Drake Chronicles: 03 Out for Blood (12 page)

I hadn’t quite been able to ask Kieran if she had a boyfriend.

The question throbbed like a broken tooth, impossible to ignore, impossible not to poke, just to see if it stil hurt.

I never did this.

I liked girls—human or vampire. I liked them a lot, but I never wondered what they were doing or if I’d hear from them. Because I always heard from them, usual y more than I liked. I treated them al wel , don’t get me wrong. You couldn’t be raised by my mother and not treat girls with a hel of a lot of respect. But they knew up front that I wasn’t looking for strings, just a good time for everyone involved.

And none of the humans knew I was a vampire. I wasn’t stupid.

Wel , except for that one time.

But that was a long time ago. It wasn’t even worth mentioning.

Besides, Hunter was different. She was strong and brave and sexy. I loved the way she looked at me, just slightly suspicious, as if she was thinking about kicking my ass. That shouldn’t be hot, but it was. And I was just itching to convince her to unbraid al that blonde hair. She’d look kil er with it down.

Damn it, I was thinking about her again. About her
hair.

“Shit,” I muttered. If I wasn’t careful I’d start writing sonnets too, like Karin had written for me. “I have to get out of here.”

•

The royal caves were a good distraction, because if you lowered your guard for a moment, you could get your head chopped off.

Right now that sounded perfect.

I nodded at the guards at the main entrance and strol ed into the caverns. They were lit with torches, the tunnel opening into several larger chambers. The largest one was the Great Hal , which suited the Drake family’s very medieval tendencies.

Just look at our only surviving matriarch, Veronique Dubois. She was even scarier than Mom was, and she could embroider your funeral shroud by hand. It was easy to accept Mom as a queen, or Veronique. Dad had that monarch thing going for him too. I had a harder time picturing the rest of us as royal princes. Connor didn’t like people, vampire or otherwise. He just wanted to be left alone with his computers. Logan dressed like a pirate. And I knew more about pick-up lines than I did vampire politics—and I didn’t have any great desire to learn more about it.

But I did have a great desire to stop vampire assassins from attacking my mom and my sister. So I’d man up and study vampire politics and show my face in court and pretend I knew what the hel was going on.

Anyway, it was better than mooning over Hunter Wild.

The Great Hal was drafty, the oil lamp lights flickering. It was saved from being damp and unwelcoming by the piles of thick rugs underfoot and the tapestries hanging from iron rods. Veronique had sent a huge banner embroidered with the Drake family crest and the royal vampire crest, which now hung behind a wooden table ringed with chairs. The chairs each had thick wooden backs, to protect against stakes, arrows, and daggers. Dad was al about treaties and diplomacy.

Mom was al about the attack. Between the two of them they might actual y be able to control the chaotic vampire tribes, at least for a little while.

Vampire tribes tended to be independent at best and bel igerently autonomous at worst. Ruling them was mostly about making sure no one wiped each other out in such a public manner that we’d al be discovered. Prosaic but true.

“Quinn.” Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “You walked right by that girl. What’s wrong?”

“I did?” I looked over my shoulder. A vampire with short brown hair and beauty mark at the side of her mouth winked at me. I winked back. Then I turned back to Sebastian, horrified. “I didn’t even see her.”

“You’re off your game.”

“Shh, keep it down, wil you?” I straightened my shirt. “I have a reputation. I’m going back. She’s cute.”

“Forget it. She flirts with everyone.”

“So?” I grinned.

“Just come on. Mom and Dad are in the back room. And we can’t handle any more disgruntled exes.”

“My exes are never disgruntled.” That was a point of pride actual y. “Any more packages for Solange?” Solange’s bloodchange pheromones, coupled with the old prophecy, had sent more vampires than we could count into a frenzy. They sent her gifts, stalked her, and general y acted like asses.

“Twelve letters, three packages, and a box of puppies.” I winced. “Puppies?”

“They’re fine. Isabeau took them al .”

“Good. Who eats puppies?” I shook my head.

“Yeah, Isabeau swore in French. A lot.”

“Hot.”

“Yeah, Logan nearly went cross-eyed.”

“So where are they now?”

“Isabeau’s gone back to the Hounds and Logan’s studying up.”

“He’s studying?” I shuddered. “For what? Girlfriends give exams now?”

“He’s an honorary Hound, remember,” Sebastian reminded me as we passed two more guards and entered the private family room. Logan had gone through the ritual initiation of the Hounds, something that was rarely offered to anyone not already connected to the reclusive tribe. “So he wants to know more about them.

Connor downloaded stuff from some ancient library in Rome.”

“Do they know he hacked their system yet?”

“Hel no,” Connor replied from where he was trying to fix Mom’s laptop. “I’m just that good. Though even I can’t get wireless down here.”

“So what’s going on?” I asked. “Dad looks like he’s about to break into song. It’s kind of scary actual y.” A grown man shouldn’t wear that kind of goofy grin.

Especial y when he was my father.

“We just got word that a Blood Moon is being cal ed for November.”

“Seriously?” No wonder Dad looked so happy. Blood Moons were only very rarely cal ed, and no one knew who exactly cal ed them. It was essential y a week-long festival with the main night reserved for tribal leaders to talk treaties and various vampire issues. The last one had been nearly a hundred years ago. “Why now?

’Cause of Mom?”

Sebastian nodded. “And the
Hel-Blar
. They’re becoming a real problem, and not just here in Violet Hil .”

“Any word on why they swarmed the Helios-Ra school?” I asked.

Connor shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

“Wel , it sure as hel wasn’t an accident. And you didn’t see that
Hel-Blar
disintegrate. It was weird.”

“We’re looking into it,” Dad cal ed over to us. “And I mentioned it to Hart.”

“Good. There are a lot of kids in that school.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Not every day I hear you worrying about hunters.” I shrugged.

Connor snorted.

“Shut up,” I told him. Sometimes the twin connection was a pain in the ass. I hadn’t said a word to him about Hunter, but he already knew I was into her.

If the royal courts and al their melodrama weren’t enough to stop me from thinking about her, I’d just have to think of something else.

“I’l check out the scene in town.”

“Hot date?”

“Working on it.”

Chapter 13

•

Hunter

Saturday night

I know it’s not very secret agent of me, but I real y,
really
love dressing up.

Even if it’s just to flitter around like dumb horror-movie vampire bait.

I love choosing a dress, shaving my legs, and painting my toes. I love pretty sandals with little heels, though I couldn’t exactly wear them tonight. I’d never get a good kick in with those, and I wouldn’t be able to outrun a raccoon. So I wore a pair of low-top Converse sneakers with my sundress. It was blue, with lace at the hem and spaghetti straps, which Grandpa thought were trampy because my shoulders were bare. I added a matching chunky turquoise necklace and pink lipstick.

Chloe grinned at me from where she sat on the edge of her bed. Against al odds, she was ready before me. And she wasn’t wearing any jewelry or makeup. Just jeans and a tight T-shirt. Her hair was in a simple braid. I barely recognized her.

“You look great.”

I twirled once. “If a vampire muddies this dress, I’m kicking ass.”

“I’l help.” Her eyes shone. I’d never seen her so happy to fight before. She usual y preferred flirting with locals at the club over the actual work of bait-nights. Maybe she’d just changed over the summer and I was being paranoid. I real y hoped so.

“Where are your weapons?” She tilted her head curiously.

I held up my purse. “In here. And I’ve got a stake strapped to my thigh.”

“Ooh.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Sexy.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

At the bottom of the stairs outside our room were clusters of whispering Niners.

They stared at us like we were movie stars.

“Creepy much?” Chloe muttered at them.

Lia was the only one brave enough to step out of the pack. “Is it true you guys go to town and lure vampires out of clubs?”

I nodded.

“That is so
cool,
” she breathed. “Can we do that?”

“You’re not al owed off campus at night until you’re sixteen,” I said as we shut the front door behind us. We hurried down the lane to the garages, passing students out for a walk or a jog on the track and others lying in the grass by the pond and catching up with each other. Night had just barely settled over the school, making the old buildings look somehow quaint and old-fashioned. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the ghost of a Victorian gentleman or a pioneer woman churning butter on the porch of the headmistress’s house. Jenna, Spencer, and Jason were waiting by the old van we’d booked for the night. It was unassumingly gray, clunky, and hideous. And it beat walking to town, hands down.

“Get in,” Jenna said, sliding into the front seat before anyone else could. She loved driving almost as much as she loved shooting stuff.

“Shotgun!” Chloe yel ed. She always got shotgun because she made mixes for the half-hour drive to town. I climbed in the back with Spencer and Jason.

“So where are we going?” Spencer asked as Jenna pul ed out, scattering gravel.

“The Blue Cat?”

“The Blue Cat shut down last month,” Jason told him, raising his voice over the loud music that fil ed the van.

“What about Conspiracy Theory?” Jenna asked. Everyone nodded. Conspiracy wasn’t a dance club like the Blue Cat had been, but it was a funky cafe in an old three-story house with live bands on the weekends. It’d be the most popular spot now—mostly because none of the other clubs let in minors as easily as Conspiracy Theory did.

I rol ed my window down, enjoying the cool breeze that smel ed like cedar and grass, flatly refusing to check my phone one more time. I had a life; I was busy taking out bloodthirsty vampires to make the neighborhood safe again. I didn’t have time to wait around for Quinn Drake to deign to honor me with a reply.

The forest and mountains gave way to fields and farms and then the tiny town of Violet Hil , tucked into the edge of the lake. It was mostly art gal eries and old bookstores and organic cafes. There were probably more crystal shops in the vil age than in al of San Francisco. Every July there was an art festival and people drew on the streets with chalk. There were farmers’ markets and a pioneer museum. I loved it, even though Grandpa thought it was run by a bunch of, and I quote, “pot-smoking hippies.” He could overlook that though, since it was a convenient crossroads for several vampire tribes, both civilized and
Hel-Blar
.

There were other creatures too, according to Spencer, but I’d never seen any of them. He was convinced there were werewolves, but even his professors in the Paranormal Department wouldn’t give him a straight answer. I kept tel ing him that probably meant one of
them
was a werewolf. You never could tel at our school.

Jenna drove too fast, as always, so we made it to the main street in twenty minutes. Violet Lake looked like a dark blob of ink on the edge of the paper-white stones. We parked down the street from the coffeehouse and walked up through the abandoned factory district. Al half a block of it. Violet Hil was nothing if not quaint.

“That’s the one,” Chloe said confidently, nodding to the old glass factory. Broken shards stil glittered on the pavement, even though it had closed ten years ago. It was wide enough to maneuver in with some cover, so we wouldn’t draw the attention of any late-night pedestrians. They mostly went in the other direction toward the taxi stand or the bus stop.

The lawn outside the cafe was littered with smokers, the music from the jazz-rock band pouring out of the open door. We eased through the crowds and claimed the torn velvet couch in the very back where the light was dim and the floors were sticky with spil ed drinks. Candles burned everywhere in jam jars, and twinkly lights were wrapped around the bar counter. The buzz of the espresso machine was a constant vibration under the music.

I took everyone’s drink orders since I was the bait. I was the one who had to prance around being al obvious and dumb. I giggled.

“Better,” Spencer approved. “You sound less like you ate an angry helium bal oon.”

I made a face at him before making my way through the crowd toward the counter.

I eyed the patrons unobtrusively. The three guys at the pool table were trying to look like predators, al suave and cool, but they were harmless. The girl in the back corner flirting with a guy in a leather coat was on my radar. She looked hungry and I didn’t know if it was for attention or blood. The two at the table under the window were underage and desperately trying not to look it. The waitstaff looked harried and didn’t have time to care who was drinking il egal y and who wasn’t. Besides, it was Violet Hil , possibly the most liberal, free-thinking town on the planet. Drinking was no big deal. Fur coats and pesticides on the other hand …

The bar was actual y a series of old wooden doors hinged together. The one at the end had belonged to a saloon at the turn of the century. There were two bartenders and a press of thirsty people waving money and shouting orders over the band. I fluttered my eyelashes and leaned on the bar, making sure my cleavage, such as it was, was visible. Part 1 of the plan required I be seen.

“A shot of Kahlua, please,” I ordered. I made sure my voice was a little too loud. I leaned farther over, catching the eye of two guys who were staring at me. The one on the left might possibly be vampiric. It was kind of hard to tel . I worked up an annoying giggle.