My Love Lies Bleeding (10 page)

We left the car just inside the property line of Geoffrey’s house and used his tunnel access. The tunnels smelled of damp
and smoke from the torches in the lesser-used parts of the corridors. It was very quiet— there were only soft footsteps and
my ragged breathing. It was the safest route to Lady Natasha’s royal court. She stayed in the mountains during the summer
months in a complicated cave system. She traveled the rest of the year between her different holdings, like a medieval queen.
Our town is considered her summer retreat, simple and countrified but relaxing enough for the odd week or two. And everyone
knew the real reason Lady Natasha had chosen to come here was to keep an eye on our family.

“Are you sure she didn’t say anything else?” I asked London. If Lady Natasha expected me to embroider or dance a waltz, I
damn well wanted a little notice this time.

London shook her head. The flickering light glinted off her tight leather pants. “She’s a good queen, Solange. You don’t have
to worry.”

“London, in case you failed to notice, there’s a bounty on all our heads. Yours included. And our side of the Drake family
has been exiled for years.”

She shrugged one shoulder negligently, though I did see her hand tighten. “It’s not the same for me. I was turned, I wasn’t
born into the Drake family.”

“Your dad married your mom and then he turned you on your twenty- first birthday. I’d say that makes you a Drake.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s no different than our dad turning our mom after Solange was born.”

London shrugged again. It was starting to get on my nerves. We couldn’t all be as blasé as she was. Some of us were going
to be very grounded by morning. And by some of us, I meant me.

“Mom and Dad are going to freak,” I muttered, stumbling into Logan. “Oof.”

He steadied me. “Careful. You’ll wrinkle the velvet.”

Connor stopped as well, in the lead. He held up a hand.

“Someone’s coming.”

“Stay close to me.” Logan’s fangs elongated, gleaming wetly.

“It’s probably just an honor guard,” London whispered. “Lady Natasha’s big on ceremony.”

Quinn shook his head, nostrils flaring. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“You’re overreac—”

The hissing rolled over us, crackling like static. One of the vampires caught Marcus on the shoulder. He immediately used
the dagger in his wrist sheath to turn his attacker to dust. A battle cry rang through the corridor. One of the vampires broke
through the line, leaping down from the ceiling, snarling at me. I kicked high, catching him off guard. London’s knife caught
him even more off guard. Dust billowed briefly.

“We are so grounded when Mom and Dad find out about this.”

“They aren’t Araksaka,” London said. “This isn’t the royal guard.”

“How do you know?”

“No tattoos.”

“Bounty hunters then,” Duncan said with a grunt, catching a fist to the eye. “Ow, damn it.”

“No hard feelings.” The female attacker grinned, jumping nimbly out of range of his return blow and kicking out at the same
time. “But you’re going to make us a fortune.”

“Bite me, you vulture.” Quinn sprawled on the tiles, groaning. An older man in a pinstripe suit grabbed Quinn’s ponytail,
yanking him up.

“Hey!” I yelled, leap frogging Duncan and the girl and elbowing another vampire, who reared up at my passing. “Get off my
brother!” I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough, not like they were, but I was angry and scared and they’d underestimated
me. I broke Quinn’s attacker’s kneecap and staked him before the others could react. Quinn jumped to his feet, grinning.

“Thanks, little sister.”

I grinned back, wiping my hands clean.

“Duck!” he added.

I ducked.

Vampire dust drifted over me like pollen. I sneezed.

One of the vampires, newly turned by the look of him, smiled at me as if we were on a date. “Fancy a shag?” He sniffed the
air and licked his lips. “Come on, love.” He sauntered over, or would have if he hadn’t tripped over Logan’s foot.

“Might I suggest you get the hell out of here?” Logan said, yanking on my arm. “Run, you bloody lunatic.”

I ran a few steps, stopped when no one followed me. “I’m not leaving you guys here!”

“Just go!”

“No!”

“Solange!” All five of my brothers hollered my name.

“Who knows how many others might be out there? You want me to go alone?”

They made a collective chorus of annoyed grunts, knowing full well what I was doing, but they reluctantly came with me, which
was all I’d wanted. We tore down the hall, skidding slightly on the tiles. My breath was ragged and hot in my lungs, tearing
at my throat. Connor scooped me up over his shoulder, barely pausing to adjust my flailing limbs, and kept running. He was
so quick, as were the rest of them, that they seemed more like washes of color around me. My stomach bounced painfully on
Connor’s shoulder, but we didn’t stop until we’d reached a rusty door. It swung open to the moonlight trickling between the
trees down onto the forest floor. Connor tossed me to my feet. I rubbed my bruised stomach.

Quinn eased ahead, peering into the undergrowth. Ferns waved their green fingers all around us. We moved quietly behind him.
I might not have vampire speed or scent-tracking, but I did have Drake training and I knew how to move without being heard
or seen. And I knew the forest as well as anyone, certainly better than Logan, who preferred the city streets to mud on his
expensive boots. The heady scent of pine needles and earth was soothing, cooling my throat. There wasn’t a single bird or
rabbit or deer. They all knew the smell of a predator, animal or otherwise. The wind tickled the oak trees. Quinn halted,
held up a hand. I strained to hear what he was hearing, but all I could make out were ordinary forest sounds: the wind, the
river, an owl.

“We’re not alone,” Logan mouthed to me.

I froze, trying not to breathe, hoping my heart wasn’t pulsing like a beacon in the center of the dark woods. I might know
how to step so I didn’t snap twigs or crush acorns underfoot, but silencing my heartbeat was a trick I wasn’t all that keen
on learning. We could be as silent as we wanted, but if the vampires were near enough, they’d hear me. Frustration hummed
through me. Something rustled, like bat wings.

“Get down,” Logan snapped, but I was already hitting the ground. It was so dark and the vampires were so fast, it was as if
shadows had collided around me, hissing. Bones shattered and mended; blood sprinkled like rain. Someone grunted. I couldn’t
see very well—not only was it dark, but I was half sprawled in a thicket of ferns. I scrambled up into a crouch. Logan hurtled
past, cursing. The moon silvered the gleam of fangs and eyes. Another vampire rolled past me, landed on his feet.

“I smell her.” He looked nearly drunk. “She’s here. She’s mine.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I muttered grimly, reaching for a branch and breaking off the end so it was sharp and splintered.
I hadn’t been raised to sit around wringing my hands. We’d all known this was coming, even if I was only now truly realizing
the scope and magnitude of my bloodchange. Everyone basically thought of me as a vampire broodmare, meant to give birth to
lots of little royal vampire babies.

No amount of red roses sent to my door was going to make that okay.

I slammed my heel into the back of his knee as he whirled to attack Marcus. He stumbled, turned. His angry hiss shifted into
a grin.

“Solange.” He took a step forward. “I’m Pierre.”

I lifted the branch threateningly. “Look, this is just a pheromone thing. Get over it already.”

“You’re even more beautiful than I thought you’d be.”

“Great.” The sarcasm in my voice didn’t appear to register. “You know, it’s been a really long night. Could you be creepy
later?”

“I love you.”

“Apparently not.” I was feeling tired. Incredibly, I felt like yawning, even as someone grunted in pain.

“Incoming!” Quinn yelled. “There are more of them than we thought.”

I tilted my head at Pierre, tried a winsome smile. Marcus stared at me.

“Are you going to be sick?”

Brothers.

“Pierre,” I said. Would fluttering my eyelashes be overkill? And did I even know how to flutter my eyelashes? “Could you help
me?”

“Anything for you, my love.” Okay, so maybe this pheromone thing might be useful after all.

“There are bounty hunters coming.” I tried to look innocent. Lucy would have fallen over laughing if she could see me now.
“They want to kill me and my brothers.”

“I will not let that happen,” he promised fervently.

“Great.” I patted his shoulder. “Go on.”

He made a very dramatic departure while Marcus and I watched. Quinn and Logan joined us.

“What’s going on?”

“Solange just got some sappy vamp to fight for us.”

“Then what are we standing around for?” Connor said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We ran, leaving behind the sounds of Pierre and his friends battling the bounty hunters. I really hoped he’d win. I didn’t
like the thought that I might have sent him to his death.

“Slowing down’s not exactly the goal here,” Logan said.

“Shouldn’t we help him?”

“No, run faster.”

“But . . .”

“Solange, you’re so pale you practically glow. Move it.”

I might have argued further but I was feeling very sluggish. I was barely able to push one foot in front of the other, never
mind performing heroics to save a vampire who I was probably going to have to stake anyway, if the pheromones had anything
to say about it.

“I feel . . . funny.”

Connor scooped me up again. I was too exhausted to feel particularly alarmed, though some part of my brain registered that
this was hardly the time for a nap.

“It’s just the change,” he said. “You’re overtired. It’s normal.”

The yawn was so big it made my eyes water.

“Are you sure?”

I wasn’t awake long enough to hear his reassurance.

“What the bloody hell do you mean Solange went to see Veronique? And Natasha?” Everyone took a healthy step back out of range
of Helena’s fury. “I specifically said she wasn’t to leave the house.”

Liam sat in his chair and grimly drank a brandy. Hyacinth’s pug was sniffing under the front door and whining. I shifted from
foot to foot. The thick miasma of anger and pheromones was starting to make even me light-headed. Liam reached out for his
wife’s hand.

“They’ll be all right,” he said darkly. I’d never heard his voice have that particular tone and kind of hoped I’d never hear
it again. It made the hairs on the back of my neck shiver.

“Why’d Lady Natasha set a bounty in the first place?” Nicholas asked hotly.

“There’s a rumor going around,” Sebastian explained. “That Solange really is going to take Lady Natasha’s crown as soon as
she changes.”

We stared at him, all sorts of horrible scenarios unfolding in the spaces between us.

“But Lady Natasha would never want to be anything else,” Helena said. “So she’ll never understand that, or trust it. Also,
she knows Montmartre is courting Solange, in his own twisted fashion. Even though they haven’t been together for a long time,
she doesn’t share well.” She glanced at the window. “Where the bloody hell is Hyacinth? It’ll be dawn soon.”

“Bruno has his boys out looking for her.”

“I should be with them.” Sebastian was standing stiffly in the corner, glowering.

“No.” Helena narrowed her eyes in his direction.

“Mom.”

“I said no, Sebastian. You’ve done enough tonight.”

“What about London?” Nicholas asked. “She’s the one who came to get Solange.”

Liam sighed. “She’s a royalist, like the rest of that side of the family. But I have to believe she didn’t know about the
danger.”

“There’s more.” Geoffrey tapped his pen on the cover of a leather-bound book. His hair stuck up everywhere; he’d been raking
his hand through it constantly since he got here. Liam tilted his head back and briefly closed his eyes.

“Of course there is.”

“I’ve finished analyzing the Hypnos sample.”

Liam straightened, his eyes flaring like hot silver.

“Tell me.”

“Several zombie drugs, as we’d assumed,” Geoffrey said.

“And?”

His expression was hard. He didn’t look like a slightly distracted scientist anymore, or like the handsome intellectual who
attracted all the divorced women in town.

“It’s ancient blood. Ancient enough to be Enheduanna.”

The silence fell like a hammer through a glass window. I blinked.

“Who’s Enheduanna?” I whispered to Nicholas. No one was speaking. It was kind of creepy, actually. “Hello?”

“An ancient.” Geoffrey was the one to answer me, though he didn’t glance my way. The fire crackled softly, falling to embers
in the grate. “The oldest vampire still alive.”

“Oh. Um, and?”

“And her blood has magical effects. Like Hypnos, it takes away your will.”

“I remember.” I stifled a shiver.

“On vampires too, not just on humans.”

“Oh.” My eyes widened. “Oh!”

“Indeed,” Geoffrey agreed drily. “And now it’s in the hands of the Helios-Ra.”

“Who are only marginally better than Lady Natasha or her tribes.” Helena’s black braid lifted into the air as she whirled
to kick the leg of a spindly Queen Anne chair. It splintered loudly.

“That was my mother’s,” Liam murmured.

“This is bad,” Nicholas said to me. “The thing about vampires, of any kind, is that we’re supposedly immune to each other’s
pheromones. It’s what’s stopped us from wiping each other out entirely with clan wars.”

“But not anymore,” I whispered.

“Not anymore.”

“How did they even get it?” Sebastian asked.

“I can assure you I plan on asking Hart that myself,” Liam said through his teeth. “He’s on his way here.”

“Here?” Sebastian gaped at him. “You’re not serious.”

“He was amenable.”

“Amenable to staking each and every one of us in our own home,” Sebastian muttered.

“No, we’re safest here and we outnumber him. I allowed him only a single companion.”

“And a bucket of Hypnos powder.”

“Sebastian,” Helena snapped. “Your father knows what he’s doing.”

Liam smiled.

“I’ll remind you of that, love.”

Nicholas sat down, shaking his head.

“So, the head of the Helios-Ra is coming here for tea, they have Hypnos at their disposal, Solange is possibly in the hands
of the vampire queen who set the bounty on her head, and we can’t find Aunt Hyacinth. That about cover it?” He looked suddenly
young and overwhelmed, like the Nicholas I’d known before he turned. I touched his shoulder. Before I could think of a single
helpful thing to say, Liam’s cell phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. He glanced at the display.

“Bruno.” He and Helena exchanged a grim look. “Hart’s here, and Hope.” They looked at us.

“Lucy and Nicholas, upstairs.”

“Mom!”

“But—”

“Now,” Liam insisted. “Lucy, the presence of a human girl will not help our cause at the moment. And Nicholas, you can barely
stand.”

He was rather wobbly on his feet. Dawn must be filling the garden on the other side of the drapes. We shuffled upstairs, reluctant
but obedient.

More or less.

Mom says my temper isn’t my only karmic baggage. I have this thing about taking orders, no matter how well meant. And though
I completely understood why it might be best to remain out of sight, it hardly followed that I should sit alone in Solange’s
room and not know what was going on. Just because they shouldn’t see me didn’t mean I shouldn’t see them.

“Lucy?” Nicholas whispered, stopping when he realized I wasn’t following. “What are you doing?”

In point of fact I was lying on my stomach at the top of the curving staircase. From this vantage I could see the front door.
I couldn’t see into the living room, but I heard Helena ask Sebastian if he wanted to retire and his emphatic refusal. He
was newly turned—it had only been a few years, after all—but I wouldn’t have left either if I were him. No matter how exhausted
I was.

I wondered again where Solange was. And if she was okay.

“They can hear your heartbeat, you know.” Nicholas stretched out next to me.

“Hey, I’m upstairs. Technically I’m not breaking the rules.” I slid him a sidelong glance. “Can they really hear my exact
location?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. He was very close. I could feel the cool length of his body pressing against mine. His eyes were
very pale, his teeth very sharp. If I was immune to his pheromones, then why did I find him so annoyingly attractive?

A knock sounded at the front door. The dogs barreled into the foyer, growling. Mrs. Brown barked from behind Hyacinth’s bedroom
door. Bruno escorted the heads of Helios-Ra inside, his expression implacable and hard. He considered the Drakes his own family,
and Solange an honorary niece.

“Hart and Hope,” I muttered. “If you’re going to name your kids like that, of course they’re going to think they live in a
comic book.” Although I had to admit Hart was handsome, practically debonair. His hair was threaded with silver and rakishly
messy. “Okay, he’s totally got that yummy secret agent thing going on.”

Nicholas scowled at me. I didn’t have to turn my head to look at him to feel his eyes burning.

Hope was short, barely five feet tall, with a cheerful face and a ponytail swinging from the crown of her head. She wore jeans
and a thick leather belt hung with stakes under her long sweater, and sandals. Somehow I hadn’t expected her to be so perky,
in her strappy silver sandals.

“They’re going in,” I whispered.

“I can see that,” Nicholas muttered. His nose twitched.

“You look like a demented bunny,” I told him. “What are you doing?”

“You switched to lemon shampoo.”

I blinked, thought back to my morning shower, which felt like years ago. He was right. His hands were clenched, but his voice
was soft and husky. He turned his head away, was close enough that his hair brushed my cheek.

“Smells good.”