Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 26



Solange


My every instinct screamed at me to run in the opposite direction.

Not only did I have to run straight into Constantine’s arms instead, but I had to do it without snarling. I was picking up speed when Sebastian grabbed my arm and spun me around the other side of a tree. “What the hell, Sol?”

“All part of the plan,” I told him quickly. “Talk to Mom.” His hold didn’t slacken. “Check your phone.”

When he read the warning text I was sure Mom had Connor send to everyone, he dropped his hand. “When exactly did Mom and Dad lose their minds?”

“Viola!” Constantine shouted. I could see the glint of his sword as he raced between the trees toward us.

“We need to make this look good,” I whispered urgently. Sebastian sighed and lifted his chin.

I punched him.

I didn’t even break his nose, which would disappoint Lucy on principle, but he still flew through the air as if a giant had tossed him. He landed in the snow, exactly where Constantine could see him. He even groaned, clutching a fake wound. I had no idea my quiet brother had such a theatrical side. “Sorry,” I murmured, jumping over him to cut off Constantine before he reached us and decided to finish what I’d started. He shot me a boyish grin so unlike his usually solemn silences that I stumbled.

The moonlight made Constantine’s violet eyes even brighter. Three men followed behind him, swords also drawn. I leaped a fallen log, scattering snow and icicles.

“Viola.” The relief in his smile was sincere. He gathered me up in his arms, looking even more knightly.

“Tristan,” I murmured. Viola had never called him Constantine and he’d never divulged his first name to Solange. When he bent his head to kiss me, I nearly panicked. The last time he’d done that it had called Viola to the surface. He knew that his presence had strengthened her hold on me. I threw a fearful glance over my shoulder and his mouth grazed my ear. “They’re coming,” I said. “Don’t let them take me again.”

He straightened. “I only left you with them in the first place because they’d never hurt Solange and I needed to marshal my defenses.”

I made my lower lip quiver. The Viola I knew, and the Viola Constantine had known before her bloodchange, were vastly different. I couldn’t quite understand why he’d let everything go so badly since she returned. He had to see there was something off about her, didn’t he? Was he blind? “Can we just go home now?” I asked.

“Of course.” He ran his hand down my back. I looked up at him with what I hoped could be construed as love and gratitude. The worst part of it was that I’d genuinely liked him. He’d listened to me. He’d even understood me and pushed me to accept myself. Even if he’d done it to free Viola, I couldn’t help but think we’d been friends.

“Chandramaa with us, but you stay here and make sure the Drakes don’t follow,” Constantine ordered his men.

“Don’t hurt them!” I burst out.

“Such a soft heart, love,” he said, smiling down at me.

Yeah, right. Clearly, he didn’t know Viola as well as he thought he did.

“We might need them later,” I added hastily. Since we had home advantage and knew the terrain intimately, I had to believe my family could take Constantine’s men. Plus, we had Mom. Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Luckily, there was no need to speak as we made our way through the forest to the encampment. Every so often we would pause in a clearing so Constantine could map our location using the position of the stars. I couldn’t see or hear the Chandramaa guard around us, but I knew they were there. Eventually the snow gave way to tramped-down dirt trails, all snaking to the same center. We passed a guard, then the field where Duncan had kept his motorcycles, then between two trees into the outskirts of the camp. I could hear faint drumming and see the warm flicker of torches and bonfires. Guards divested us of all our weapons, right down to the slender toothpick stake strapped to my ankle under my pants.

I waited until we’d entered the main field, the wind snapping the pennants and banners on the painted pavilions. Lanterns swung between the tents. Vampires turned toward us slowly.

“Chandramaa!” I called out. Constantine paused curiously. I met his eyes. “I am formally calling off the banishment on the House of Drake. Do you hear me?” I added, just as loudly.

“We hear you,” someone answered from the treetops. “Consider it done.”

“We hear you as well,” a hard voice said from behind us.

“What are you doing?” Constantine asked me at the same time. We turned to face the speaker. He was huge, with ropes of muscles and braided blond hair. He didn’t look impressed.

And he wasn’t alone.

Vampires circled around us, pressing closer. They muttered unhappily, menacingly. “The little queen finally makes an appearance,” the blond vampire said disdainfully. “Been too busy breaking all of our covenants and terrorizing the town to sit council?”

I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“What do we care about the town, Lars?” someone else shouted. “Do the humans care about the cattle they eat?”

“She’s turning too many eyes our way,” Lars snapped. “And if we’re going to have a figurehead queen, she should at least be benign.”

“What, like Natasha was? You weren’t here in the eighties.”

They were starting to shove one another to get closer to me. Constantine angled himself to shield me. They didn’t have weapons of course, but the press of their anger was sharp and unyielding. “Don’t hurt her.” A woman cuffed Lars on the back of the head. “Do you want a red arrow through your head?”

“Alva, quit it,” he grumbled.

“You have every right to be angry,” I tried to shout above the harsh words and hissing. Constantine shoved at someone who came too close. “I was possessed,” I said, trying not to give away the fear choking my throat like smoke. I knew they’d be able to smell it. “Please, listen.” I tried to force my pheromones out over the crowd, but there were too many of them.

“A likely story,” a girl scoffed.

“It’s true,” I insisted, stumbling when an elbow hit me in the spine.

Constantine caught me, turned me to face him as if we were alone under the moon. “What are you saying?”

“I’m not Viola,” I told him coldly. “We cast her out. She’s not coming back.”

He staggered as if in physical pain. “That’s not possible.”

The mob shifted and I could suddenly see down the path to a circle of torches. The light glinted off metal chain and a tall heavy tree, cut down to become a post. People were tied to it at various lengths, huddled around small fires. I froze. “What is that?”

“The post you ordered,” Lars barked. “As if you didn’t know.”

Viola had set up the same kind of post her own mother had been chained to. It wasn’t just cruelty, it was madness too. “Take it down!” I shouted, ill at the sight of it. I could remember only too well Lady Venetia covered in bite marks. “Let them go!”

Someone had me by the hair. I was dragged toward the post, the angry mob moving with us. I couldn’t get away. I caught a glimpse of a trio of laughing girls all wearing white brocade gowns with dyed white hair. The Furies.

“Too little too late, princess,” Lars said, deliberately not referring to me as the queen. I couldn’t care less about that, except it meant I was losing what little ground I still had.

And I really didn’t want to have my head chopped off or whatever it was they were planning to do.

“The Chandramaa,” I croaked. Constantine was just standing on the deserted path, broken. He swayed, looking worse than I felt, and I was the one about to be torn apart by an angry mob.

“Vampire tradition allows us a royal execution if all the tribes agree.”

“But I was possessed! Can’t I abdicate? Name a regent or something?” I was really starting to hate vampire traditions. There was no fairness to them, no second chances. Just a stake in the heart if you made a mistake, like medieval law. I’d seen the Middle Ages firsthand and it wasn’t all pretty dresses.

“That seems fair,” a girl pointed out, the pink daisy in her hair incongruous against all the fangs and bloodshot eyes.

“Not good enough,” Lars argued fiercely. The Furies shouted their agreement. “She nearly exposed us all. My own son fell to a Huntsman just last night because of her recklessness.”

“Murdering a sixteen-year-old girl won’t bring him back,” his wife said wearily.

He growled like a wounded bear. “If they won’t grant me an execution, then I demand blood debt. Her life for my son’s life.” He smiled then, and it made me take a step back. “Trial by combat.”

“Are you kidding?” I blurted out. He was more than twice my size. All I had were bats. A few circled over us, squeaking.

“If you insist on that antiquated tradition,” my father suddenly interjected loudly from the edge of the crowd, his eyes flashing, “then my daughter has the right to name a champion to fight in her place.”

“Fine. Who will it be? You?” He chuckled condescendingly. “The peacemaker?”

“No,” my mother corrected, stepping out from behind my dad, her smile cold and dreadful. “Me.”

Lars blanched.

If I’d been five years old still, I would have added a “nah-nah-nah-boo-boo.”

The crowd fell silent. He let go of my hair and I scrambled out of his reach, rubbing my tingling scalp.

“You can still withdraw with honor,” Dad said gently. “And we can reconvene the council and continue with the real work of the hour.” Lars spat on the ground. “Guess not,” Dad added mildly. “Before you begin, know that my daughter was the victim of possession and has been exorcised. The Hounds’ handmaiden will attest to it.”

“The one allied to your family?” someone scoffed loudly. “With your own son initiated? What do you take us for?”

“Are you maligning Kala?” Finn asked quietly. He was tall and blond and usually so silent it was creepy. He could have given Sebastian lessons. He was also thousands of years old and I hadn’t seen him since Isabeau had first arrived at the courts. Those months felt like years.

Whoever had spoken lost herself in the crowd.

“Choose your own shaman,” Dad suggested. “And have my daughter tested.”

“No, we’ll decide now,” Lars insisted.

A Chandramaa guard stepped forward, holding two quarter-staves with pointed tips. She was tall, with short black hair and the red insignia stitched onto her sleeveless tunic. She gave Mom the black-tipped staff and Lars took the white one. They each had a red feather attached, like the one the guard wore in her hair.

Someone I didn’t know placed the crown on the ground between Mom and Lars. More Moon guards stood in a circle, defining the battling ground. Lars’s clan stood behind his wife, fists over their hearts in solidarity. “Dad,” I said, holding his hand tightly, as if I was still a little girl. “Has anyone realized this is the twenty-first century? This isn’t justice.”

“I know,” he squeezed my fingers. “Don’t worry,” he added, but I could see the way his jaw clenched. Mom was the only one who didn’t seem bothered. She actually looked pleased.

“To the death, I presume?” she asked lightly, swinging her staff experimentally to get the feel of it.

“Yes,” Lars replied.

“No,” his wife broke in hotly. “I’ve lost my son; I won’t lose my husband too.”

Lars raised his eyebrows. “Alva, she’s tiny.”

Alva looked disgusted. I had the distinct impression that if she’d had an iron skillet nearby she’d have clobbered him over the head with it. “Don’t be an ass.” She pointed at the guard, fangs extended. “First blood.” Lars grumbled but didn’t say anything else when his wife shot him the kind of look I thought only Mom could wield.

Mom inclined her head. “First blood is acceptable.”

They both held out their left hands, palm up. The Chandramaa guard scored them lightly with the tip of a ruby-handled blade until blood welled to the surface. They flung the drops over the crown and stepped back; the fight had automatically begun.

Lars attacked first, his staff missing Mom so narrowly I yelped. The pointed tip slammed into the dirt with such force it sounded like a horse’s hoof hitting the ground. It stuck slightly when he went to swing it again. Snow and earth flung in every direction. Mom ducked and used her own staff for leverage. She swung around, using her locked legs as a battering ram. Her boots smashed into his chest. Lars staggered backward, knocking down several bystanders.

He swung low, hoping to catch more across the knees. She leaped up nimbly, slamming the butt of her staff into his shoulder. He howled, bones cracking. But she hadn’t cut through his skin and there was no blood. The fight continued.

Their staffs cracked against each other, like bones breaking and skulls shattering. Mom deflected a downward blow by reaching up with the staff in a horizontal position. Lars parried her next attack by smashing it aside. She danced backward and then extended, flipping the staff in both hands as if it were a sword. She thrust forward, hitting his sternum. She feinted low and when he went to block she caught him in the throat. He gagged, his muscles contracting viciously. He slammed his staff down into her upper thigh, catching her at such a brutal angle that her leg gave out. She fell to one knee.

“Helena,” Dad breathed.

Mom shifted her hold on the staff and instead of using it to get back on her feet, she jabbed up, hitting Lars under the chin. The staff kept going, hitting his mouth and nose. Blood splattered into the ground.

“First blood!” the Chandramaa guard announced. “Surrender your weapons.” Her compatriots rushed in to disarm Lars and my mother. Mom limped over to where he was sprawled in the dirt, blood oozing from his split lip and cracked nose.

“I’m sorry your son died,” she said bluntly. “But my daughter was a victim of the same person. She’s gone now. I hope you find some comfort in that.”

“Enough,” Alva said, when Lars swore, fists clenched. There were tears mingling with the blood on his face.

The guard used the end of one of the staffs to hook the crown and toss it at me. “It is done.” She bowed in my direction. “Hail the queen.”

I cringed, holding the bloody crown clutched in my hands.