“And where were the lot of you when we needed help?” Saga scoffed.
Now that daggers weren’t being thrown at me, I couldn’t help but glance around curiously. The cave was full of pelts and weapons and the usual coolers of blood bags. Saga and Aidan were both so pale, even more than Christabel. They were nearly translucent, the blue of their veins like gasoline trails. Saga wore rolled-up jeans and a silvery breastplate. Aidan had a bear-tooth amulet around his neck that my father would love. His hair was straight and black, and he was distractingly handsome. My heart must have sped up because Nicholas nudged me with his elbow. I tried to look innocent.
Christabel narrowed her eyes. “Fine,” she said smoothly. “Then let me quote your precious Ann Bonny.” Saga was nothing if not a pirate at heart. “If you would have fought like a man you needn’t die like a dog.”
“Nice,” Connor approved quietly.
“I looked it up,” she admitted. That was pure Christabel. She’d be speaking in rhyming couplets any second now.
“I’m not dying for your precious camp,” Saga said. “We have too much left to accomplish when this is over. But I like your sister well enough.”
“You do?” Connor looked startled. Frankly, so was I. After Viola, Solange wasn’t exactly winning any popularity contests.
“She broke the crown into pieces and gave us our due,” Saga explained, as if we were dumb. “Of course I like her. So for that reason, we’ll give you a few of our pets,” she offered finally. “And the wild ones will find you soon enough, if they haven’t already” She shook her head at us. “You’re barking mad, you are.”
Aidan slipped away to give the order to release some of the Hel-Blar. They screeched and howled, sending shivers up my spine. There was something deeply unsettling about watching them scurry and scuttle down the mountainside.
“Now what?” Christabel asked. “I’m not exactly trained for battle.”
“Got a poem for this?” Connor teased her. “Not ‘The Highwayman,’ ” he added. “I finally read it to the end. She kills herself to warn her lover off a trap.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s romantic.”
He laughed. She poked him but she was smiling too. No one saw the soft girl under her tough girl quite like Connor did. And no one saw the tough guy under the geek like she did. I was happy for them both, despite the circumstances.
“I hate that I’m a liability to you guys,” she said. “I should stay up here, shouldn’t I? I’ll only hold you back.”
“To be honest, I’d feel better if you were safely up here,” he admitted. “But between my mom and Lucy I’d have been terrified to suggest it.”
“Hey,” I said. Then I glanced at Nicholas. “And don’t get any ideas.”
Christabel sighed. “I can’t see how I can help down there.” She slid him a glance. “You could stay with me.”
“How about I find us one of the better hidden satellites,” he suggested. “We can all go together and if we’re lucky, no one will even notice us.”
Do I even have to say it?
We were totally noticed.
Chapter 39
Solange
Isabeau’s shields glowed brightly, deflecting the sinister ooze of tainted magic as it tried to slip around us like ropes.
“Isabeau!” Logan shouted. Back on the ground our bodies must be reacting just as our spirits were.
Isabeau closed her eyes and I imagined her pulling energy from the earth and the trees and even the snow drifting slowly down. She used it to form a sword, sharper and more lethal than any forged in the physical world. It glowed like fire. She hacked at the muddy ropes as they tried to drain us. They were insidious and clever. I was exhausted before I’d even realized what they were doing. Everything looked dimmer.
As Isabeau I sliced through them, they fell apart into black smoke, and reformed in the shape of Greyhaven’s face. He smiled at her. I hissed at him, knowing he’d been the one to turn Isabeau into a vampire, leaving her buried in a coffin for hundreds of years.
“Non,” she said as the magic slipped through our barriers. For a moment I saw what she saw and felt what she felt: the weight of the earth over her head, pale roots easing slowly down through the wooden slats of the coffin. The footsteps of mourners passing the graveyard. The smell of the flowers they left to rot under the headstones. The struggle to stave off the madness that licked at her, the hunger burning her into a hollow, papery husk. The blackness when she’d passed out inside the coffin, blessedly cool and numb.
Her spirit body flickered like a candle in a gust of wind.
“Isabeau,” Logan called again, more frantically.
“Non,” she moaned again. The sword in her hand flared.
I knew she wouldn’t break the spell, not yet. Despite the fact that I felt as haggard and gray as she looked, she still needed to do the spell. She wouldn’t let the Host win.
And she certainly wouldn’t let Greyhaven win.
She pushed back, until light shot out of her tattoos, out of her amulets, and finally, out of her aura.
It touched me like rain, washing away the dark magic as if it were mud sticking to my skin.
“Logan once told me to survive Greyhaven,” she said, suddenly sounding like my mother, fierce and deadly. She brought her sword down through Greyhaven’s face and the smoke dissipated, hissing as if it felt pain. The last of the muddy tendrils fell away completely. My spirit cord flared briefly, painfully.