The Longest Night: A Drake Chronicles Novella (5 page)

* * *

Aggie didn’t sleep.

Paige snored peacefully, wrapped in Christmas and a three-candy-cane mochaccino sugar
crash. Aggie sat with her back to wall by the door. She’d flipped the lock and checked
it more times than was strictly healthy.

She distracted herself on her laptop, which wasn’t much of a distraction since most
of the sites she bookmarked were underground vampire hunter sites and Google alerts
on animal attacks in the Violet Hill area. When an alert pinged, it led her to a secret
website she could only access because she had three different codes. Whitethorn was
run by someone in the area, but no one could figure out who.

A photograph flashed onto her screen. She’d seen countless victim photos, helping
to sort out which were vampire attacks and which were actual animal attacks. Violet
Hill was still pretty wild and rugged, even just a few miles outside the border of
street lights.

This photo was different.

It was the girl from Conspiracy Theory, with blood on her throat, running down her
collarbone and into the snow. There were puncture marks from fangs.

Cal’s fangs.

She’d actually believed him when he said he wasn’t feeding on her. He’d almost had
her. A small treacherous part of her had started to believe that Cal might be different.
Snow piled at the windows while she berated herself for being such an idiot. She knew
better. Her dead sister knew better.

Aggie’s heart rate suddenly increased, thumping like the hooves of a startled deer.

Cal was home.

She barreled out of her room, just as he exploded into the hallway, ripping off the
T-shirt he slept in. Judging by the welts on his bare chest and shoulders, it was
soaked with UV holy water. His skin was seared raw and bloody over the tattoo of crows
flying over his left shoulder. His fangs were sharp and the whites of his eyes were
veined with red. Pain and fury mixed a cocktail that looked a lot like bloodlust.
Two out of those three emotions, Aggie could understand. Intimately.

“What’s going on?” Paige mumbled sleepily from the doorway. “Om!” she added suddenly,
as if meditation would stop Aggie propelling herself at Cal.

This time he was ready. Eager, in fact.

They were a summer tornado, cold vampiric fury and hot human rage crashing together.
Magic ignited between them. Blue sparks exploded, leaving scorch marks on the ceiling.

“Om, Om, Om!” Paige shouted.

The house shook right down to its foundations as Aggie and Cal fought the magic and
each other with equally intensity. Doors slammed open all along the hallway. Fletcher
tried to intervene and Aggie broke his nose. The world had narrowed to Cal’s burning
blue eyes, to the thump of her heartbeat almost loud enough to drown out the memory
of her sister’s voice.

He blocked her strikes with maddening ease, faster and stronger than she was. She’d
learned to fight dirty for that very reason. He had her pinned to the wall, his cold
fingers clamped around her throat. Aggie’s breaths were ragged and dry in her lungs,
scraping like rusty needles. She released the stake in her sleeve and it grazed his
ribs, leaving a bloody trail.

She managed to get a punch in, slamming his head back. He stumbled against the opposite
wall. Catelyn leaped into the fight in her plaid flannel pajamas. Noah grabbed her
by the hair and tossed her aside. She crashed into a lamp. The dogs barreled through,
growling and barking. Teeth clamped around Cal’s leg. Blood stung the air, further
maddening the vampires.

Nicholas was a pale blade cutting through the complicated web that had caught them
up. He knocked Cal into the wall, cracking the plaster. With his other arm, he gripped
Aggie’s sweater, holding her off the ground.

Pink light touched the windowsills in the living room.

Kali and Noah went limp and slid down the wall. Cal pushed through, refusing to give
into the dawn. Nicholas dropped Aggie, but only because Lucy wedged a broom between
her and Cal. Cal finally slumped to the ground at Aggie’s feet. He was vulnerable.
Wounded. The welts on his chest were raw and wouldn’t heal properly until he fed again.

“Go ahead,” Lucy said to her quietly. “He’s unconscious. Now’s your chance.”

Aggie hesitated, knowing Lucy didn’t mean it. Yen wouldn’t have hesitated. “He attacked
a girl. That’s where he got all those cuts and bruises.”

“Not unless he can be in two places at once,” Nicholas said, forcing the words out
as he fought the heavy drug of morning. “I found Cal fighting a gang of yahoos at
the side of the road. They took off, but judging by his broken wrist and shoulder
and the amount of blood on him, they were winning.”

“That’s convenient, don’t you think?”

“Not as convenient as the fact that you were the last one seen with him at the coffeehouse.
Fighting again, of course,” Nicholas added.

Aggie scowled. “Did he tell you that?”

Lucy shook her head. “No. He very specifically didn’t mention you, actually.”

“Oh.” Her fury turned to confusion. It was just as uncomfortable. “Well, I saw this
photo,” she said, grabbing her laptop. “And this is the girl he was flirting with.”

Lucy pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll call it in to Hunter.” She
touched Nicholas’s cheek when he wove slightly on his feet. “Go to bed,” she murmured.
“I’ve got this.”

“Be . . . careful,” he slurred.

“I’m always careful.”

Even on the brink of being catatonic he could snort disbelievingly. He shuffled toward
the tiny room beside Lucy’s bedroom, where he slept. There were locks on the inside
of the door, barred and shuttered windows, and a bar fridge filled with blood like
all the vampire’s rooms. Paige and Fletcher helped drag Cal, Noah, and Kali to their
respective beds.

Aggie didn’t know what to feel. This should have been simple. She was the good guy
saving the idiots from monsters.

“Aggie, come with me,” Lucy said, after hanging up with Hunter. She went straight
to the stove to boil water for hot chocolate.

Aggie sat down. She’d be expelled from the academy. She had nowhere to go. She’d have
to steal money for bus fare back to New York. And then what? Dumpster diving and vampire
staking while dodging the cops and the teen shelters. “Are you kicking me out?”

“I guess that’s up to you, isn’t it?” She leaned against the counter as the water
boiled. “Whitethorn posted that photo, didn’t they?”

Aggie blinked. “Um.”

“Any idea who they are?”

“No.”

“Not that you’d tell me even if you did,” Lucy said wryly. “Just be careful with them.
Being anti-vampire isn’t the same as being pro-human.”

“Cal was with that girl at the coffeehouse,” Aggie felt compelled to point out. She
didn’t mention that Whitethorn had sent her an e-mail to recruit her. If she passed
their test. They hadn’t mentioned what that was yet. “It was a reasonable assumption
on my part.”

“Your assumptions stop being reasonable when they come from fear instead of facts,”
Lucy pointed out, joining her at the table with the mugs of hot chocolate. “You attacked
before asking any questions. Just because it was Cal. And that much holy water would
have killed him anywhere else. He was lucky the house magic gave him those extra seconds
to react.”

“I didn’t dose him!” Mostly because she’d never thought of it. “My heart speeds up
whenever he’s around,” Aggie grumbled. “My body knows he’s a monster, even if you
choose not to see it.”

“Are you sure that’s what your body is telling you?”

“What else could it be? How was I supposed to know someone jumped him? This is Violet
Hill.”

“True. But the thing about Violet Hill is that nothing is ever exactly as it seems.
There are hundreds of ways we all misunderstand one another.”

“I can’t just forget.” She didn’t mention the stake she’d found. What was the point?

“I’m not asking you to. Cal has suffered as much as you have. You have no idea what
he’s been through. His file is thicker than the last Harry Potter book. So I’m asking
you to act in the present instead of reacting to the past.” Lucy rubbed her face with
both hands. “Because, dude, I
really
can’t stand giving these old-lady psych lectures anymore. It’s totally lame. But
since the garden hose won’t reach this far it’s all I’ve got.”

* * *

“What are you doing
now
?” Paige mumbled, sitting up in her bed. She squinted at Aggie, who’d frozen while
reaching for the doorknob.

“I’m going to pee, what do you think?”

“In your parka?”

“It’s cold.”

“You are such a bad liar.” Paige pushed aside her blankets and scrambled out of bed.
“What are you really doing?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

Aggie sighed and counted to ten. The counselor at the academy had been trying to get
her to count to ten when she was annoyed, to help her keep her temper in check. So
far, it wasn’t entirely successful. Paige just crossed her arms and waited. She’d
been on the receiving end of Aggie’s temper often enough that she was used to it.
And since she was human, Aggie hardly ever tried to stab her anymore.

“I’m breaking into the office,” Aggie finally said.

“Cool.” Paige grabbed her sweater, another flashlight, and slipped on a pair of reindeer
slippers. “Let’s go.”

Aggie smirked at the slippers. “You’re going to sneak around in those.”

“Stealthier than your combat boots,” Paige snorted. “Now are we going or what?”

There was a very small window of time in which to be even remotely stealthy at the
farmhouse. Vampires came and went all night and humans all day. There was about an
hour after dawn where a true peaceful quiet fell. It was Aggie’s best chance.

Paige followed her out the back door to the wooden garden shed that had been converted
into an office. The sky was thick with pink clouds. It would snow again today. Aggie
wished she had time to take photos. The light on the birch tree bent over with snow
was perfect.

They skirted the fire pit and the herb garden and Paige elbowed Aggie aside. “I’m
better with locks,” she said, crouching down. “I assume you brought tools?” Aggie
handed her a picklock kit.

The room smelled strongly of cedar and there was a jar of candy on the desk, next
to a laptop and a handmade pot filled with decorated stakes. Aggie briefly coveted
the silver one with the dragon’s head handle. The walls on either side of the desk
were lined with file cabinets and bookshelves.

“So why are we here exactly?” Paige asked.

“I want to see the files.”

“Anyone in particular?” She waggled an eyebrow.

“It’s not like that,” Aggie mumbled, but her voice sounded weird, even to her. Her
cheeks were faintly warm. “Let’s just hurry,” she said while Paige chortled. “And
no more sugar for you. You even laugh like a Christmas cartoon now.”

Paige used a bobby pin to fiddle and fuss at the lock of the file cabinet. It finally
clicked open and Paige went straight to her own file and Aggie’s. Aggie flipped through
the folders, trying to remember if she even knew Cal’s last name.

Paige whistled through her teeth. “You beat up an old lady?”

“She was a vampire.”

“Still.”

“She tried to bite me!” Aggie protested.

“And you gave a teacher a black eye?”

“That was an accident. Mostly. It was Mr. York.”

“Oh, well he’s a jerk.”

“See, it wasn’t my fault. I was provoked.”

“Yeah, because you’re so warm and fuzzy,
usually
. The first thing you ever said to me was, ‘If you ask me to help you with your math
homework because I’m Asian, I will stab you.’”

“Two people had already asked me that and it was my first day!’”

“All
I
said was hello.”

“Well.”

“It was like befriending a porcupine.” She glanced back at the file and grimaced.
“Your sister wore fangs as a necklace? No offense, but that’s gross. Not to mention
unhygienic.”

Momentarily distracted, Aggie tuned away from the cabinet. “They have stuff about
my sister in there? Let me see.”

“
Killed at the Battle of Violet Hill. Age 16. Homeless.”

“We had a home,” Aggie muttered. “New York.” It rankled to see it written so starkly,
without any mention of how hard Yen fought to keep them alive and together. “
Renegade. Fang trophies, suspected agitator.
”

Aggie tossed the file aside. “Fletcher has PTSD,” Paige said. “And Noah has anger
issues. Tell me something I don’t know.”

The beam of Aggie’s flashlight caught the edge of a folder on the desk. She checked
the name, just in case.

Callahan Lewis.

“Lucy wanted me to find this,” she said, eager for the distraction and reluctantly
impressed. “She totally played me.” She skimmed the summary at the top of the first
page. “He lived alone in the woods for a full year before someone named Isabeau found
him.” She swallowed, imagining how alone and hungry he would have been, feeding off
animals and avoiding all contact, even with other vampires. Something inside her softened,
something she didn’t fully understand. She’d wanted to do the same when she found
about Yen, only there was nowhere in New York to be alone. That’s why she’d come here
as soon as she was able. She’d lived in a tent in the woods until Hunter stumbled
over her while patrolling and brought her in to the school.

“He had a girlfriend too,” Paige said. “Jane Corbeau.”

“
Corbeau
is French for crow,’” Aggie murmured. Mrs. Boneta had spoken more Spanish and French
than English. “That’s why he has that crow tattoo on his shoulder.”

“She was obsessed with vampires,” Paige read on. “She wanted to be one, but she didn’t
survive the bite.”

“Cal obviously did,” Aggie said. “Do you think he bit her?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“Wouldn’t it—“

“Girls,” Lucy interrupted from the doorway. She wasn’t smiling.