Her Blood Sings: Episode 01 (2 page)

"Because I'm proud." Lucy lifted her chin a
little bit. "I want to frame it."

Evie handed the paper back to Lucy.

Evie knew where Lucy was coming from. She had
gone through a series of majors in the four years Evie knew her.
First, Lucy had her English Major phase during freshman year.
That's when she met both Evie and Tamara. Then, toyed with Law,
Art, and Philosophy. But last year something clicked for her and
she settled on Business. She has taken a bunch of extracurricular
classes and worked really hard to graduate with the rest of her
class. Evie couldn’t be more proud. Then, it became a no-brainer.
She would go to Moonlight or wherever else Lucy wanted her to go.
But she'd still make Lucy work for it.

“Come on, Evie. You promised." Lucy
pouted.

"Lucy, I-"

"Please,” Lucy said, stretching the word to
its breaking point.

Evie pressed her lips together, trying to
smother the smile that insisted on coming alive.

"Okay," Evie said.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Lucy pulled Evie into a tight hug, chanting
thank you
over and over.

"How did your parents ever set boundaries for
you?" Evie watched Lucy as her face lit up. "You must have been
disgustingly adorable."

"I was." Lucy opened her locker and shoved
her bag inside. "So, I'll drive you back to your place when work
ends and within the hour, Tamara and I will pick you up, ok?"

"Tamara is coming too?" Evie said, her
happiness slipping a notch or two.

"She's the one with the connection,
remember?" Lucy did a little twirl and marched to the door.

"And what about her boyfriend?" Evie tried to
remember the guy's name. “Jamal? Jeremy?”

“Jackson,” Lucy corrected. “They broke up.”
Lucy glanced over her shoulder and caught the look on Evie's face.
"What is your problem with Tamara?"

"Nothing," Evie said, raising both her hands
in mock surrender. "I just think she's full of it."

Lucy rolled her eyes. She turned to Evie and
crossed her arms over her chest.

"She's always been a good friend to you, you
know?"

Evie let her eyes drift to her feet. She
didn't need the reminder to feel any guiltier than she already
felt. Tamara had been a good friend to her and, over the years,
Evie had come to know and like her. But sometimes she couldn't help
it. She straightened her shoulders and shook her head back, sending
her hair flying down her back. She would stick by her gut
feeling.

"I like Tamara. Don't get me wrong," Evie
explained. She heard Lucy snort before she added "But she's lying
about something. Something big."

That got Lucy's attention. She dropped her
arms and her face was wiped clean of sarcasm. "How do you know? Do
you know something I don't?"

Evie hesitated. She knew she would sound
crazy. She sighed and shook her head.

"I don't," Evie admitted. "But I feel this
thing sometimes when she's around. Like a tingling in the back of
my neck. Every time I've felt that, someone was lying to me."

Lucy went through a series of contrasting
emotions while Evie explained herself. First, she was relieved to
find out Evie didn't know anything bad about Tamara. Then, she
looked puzzled. Finally, she was amused. She was trying very hard
to keep a straight face, but her lips were curling into a grin.

"I know," Evie said. "I sound crazy."

Lucy arched an eyebrow at her but said
nothing.

"Nevermind," Evie said. She sounded as
defeated as she felt. "Moonlight it is. Yay."

She pushed the door open and went to the
café's salon, trying to ignore the look on Lucy's face.

There were very few things Chris didn't love
about being a vamp. Running. Limitless amounts of cash - which was
a perk of being Darcy's son. Not dying. He loved the not dying
part, in fact. Sure, there was some getting used to it. At first,
he hadn't been used to the way people would react to him, to how
different the world had felt to his senses. But he had gotten used
to it all pretty fast. The one thing that still bugged him was the
sameness of everyday life. Darcy said Chris would get used to it as
the years went on. After 100+ years, he was still struggling.
Still, he had lived long enough to know that the pros outweighed
the cons by about a thousand to one.

That fine December evening he'd been sharing
a meal with his vampire family. Darcy, his father for all intents
and purposes, had sipped from his teacup with elegance he had
probably already had in his mortal days. Elliot, Chris's brother
from another mother, had tried very hard not to smash the delicate
china set the hotel had offered them. Lydia and Louisa, Chris's
sisters, had sniggered while watching Elliot suffer. Louisa had
been sired when her family had lost everything during the Civil War
and Lydia had been raised in luxury. They had no problem with the
dainty cups in their hands.

But for the past twenty minutes, they had
been watching Elliot fight with Lydia. Again.

Chris sighed. He knew exactly what would
happen next. Some of the setting was different but the scene before
him wasn't.

"We cannot be seen together," Lydia said. "It
would defeat the purpose of the alliances Darcy negotiated."

"You can't seriously think we're fooling
either Gaius or Monicelli," Elliot said. He huffed in frustration.
"Everybody knows the truth!"

"What do you think people know, Elliot?"
Lydia snapped.

Their voices mingled together again.

Chris and his older sister, Louisa, watched
the argument with as much excitement as watching paint dry.

Darcy raised a hand, silencing both his
children.

"The war is coming. There's nothing to be
done," Darcy said. His deep voice still had a trace of English
accent - even after centuries living in the New World. "We can only
try to do damage control. We must soldier on."

Chris abandoned his cup on the table and
played with his nails, repressing a sigh. He wanted to go out and
hunt. He'd love to go to a nightclub and get himself someone young
and stupid, bring her back to his room, and drink her blood while
he fucked her. He loved getting lost in the pounding sound of the
music. He loved to feel hundreds of heartbeats sink together. He
craved the abandonment of sex, of feeling someone else's heartbeat
in his mouth and fingertips.

Chris rarely killed his prey. He was a master
at Byronism - the vampire's version of catch and release. There had
been accidents in the past, but Chris had kept an excellent track
record for the past 70 years.

Lydia raised her voice, attracting his
attention.

She said "It's not just our shifting
political alliances, Elliot. There's a very real possibility the
Order will strike."

Elliot snorted at that. "The Order?" He gave
Chris a
can you believe this?
look. "The Order has been as
good as dead for the past 40 years or so."

Lydia turned to Darcy. She had a look of smug
defiance on her face.

Darcy sighed, annoyed. "The witches'
Intelligence Office has said they picked up some noise in one of
the online forums the Order has."

That only fueled Elliot even more.

"See?" he asked. "This is why we shouldn't
even be here." He dropped his teacup and saucer with a loud
clank
on the table. "We fight amongst ourselves and these
freaks get ideas."

Chris sniffed the cup like it was going to
bite him. He tuned Elliot out. Elliot was fighting a losing battle.
Darcy was right. The war was happening. There was nothing they
could do to stop it.

Every once in a while a vampire was crazy
enough to stake claim at a certain territory and challenge the
leader of the local Great Clan for his land. Sometimes, the
newcomer won. Sometimes he or she lost. It was always messy.
Vampires are not exactly subtle when they're fighting. This time,
though, the whole thing had taken absurd proportions. The current
newcomer, Vicenzo Monicelli, was powerful, but his claim would've
been dismissed if he hadn't done such a good job of manipulating
the already underlying distrust of other vampires against the
current leader of the Great Clan of Europe, Gaius. Sides had been
drawn, each getting loyal supporters. The Queen of all witches and
her brother swore allegiance to the current Great Clan of Europe
while the Unseelie Court had declared that each elf should pick his
or her side - which several had done. Other Great Clans had also
picked their sides, tainting the whole affair a particular shade of
awkward. Things were quickly escalating into a war unlike anything
the vampires had seen in centuries.

So, Monicelli and Gaius had agreed to change
venues. There was simply no place in Europe where their battle
could go unnoticed. So, their choice of venue was in Darcy's turf.
The official reason was that vamps would be able to manage the
battle and its aftermath better in the New World. The unofficial
reason was that Darcy held a lot of prestige in the myth's world
and both parties wanted him on their side.

Logically, Darcy had promised his unofficial
support to both sides.

Chris and his family were now officially torn
in half. He and Lydia would fight for the Great Clan of Europe
while Louisa and Elliot would fight for the newcomer. Darcy had
claimed he could not choose sides, since Gaius was a personal
friend and Monicelli was a business partner, and that he was
heartbroken by the whole affair. In fact, Darcy had demanded a last
round of negotiations - something unheard of - to try to work a
peaceful solution out of this quagmire. Both sides were putting in
an effort because Darcy had asked them to.

If Elliot and Lydia's behavior was any
indication of how it would be for the next couple of days,
negotiations were bound to fail.

"What is the plan here?" Chris looked at
Darcy.

"Are we keeping you from something, Chris?"
Lydia asked.

Chris desperately wanted to fuck someone
tonight. He was bored out of his mind. But he wasn't about to tell
Lydia that. He kept his stare on Darcy and his voice neutral as he
asked, "In front of everybody else, we should be ready to tear each
other apart. Anything else?"

"Just in front of other people?" Louisa
asked. Her big blue eyes blinked in mock innocence at Chris while
her lips twitched into a smile. "I thought we were already
pretending to be at each other’s throats. Isn't that what Elliot
and Lydia are doing?"

Chris grinned at that. Louisa was always with
her books and experiments but every now and then she cracked a
joke. She loved to play the dumb blonde.

Lydia, on the other hand, didn't appreciate
the joke at her expense. She narrowed her eyes at Louisa and
sneered. Elliot ignored Louisa all together.

"I don't like it." Elliot said. He shook his
head, trying to add more weight to his claim. "This family has
traditions. We always go hunting on our first night in a new
town."

Lydia started talking again. Elliot's and her
voices mingled until it was nothing but ruckus.

"Enough," Darcy snapped. “Gaius is a friend
and a good man. He’ll be much kinder to us if he wins.” Darcy
dabbed a soft white napkin. "Vicenzo, on the other hand, is a loose
cannon. But there's a chance he will win. We have to play safe." He
turned to Elliot. "We're done talking about this."

"I agree with Elliot that certain family
traditions have to be maintained," Chris said. He caught, out of
the corner of his eye, Lydia open her mouth ready to fight back.
"Still, our current divide has to be maintained. Unless we, as
siblings, decide to have negotiations of our own." When he was sure
he had his siblings attention, Chris added, "Two of us, from
opposing sides, could go hunting tonight and two others could go
hunting tomorrow. I'll volunteer. Who will join me? Louisa?" He
turned to Elliot. "Elliot?"

Chris and Darcy exchanged the briefest of
looks. Darcy's lips twitched into a smile.

"That would work perfectly for us." Darcy
laced his fingers together, seemed to ponder for a moment. "It
would set the tone for my speech."

Lydia relaxed on her chair, but her eyes
still shot daggers at Elliot.

"Who are you sending out tonight, dad?"
Louisa asked, her voice always pleasant and neutral. Elliot and
Lydia's constant bickering, the ghost of war hanging over them,
natural disasters of epic proportions... nothing bothered her. "It
has to be a crowded, public place."

"What is the name of the local Elvin
nightclub?" Chris asked. "Do they have one here?"

Louisa picked up her cell phone from her
jeans' pocket and Googled it. "Moonlight."

"Moonlight it is." After a second or two,
Darcy added "Elliot and Christopher should go out tonight."

Chris glanced at Lydia. She was deep in
thought, calculating.

"This plan is solid,” she said. "When you
make the speech, dad, be sure to have the room looking at you. Your
words are powerful and Vicenzo is a crowd pleaser. We can use that
against him." Lydia was all blonde hair, heart-shaped face and
angelic green eyes - which made her next words even more biting.
"But that little bitch Vicenzo is shackled to is a problem. She
wants Gaius's head. It’s best for everyone if she dies - even if
there's no war.”

Darcy’s stare was lost in the distance. Chris
knew he hated to kill one of his kind. There were so few vampires –
especially compared to the witches and the weres. But Vicenzo's
companion really was a liability. Lydia was right. Darcy nodded,
his face heavy with sadness.

Lydia smiled at Chris and Darcy and leaned
back on her chair. She picked up the teapot and poured herself some
more blood. She looked like she'd just got daddy to give her a
brand new car, not like she'd convinced him to slaughter a 500
year-old vampire.