Whatever could scare the Blood Moon guard was not something I wanted to tangle with. She rolled over, coughing more blood into the snow. The next body turned to ash before it hit the ground. A quiver of red-tipped arrows and a set of leather armor caught in the tree branches. I leaped back, after snagging one of the bloody-tipped stakes I’d pulled from the first guard. No arrows rained down to stop me. They were clearly too busy.
The silver spike that whistled toward me wasn’t Chandramaa. It bit into my hand before I could dodge, pain making me yelp. I’d seen a spike like it before, had plucked one out of my own arm. I knew who was taking out the Chandramaa.
Seki.
And I knew why she was doing it.
I’d managed to forget about her in all of the chaos, assuming she’d forgotten about me too since I wasn’t Viola anymore. I briefly considered running from the camp, to draw her away from my family but Duncan and Marcus were already dashing toward me. So I did the next best thing.
“Mom!”
Someone else screamed from the treetops. Duncan and Marcus grabbed the other two spikes and stood beside me as a cloud of bats swarmed in, called by my fear. They flung themselves about, screeching and being generally unhelpful. I tried to marshal them into fanged, winged missiles but I didn’t even know where Seki was. She could be behind us, above us, anywhere.
“What the hell?” Duncan asked, scanning the branches.
“It’s Seki,” I replied. It wasn’t technically her name but close enough. “Vampire assassin.”
Marcus frowned. “I thought they were a myth.”
“Not so much,” I replied as another guard toppled from one of the tree bridges.
Mom and Dad broke through the trees behind us. “What’s going on?” Mom demanded. She stared at the silver spikes. “Where did you get those?”
Seki dropped down in a cloud of ashes before I could answer. She wore the same white leather, with the same white braids and eyes like abalone shells.
“Get Madame Veronique,” Dad said. Marcus was fastest, gone before Duncan and I had time to react, leaving Mom his spike.
That was all the time we had before silver spikes flung through the air like birds. A bat flying too low caught one in the wing and spiraled to the ground. Mom kicked the second one out of its trajectory as Dad knocked me to the ground. He caught the spike Mom had knocked aside before it slammed into a tree behind us. He and Duncan stood over me, side to side. They wouldn’t let me back up. I crawled away between their feet.
Mom attacked Seki, heedless of the danger. If the Chandramaa were no match for Seki, I wasn’t sure my mother would fare much better. Seki wasn’t like the rest of us. Even with the nose plugs blocking my pheromones, she could track my location. I had to do something. Fast. More bats were falling, dropping like black rain.
I may as well make it easy for her.
“I’m over here!” I called out after Seki’s spike pierced Mom’s shoulder. I jumped to my feet, waving my arms even though I knew she couldn’t see me in the usual sense.
“Solange, no,” Mom said between clenched teeth as she yanked the spike out of her flesh. Blood oozed. She flung the spike back, grazing Seki’s hand as she lifted it to stab my father. Dad dodged during that brief moment of distraction and slammed his foot into her knees, knocking her back. She fell backward, still flinging spikes. One of them sliced a long gouge in Duncan’s cheek.
We’d barely begun and already we couldn’t hold her off much longer.
“Cease,” Madame Veronique said calmly, as if her family weren’t being beaten to a bloody pulp around her. She used a tiny pearl-encrusted dagger to cut her finger, and flung her own blood into the snow as she approached us.
Seki stopped, standing preternaturally still. She only moved her head, turning it to pin Madame Veronique with her ghostly moonlight eyes.
“You did this!” Mom spat at Madame Veronique.
“Yes, and only my blood will call her off,” Madame Veronique said. She flicked a cold glance at my dad. “Really, Liam, you might try to control your wife.”
“Hey,” I snapped, fully aware of the lengths to which Madame Veronique went to restrain the wife of one of her twin sons. “You leave my mother out of this.”
“Solange,” Dad said quietly.
“She’s the reason London died!” I exclaimed. “And she knew about the prophecy from the beginning.”
“Hush,” he murmured. Marcus put a restraining hand on my arm. Duncan’s eye was already mottled and bruised. One of the tree bridges above us appeared to be on fire, throwing flickering light and embers. Dad helped Mom to her feet as Madame Veronique gestured at me imperiously. I just narrowed my eyes at her.
“If you wish this assassin to leave you and yours alone, you will come here, little girl.”
Walking calmly toward her was harder than dodging Seki’s spikes. Still, I gave her a wide berth as well. Madame Veronique’s handmaidens stood in a half-circle behind her, expressions unreadable. She pinched her finger so that more blood welled to the surface and then smeared it on my forehead. What was it with everyone painting their blood all over me? Even for a vampire it was getting kind of gross.
Seki bowed in our direction and then stalked away, her white leather blending into the snow.
Relief had me exhaling even though I hadn’t taken a breath. Madame Veronique sheathed her dagger on her jeweled belt.
“Thank you,” Dad said, as bits of fiery rope smoldered and drifted down around us. “And I don’t think,” he continued in a silky, menacing voice I’d never heard before, “that we’ll be taking orders from you anymore.”