure even the legendary Drake blood was enough to save him from whatever had happened to him while he was missing.

“We’ll have to kill her,” a woman said coldly. I couldn’t see her over all the people between me and the door. I didn’t have to see her. I could hear her just fine. “I won’t have Solange undoing the honor of our name. Tomorrow night, though tonight would be better. She’s become a risk to us.”

“Kill her?” I exclaimed, pushing through a wall of Drake brothers. “Who the hell— Whoa.”

The vampire could only be Madame Veronique, currently the oldest Drake vampire alive and the matriarch of the line. I’d never met her before, had only heard the stories the others whispered about how scary she was. I’d assumed they were exaggerating.

They totally weren’t.

Despite her words, she didn’t do anything outwardly aggressive. Still, all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stuck straight up. I felt like a threatened porcupine, every quill bristling painfully. Her brown hair was in braids that reached her hips, under an embroidered wimple. Gold glinted off her circlet and the ribbons on her long, medieval-style dress. Her eyes were such a light gray they were practically clear. Not to mention glacial.

She was pale, small, and strange. She radiated otherness in a way the Drakes didn’t, not even Aunt Hyacinth—and she was almost two hundred years old. Madame Veronique was eight hundred years old, and everything about her was deadly. She was the silent poison to Helena’s blade. I shivered.

“Humans?” she inquired with faint disdain. Her gaze flicked over me, dismissing me as unimportant. Quinn and Connor stood in front of me regardless, shifting casually so that I was hidden. Sebastian blocked Kieran. “Haven’t we enough trouble without your unruly pets?” Madame Veronique inquired calmly, after a terrifying pause.

Logan’s hand clamped on my arm, and he dragged me out the sliding glass doors, Kieran at our heels. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to Christabel. “Come on, before Madame Veronique sics one of her handmaidens on you.”

“She has handmaidens?”

“Yes, and they look like scary undead librarians.”

“She really wants to kill your sister?” I asked as we hurried through the dark gardens. They were slightly overgrown, mostly roses and fields. My parents’ gardens were crowded with vegetables for canning and herbs for Mom’s health tonics. Not to mention the crystals planted everywhere to help everything grow. “Can she do that?”

“Yes,” Logan answered grimly.

“But . . . your mom can stop her, right?”

“I hope so,” he said, his charming smile gone. “I really hope so.”

“We’ll stop her,” Kieran said, walking silently beside us. With his Helios-Ra training he was nearly as noiseless as Logan. I was learning, but I still cracked the odd twig under my boots. “Somehow.”

“I’m going to see what Isabeau knows,” Logan said, leading us down the driveway to Kieran’s car. “Be careful.”

“You too, Logan.” I hugged him tightly. “I don’t want to lose any more Drakes tonight.” I got into the passenger side. Logan closed the door and stood there glaring at me until I locked it. “I should call Jenna,” I said, grabbing my bag from the backseat. I’d taken her and Tyson to a bonfire party with friends from my old school. A vampire snuck in and one of the girls got bitten but, luckily, she was too drunk to remember details. Tyson brought her to the school infirmary, and Jenna and I tried to track the vampire. That was when Solange’s guard had grabbed me and left Jenna unconscious in the forest.

“She’s fine,” Kieran reminded me. “Spencer got your message and called Chloe and she got help. Jenna’s back in her dorm room with a few stitches and a mild concussion.”

I couldn’t even argue; I was too busy yawning so hugely my cheeks tingled. Despite everything that was going on, I fell asleep on the way back to the academy. The adrenaline crash made me feel as if I were made of wet cement. When Kieran nudged me awake, I tried to punch him.

“Lucy—shit!” He ducked, smacking his head on the window.

I blinked blearily. “Sorry, Kier. Habit.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “Between you and Hunter, it’s a wonder I have all of my limbs still intact.”

I snorted, rubbing my eyes. “You dosed me with Hypnos.”

“Three months ago. Let it go, Hamilton.”

I just grinned sleepily. “You have so much to learn.”