Blood Moon (13 page)

“So what were you looking for that had you wedged back here?” Chloe asked Lia, while we waited impatiently for something to happen.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” Savannah grinned. “She heard Kieran was in the infirmary and she wanted a look.”

Lia pinched her roommate. “You suck, Savannah.”

Savannah just shrugged, unrepentant.

Hunter smiled briefly. “Kieran’s already gone home,” she said gently.

“Oh.” Lia tried not to sound disappointed and failed miserably. She paused. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Hunter replied. “Lucy’s the one that brought him in.”

Lia looked at me, eyes round. “You know Kieran?”

I didn’t tell her he was dating my best friend. Well, according to Nicholas he wasn’t dating Solange anymore anyway.

“Heads up,” Hunter said.

Down below, two Huntsmen emerged, carrying the limp body of a human woman to the infirmary.

“Those are the Huntsmen that came at us in the woods.” I recognized the fang necklaces as well as the man I’d pepper-egged.

“Damn it,” Hunter muttered. “I can’t figure out what they’re saying. I knew I should have learned to read lips.” It was probably the only thing in the world she didn’t know how to do yet.

The Huntsmen rushed the patient under a lamppost. Hunter and I both fumbled for a better angle. The woman had short hair, short enough that I could see the side of her neck.

And the puncture wounds, which could only have come from fangs, dripping blood.

I sucked in a breath. “Shit.”

The Huntsmen knew there was a vampire out near the school; Jody and her idiot friends knew Nicholas was with me. And now there was the body of a human woman very clearly suffering from
a vampire attack. I knew for a fact Nicholas hadn’t done it. And I also knew no one was likely to believe me.

The binoculars dug into my cheekbones but try as I might, I couldn’t see anything else. They’d already rushed the woman inside.

“She wasn’t a Hunter,” Hunter said quietly, thoughtfully.

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

“For one thing they never bother sneaking wounded Hunters onto the campus. They’d just drive right over the lawns if they had to.”

“Which means?”

“Which means it was a mundane, a civilian.”

I sat back. “Do they do that a lot? Bring them here, I mean?”

She looked at me grimly. “Only if it was a vampire attack and they want to be sure the person wasn’t infected. Hospitals would be useless in that case.”

“Looks like we do need protection after all,” Chloe said quietly.

That seemed to be the consensus in the rest of the dorm as well. When we got back to Hunter’s room, there was a small pewter charm hanging on the doorknob. Hunter and Chloe exchanged a grim glance and opened the door. Hunter pocketed the charm and scooped up the folded note on the carpet. It was the number 113.

“Let’s go.” Hunter turned to leave again.

“Go where?” I asked. “Is that a secret code? Night-vision goggles and secret codes. Okay, this League doesn’t entirely suck.”

“Hunter runs a secret Black Lodge,” Chloe explained quietly.
“Well, sort of secret. It’s authorized by Hart but no one else really knows about it.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah,” Chloe agreed, scooping her laptop up off the desk and slipping it under her arm. “It’s because of the whole teacher-vampire drug thing. Hunter is Hart’s secret eyes and ears at the school.”

Hunter shrugged, modestly. “It’s no big deal.”

Chloe just ignored her. “The Eye of Horus means someone’s got info. It calls a secret meeting.”

“In Jenna’s room, apparently,” Hunter said, shoving the note in her pocket. “That’s her room number.” She glanced at me. “Want to come?”

“Hell, yeah, I do.”

“I was going to see if you wanted to join. I think it would be good to have your perspective, just coming into the school and everything. You might see stuff we don’t even notice anymore.”

“You mean other than the fact that I’m surprised you guys don’t run around in black capes and call each other Van Helsing?”

“Yes.” She rolled her eyes. “Other than that.” She nodded to the door. “Let’s move.”

Jenna’s room was just down the hall, next to a window hung with a hideous lace curtain that was probably meant to be homey. It was just ugly. Hunter knocked once softly and then slipped inside. Jenna was at her desk, her red hair in a braid. There was one other girl and two guys with her, none of whom I recognized. Chloe went straight to the empty bed and stretched out on her stomach, flipping open her computer.

“Where’s your roommate?” Hunter asked Jenna.

“At the library, working on a paper,” Jenna replied. “She’ll be at least another hour.”

“This is Lucy,” Hunter introduced me. “You know Jenna, and that’s Kyla, Griffin, Drew, and Eric.”

Eric’s dark eyes snapped onto me. “Lucy Hamilton? You know Solange?”

“Yeah,” I said. At least he hadn’t called me Lucky. I’d probably let him live, despite the tone he was using, as if I’d personally kicked his puppy. “Why? Do you know Solange?”

“I know Kieran.”

“Oh.”

“She—”

“Stop right there.” I cut him off with a narrowed glare. “I might be pissed off at her but she’s still my best friend, and I’ll kick your ass if you say anything about her.”

He leaned back against the edge of the desk. “Yeah? Well, Kieran’s my best friend.”

“He’s my friend too,” I replied quietly.

Eric looked at me for a long moment before finally nodding his head once. “Okay.”

Hunter sat on the floor. “If you two are done with the macho pissing contest, can we get on with it? Why are you here, Eric? You’re not Black Lodge.”

“No, but Kieran said you might need this info.” He reached over and flipped on Jenna’s radio. It was a trick I knew well. It masked conversations in cases of bugging devices or vampires, take your pick.

“Is it about the woman who was just brought in?” Chloe asked. “’Cause we know about that already.”

“What woman?” Jenna asked quizzically.

“A wounded civilian,” Hunter said. “Bite marks.”

Jenna let out a whistle through her teeth. Eric looked at me. I looked back at him.

“What?” I said. “I didn’t bite her.”

“But you’re friends with vampires.”

“Oh my God,” I exclaimed, disgusted. I flopped back onto Jenna’s bed so I wouldn’t throw something at his head. Like a chair. “You guys are making me nuts. Kieran’s friends with vampires. So’s Hunter. So get off my case or I swear I’m going to torch this whole stupid school.”

Eric grinned unexpectedly. “That I’d like to see. You’re okay, Hamilton.”

“Gee,” I replied sweetly, sarcastically. “Thanks.”

He just laughed. “Anyway, we didn’t know there’s a civ here, but she’s not the first to be bitten this week.” He went serious. “She’s the third.”

I sat up. “The
third
? Why isn’t it in the papers? By now at least one of them should be screaming about how this is all because of a government conspiracy or chupacabras or some other weird-ass thing.”

“It’ll be in the papers tomorrow,” he confirmed. “Something about an escaped snake.”

“A snake,” I said, nonplussed. “What, like an escaped pet cobra? How damned big would the snake have to be to leave marks like that?”

Chloe made a face. “Too damned big.” She scrolled down her screen. “Is it in the
Violet Hill Gazette
? Or the
Journal
? Doesn’t matter,” she added before he could answer. “I can crack either of their servers in my sleep. I could totally delete an article.”

“No point,” Eric said. “Then they’d really think they were on to a story.”

“How did Kieran get the info?” Hunter asked.

“Does it matter?” His teeth flashed white in his dark face.

“I guess not,” she grumbled. “But he shouldn’t have told you we’re Black Lodge. Kinda defeats the whole secrecy thing.”

“With an uncle like his, what do you expect?” He shrugged. “Anyway, Huntsmen are all over, vampires are all over, so we need to be out there too. If you’re game.”

Hunter stood up. “Hell, yeah, we’re game. Are you kidding?”

They bumped fists like they were in some action movie. Hunter didn’t even glance at me. “Shut it, Lucy.”

I grinned at her all the way to the staircase. “You’re like Bruce Willis, dude. Or the Rock or something.”

“Can I at least be Lara Croft?”

“You don’t have the boobs.” I was still grinning when I snuck into my room.

Sarita sat up in her bed. “Your dad called like five times.” She looked at the clock disapprovingly. “And it’s past curfew.”

Chapter 11
Solange

When I opened my eyes again the sun was rising, scattering pink and orange light over pine trees and a mountain. But it wasn’t my pine trees or my mountains. It wasn’t Violet Hill. When I turned around there was nothing but moorland stretching out to a lake in the distance. The heather was purple and interspersed with tiny yellow flowers that looked like birds’ feet.

And I wasn’t falling into an unconscious sleep. I wasn’t even tired.

Dumbfounded, I watched the sun inch higher in the sky. I ran my tongue over my teeth. I still had fangs. I was still a vampire.

But the sun didn’t affect me.

I could smell wood smoke so I climbed a hill toward it, dipping down into a valley where a small stone cottage stood on the banks
of a wide river. I really had no idea where I was or what was going on. The last thing I remembered was Kala shaking her rattle of dog teeth at me.

And now this.

I kept climbing down to the cottage because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t just stand there on the moors, however grand and beautiful they were. I heard scratching when I got closer, like an animal digging for roots and grubs. I peeked around the side of the cottage expecting to see a badger or a bear.

Instead, there was an old woman, muttering to herself, up to her knuckles in mud. Her long gray hair was braided and wrapped like a small crown around her head. She wore a long, woolen blue-gray dress with a leather belt hung with bones and pouches and a short dagger with a curved blade. A long chain rattled down to her knees, hooked onto a ring of keys.

She was crouched down, pulling white puffy mushrooms out of the ground and adding them to a pile of herbs in a wooden bowl. When she chortled to herself I noticed she was missing a few teeth. And she smelled like berries and sweat. I wrinkled my nose.

“Excuse me?”

She ignored me.

She got to her feet, creaking and groaning and shuffled toward me.

“Hello?” I tried again, louder, in case she was deaf. Still nothing. Her left eye was milky white. She was blind. Good, she wouldn’t see the fangs and freak out. But she seemed to be ignoring me.

Instead, she walked right through me.

I came apart as if I were made out of cold air and smoke, and then melted back together.

It did
not
feel nice.

“Shit!” I burst out, startled and creeped out. “Am I dead? Kala totally drugged me and killed me. Can vampires even become ghosts?”

The old woman shivered and turned her head suddenly, staring at me as if she could see me. Her right eye was clear, black as a jetbead. “On with ye, Fair Folk. I’ve left milk out and I’ve cold iron. Your choice, but I’ve no time to play.” She chortled again and bustled off, slamming the door of the cottage behind her. I knew in that dream logic you sometimes had that she’d been speaking Scottish Gaelic, and I’d understood every word even though I’d never learned Gaelic.

I looked at my hands. I seemed solid enough. And I could feel the uneven dirt under my shoes. But I was pale. Not vampire pale; more like I was in a black-and-white movie when the world around me was in full Technicolor.

Clearly, I was hallucinating.

I went to the front door and reached for the handle. My fingers slipped right through it. Frustrated, I tried again. And again. I tried knocking, and my fist vanished through the other side of the wooden door. My arm felt like it was stuck in molasses that was slowly freezing solid. I yanked it back out again, feeling disoriented.