Sleeping Beauty (17 page)

She staggered back, not wanting to reveal herself to the other slayers and lose her anonymity. It was bad enough that she'd spoken—the slayers had heard her female voice.

“Got it!” one of the slayers said to the other. “Since I got the kill, you've got to dump his body over the border in the morning.”

Lucette ran, hating that the slayers were so cavalier about killing. It was slayer policy to use the dead vampire bodies to send a message to others in Sanguinia to stay away. Clearly it wasn't working, but no one seemed to notice. She couldn't help but think that the slayed vampire corpses might have the opposite effect—inciting anger, rather than building a deterrent.

She didn't stop running until she was back at the palace. Legs burning, they crumpled under her, and she fell back against the outermost wall of the courtyard. Tears sparked in her eyes and she struck her stake against the stone wall. The sound cracked through the night.

She struck the wall again. That vampire's death had been her fault. If not for her, he'd have fled into the night and would be halfway to the border by now. Sobbing, she struck the wall again, and even with her glove on, the vibrations shot through her arm and up to her teeth.

Every time she tried to fix things, they only got worse.

Still shaken from seeing an innocent vampire killed right in front of her, Lucette stuck her stake under her pillow as she did every night. Her father wouldn't approve, but she never slept without some kind of weapon. She no longer believed that every vampire deserved death,
but if some had been hired to bite her, she wasn't taking any chances. With any luck, brandishing her stake would be enough to frighten off any would-be finger-prickers or neck-biters.

She stared at her gloves. Many mornings, she woke with deep creases on her face from sleeping with her cheek on the leather seams, but it was worth it to stay safe. For years, her mother had let her sleep without gloves, and out of habit, she sometimes removed them in her sleep, but she'd kept them on all night for the past three weeks.

Moving over to her washbasin, she removed her gloves and carefully washed her hands and face. Staring at her reflection in the mirror, tears rose in her eyes and she swiped them away with the backs of her hands.

Slayers didn't cry. Especially not at the death of a vampire. But the one she'd met tonight hadn't deserved death, and she was sure that if he'd talked to her father, it would have helped. She couldn't tell her father what she'd learned without revealing that she'd been out on patrol.

She put her gloves back on, brushed and braided her hair, then climbed into bed. She double-checked that her stake was in position, even though she no longer felt sure she could use it. She tried to sleep, but instead tossed and turned, haunted by images of the vampire's violent and unnecessary death.

A huge vampire tore into Lucette's throat.

She gasped as she woke with a start, and reached under her pillow for her stake. Just a dream.

She sat and backed up against her headboard to assess any imminent danger. The gloves must have twisted in her sleep, because
they were caught between her hand and the stake, pinching the skin on her finger. This wasn't the first time it had happened.

She listened to the darkness of her room. Something had woken her, but the room was quiet. After a few moments, her eyes focused in the dark, and she felt confident she was alone. She let out her breath and fought to slow her rapidly beating heart.

Calmer, she looked down at her hand, and her heart raced again. Her stake. She was holding her stake with a bare hand. One glove lay on the floor next to her bed. She'd removed it in her sleep, and that pinch she'd felt . . .

Panting, she dropped the stake and tried not to panic. Her stakes were all carefully sanded, not a rough spot on them, so it should be impossible for her to get a splinter, even without the added protection of the gloves. She closed her eyes tightly, trying not to think about the pinch, the pinch that had now turned into a sting. Which stake had she put under her pillow? The same one she'd banged on the stone wall in anger and grief? Had it cracked?

Not wanting to use her bare hand to light a candle, she walked to the curtains and used her other hand—still gloved—to pull them back. Moonlight streamed in and she slowly lifted her finger into the light.

A small sliver of wood stuck out of the end of her finger, surrounded by blood. A tiny drop fell to the floor—a small, dark blotch on the pale stone.

“No!”

She staggered back, hoping this was still part of a dream, that she was really still tucked into her bed, still wearing her gloves. Hoping she hadn't cracked one of her stakes. Hoping that cracked stake wasn't the one she'd tucked under her pillow.

Trembling, she stepped back to the window. This was no time to lack courage. As much as she wanted to get back into bed and pretend this hadn't happened, it had, and she had to see if the consequences were as disastrous as she imagined. She looked down into the courtyard. There was no movement, but that wasn't unusual for this time of night. She tried to spot something, even a shadow of a guard, but saw nothing.

She headed for her door, slowly opened it, and gasped. The royal guards and slayers assigned to her bedroom had all collapsed. She shook one and shouted, “Wake up!” She knelt beside another guard and turned his head around. “Wake up, please, wake up!” The guard did not move.

Lucette ran down the halls toward her father's bedroom, gasping for air. The guard in front of her father's door was collapsed on the floor, asleep. She pushed the sleeping guard aside to open her father's door and ran to his bedside. “Wake up, Dad! Please, wake up!” She shook him, but he slept soundly. She slumped to the carpet beside his bed in a heap and began sobbing.

It had happened. Everyone in the kingdom was asleep except her . . . and any vampires who might have escaped the slayers' stakes.

Creeping back to her bedroom, she kept alert to any sound or movement, but heard none. Never before had she heard the castle so silent. Typically, someone—one of the servants, a guard, a slayer—was moving about.

After retrieving a stake from her room, she returned to her father's bedside. As she watched her father in his sleep, guilt plowed through her at how she'd resented his attempts to keep this from happening. Her curse had been the thorn in her parents' relationship, and it hadn't
helped that she'd almost always sided with her mother. Lucette stared at her pricked finger. She'd blown everything.

If every citizen of Xandra was sleeping, so too was her mother's entire household, nearly six hours away by carriage and completely vulnerable, with no one to protect them. Wiping away tears, Lucette walked to the end of her father's bed and readied herself to defend him from whatever might come in the night. She knew full well that not every vampire was as timid and well-meaning as the one she'd talked to earlier that evening. And even if she couldn't protect both her parents, given their different locations, tonight she would do her best to protect one.

The next night, Lucette bolted upright from her slumber. She spun her head around to find herself in her father's office, lying on a sofa in the middle of the room and dressed in a white lace gown she'd never have put on without a fight. Her hair was down and brushed out, the curls fluffy and soft.

But worse than being dressed in a way she'd never have agreed to, she realized she was not alone in the room. Her father was slumped over his desk, and six or seven of his advisers, plus several guards and slayers, lay about, having clearly fallen asleep on their feet.

One of the guards had bumped his head on the edge of a table and cut his forehead. A trickle of blood ran down his face, but his breathing was steady.

If they knew they were going to fall asleep when the sun set, why hadn't they prepared and gone to bed? She shook her head, realizing
her father must have found her collapsed beside his bed this morning, a stake in her hand.

A stake
. If she was the only one awake, she needed weapons She stepped over an adviser and knelt next to a sleeping slayer. She confiscated his quivers of arrows and stakes, but didn't see his crossbow anywhere. No matter, she'd find one.

Feeling slightly more secure, yet somewhat silly with her hair flowing and the leather straps of the quivers across her white gown, she stepped over to make sure her father wasn't hurt. Under his hand was a half-written note. They'd clearly mistimed the sunset—maybe because they had completely blocked all the windows in the room with large boards.

She carefully pulled out the note, and then chided herself for the care she'd taken to pull it away slowly and silently. It wasn't as if she could wake him.

His note told her he loved her, how devastated he was that he hadn't been able to prevent the curse from falling, and that her primary concern should be to keep herself safe and not worry about him or anyone else.

That was one request she couldn't fulfill, especially since she knew vampires were targeting her family. There was nothing she could do about her mother, but she would make sure her father's neck stayed unbitten.

His note also talked of a plan to ensure her safety, but that he needed one more day to prepare. She decided not to think about that part. Her father's last plan, that glass room in the tower, had been a monstrous disaster, but surely he'd learned from that mistake.

After cleaning the cut on the guard's head and bandaging it as best she could, Lucette opened the door to her father's office to peek into the hall. A mouse scurried across the floor and she jumped. Clearly
the curse only affected the humans of the kingdom—not that the mice were likely to help her fight off vampires—but it was good to know.

She took out a stake and gripped it in her hand. The smooth wood felt good without gloves, more secure, more like a weapon. And now, well, who cared if she got a splinter? That damage was done.

Her first goal was to change into a more practical outfit, so she started down the hall toward her bedchamber. Halfway there, she heard a thump behind her. She stopped short and spun, stake raised.

A tall vampire with greasy, shaggy brown hair had leaped up to the corridor from the main hall below. He had blood on his chin.

“Excellent. Someone's awake.” He licked his lips. “Drinking from sleeping creatures makes me drowsy. Your blood will be much perkier.” He strode forward slowly and confidently.

The vampire nodded toward her stake, a smirk on his face. “Don't point that thing at me unless you know how to use it.” His underestimation of her abilities rankled her, but she quickly realized that she could use it to her advantage.

She let her arm shake. “P-p-please, d-d-don't k-kill me.”

He laughed, stepping forward and walking around her in a tight circle. “I don't want to kill you, I just want a little nibble. You've not been bitten before, have you?”