Drake Chronicles: 02 Blood Feud (17 page)

Clearly, we were alone. What a waste of a moonlit night.

She frowned at the ground. “Look, dog prints.” I fol owed her gaze to the trampled grass, the paw marks.

“Charlemagne?”

“No, there are too many. And they’re fresh.” I took a closer look. “Someone came back here after we left, just to add dog prints?” I rocked back on my heels, chil ed. “To frame the Hounds for the attacks, same as the death charm in my pocket.”

She nodded tersely. “Montmartre, probably.”

“He doesn’t want the treaties,” I agreed. “He’d much prefer we fight each other than him.” I sighed. “So, what now?” She was walking the perimeter much as Charlemagne had, her head tilted, sniffing delicately. “Now for the ritual.” I frowned. “Are you sure about this? Montmartre could be anywhere. And I didn’t even know magic was actual y real before your trick with the love charm.”

She shook her head, mystified. The bone beads in her hair clattered together. “I’l never understand how vampires could be so ignorant of the magic in their own veins, in their own bodies.” I shrugged uncomfortably.

“I can do this, Logan,” she said confidently. “Kala trained me for this.”

“What if something goes wrong? I can’t exactly wave a magic wand over you. I’m not Harry Potter.”

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Never mind,” I said.

“Al you have to do to pul me out is say my name three times.

If that doesn’t work, bury both my hands in the earth.”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“It wil ground me back into my body. Honestly, what does your family teach you?”

She pul ed dried herbs out of a pouch hanging from her belt and scattered the mixture in the center of the meadow. I could smel mint, clove, peppercorn, and something unfamiliar. She’d put a new amulet around her neck: this one was tarnished silver and hung with tiny bel s and garnet beads like frozen drops of blood. There were symbols etched around the edges.

Next she pul ed what looked like tibia bones out of her pack and stuck them into the dirt. They were smooth and polished and painted with more symbols. One was wrapped in copper wire and pearls.

“Are those human?” I frowned. Vampires didn’t leave bones behind, only ashes.

“Dog,” she replied. “And wolf.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say to that.

She lay down on her back between the bones, one at her head, one at her feet. The trees around us glimmered with broken bottles. Her arms were bare as usual, scars proudly displayed, chain mail draped over her heart. She closed her eyes, looking like a feral Sleeping Beauty.

I unsheathed my sword and paced slowly around her, listening so intently for sounds of another ambush that sweat gathered under my hair. She shifted, making herself more comfortable and murmured something too softly for me to hear.

She lay there for a long time, quietly and eerily stil .

Just as I was beginning to think there was nothing more magical happening than a nap, every nerve ending tingled and the hairs on my arms stirred. It suddenly felt like I was entirely covered in static electricity.

I turned to Isabeau, sword swinging out protectively.

She was alone, safe. But I could have sworn a silver glow pushed out of her skin, making her shine. She didn’t seem concerned; in fact she smiled, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. I admit I was relieved. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about fighting an invisible enemy.

There were clearly gaps in the famous Drake education.

I could just imagine what Mom would have to say about that.

And then the grass around her flattened outward in a circle, as if pushed by a strong wind. When it hit me, I staggered back, hitting a tree. A bottle fel from a branch overhead and tipped blood into the grass. I straightened, cursing.

Isabeau stood up as wel . She seemed to be glowing even more than before. It was a little distracting.

“I guess it didn’t work,” I told her.

She blinked at me. “Actual y, it worked a little too wel .” I was beginning to notice that everything around me seemed insubstantial, faded. And that I appeared to be glowing a little bit too, like those nature films about incandescent phloem under the surface of the sea. “I don’t think I want to know what you mean by that.”

mean by that.”

“You’re dreamwalking with me, Logan.”

“Yup, that’s what I didn’t want to know.”

She looked confused. “This has never happened before.”

“Yeah, that’s the opposite of comforting.” I could see through my hand.

Not good.

I tried to clench my fingers tighter around the sword.

Everything glittered around the edges, like the night sky was reaching down to touch everything. In fact, the sky seemed closer than it ought to be.

“Put that away,” Isabeau told me. “It won’t do you any good anyway. Weapons are useless when just a wayward thought can kil .”

“Wel , shit, that’s just great.”

“The best weapon’s a mirror.”

“Huh?” I was only half paying attention.

“So you can see a person’s true face. Don’t trust appearances here, Logan, any more than you would in your regular body.”

“Okay, sure.” The trees had a green glow, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat. In fact, everything seemed to have some kind of bright, candy-colored aura. “Did you slip some of that mushroom tea into my blood supply when I woke up?”

“No, this is perfectly normal,” she assured me.

“Right,” I countered dubiously.

“Wel , not exactly normal,” she amended. “I’ve never taken someone into a dreamwalk with me before.”

“I feel total y weird,” I told her, staring at my body, which was shooting off sparks.

“You’l get used to it. We should hurry though, it’s not good to stay too long on your first journey.”

“Why?”

“You might turn into a toad.”

I gaped at her in horror, tried to stutter a reply but couldn’t form the words. It took a ful two minutes for me to realize she was joking. She actual y chuckled out loud.

“Oh, sure, now you giggle like a girl. You have a sadistic sense of humor.”

She grinned, unfazed. “You’re not the first to say so.” I turned, saw myself leaning against the tree, lace cuffs spil ing out of my sleeves, sword tip resting in a clump of violets.

It was like the near-death experiences people talked about on al those psychic shows. Only I was already technical y dead. I wasn’t moving and my eyes were open, watching nothing.

“Okay, that’s just creepy.”

“Don’t look at yourself for too long,” she suggested. “It’l make you queasy.”

“I can see why.” I turned away deliberately. “So now what?”

“Now we hunt for psychic traces, for anything that looks out of place, anything with an absence of light or a strange scent.” The blood from the bottle traps was a different color, like I was looking at a photographic negative. It was molten silver and it made everything else look darker, more translucent. Isabeau was crouched, sifting through the undergrowth with her fingers, plucking bits of broken glass as if they were petals off a flower. I plucking bits of broken glass as if they were petals off a flower. I tried not to be distracted by the way her eyes went green as mint leaves, by the way the stars seemed to leak light, by the hundreds of spiders and beetles and moths moving al around us.

She shoved to her feet, wiping her hands. “Nothing,” she said, frustrated.

I paid closer attention to our surroundings, to the scents. I could smel mud and the river and pine needles and the humming off Isabeau’s skin. And aside from the fact that everything looked like it was covered in glow-in-the-dark paint, it was al pretty normal. Footsteps, scuffs in the dirt, al the marks of our battle in the proper places.

Except.

I paused. The spot where Jen had disintegrated was dul , as if the shimmering light had dried to powder. I felt sick to my stomach.

“Isabeau.”

She hurried over, startled at my tone. “What is it?” She stopped. “Oh. A violent death leaves psychic marks that can take years to fade,” she said quietly.

“But she’s not stuck here, right?” I asked sharply. “This is just residue?”

She nodded. “
Oui.
”

I released the breath I would have been holding if I’d stil been able to breathe. “Okay. Good.” She had a weird look on her face, her nostrils flaring. “Isabeau?”

“I didn’t notice before,” she murmured. If vampires could go green with nausea, she would have.

“What, damn it?”

“It wasn’t just cow blood in the bottles,” she said.

“Montmartre’s blood was in there as wel . Just enough to be certain the
Hel-Blar
would fol ow the scent.” I frowned. “You know, that doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense.

Just once I’d like an answer, not more questions. We know Montmartre is after Solange, and he’s making sure the rest of us don’t negotiate a treaty. We can assume Greyhaven is doing his dirty work here, but that stil doesn’t explain why he has it in for you.”

“I would real y like to kil him,” Isabeau said, as if she was asking for a second eclair at the local cafe.

I nodded at her amulets. “Um, you’re sparking.” She looked down, blinking. The amulet was like the tooth that had broken when we’d heard about the attack on Kala. It was polished and capped with silver and smal crystals that shot off a fountain of light, like a Fourth of July sparkler.

“
Bien,
” she said, slipping the necklace off and wrapping the chain around her wrist so that the dog tooth dangled over her thumb. She stretched her arm out, watching it turn in circles, clockwise and then counterclockwise. I’d seen Lucy use a pendulum once in the same way, only she’d been trying to find out where her mother had hidden her birthday presents.

“There’s something here,” she said. “A connection I am missing.” She stalked the perimeter with concentrated purpose, frowning into the grass, at the trees, spending extra time over the remains of the bottles. She stopped, swore fervently and fluently. It was al in French but there was no mistaking her tone.

She dug a shard of green glass out of an exposed oak tree root.

“What is it?” I asked, grabbing for my sword, even though she’d assured me it was useless.

“I know this,” she said, peeling the painted yel owed label with her thumbnail. Her eyes went dangerously watery, then brittle.

“This is from my family vineyard.”

I took a step toward her. “It’s definitely personal,” I said darkly.

“
Oui
.”

“Why?”

“I real y don’t know.”

I hated how shattered she looked. “Greyhaven is playing you, trying to get under your skin.”

“
Oui
.”

“Don’t let him, Isabeau.” I grabbed her shoulders, squeezed hard until she stopped staring at the wine bottle fragment and blinked up at me. “Don’t you let that son of a bitch win.” There was a long moment when I wondered what she would do next. She was utterly unpredictable.

“You’re right. He’s doing this for a reason.” Her chin tilted up and she was the Isabeau I’d first met: fierce, hard, and a little bit terrifying. “So I have to find out what that reason is.”

“
We
have to find out,” I corrected her, just as grimly. “You’re not alone.”

“Of course I am.” She smiled wistful y, but she unclenched her fingers from the shard. Blood wel ed on her skin, but it was silver. I’d assumed you couldn’t be physical y hurt when you were astral traveling or whatever the hel it was we were doing.

It seemed only fair.

She frowned at the silvery blood. “
Non
,” she squeaked. She dropped the shard, frantical y wiped her hands clean, even wiped her fingers on her pants until they were raw.

“
Merde
.”

And then her eyes rol ed back in her head and she crumpled.

CHAPTER 16

Paris, 1793

After the food riots broke out, Isabeau took to the rooftops of Paris.

She’d scrambled up to the sturdy roof of a
fromagerie
to get away from the horde of starving Parisians and local vil agers as they stormed the cobbled streets with bayonets, pitchforks, and torches. Her favorite
patisserie
, the one the revolutionaries never bothered with and whose owner often gave her stale croissants, burned to the ground in a matter of minutes. Thick black smoke fil ed the air; coughing and cursing fil ed the al eys.

The fire traveled next door to the tooth pul er and crept too close to a popular cafe. Buckets of water were hauled and passed hand to hand. Isabeau dropped back to the ground to help, pul ing her col ar up over her face. She wore the workmen trousers of the revolutionaries and a tricolor cockade on her hat.

She’d put up her hair and tried to affect a lower voice when she spoke, which was rarely. She’d learned quickly that looking like a boy and spouting “
Fraternite
” whenever anyone asked her a direct question was the surest way to stay unnoticed and uninteresting. A girl with an aristocratic accent, soft hands, and long hair would never survive.

And her father had died so she could survive.