Hearts At Stake - By Alyxandra Harvey Page 0,39
reassurance.
CHAPTER 14
Lucy
“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 Solange would hate that,” I said.
“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,