A Tithe of Blood and Ashes (The Drake Chronicles Book 7) (2 page)

She even had the Drake brothers doing it, though so far Duncan had managed to evade it entirely. He came home with a tattoo and called it his artistic expression. Solange, Kieran, Nicholas and I had already gotten matching tattoos of a slender pointed star before Solange and Kieran left Violet Hill. Mom hadn’t seen mine yet, it was safely tucked under layers of winter wool and flannel.

“Why so many mandalas?” I asked Jenna. “She’ll let you do other stuff if you suggest it.”

“Apparently my ability to focus is scary so she wants me doing something that requires it but also tames it. Or some shit like that. I stopped listening. Kind of like you, right now.”

“What? Oh, sorry. Samuel is staring at me. Just like this morning when he watched Jody and Ben lock me in the bathroom.” He was beginning to piss me off actually.

“She locked you in the bathroom again?”

“Yeah, it’s getting kind of boring.

“Did you tell Bellwood?”

“Hell, yeah, I did. But it’s Jody’s word against mine right now. “ I slanted Samuel a flinty gaze. He was lean and dark-haired and might have been menacing if I hadn’t grown up around the Drakes.

I took a deep breath and tried to change the subject. It wasn’t my usual tactic but I’d promised Mom I’d work on my violent tendencies. “So is Sebastian romantic or what?” I asked Jason. His cheeks went red immediately.

“Stop asking him about his love life, you perv,” Jenna rolled her eyes.

“But Sebastian is practically mute. How else am I going to get any intel?” That fact that I’d used “intel” instead of “gossip” was further proof that just three months at the Helios-Ra academy had irrevocably damaged me.

“If Jason blushes any harder, his head will explode.” Jenna pointed out. “And getting brain matter out of clothes is hard.”

“You speak from experience?” I paused . Samuel still hadn’t looked away. “Okay, now he’s really pissing me off.” I met his eyes and raised my voice. “Stop staring at me, Samuel.”

The other students hunched over their binders for last-minute studying looked up. Eyebrows rose, coughs covered startled laughs. “Are you crazy?” Jason slumped in his chair. “He’s scary even for a Helios-Ra student. You’re like a hurricane, Hamilton.”

“Or a really vicious ferret,” Jenna added, grinning.

“Seriously, what’s your problem?” I asked Samuel.
Sorry, Mom.
But at least I wasn’t punching anyone. I should get credit for that.

He just tilted his head as if he was studying me for one of the damn exams. “There’s something off about you.”

I stood up slowly. Jason touched my elbow. “Let’s just go,” he said. “It’s the last day of exams for everyone,” he reminded me as I stalked away. “We’re all on edge. That’s why we’re meeting up for paintball after dinner. It helps.”

“Shooting shit helps---wait.” I shook my head. “Of
course
it helps. I’m in.” I planned to shoot a paintball right in Samuel’s ass. Meanwhile, there was just enough time left before my next exam for him to make it up to me. I marched over to his chair.

“You owe me, Samuel Crow.” I grabbed his hand and yanked him up out of his chair. Startled, he let me. “Let’s go.”

“He’s going to eviscerate her,” Jason mumbled to Jenna.

Jenna just snorted. “My money’s on Lucy.”

I ignored them both and dragged Samuel out of the library and down the stairs to the headmistress’s office. “Are you taking me in for a scolding?” he drawled.

I recalled the rumours of fistfights and ambushes, nothing exactly out of the ordinary for this school. He’d also apparently put a guy in the infirmary and busted someone else’s leg. I wasn’t particularly impressed. I shoved him through the door, and not gently. “You go in there and tell Bellwood what you saw Jody and Ben do to me this morning when you just stood there and didn’t even help me. “

I didn’t want to be rescued, in fact it was deeply infuriating that Jody had gotten the better of me. At least she’d had to use Ben to do it. His shoulders were wide enough that he could have played the minotaur in one of those cheesy TV movies. Still, Samuel didn’t exactly have a reputation for being easily cowed.

“I figured you could handle yourself.”

Out of all the answers he could have given me, that was the only one that made me pause. Still.

“And why exactly have you been staring at me all day? Didn’t you parents teach you manners? Are you not even a little bit housebroken?”

“They’re still on the rez on the other side of the mountains. It’s a little far for family dinners.”

I stared at him, then sighed, thoroughly disgruntled. “Well, damn it.”

“What?”

“Now I have to invite you to my house for the next holiday so you’re not alone and I don’t even
like
you.”

He just blinked. “You know, most people are scared of me.”

“Oh please, have you met Helena Drake? You’re a puppy.”

“A puppy.”

“A creepy staring puppy. Cut it out, you’re going cross-eyed.”

“I told you, something’s off. But I can’t put my finger on it. You haven’t done some sort of spell, have you? Some love magic thing?”

“Because I’m a girl? And all I think about is getting boys to like me?” I rolled my eyes. “Get over yourself.” I’d been running for my life since last summer. Okay, sure, I’d made time for Nicholas. It was called multi-tasking. A well-balanced life. A
Drake brother
, for crying out loud.

“Exam spell then?” Samuel pressed.

I paused, distracted. “Is there such a thing?”

“Yes, but they never work.”

“Then stop teasing me with it and get in that office and redeem your sad self.” I shoved him again.

“Jody will lose her shit when she finds out you ratted her out,” he said over his shoulder.

“Ratted her out?” I crossed my arms. “Please. I told Bellwood, because like hell I’m keeping that shit secret. That would only serve Jody. If she doesn’t want people to know she’s an asshole, she should maybe stop being one.”

Samuel looked like he might be trying to smile but he didn’t know how. “I guess what they say about you is true,” he said.

“What? That I’m a blood-puppet? Vampire lover? Hippie? Whatever.”

“No, that you’re insane.”

I shrugged and patted his arm. “Takes one to know one.”

And the bell for my final exam rang, signaling my impending doom.

***

By shooting Samuel in the ass with a paintball pellet, my mother would say I was engaging in an unhealthy circle of violence. I considered it karmic justice. He shot me a glance but didn’t retaliate, proving my point. I wonder what Mom would have to say about Jody’s unyielding attempts to take out my left eyeball with yellow paint.

The game was being held in an old barn, the cold snaking between the weathered planks. Fires burned in metal bowls between wooden towers, bridges, random walls, and ropes dangling from the rafters. The owner had graduated from the academy and though he had never actually become a hunter, he must have been fond of his school years because he’d donated the barn to the students.

At the moment it was filled with adrenaline, exhaustion, and that special kind of rush of not having another exam for months. We wore the standard goggles and chest plates, and the paintball guns were ancient but survivable.

My mother was even now chanting soothing mantras in mediation class. Me? I was swinging from a rope screaming with laughter and shooting hot pink paint at anything that moved. I landed and rolled behind a brick half-wall. It was multi-coloured mayhem. And I loved it.

There was no over-thinking; no wondering if that vampire was a friend or a foe, if that hunter might try to stake someone I loved, if the Blood Moon treaty would hold, if Solange was safe on her travels, if I was going to pass my classes, and if so, what then? I was never going to truly be a hunter, not like the others. Nicholas’s dad, Liam, said that was a good thing. The fact that I was different meant I could be a bridge, not just a sword.

But right now, none of that mattered. It was only the cold puff of my breath, the smoke and dust, and exploding paint. There was something meditative about being still amid the chaos.

Until a capsule caught me in the shoulder, bruising on impact. White paint splattered in my hair.

“Wake up, Hamilton,” Jenna barked “This isn’t the time to start Ohming on me.”

I ducked further down behind the wall, tracking glimpses of movement. The bulbs were dim and mostly black lighting effect. It was disorienting and dark, but we were used to that. It was another hour of tactics and paint bombs and running and crouching until our legs hurt. By the time we pushed out into the cold field and clustered around a barrel fire, the exam stress was gone. We were left with starlight and cold and the snap of the flames.

Jason handed me a bottle of water, sweat spiking his hair. Jenna and Hunter followed, grinning. “I didn’t see you in there,” I said to Hunter. She was Quinn’s girlfriend and about to graduate as valedictorian. Or whatever the equivalent was in a vampire hunter high school.

“She was on one of the bridges,” Jenna said, sounding disgusted. “Not a shot on her, plus she’s the one who took me out.”

“Me too,” Jason admitted.

Hunter shrugged and went back to braiding her tangled blond hair. She tucked it under a wool cap. “You always leave your left side open,” she said to Jenna. “And you shot first.”

Someone produced graham crackers and marshmallows. And even though it was so cold I could barely feel my ears, it was a nice quiet night for Violet Hill.

It didn’t last, of course.

We were heading back to one of the school vans when Hunter stopped, suddenly alert. I felt it too, a faint warning prickle on the back of my neck. Snow drifted down off the tree branches of the woods pressing in along the field. Laughter floated from the around the fire. I reached for the stake always tucked neatly in my boot. It was boring whittled oak. I’d long ago broken my favourite one with the rhinestones.

“Hel-Blar?” I mouthed at Hunter, thinking of the nest Nicholas and his brother’s had routed yesterday. She climbed onto the roof of the van to check while I peered deeper between the trees. Again, I saw the same shadow, a woman in a grey cloak walking away from me. Before I could wonder at it, Hunter jumped back down to the ground.

“I counted at least nine.”

“
Nine
Hel-Blar?” I gaped. They usually travelled alone, or in pairs. I wondered if another nest had been found, but no convenient horde of Drake brothers stormed out of the forest this time.

“And dozens of hunters,” Jenna said. “We’re fine.”

“Or we’re screwed,” I muttered. I knew too well how basic common sense fell apart when humans met vampires. Hel-Blar were the worst. There would be casualties. After the Blood Moon battle, I hated that word even more.

“Two more on the far left.” Hunter met my gaze. “We need to get everyone out of here before they lose their minds.”

“Hel-Blar!” someone yelled just as the stench hit us.

“Too late,” I sighed.”

“Get in formation,” Hunter ordered, instantly reverting to her ancestral lineage of vampire hunting. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d taken off her winter coat to reveal a superhero costume. Something tasteful and practical and deadly.

Students fanned out, waiting with stakes in hand. Jenna took Hunter’s place on the van, after claiming a crossbow from inside. The Hel-Blar hissed, scuttling between the dead stalks of last summer’s corn rattling like bones. Someone released a vial of Hypnos powder but the wind blew it away before it reached the Hel-Blar. There would be no easy hypnotism, no ordering them to stand down. There would be blood and teeth and the end of sharp stakes.

I grabbed my own crossbow and climbed onto a red tractor crouching nearby like a metal beast. There were a few eager students pushing the front line and rushing in to cut off the advancing Hel-Blar. It was noble and all but it made my job harder. If I loosened a bolt now, I might take one of them out instead. “Get down,” Jenna hollered, having the same problem. “Asshats! Down!”

Hunter had a bit better luck. She commanded them like a conductor at the orchestra pit. There a strange kind of music to her orders, to the pounding of footsteps, the harsh rasp of breaths, the whistle of arrows when we could finally shoot them.

The Hel-Blar were focused, so focused they didn’t bother attacking the students in their way. They just dodged around them, clawing and spitting. I’d never seen them so focused on anything. Many of them could barely even speak usually. But something had galvanized them. Or
someone
.

Me.

“Um,” I said, watching the Hel-Blar press closer, clacking their jaws. “I think they’re following me.” I hopped off the tractor onto the roof of the chicken coop to test my theory. They tracked me with their manic eyes, saliva dripping from their needle teeth. Gagging at the smell , I jumped back onto the tractor. They followed, shoving though the snow. “That can’t be good.”

I shot another bolt, the tractor creaking under me. “I guess that makes me the bait,” I muttered.