“You’re making me feel like a drug pusher in one of those old after-school specials,” he remarked wryly. “It’s just blood, Solange. Food. Without it you die.”
“I’m not … thirsty.”
His smile was crooked and sardonic. “You’ve just turned. You’re always thirsty.”
He was right.
“Drink it if you want to make it to camp. Otherwise you’ll have to let me carry you.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t mind, but you seem to.”
Being brought in unconscious. My family would freak right out.
I took the vial and wrenched off the silver-topped cork. I tilted it, letting the blood slide down my throat, swallowing greedily. It sparkled through me as if it were made of stars and lightning. I laughed. Constantine’s gaze raked me from head to toe and he smiled slowly, hungrily. I would have blushed if I were still human. I picked up my pace. “Let’s go,” I said.
“Of course, princess.” He gave a short bow.
I frowned at him. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
“And I told you to stop being ashamed of who you are. Most would kill, literally, to be a vampire and a princess, never mind both at once.”
“I’m not a princess.” I rolled my eyes. “And the last guy who gave me a tiara wore it through his chest.”
“You are a princess,” he said sharply, ignoring my reference to Montmartre’s untimely end by my mother’s hand. And mine. I’d been the one to shove the tiara but had needed Mom’s strength to get it through his heart. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s vampire bride. “You might wish otherwise, but lying to yourself won’t change the facts. You should be proud, love.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me. But he didn’t get it. The fact that I was a princess had nearly killed Aunt Hyacinth, had Lucy thrown in a dungeon, had assassins tracking my mother. And my being a vampire had nearly killed Kieran.
I wanted to call Lucy to see how Kieran was, but there was no cell-phone coverage whatsoever this deep into the mountain forests. I wouldn’t know until well after sunset tomorrow. The worry dimmed the fire of the blood in my system, the sweet metallic taste on my tongue. We made it to the outskirts of the camp as the mist rose off the river and trailed between the pine trees. A guard nodded to us once and let us pass.
The field that usually hosted wildflowers and bumblebees now bristled with huge canvas tents and swarms of vampires wearing such an odd combination of historical costumes it was as if we’d stumbled onto a circus. In private and for formal vampire occasions we tended to revert back to the clothing of our bloodchange. Even this close to dawn with the mists thick around our ankles and the call of the first birds in the treetops, I could see Victorian bustles, Celtic tattoos, medieval tunics, a 1920s beaded flapper dress, a woman dressed like a very pale Marie Antoinette.
A dog barked from the caves set back into the mountains. The Hounds slept there, and the rest of us had canvas tents like the kind I imagined littered medieval jousting tournaments. There were few humans allowed, mostly personal guards and bloodslaves who traveled with specific tribes. I couldn’t stand the word “bloodslave,” but Constantine only laughed and called me colonial when I mentioned it. He hadn’t met Lucy yet. She’d punch him right in the nose if he called her a bloodslave.
Still, for all its flaws, there was a sharp, delicate beauty to the encampment, like a honed sword. It was silver and filigrees and handcrafted art. And it was blood and death and teeth. No amount of silks and velvets could hide the undercurrents. There were secrets here, and hunger and passionate affairs and bitter feuds. It was like living in a boiling iron cauldron set over a raging fire.
Sometimes the steam had to escape or the whole pot would explode.
Like right now.
I don’t know who started it. I only saw a vampire, his blond-white hair straight and pale as moonlight, on the path where it branches into a crossroad. He was from the Joiik family, one of the oldest vampire lineages on the Raktapa Council. Coming from the other direction was a vampire I didn’t recognize, dressed in a prim tweed skirt and a white blouse. She spat out a curse and launched at his head, fangs flashing.
She never made contact.
A crossbow bolt split the air and cleaved her heart, turning her to ash. A second bolt caught the Joiik, because he’d reached for his weapon. If he’d stayed still and trusted the Blood Moon secret guard to protect him, he wouldn’t have been hit. Now he was dust.
It happened so fast, I barely had time to squeak. Constantine gripped my elbow, fingers digging painfully into my skin. He was holding me back, protecting me. And I was suddenly remembering that hundreds of years ago, Blood Moons were places of trials by combat and executions.
“Don’t move,” he murmured.
There were vampire tribes here from all over the world, each with its own customs and traditions and histories. Not to mention feuds. It took a special kind of guard to keep order in a place like this; a guard no one had ever seen and couldn’t accurately describe. Even Madame Veronique, who was nearly a thousand years old, couldn’t tell us who they were or even what they looked like. We only knew some of them must be human since the crossbow bolts apparently came during the day as well. They kept to the trees and the shadows, constantly circling, constantly watching. No one was exempt from their justice. Not princess, not council; only the queen.
The back of my neck prickled. “Are they gone?”
Constantine’s violet eyes flickered back and forth. “Never, but the danger’s past I think.”
A Joiik woman with long blond braids rushed to the ashes under the leather tunic, marked with a Thor’s hammer design. She keened loudly, brokenly. The sounds made the back of my throat hurt.
Constantine’s hand nudged me and we moved backward, out of the way. “Best get you home,” he said.
We weren’t far when Bruno stepped in front of me. “The Chandramaa guard?”