The Longest Night: A Drake Chronicles Novella (6 page)

“Busted,” Paige groaned.

Aggie tossed the file away. “I just—”

“This isn’t about the files,” Lucy said quietly. “It’s about what the dogs just found
under your pillow.” She opened her palm to reveal half a dozen vampire fangs, drilled
and hanging off a chain.

Just like Yen used to wear.

“Dude,” Paige said faintly. “Even Mary Walker didn’t collect fangs.”

* * *

Kali went missing the same night.

Aggie sat at the kitchen table, unable to stop staring at Yen’s fang trophy necklace.

It made no sense.

Lucy bustled around the room, talking to various Drake brothers on the phone, and
then, when they weren’t moving fast enough for her, Hunter. Somehow, Hunter managed
to be everywhere at once, even being human.

Paige made hot chocolate and comforting noises. Cal and Noah went tracking and then
came back, pearly gray with dawn fatigue. Nicholas found footprints and a splintered
stake, but no ashes, no blood. No body.

Through it all, Aggie stared at the necklace. She stopped to check the Whitethorn
website but there were no photos or mentions of Kali, so she went back to staring.

She didn’t touch it, though part of her wanted to, and fiercely. The rest of her knew
she was being watched and also knew how easily her desperation for her sister could
look like guilt.

The fangs were glossy and nearly elegant in their frozen, polished violence. They
were harsh and horrible and they reminded her of home.

Paige touched her shoulder and she jumped, knocking over her forgotten cup of hot
chocolate. The porcelain shattered, skittering like pale insects across the floor.

“Let’s go to bed,” Paige said quietly. “There’s nothing else we can do right now.”

But Aggie was still thinking about Yen. She wondered how bad a person it made her
that she’d already stopped worrying about Kali.

* * *

“Lucy’s almost as bad as you are with the whole Christmas thing,” Aggie said, watching
Lucy string lanterns through the trees. She’d already shoveled the snow out of the
back fire pit and baked three dozen jam cookies, only half of which were burned.

“It’s a Solstice thing with her,” Paige corrected. “The longest night of the year
and all that.”

“I just don’t get her.”

“Well, she’s saving your butt from being sent back to New York, so play nice.”

“I
am
playing nice,” Aggie insisted.

“For someone raised by wolves.”

“Why does everyone keep saying stuff like that?” Aggie grumbled. She couldn’t stand
the glares from Noah and the approving thumbs-up from Cateyln, both of whom thought
Aggie collected fangs and dosed Cal’s pajamas with holy water. Even Paige kept giving
her little lectures. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Do you really think that’s such a good—”

“Yes.” Aggie cut her off, and let the back door slam behind her. The house was too
small, too crowded, too full of Christmas cheer and magic and violence and impossible
questions. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember the exact sound of Yen’s voice.
That scared her most of all.

She took the farm truck and drove until her fingers no longer clenched the steering
wheel. She got out, strapped on her snowshoes, and started to walk. For the first
time in months, she didn’t miss the sounds of city traffic and the flash of neon lights.

“Yen, what do you want from me?” she asked the cold stars. At least there was no one
around to hear her talking to her dead sister. The others assumed she was searching
for Kali too. No one had found any more clues and Aggie had no idea how to go about
looking for a missing vampire. It wasn’t exactly in her training.

Still, she kept an eye out as she paced along the frozen road.

During the weeks she’d spent camping and trying not to get eaten by a bear—never mind
vampires—she’d walked for hours through the forests around the Violet Hill mountains.
She’d become intimately familiar with blisters, mosquitoes, and poison ivy. She’d
walked until her calf muscles cramped. And still, she’d never found any remnant of
the battle.

Aggie hadn’t made the circuit in a few weeks. There’d been training exercises, drills,
and midterms. She felt vaguely guilty, as if she was letting Yen down. She was getting
soft, letting the farm and the school change what her sister had trained her to be.
That had to be why the stake had been left on her pillow, and the fang necklace. A
reminder.

Paige would have told her it was suicide to go out into the winter woods. Of course,
Paige thought it was suicide to go down the driveway if there was more than an inch
of snow on it. Aggie just kept walking until she struggled to stay steady on her snowshoes.
She was so lost to the search and her own whirling thoughts that she barely noticed
the dimming of the sun in the white winter sky until it was too late.

She was alone after sunset, clumsy in her parka, and slow in her snowshoes.

She was as bad as that girl flirting with Cal at Conspiracy Theory.

Worse.

She was lost.

“Idiot,” she muttered, her breath frosting in the air. Snow drifted between the trees.
“Perfect.” The stars were bright as little knives. At least the moon was bright enough
on the snow that she didn’t need a flashlight. She’d be able to see her bloody death
coming.

She reached for her stake, turning around to follow her tracks back to the road. Hopefully.

And then she wasn’t alone anymore.

The crunch of boots on the snow gave him away. She knew it was deliberate. He could
move as soft as water if he wanted to. She turned toward him, heart thumping like
rabbit feet.

“Aggie.” Cal spread his hands, showing that he was unarmed. His teeth were just teeth,
white and perfect but harmless. He wore a navy blue peacoat in concession to the cold.
He’d have been too noticeable wandering around in a T-shirt.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, mostly because she didn’t know what else to
say. She felt awkward, which was ridiculous.

“If I stay home I’m afraid Lucy will make me swing from the trees with twinkly lights.”

Aggie smiled before she remembered she never smiled at vampires. The welts from the
holy water had left faint red scars on his collarbone. It was hard to scar a vampire.
He must have been in excruciating pain when she attacked him in the hall. Something
very close to guilt nibbled at her. She pushed it back. Maybe Cal hadn’t fed on that
girl, but another vampire had; that girl needed someone to be angry on her behalf.

“You smell angry.”

Her eyes widened. “You can smell my mood?” Another unfair advantage.

“You look angry all of the time, so it’s hard to tell otherwise.” His smile was quick
and surprisingly charming. She was charmed. And technically he’d just insulted her.

He was even more dangerous than she’d thought.

She put a little more space between her and his pheromones. His smile was positively
wicked, as if he knew something she didn’t. “Can you smell the stake in my cuff too?”
she muttered. “Or the vial of holy water in my boot?” That made her think of the welts
on his chest. “I didn’t dose you,” she said quietly. For some reason it was important
he knew that.

“Okay.”

“You believe me?” she asked, surprised.

“You’re not exactly subtle about trying to kill me,” he pointed out drily.

He had a point. And it sounded so much worse when he said it like that. He could have
tried to kill her back at any time. He might have succeeded. Another vampire definitely
would have tried.

“You’re far from home,” he said.

“So are you,” she returned suspiciously.

“I wasn’t accusing you of anything,” he pointed out mildly.

She winced. He was right. “I’m lost,” she admitted, which was as close to an apology
as she was going to get.

“Strange time to take a walk.”

“I was looking for the battle site,” she blurted out. He looked different. She knew
it was because she’d read his file. He wasn’t just a vampire; he was a boy who’d suffered
alone for months and months. Even the way his expression stilled seemed new to her
now. As if she could decipher his mood, like a friend would.

Clearly the cold was going to her head.

“Never mind,” she added.

“I know where it is,” he said finally, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. His
voice was as soft as the snow settling on the branches.

Aggie stumbled over her own feet. “
What?
” She grabbed his arm. “Where?” She realized she was touching him and hastily let
go.

“Why do you want to go there?” he asked. “It’s . . . awful. Saturated.”

“Saturated?”

“With blood.”

She swallowed thickly. “My sister died there.”

Cal nodded and started to walk away without a word. She stared after him for a long
moment before realizing he was offering to show her where the site was. She hurried
after him, gasping for breath as she struggled through the snow. Ice cracked on the
surface, like thunder under her feet. Cal was just another shadow between the trees.
She couldn’t keep up. She was going to lose him. Panic clawed at her throat.

And then his tracks were deep grooves, cleared of snow and easy for her to follow.
She took off her snowshoes and felt the relief of being able to run again. The trail
led her to more forest and a clearing. They passed a beaded lamp frozen in the river.
Broken and rusted lanterns dangled like Christmas ornaments next to jagged holes from
crossbow bolts and deep grooves from stakes. The charred remains of wooden platforms
and ropes dangled from a high branch overhead. No amount of snow could completely
hide what had happened here, even six years later.

Cal rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable.

“I can feel it too,” she murmured, even though she had no supernatural senses. This
place was quiet and sad, and full of secrets. Someone had left roses, recently enough
that they sat on the frozen crust, but they had withered to a dusty red.

He met her eyes, pale irises gleaming, before stepping back to give her privacy. She
walked around slowly, not sure what she’d expected to find. Blood in the snow? Bones?
Both the Drakes and the Helios-Ra had gone to great pains to identify all of the bodies
and give them proper burials when they couldn’t find next of kin. There was a monument
at the school for the fallen. Aggie had scratched Yen’s name into it with her pocket
knife. And since the battle, Hunter and Quinn had created a kind of emergency unit
to break up confrontations and clean up the aftermath of the inevitable violence.

She’d read all about it. She’d even written essays on the topic. Dry words and theories
were nothing compared to standing on the place where her sister died.

Needlessly.

Yen had chosen to join the battle. She’d chosen to leave her little sister behind
to follow the lure of blood vengeance. She’d chosen wrongly.

Aggie could admit it to herself, this one time. She’d thought finding the place where
her sister died would change something inside her. She was supposed to cry. She was
supposed to feel better, or worse. It was all supposed to make sense now.

Instead she just felt cold and confused.

“Let’s go home,” she said quietly, turning away.

Cal didn’t speak as she drove them back to the farm. He didn’t offer empty condolences
or try to get her to share her pain. That alone made the ice inside her stomach melt
slightly.

She parked around the side of the farm and they cut across the adjoining field. The
last thing she wanted was for the others to see them together. There’d be more questions.
Teasing. Paige would be merciless, and then Aggie would have to duct-tape her mouth
shut and she’d end up with even more detention.

And it might feel like a date. A morbid, creepy date with frozen toes, but still.

Aggie shifted, the silence making her itchy. She knew how to stake, decapitate, and
dismember a vampire. She had no clue how to engage in small talk with one. She slid
him a sidelong glance and wondered if he felt like an idiot too. He was always so
quiet and composed, like nothing surprised him.
She’d tried to stake him a dozen times and he never really lost his temper. She’d
never met anyone like him. He was a gentleman, in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

Well, until he pushed her.

He flung his arm out, knocking her off her feet and into the snow several feet behind
him. She scrambled to her feet, cursing. “What the hell do— Oh.”

A
Hel-Blar
came out of the woods into the field, stinking of rot and spoiled mushrooms. Aggie
gagged, reaching for her stake.
Hel-Blar
bites were contagious to both humans and vampires.

“Get help,” Cal told her.

“Get real,” she returned.

The edge of the forest could hide a dozen more
Hel-Blar
. Or hunters. You just never knew in Violet Hill. The cold made her movements slower
and stiffer, but at least she had two stakes and Hypnos powder. Getting close enough
to dose him would be tricky. She’d have to circle around while he was distracted by
Cal. She threw a stake, hoping to catch him between the shoulder blades.

It sounded good in theory.

In practice, the
Hel-Blar
was faster than the only other one she’d ever come across. And there was ice under
the snow. She dodged his attack and slipped, landing on her tailbone hard enough to
knock the breath from her chest. She flattened and rolled when he leaped for her.
His stench made her eyes water. He crouched over her, snapping his jaws. Saliva hit
the cuff of her coat. She squirmed out of it, terrified it would touch her skin.

She kicked up at him just as Cal grabbed the
Hel-Blar
’s shoulder and flung him away. The
Hel-Blar
sailed through the branches, snapping them into splinters before he hit a tree trunk.
Black blood dripped from his mouth, where he’d bitten through his lip with his rows
of needle-fangs. Aggie pushed into a crouch, pain radiating up her spine.