Blood Prophecy (42 page)

Montmartre used magic against me in the past, and apparently his men were still using it. They hated me for helping to kill Montmartre. And they hated the Hounds, almost as much as the Hounds hated them. They hated Isabeau most of all, particularly for helping to defeat both Montmartre and his first lieutenant Greyhaven.

They’d known she would be here.

Because this spell clearly had only one target.

And it wasn’t my family.

It wasn’t even me.

It was Isabeau.

Chapter 38

Lucy

“Nicholas!” Connor grabbed his arm and nearly got decapitated before Nicholas realized who it was. “We need backup. Now. Because if this works, we won’t be safe anywhere.” He paused, frowning at Quinn, who looked up at his twin with his fangs extended. Hunter crouched over her grandfather, in shock.

Connor took a step forward, but Quinn shook his head. “Go,” he mouthed.

“Wait for me!” I scrambled after Nicholas and Connor and they turned as one. Nicholas didn’t even look back, he just put his arm out behind him so I could grab his hand. He towed me around bloody skirmishes, his firm grip a comforting anchor. I tried not to notice the smell of blood, the moans of pain, the red staining the snow.

We raced between the trees, circling around to the edge of the
camp and then up into the mountains. By the time Connor had taken us to one of the caves, my lungs burned and my calf muscles were tight as bowstrings. Inside the damp cave, Christabel was arguing with Saga and Aidan.

And clearly getting nowhere.

“We don’t owe you,” Saga fumed. “Aidan saved you, you ungrateful wretch.”

“If he hadn’t kidnapped me, he wouldn’t have had to save me!” Christabel yelled back.

Saga didn’t even look our way, but the dagger she threw would have caught me right in the stomach if Connor hadn’t reached out to grab it, even as Nicholas tackled me to the cold ground. I landed hard, my breath knocked right out of my already strained lungs. Nicholas turned his head to glare, his eyes a deadly silver.

“That’s my cousin!” Christabel shouted.

I coughed painfully as Nicholas eased off me.

“Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching down to help me up. Her grip nearly broke my fingers. When I squeaked, she winced. “Sorry! I keep forgetting I’m like the Incredible Hulk.”

Nicholas stayed between me and Saga. She didn’t looked particularly sorry, mostly amused. Aidan just looked tired.

“You brought a human to our home uninvited?” Saga asked, her red hair like fire down her back. “You ought to know the consequences.”

“My family,” Christabel snapped.

“We’re your family now.” Saga shrugged.

“Then act like it,” she shot back smugly.

“I thought we’d been through this already,” Aidan interjected, trying to sound reasonable. They both bared their fangs at him.

“If you want to be part of vampire society so badly,” Connor said, “then be a part of it. Especially now that it needs your help.”

“And where were the lot of you when we needed help?” Saga scoffed.

Now that daggers weren’t being thrown at me, I couldn’t help but glance around curiously. The cave was full of pelts and weapons and the usual coolers of blood bags. Saga and Aidan were both so pale, even more than Christabel. They were nearly translucent, the blue of their veins like gasoline trails. Saga wore rolled-up jeans and a silvery breastplate. Aidan had a bear-tooth amulet around his neck that my father would love. His hair was straight and black, and he was distractingly handsome. My heart must have sped up because Nicholas nudged me with his elbow. I tried to look innocent.

Christabel narrowed her eyes. “Fine,” she said smoothly. “Then let me quote your precious Ann Bonny.” Saga was nothing if not a pirate at heart. “If you would have fought like a man you needn’t die like a dog.”

“Nice,” Connor approved quietly.

“I looked it up,” she admitted. That was pure Christabel. She’d be speaking in rhyming couplets any second now.

“I’m not dying for your precious camp,” Saga said. “We have too much left to accomplish when this is over. But I like your sister well enough.”

“You do?” Connor looked startled. Frankly, so was I. After Viola, Solange wasn’t exactly winning any popularity contests.

“She broke the crown into pieces and gave us our due,” Saga explained, as if we were dumb. “Of course I like her. So for that reason, we’ll give you a few of our pets,” she offered finally. “And the wild ones will find you soon enough, if they haven’t already” She shook her head at us. “You’re barking mad, you are.”

Aidan slipped away to give the order to release some of the
Hel-Blar.
They screeched and howled, sending shivers up my spine. There was something deeply unsettling about watching them scurry and scuttle down the mountainside.

“Now what?” Christabel asked. “I’m not exactly trained for battle.”

“Got a poem for this?” Connor teased her.
“Not
‘The Highwayman,’ ” he added. “I finally read it to the end. She kills herself to warn her lover off a trap.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s romantic.”

He laughed. She poked him but she was smiling too. No one saw the soft girl under her tough girl quite like Connor did. And no one saw the tough guy under the geek like she did. I was happy for them both, despite the circumstances.

“I hate that I’m a liability to you guys,” she said. “I should stay up here, shouldn’t I? I’ll only hold you back.”

“To be honest, I’d feel better if you were safely up here,” he admitted. “But between my mom and Lucy I’d have been terrified to suggest it.”

“Hey,” I said. Then I glanced at Nicholas. “And don’t get any ideas.”

Christabel sighed. “I can’t see how I can help down there.” She slid him a glance. “You could stay with me.”

“How about I find us one of the better hidden satellites,” he suggested. “We can all go together and if we’re lucky, no one will even notice us.”

Do I even have to say it?

We were totally noticed.

Chapter 39

Solange

Isabeau’s shields glowed brightly, deflecting the sinister ooze of tainted magic as it tried to slip around us like ropes.

“Isabeau!” Logan shouted. Back on the ground our bodies must be reacting just as our spirits were.

Isabeau closed her eyes and I imagined her pulling energy from the earth and the trees and even the snow drifting slowly down. She used it to form a sword, sharper and more lethal than any forged in the physical world. It glowed like fire. She hacked at the muddy ropes as they tried to drain us. They were insidious and clever. I was exhausted before I’d even realized what they were doing. Everything looked dimmer.

As Isabeau I sliced through them, they fell apart into black smoke, and reformed in the shape of Greyhaven’s face. He smiled at
her. I hissed at him, knowing he’d been the one to turn Isabeau into a vampire, leaving her buried in a coffin for hundreds of years.

“Non,”
she said as the magic slipped through our barriers. For a moment I saw what she saw and felt what she felt: the weight of the earth over her head, pale roots easing slowly down through the wooden slats of the coffin. The footsteps of mourners passing the graveyard. The smell of the flowers they left to rot under the headstones. The struggle to stave off the madness that licked at her, the hunger burning her into a hollow, papery husk. The blackness when she’d passed out inside the coffin, blessedly cool and numb.

Her spirit body flickered like a candle in a gust of wind.

“Isabeau,” Logan called again, more frantically.

“Non,” she moaned again. The sword in her hand flared.

I knew she wouldn’t break the spell, not yet. Despite the fact that I felt as haggard and gray as she looked, she still needed to do the spell. She wouldn’t let the Host win.

And she certainly wouldn’t let Greyhaven win.

She pushed back, until light shot out of her tattoos, out of her amulets, and finally, out of her aura.

It touched me like rain, washing away the dark magic as if it were mud sticking to my skin.

“Logan once told me to survive Greyhaven,” she said, suddenly sounding like my mother, fierce and deadly. She brought her sword down through Greyhaven’s face and the smoke dissipated, hissing as if it felt pain. The last of the muddy tendrils fell away completely. My spirit cord flared briefly, painfully.

Isabeau lifted the leg bone of what must have been a truly huge
dog. It was painted with runes and swirls and hung with crystals. It was an echo of a real talisman, one reserved for Shamankas and their handmaidens; I’d seen something similar when Kala had used magic to help me see the prophecy. It was so deeply imbued with magic that the moment Isabeau snapped it in half, the dried marrow exploded into a cloud of glitter.

“Vérité,”
she whispered in her native French tongue.
“Vérité,”
she said again, shaking the magic off the bone over Hope’s head until it covered her like dandelion pollen.
“Vérité,”
she repeated for the last time.

Hope frowned suddenly, shaking her head as if an insect had crawled into her ear.

“C’est fini.”
Isabeau smiled and drifted away, taking me with her.

“Okay, what just happened?” I asked. “I assume you didn’t do all that just to make her itchy?”

Isabeau didn’t answer. She was too busy scowling down at the
Hel-Blar
scurrying through the camp, clacking their jaws. One of them stopped to lick the dried blood off the splintered ruins of the post and the chains coiled like dead snakes. I could also see the outcropping jutting over the long feast table where Logan stood over Isabeau’s body with his sword, looking pale. Charlemagne sat behind her head.

“It’s time,” she said, snapping the ribbon of light that bound our wrists. “You must return to your body. Do not linger.”

I shivered, feeling odd. “Don’t worry.” The pull of the silver cord was making me nauseated as it tugged my spirit back home. I followed the trail, passing through pine boughs and branches, to the
platform where Kieran was crouched by my side, looking frantic. I reclined into my body, the way Isabeau told me. My eyes snapped open.

Kieran jerked back, slipped, and fell on his butt. I blinked again, feeling the cold boards under my back, the snow seeping into my clothes, the warmth emanating off Kieran’s body.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said hoarsely, as he got to his feet. “Again.” He offered me his hand to help me up and I shot up so quickly I ended up pressed against his chest. The sounds of the bloody battle beneath us receded for one moment. And then one of Lucy’s classmates darted past, jostling us.

“What the hell happened?” Kieran asked, stepping back but not letting go of me completely.

“Magic,” I replied. “Isabeau this time, so I’m okay. And she worked a spell on Hope, so it was worth it.” I finally stepped away from him, feeling the cold wind snake between us. His scent of cedar and mint clung to me. “But there are
Hel-Blar
down there now. So I should go.”

“We should go,” he corrected me.

Chapter 40