“Jenna thinks we’re fooling ourselves,” I felt compelled to add, as we sat there, foreheads touching, eyes filled with nothing but each other. “That we want Solange to be possessed because it’s easier.”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But I’m guessing exorcising a vampire queen with brainwashing pheromones is going to be harder than it sounds.”

“Probably.”

“Can’t wait, can you?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither.”

We grinned at each other for a moment, until he got to his feet, pulling me up with him. “We have to get you out of here,” he said, suddenly looking dangerous again. “Now.”

Chapter 13

Solange

I’d never seen anything like the vampire woman who dropped down from a branch and landed right in front of me. She wore white, from leather pants so tight they looked like wet oil paint, to the hood drawn up over her head. Her sleeves ended above her elbows and the rest of her arms were covered in leather bracers set with slim silver stakes. There were more stakes on the straps that crossed between her breasts and at her belt, and a long slender sword in a scabbard at her back.

She made my mom look like a perfectly normal member of the PTA.

The really strange part was the way everyone else froze for a heartbeat, staring at her with the kind of fear that left a coppery taste in the mouth.

“A Seki.” One of the handmaidens gasped.

The animals in the forest fell back into the shadows, sensing a predator they had no hope of defeating. Viola was trembling inside my head. Seki looked directly at me, even though her irises were such a pale gray they were practically translucent, but the pupils were completely and violently red. Her fangs were out, glistening like bone needles, and she wore a pair of ornate silver-capped nose plugs.

I didn’t even see her jump: there was no whisper of displaced air, just the crack of her boot on my knee and the jab of the side of her hand on my throat when I fell to the ground. I flung to the side like a rag doll in a washing machine as she kept attacking me. She knew where I was going before I’d even moved.

I fought back because I was my mother’s daughter, not because I thought for one second that I could defeat her. But I was also my father’s daughter, born to an ancient family. I pushed up to my knees, blood dripping from a cut under my eye. “You can’t hurt me,” I said, forcing pheromones so intently that I pulled a muscle in my eyelid and my teeth ground together. I could taste blood from my split lip. Bruises throbbed along the left side of my body, from neck to hip. “You can’t hurt me!’

She didn’t look convinced.

I couldn’t compel her. Between the blindness and the nose plugs, she was as immune as Lucy. Constantine was on my side but we still couldn’t win this. The last time we’d been this outnumbered was when he’d saved me from Lady Natasha’s Furies and I’d had to save him from the Chandramaa. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I heard the soft beat of leathery wings and the very faint squeaking of nearly a hundred bats. They flew between the red pines, filling the meadow like storm clouds with teeth. They attacked Madame Veronique, who was just now stepping out of the shadows. They bit at the handmaidens but most of all, they bit and gouged at Seki.

And I did the only thing I could do.

I ran.

Seki released silver spikes like deadly rain while the bats gnawed at her hands. Three spikes scraped me at the same time and blood stung my left elbow, right hip, and ankle. I tried to use the trees as a shield, zigzagging so I made a less predictable target. My blood sprinkled the snow and Seki paused, as if sensing my new position even through the swarm of bats. One of the handmaidens threw her own dagger. I glanced over my shoulder just as Seki grabbed her by the throat and snapped her neck. I tripped over a root. The bats flew past me in a stream of dark wings and sharp teeth.

I barely got out of the clearing before a handmaiden tackled me, despite what happened to her sister. We landed hard, branches snapping under us like gunfire. I elbowed her in the eye, struggling to get free. The handmaiden’s eyes were as wild as mine were. I was bruised and scraped all over but I barely felt the pain. There was too much adrenaline sizzling through me. A bat fell next to us, wings torn by a silver spike. She kneed me in the stomach and I flailed, falling back to the icy ground. I pulled her hair because it was all I could reach. I yanked as hard as I could, overbalancing her so that she flew off me. I scrambled to my feet and kicked the dagger out of her hand.

“Where the hell are your guards?” My cousin London crashed through the bushes, incongruous in her gelled hair and super-modern tight black pants. She still had vicious red scars under the strap of her tank top from her encounter with a Huntsman and holy water. I gaped at her. “Shit, London! Run!” I shoved her so hard she stumbled.

Behind us, Constantine emerged from his fight long enough to hurl a dagger at the back of Seki’s head. She leaned casually to the side, avoiding it. The sound of so many bats made the forest shiver. Snow and cold water shook off the pine boughs.

“London, what are you doing here?” I asked, pushing her into a run again. Stakes pierced the air between us. A bat squeaked, pinned to a tree.

“I nearly got you killed last summer but you saved my life this week. I owe you.” She threw me a humorless smile. “Besides, I’m a royalist, remember?” She stumbled, and then shoved me back. “Quit pushing at me, what’s your problem? I can handle a few handmaidens and your weird bats.”