4
I was giddy as I watched the muffin-shaped haystacks roll past like a live Monet painting, the sky shimmering pink behind them. Beside me, Cherie vibrated like a frightened chihuahua.
“Criminy’s going to kill us.”
“You’ve already said that a thousand times. It’s too late to worry about it.”
“It’s never too late to worry.”
I rolled my eyes at her and leaned my head against the worn cushion of the jouncing carriage, which was moving across the fields of Franchia at a fast clip, spiriting us from Callais to Paris. My best friend was starting to sound way too much like my conscience. I was fairly certain she would nag me to death before we even reached our destination, much less before Criminy found out.
“He’s got to find us before he can kill us. And Paris is a big city, mon petit chouchou.” I elbowed her in the ribs.
“And what is that supposed to mean, Demi?” She elbowed me right back.
“It means I called you a cabbage. It’s a French—I mean, Franchian—term of endearment. And did you know you have seriously pointy elbows?”
Her voice went so quiet that surely the Pinkies in the carriage wouldn’t hear. “I just don’t think it’s right, running out on Mademoiselle Caprice and taking all her francs. Criminy’s going to kill her, too, for being a bad chaperone. What was so horrible about going to the University of Ruin, anyway?”
We hit a pothole, and my head knocked against the wood, loosening a dark brown curl to dangle in my eyes. I sat up straighter and shrugged. “I left her enough money to get back to the caravan. And Ruin wasn’t horrible; I just wanted an adventure. I don’t want to be a boring contortionist in the boring caravan anymore, and I don’t want to go back to college, either.”
“Back to college?”
I wedged my head onto her shoulder, my mouth to her ear behind a curled glove. The other passengers didn’t know we were Bludmen or that I was a Stranger from Earth. We would be in serious trouble if they found out we were bloodsuckers—not the nice, normal, Pinky girls we appeared to be. “I guess I never told you. I was at university when I . . . when I ended up in Sangland. When Criminy found me and saved me. I was a student, in my world. I hated it.”
“Why did you never say? And why did you hate it so?”
I scowled behind my hand, but her confusion was genuine.
It was easy to forget that Cherie had grown up poor and freezing in the forests of Freesia after her family fell out of favor with the Tsarina. To her, the caravan was a life of warmth and security. And I had taken that from her when I decided to leave. Breathing in the scent of her hair, I felt a rush of love for the first person who’d reached out to me when I arrived in Criminy’s caravan, naked and confused and newly blood-hungry. She’d hugged me and taken me in like a lost kitten, teaching me how to drink blood from vials without staining my clothes and showing me how to line my eyes with kohl like the other girls. When I looked at her, I saw only my dear friend, the closest thing I’d ever had to a sister. Golden curls, eyes too innocent for a Bludwoman, pink cheeks, and an upturned nose. She looked like an American Girl doll, not a well-disguised wolf.
But to her, the University of Ruin represented untold wealth and opportunity. Most likely, no one in her entire family had ever been to university, much less a woman. I would have to keep reminding myself, before we landed in Paris, that women in Sang didn’t have the sort of freedom I had known back home in Greenville, South Carolina. I hadn’t spoken much of my life before Sang, it was true. But I owed her a better explanation for why I’d forced her to join me on a risky adventure.
“I never told you because I wanted a clean start, wanted to forget how I ended up here. Earth is different. Safer. I guess I thought that once I left home and got to a new city for college, everything would be different. That I would make friends and get a boyfriend and do well in my classes without really trying and that a degree in art history would actually get me a job. I thought life would be as pretty as it looked in the brochures, in the advertisements. I thought that just getting away from my parents would suddenly make everything better.”
“It didn’t?”
“Nope. Kind of the opposite. It just made me more depressed and alone.”
The Pinky gentleman across the carriage watched our whispered closeness with an unhealthy fascination, a creepy gleam growing behind his spectacles. My instinct was to flash my fangs at him and hiss, but that would get us thrown off the carriage, if not killed. Instead, I pulled my head away from Cherie and locked eyes with the older man. After a few moments of my intense glaring, he cleared his throat juicily and looked away. The prim nursemaid beside him sniffed in disdain and sidled closer to her charge, a girl of about seventeen. The girl gave us an innocent, hopeful smile, which I was sure Cherie would return behind closed lips. We might have looked her age, but we were probably ten years older. There were benefits to being bludded, after all.
“Well, I think it’s important that we—”
I never found out what was important. Two sharp thuds outside set the bludmares screaming as the scent of fire reached my sensitive nose. Cherie’s head whipped around, her eyes wide and alert. The coach shuddered with sudden violence, throwing us against each other and the walls. Flames caught at the curtains, black smoke rolling into the stuffy, airless space. The gentleman who’d ogled us earlier threw open the door and froze before tumbling out onto the ground, a flaming arrow lodged in his jabot.
I leaped out, tugging Cherie behind me, trying to make sense of the chaos, while the young girl behind us clutched at her nurse with one hand and the carriage seat with the other and screamed bloody murder. I forgot myself and turned to hiss at her, which only made her more annoyingly hysterical.
A loud screech in the road caught my attention. It was a metal conveyance, shaking and belching smoke as it skidded to a halt. Masked figures with bird beaks and round goggles appeared in the haze, and I started to run in the opposite direction. Cherie was motionless beside me, stiff with fear.
“Run, you idiot!” I hissed.
“I—I can’t.”
The figures hovered closer, dark arms up as if to calm us, as if creepy, masked monsters could ever calm anyone. I grabbed her hand and pulled, but she was rooted to the ground and stronger than she looked. Gritting my teeth, I slapped Cherie’s white face. “You’re a goddamn predator, Cherie. Act like it. Run.”
“I can’t. I’m . . . I’m scared of fire, Demi. You don’t understand. I never told you—”
With a growl, I scooped her up over my shoulder and dodged around the thrashing, burning, screaming bodies of the once-white bludmares to charge into the waist-high grass of the moors. Crossbow arrows thwacked over my head, carrying nets instead of killing points. I tripped and fell face-first into the grass. Cherie slipped out of my grasp and landed with a groan just ahead of me. I couldn’t see her, but the plants up ahead swayed with her passing, her frantic breathing and grunts as clear as the sounds of prey being hunted.
I stayed low to the ground and followed her, but the smoke was everywhere now, blocking my view and filling my lungs with the greasy funk of magic. I didn’t dare call to Cherie, but I had lost her in the maze of foggy grass. Waving the smoke away, I clawed through the chaos and into a thick pricker bush that would have torn apart anyone not wearing so many layers of city clothes.
“Come on. Come on come on come on,” I chanted, listening for Cherie, waiting for her to join me.
I’d given up on sight, but my eyes were screwed, too. With the screaming of the girl in the coach and the bludmares dying on the ground, the conveyance’s rattling, the roaring of fire, and the thrashing of the grass as the cloaked figures hunted us through the smoke, I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t dare peek up or call out for Cherie. I would have to hope that her inner strength had overcome her fear, that she was waiting somewhere, crouched, as I was, hiding under the heavy gray sky. I was one of the few people who understood Cherie’s quiet tenacity and power, and I prayed it wouldn’t fail her now.
The screaming stopped all at once, leaving only the rumbling of the conveyance, the crackling of the fire, and the eerie whispering of the wind in the grass. I took a deep breath, trying to scent Cherie, but I smelled only smoke and charred meat. When the conveyance’s racket quieted, I rubbed my ears. It took me an extra moment to realize the sound was fading as the vehicle moved rapidly away. I stood in a crouch and found a trail of black exhaust lingering over the road as the mixture of smoke and magic lifted. The machine was far off now, low-slung, dark, and mean, like a blackened raven’s skull. And faster than anything I’d seen since coming to Sang.
“Cherie?”
The only sound that reached me was the creaking of the burning coach as the timbers collapsed. I was about to rush over and hunt for Cherie amid the flaming pyre when I heard the loud, nasal sound of a horn. Were they coming back?
I dropped to the ground behind the bush, the adrenaline finally running out of my veins and leaving me cold and wobbly. A bludbunny darted past me with a bleeding human finger in its mouth. The next one stopped by my boot to hiss, nearly dropping an ear. I shook my head to dislodge the woozy funk of magic and smoke, and one of the rabbits hissed at me.
“I’m not that desperate,” I muttered. When I started to sit up, I only fell back, dizzy.
My head was pounding—at least, I thought it was. Then the pounding turned into the slamming of hoofbeats against packed dirt. I froze. I needed to find Cherie and get back on the road without interference. The only thing I needed less than further trouble was a cadre of helpful Pinkies and Franchian gendarmes asking too many questions I couldn’t answer.
“Damn. Just missed them!” an older man’s gruff, gravelly voice shouted.
“Nicely done, Vale.” That voice was younger, smug and nasty.
“Yes, of course. Blame the guy who had to take a piss.” A third voice, sarcastic and dry. All three voices were heavily tinged with the boozy kiss of a French accent, which told me they were likely humans, as only daimons actually spoke Franchian in Sang.
The horses skidded to a stop somewhere to my left. I pried a hole in the bush but could only see more grass and a column of white smoke. That had to be the coach. I could smell it, wood and flesh melding into the now repellent scent of barbecued pork. Horses whinnied and pawed the earth somewhere nearby, far more beasts than were necessary for the three voices I’d heard. I struggled to hold very, very still. Bludman or not, with a crowd of any males, the likelihood of being raped was just as high here as at a frat party back home.
“You three, after the slavers. Another man in each direction, hunting for survivors. Don’t return until you hear the horn. Lorn and Vale, with me.” The old man sighed, and I could imagine him. Paunchy, starting to stoop, a barbarian in decline, wiping his balding head under the Franchian sun. “I’m getting too old for this merde.”
Even with my eyes closed and my body hidden, I could sense a strange tension in the following silence.
“I’m going to look over there,” said the dry voice.
“There’s nothing over there, Vale.”
“Exactly.”
Soft footsteps spelled anger in the dirt. He was moving toward me, and if he got too close, the patchy bushes and grasses wouldn’t conceal my overly bright teal dress. Dammit. Why couldn’t I have just stayed unconscious for this part or dressed in the boring green of the moors? And where was Cherie?
“Only the coachman and a gentleman, Father. No women.” The smug voice was far away and muffled, and I could easily imagine a piratical man with the arm of his floofy blouse over his mouth and nose to keep out the scent of burning flesh.
Nearer me, the man they’d called Vale struck the bushes. Breathing in, I scented a strange mélange of good and bad and spices. He reminded me a little of Veruca the Abyssinian, and I assumed he was a half-breed of some sort.
“No bodies over here. Just a bush.” The shout was sarcastic and falsely bright, and I struggled not to grin. My teeth clacked together seconds later as his stick poked my thigh through several layers of skirt. “What ze hell?”
His hands parted the twigs, and in a moment of panic, I sat straight up and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him through the bush and dangerously close without taking time to look at his face. To his credit, he didn’t topple over or shout.
Into a caramel-tan ear with three gold rings in the lobe, I whispered, “I am not in the mood to be found. Or raped.”
With a soft laugh, he whispered, “Excellent. I’m not in the mood to rape.”
When he didn’t shout or otherwise broadcast my existence, I let go of his shirt, noting that he smelled like a chai latte mixed with hearth smoke and starlight, with an undercurrent of something . . . wrong. But oddly tempting. He pulled away gently, no sudden moves, and studied me. I scooted back and wrapped my arms around my trembling knees, realizing how close my lips had been to a seriously hot guy. Peridot-colored eyes lined in black and set in molten tan skin regarded me with a cat’s mixed disdain and curiosity. He had a two-day beard that framed full lips and matched his recently shorn hair, which wasn’t normally my preference but worked in his favor. He was dressed in all black like the Dread Pirate Roberts, sitting back on his haunches with a loose-limbed confidence that made my limbs a little looser, too. His eyes blended in with the moors perfectly, an endless shifting amber green, like a glass of chilled wine that made me feel thirsty all over for something other than blood.
“Anything behind that bush, Vale?”
I jerked and flailed at his father’s shouted words, and Vale’s lips curled up, revealing white teeth.
His eyes raked from my mussed hat down to the tall leather boots peeking out from beneath foamy black layers of petticoats, as if he was pondering which end of a Chinese buffet to start at. I’d felt like a stone-cold predator since waking in Sang under Criminy’s bloody wrist, but now my middle went hot and soft.
“Just ze prettiest girl I have ever seen.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Lazy, lying bugger!”
Something plinked against Vale’s back, and he laughed and held up a river-smooth stone for me to see.
“Get to work, you worthless ass!”
Vale shrugged, unaffected. Barely loudly enough to be heard, he said, “Sometimes I tell ze truth. It keeps them guessing.” Another stone thwacked him in the head, and he rubbed it with a black-gloved hand. “Stay here. I will return.” Before I could respond, he had disappeared, leaving shivering grass and skin in his wake.
I flopped onto my back, just in case one of the other men should doubt his lie this time. Eyes open, staring at the lavender-gray clouds, I listened for more footsteps. Partly because I wanted to avoid notice and partly because I wanted Vale to come back and look at me as if I was a candy apple waiting to be licked all over. But most of all, I wanted them all to leave so I could find Cherie.
I didn’t smell her anywhere near, couldn’t smell anything over the smoke and now the highwaymen and their predatory mounts. But from the men’s shouts, at least I knew they hadn’t found her body. Cherie was small and agile and clever, and I could only hope she was hiding in another copse or backed into an empty bludbadger den, waiting for the pesky band of brigands to finish their plundering and go the hell home. Maybe Cherie was a predator, but she was also a beautiful young woman, and all we knew of Franchia was ancient history from the daimon dancing mistress and tips on navigating city life. Who knew what dangers actually lurked here in the wilds?
The hooves of a single horse pounded close, the bludmare’s scream protesting her rider’s harsh treatment.
“You were right, boss. Usual slavers riding hell-bent for Paris in that damnable fast conveyance. Farther along than we thought. But the others might still catch them before they reach the underground.”
“Great humping Hades!” I could hear echoes of the old man’s greatness in the bellow of his baritone. Bludmare squeals and the squeaks of butts in saddles meant I would soon be alone again. “Lorn, you’re with me. Vale, you continue investigating your precious bushes. Dig through ze rubble. Bring in at least a silver’s worth of plunder, or don’t bother to come home, you spineless coward.” He spit in the dirt, and despite my ambivalence, I flinched. That was some cold shit.
I barely heard Vale’s muttered, “Have fun in ze catacombs, arsehole.”
The horn sounded, and the horses took off amid the men’s whoops and hollers. I sat up before Vale could pry his way through the bushes, smoothing my bangs and licking my lips and hoping I looked less like a terrified girl and more like a sophisticated, exotic, and possibly dangerous lady on a mission gone awry.
“We keep meeting like zis.” He grinned and held out a hand, and I took it, well aware that the two gloves between us lessened the heat no more than grabbing a hot cast-iron skillet with a paper towel. I stood, but he didn’t let me loose. “I’m Vale Hildebrand, first son of Curse Hildebrand.” He paused as if waiting for a response. “Lord of ze infamous Brigands of Ruin. Nothing? Really?” Dark eyebrows swept up, and he rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Damn. You’re very hard to impress.”
In just a few moments, his hot Franchian accent had become my new normal. I could have listened to him talk all day—if I hadn’t been so hellbent on finding Cherie.
“I’m not from around here. Name’s Demi Ward.” Then, before he could derail me, “Have you seen another girl about my age and size but blond?”
“Unfortunately, you’re the only one today. Perhaps I should start setting snares.”
He released my hand, and I stood tall but not quite tall enough to look him in the eye.
“My best friend is gone. We were on the coach together—it was just us and another girl and her chaper-one and a gentleman. Headed to Paris.”
He put a hand on the small crossbow on his belt but refused to look away. “Who wore the pumpkin-colored dress?”
“The chaperone. An old nursemaid.”
Vale exhaled and jerked his head toward the smoking coach. “There is a blood-stained scrap of orange fabric caught on an arrow. Two men are dead and burned. I see no sign of your friend or the other girl.” His hand landed on the puffed shoulder of my gown, and I took a deep breath to meet it. “I’m sorry. We try to catch the slavers before they swoop in, but they’re fast.”
“Slavers?”
“We call them slavers, although we don’t honestly know what happens to their victims once they abscond to the catacombs under Paris. They mostly take young girls, although they’ll sometimes take an older woman or a young man. We believe they take girls off the streets, too. And from the cabarets. We try to track them, but . . .” He shook his head. “They simply disappear. Like smoke.”
I couldn’t breathe, and my back felt more boneless than usual. “Do you never find them? The girls?”
“Not once they’re underground.” His eyes went skittery, and I knew he was lying.
“What about my friend?”
He squeezed my shoulder and gave me the warm but useless smile someone might give a child at a funeral. “I know I’m a complete failure, but the rest of our band are sharp as hell and twice as fast, I promise you. There is still time.”
I nodded once and walked to his giant black-and-white-spotted bludmare where she stomped around a picket driven deep into the earth. She tossed her muzzle at me, and I shoved the metal cap away, sending bloody froth flying.
Vale blanched. “Please, Demi. You will want to—”
“Hang on to your waist really tightly? Yeah, I know. Let’s go.”
He allowed himself a smirk. “Look, bébé. I beg you. Just wait until the rest of the band returns. We’ll take you to our camp, and the women can feed you and help you wash up. We’re brigands, but we are honorable, and we can get you home safely in a wagon with far less bouncing and biting.” He winked. “Not that I would mind you bumping against me.”
“You’re wasting time, Vale.”
“And you waste your breath. Nice girls don’t ride into Paris bareback on a brigand’s hellbitch.”
With a snort, I stepped out of the mare’s reach, took a deep breath, and bent over backward into a C. From the backbend, I walked my hands between my feet, curling under until my forearms were on the ground beneath my skirt. Putting my boots on my own shoulders, I felt the frothy layers of the dress fall down around me, giving him a fine look at the slim-fitting trousers I favored for just such an occasion.
“I’m not that nice. And I’m not just a girl.” I grinned, showing fangs.
To his credit, he didn’t freak out. Just put his head to the side like a crow watching a jewel glint in the sun. For the first time, his tone went serious, quiet. “Now, that I did not expect. Tell me, Demi. What is it that you want?”
“Right now?” I did a front walkover and turned to face him with a swirl of skirts. “I want you to take me to Paris and help me find my best friend.”
“Say we find her. Say we don’t. What’s your endgame, bébé?”
I windmilled my arms, loosening up. I was a little sore after the crash, not to mention the previous hours I’d spent crammed between Cherie’s shoulder and the wooden wall of the carriage. Just to see what he would do, and to stretch out further, I slowly lifted one leg until it was right beside my ear, perfectly pointed straight up.
“I want to find Cherie and then go to Mortmartre and be the stars of the cabaret, of course.”
“There are no Bludmen in the cabarets—”
“Not yet. There will be. Once I find Cherie, there will be two. We’re an act.” I dropped my leg—and my smile. “But I have to find her first. So are we going now or what?”
He shook his head, earrings winking. “But where will you stay, bébé? Where will you sleep? How will you feed? If you drink from a human, they’ll drain you. Unless you have money, which I don’t believe you do, you are destitute. Even with my connections there, I cannot keep you.”
My narrowed eyes shot to him, my shoulders rising and my mouth drawing down as I prepared to give an earful about what exactly he could keep.
He cut me off before I could start, a hand slicing the air. “Forgive me. The language barrier is perhaps as unkind as your tongue. I don’t mean to keep you like a pet. I mean that nothing is free, more so in Paris perhaps than elsewhere.” But his eyes said something different about keeping me.
“Then take me to a cabaret, and let me earn my blood. It’ll be a good base of operations.”
He exhaled, his head on the side. “You understand that women here are sometimes sold into cabarets as chattel. That it’s a life no sane girl with options would choose.”
I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat approximately the size of Cherie’s white fist. “Then I’m not sane, and I don’t have options. I’m choosing it.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked off into the hazy distance, where a single dark spear pierced the clouds. The Tower, they called it—some daimon scientist’s clever way to attract and channel lightning into electricity for the City of Light. Funny, how it looked exactly like the Eiffel Tower from my world but actually served a purpose here. Paris wasn’t tall and humpbacked like Sanglish cities but sprawled, orderly, and leisurely, in neat squares. The daimons weren’t known for leading lives of fear, nor were the humans who had taken up residence alongside them. There was a wall around the city, of course, but they’d given the artists free rein to make it beautiful, from what I’d heard. Daimons made things much nicer than Pinkies, as I was learning since touching down in Franchia.
I’d always wanted to see Paris on Earth. And now it was the key to finding Cherie in Sang.
Vale followed my gaze and nodded, rubbing his buzzed head. “It will be a hard ride. If you fall off, I will laugh at you. Odalisque is a bitch of a mare, and there’s no room for you on the saddle.” He met my eyes, steady and unblinking. “And odds are we will not find your friend.”
“I’m not scared. And I will find her.”
“Perhaps you are deaf. Do you understand that girls are kidnapped from the city, too? The brightest stars of the cabaret are often among the victims. It may be your dream, but ma chère, it could become your nightmare. The safest thing for you to do is let me return you to your people, or at least to mine. Getting taken yourself will not bring your friend back.”
I rolled my eyes. “But it sounds like getting taken is the fastest way to find her. Can we go now? At least try to catch her?” I paused, let a little of the brave front down to show him the blud tears gathering. “We have to try. She’s all I have.”
He held out his hands as if grasping for sense and finding nothing but air, a gesture I recognized from both Criminy and Cherie when dealing with me. “It’s suicide, bébé. Life in the cabarets isn’t easy, even if they will hire you on. And if you survive the ride to Paris, sneaking in will be messy.” He looked me up and down, and I gave him my Bludman’s stare, promising all sorts of yummy violence. “But if you really are that determined, I will take you.”
“If you don’t take me now, I’ll start walking.” I realized what I’d said a heartbeat after he did and almost dived back into the bush to die of embarrassment in peace.
His grin was luscious. “How can a gentleman turn down a threat like that?”
With practiced movements, he snatched out the mare’s tether and slid the picket spike through a slot in her metal muzzle cap to make reins. He threw them over Odalisque’s head as she danced, then put a foot into the wide stirrup to leap into the saddle. Still grinning, he held down an arm for me. I took it, surprised at his strength as he swung me up behind him, his wide crystal-green eyes showing in turn his own surprise at my agility. The mare screamed and crow-hopped, trying to shake me loose, and he jerked the reins and kicked her. Odalisque reared and bucked before collecting herself for a pounding gallop.
I fastened my arms around Vale’s lean waist and settled my cheek against his back, inhaling deeply and willing the beast to run faster toward Cherie. Back in the caravan, I had ached for a goal, an adventure, for something to care about. My wish had definitely been answered but not in the way I had hoped. The adventure wasn’t important anymore, not until I got my best friend back.
“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to rip you to shreds?” I asked, trying to cover the fact that I’d all but nuzzled the hard muscles of his back through the worn black shirt.
“I’m half Abyssinian. My blood would drive you mad and kill you,” he shouted into the wind. “But please, bébé, keep trying.”
I snuggled against his back as the bludmare thundered toward Paris, my cheek nestled up to his ribs, hoping he couldn’t feel my tears soaking into his shirt. I might have shown him my brave face before, but inside, I was falling apart. Cherie had trusted me, and I had brought her nothing but disaster. I let out a racking sob, and Vale tensed in the cage of my arms, muscles taut as the horse leaped and skidded across the road. Finally, he exhaled in a sigh I felt more than heard, and his hand reached down to squeeze mine where it held on to him for dear life.
He didn’t let go.