Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 31



Solange


As it turned out, being a revolutionary was actually quite boring.

Until the assassin returned, that was.

Before that, I mostly had to sit quietly and restrain myself from rolling my eyes when vampires ten times my age acted like toddlers in need of a nap. There was a lot of shouting and slamming of fists on the council table. Dad said the pressure had built up so long it needed a healthy outlet before we got down to the real work. If they didn’t start being more productive by the end of the night, I felt sure everyone was going to be treated to one of the famous Liam lectures.

In the meantime, I just had to survive.

I’d been wandering through the field of dirt bikes and motorcycles, now covered in a thin dusting of snow. Duncan was puttering with one of the antique Triumphs, mostly to get away from the crowds. Marcus sat on a bench with a pile of books. The immunity powers of my blood, the magic in the copper collars, and the way Viola survived, had all posed more questions than they’d answered. And there was nothing he loved so much as a riddle.

I was on the edge of the field, wondering if I’d finally have a chance to spend an hour at my pottery wheel when we got home, when the first body dropped from the treetop.

The girl landed in front of me with a thud that scattered icicles and dead leaves. Three slender silver spikes stuck out of her chest, all surrounding her heart and the Chandramaa crest stitched in her vest. She wheezed, blood spattering her lips. I crouched down to pull the stakes out and her eyes tracked me, wide and terrified.

Whatever could scare the Blood Moon guard was not something I wanted to tangle with. She rolled over, coughing more blood into the snow. The next body turned to ash before it hit the ground. A quiver of red-tipped arrows and a set of leather armor caught in the tree branches. I leaped back, after snagging one of the bloody-tipped stakes I’d pulled from the first guard. No arrows rained down to stop me. They were clearly too busy.

The silver spike that whistled toward me wasn’t Chandramaa. It bit into my hand before I could dodge, pain making me yelp. I’d seen a spike like it before, had plucked one out of my own arm. I knew who was taking out the Chandramaa.

Seki.

And I knew why she was doing it.

I’d managed to forget about her in all of the chaos, assuming she’d forgotten about me too since I wasn’t Viola anymore. I briefly considered running from the camp, to draw her away from my family but Duncan and Marcus were already dashing toward me. So I did the next best thing.

“Mom!”

Someone else screamed from the treetops. Duncan and Marcus grabbed the other two spikes and stood beside me as a cloud of bats swarmed in, called by my fear. They flung themselves about, screeching and being generally unhelpful. I tried to marshal them into fanged, winged missiles but I didn’t even know where Seki was. She could be behind us, above us, anywhere.

“What the hell?” Duncan asked, scanning the branches.

“It’s Seki,” I replied. It wasn’t technically her name but close enough. “Vampire assassin.”

Marcus frowned. “I thought they were a myth.”

“Not so much,” I replied as another guard toppled from one of the tree bridges.

Mom and Dad broke through the trees behind us. “What’s going on?” Mom demanded. She stared at the silver spikes. “Where did you get those?”

Seki dropped down in a cloud of ashes before I could answer. She wore the same white leather, with the same white braids and eyes like abalone shells.

“Get Madame Veronique,” Dad said. Marcus was fastest, gone before Duncan and I had time to react, leaving Mom his spike.

That was all the time we had before silver spikes flung through the air like birds. A bat flying too low caught one in the wing and spiraled to the ground. Mom kicked the second one out of its trajectory as Dad knocked me to the ground. He caught the spike Mom had knocked aside before it slammed into a tree behind us. He and Duncan stood over me, side to side. They wouldn’t let me back up. I crawled away between their feet.

Mom attacked Seki, heedless of the danger. If the Chandramaa were no match for Seki, I wasn’t sure my mother would fare much better. Seki wasn’t like the rest of us. Even with the nose plugs blocking my pheromones, she could track my location. I had to do something. Fast. More bats were falling, dropping like black rain.

I may as well make it easy for her.

“I’m over here!” I called out after Seki’s spike pierced Mom’s shoulder. I jumped to my feet, waving my arms even though I knew she couldn’t see me in the usual sense.

“Solange, no,” Mom said between clenched teeth as she yanked the spike out of her flesh. Blood oozed. She flung the spike back, grazing Seki’s hand as she lifted it to stab my father. Dad dodged during that brief moment of distraction and slammed his foot into her knees, knocking her back. She fell backward, still flinging spikes. One of them sliced a long gouge in Duncan’s cheek.

We’d barely begun and already we couldn’t hold her off much longer.

“Cease,” Madame Veronique said calmly, as if her family weren’t being beaten to a bloody pulp around her. She used a tiny pearl-encrusted dagger to cut her finger, and flung her own blood into the snow as she approached us.

Seki stopped, standing preternaturally still. She only moved her head, turning it to pin Madame Veronique with her ghostly moonlight eyes.

“You did this!” Mom spat at Madame Veronique.

“Yes, and only my blood will call her off,” Madame Veronique said. She flicked a cold glance at my dad. “Really, Liam, you might try to control your wife.”

“Hey,” I snapped, fully aware of the lengths to which Madame Veronique went to restrain the wife of one of her twin sons. “You leave my mother out of this.”

“Solange,” Dad said quietly.

“She’s the reason London died!” I exclaimed. “And she knew about the prophecy from the beginning.”

“Hush,” he murmured. Marcus put a restraining hand on my arm. Duncan’s eye was already mottled and bruised. One of the tree bridges above us appeared to be on fire, throwing flickering light and embers. Dad helped Mom to her feet as Madame Veronique gestured at me imperiously. I just narrowed my eyes at her.

“If you wish this assassin to leave you and yours alone, you will come here, little girl.”

Walking calmly toward her was harder than dodging Seki’s spikes. Still, I gave her a wide berth as well. Madame Veronique’s handmaidens stood in a half-circle behind her, expressions unreadable. She pinched her finger so that more blood welled to the surface and then smeared it on my forehead. What was it with everyone painting their blood all over me? Even for a vampire it was getting kind of gross.

Seki bowed in our direction and then stalked away, her white leather blending into the snow.

Relief had me exhaling even though I hadn’t taken a breath. Madame Veronique sheathed her dagger on her jeweled belt.

“Thank you,” Dad said, as bits of fiery rope smoldered and drifted down around us. “And I don’t think,” he continued in a silky, menacing voice I’d never heard before, “that we’ll be taking orders from you anymore.”

She sniffed. “I am the eldest of your lineage, boy.”

“Consider our branch of the family tree severed,” he said calmly.

“And if you come near our daughter again, it won’t be all that’s severed,” Mom promised.

They stared at each other for a long deadly moment before I flicked my hand, casually bringing a curtain of bats between them.

“We’ll discuss this later,” Madame Veronique said before moving away.

“Remember when the most exciting thing you did was make lopsided pots at your wheel?” Duncan asked, wiping blood off his face. “Good times.”

I smiled slightly. “I promise to make you a dozen lopsided pots for Christmas.”

He just groaned and moved his shoulder until it cracked back into place.

“Some sweet sixteen,” Mom said, sliding her silver spike into her boot, as the Chandramaa were too busy to stop her. “I don’t remember sixteen being quite so treacherous.”

“I was there,” Dad reminded her drily. “I’d say it’s a family trait.”

She just laughed, winding her arm through his. It was her first true laugh since my bloodchange. Duncan, Marcus, and I grinned sloppily at one another. Then Dad kissed her and we looked hastily away, grimacing.

“Haven’t we suffered enough?” Duncan muttered as we left them, still kissing. It didn’t seem to bother them that Chandramaa guards were now racing up and down rope ladders with buckets of water and refusing to let any other vampires out of the camp until they’d gotten the fire under control.

I followed Seki’s barely-there footsteps, just to reassure myself that she was truly gone. I felt better when her footsteps disappeared and no one tried to kill me for five whole minutes. The soft, quiet beauty of the woods in winter helped. They were cleansing, hopeful. I could finally hear myself think again.

And in that soft quiet moment, I couldn’t help but think of Kieran.

I wanted to call him but I was still out of signal range. I wrote a text and then decided to take a walk to the Bower to find a signal strong enough to send it. I wondered what he was doing right now. Had he thought of me at all, since our conversation at the tree? There’d been no mention of getting back together, no reunion kiss. But he’d told me I was worth it. Surely that meant something? Was it too soon to ask him on a date? Would we ever even be able to reclaim such a normal pastime after all we’d been through?

I wouldn’t find out by being a coward.

I hit “send” on my text before I’d even reached the Bower. The connection was weak, but it eventually went through. Now I could go back to concentrating on history, politics, and the traditions of tribeless vampires around the world.

I was turning around to head back when I spotted Nicholas moving furtively between the trees. He was holding the back of his neck.

“Nic,” I called out, hurrying to catch up to him. He didn’t hear me. He was stumbling, as if in pain.

“Nicholas!” I was running alongside him now and he still couldn’t hear me. He kept scratching at his neck, but there was nothing here. There were no wounds on him, no blood. But he was acting as if he didn’t even know I was there. “Hey,” I said. “Stop.”

Even my pheromones didn’t work. He kept staggering along, but he was also now clutching at his head, moaning. I dropped back, not wanting to cause him more pain.

Frowning, I hung back out of sight, tracking my brother as he went deeper and deeper into the forest.