Blood Feud Read online

  For Pat, who suggested to a bored nine-year-old me:

  “Why don’t you write a story?”

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Back Cover

  PROLOGUE

  England, 1795

  If Isabeau St. Croix had known it was going to be her last Christmas Eve, she would have had a third helping of plum pudding.

  As it was, she was avoiding the drawing rooms. She’d never imagined a parlor could be so crowded and stuffy, but when she’d mentioned it to Benoit, he’d only laughed and told her to wait for summer, when coal fog clogged the city.

  “Don’t think I don’t see you there, chou,” he remarked dryly. He was tall and thin with a dashing mustache. So many fine gentlemen had fled France during the Revolution that every fine house in London now boasted a French chef. Never mind that most of those chefs had never even learned to boil an egg at home. They certainly did well enough here. “Mais non, you are murdering my carrots.” He shooed away one of his harried helpers.

  Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Isabeau shrank back into the shadows of the bustling kitchen. She ought to have known better. Benoit was determined to have her dancing in satin slippers, as any nobleman’s daughter would. Not too long ago she would have begged for the chance. And before that she would have expected it.

  Spending a year on the streets of Paris had changed her.

  Silk dresses and pearl earbobs seemed decadent now, and the concerns of fashion and gossip ridiculous. Benoit despaired that she preferred his company to the opera. But she loved the crackling of the hearth, the heavy scents of baking bread and roasting meat. Tonight there were bowls of oysters, plates of foie gras, a turkey stuffed with chestnuts, almond cream, and tiny perfect pastries in the shape of suns and holly leaves.

  Benoit was the only person she could truly talk to. Her uncle was kind enough, as was his wife, but he hadn’t lived in France for nearly two decades. Benoit had lived in Paris during the storming of the Bastille. He knew. But he still wasn’t going to let her hide out in the kitchen all night, no matter how she begged.

  “One little slice of galette.” He handed her a plate and a fork. It was a traditional Galette des Rois, served in every French house during the holidays. She took a greedy bite. The second mouthful revealed the hidden dry bean tucked into the cake. She sucked the filling off it and dropped it onto her plate.

  “Voilà!” Benoit grinned. “I knew you would get the bean. Now you are queen for the night.” He plucked the fork from her hand even though she protested. She hadn’t finished scraping every grain of sugar off the silver tines. “And so you must dance until dawn. Allez-y!”

  She slid off a wooden stool, knowing she couldn’t avoid the festivities any longer. It would be rude of her, and she had every reason to be grateful to her uncle. It hadn’t been easy for her to steal enough money for the passage to England and he could have turned her away when she reached his doorstep. He’d never even met her, after all; she was the daughter of his estranged brother. His dead estranged brother, who hadn’t spoken to him since before Isabeau was born. And if it wasn’t for her uncle Olivier, or Oliver St. Cross as he was known here, she’d be spending this Christmas the same as she’d spent the last: huddled under the eaves of a cafe hoping some citoyen might give in to the holiday spirit and buy her a meal. If not, she’d have nicked the coins from someone’s pocket and bought it for herself. One learned to do as one must while living in the alleys of Paris during the Great Terror.

  “Allez, allez,” Benoit urged her. “I insist you find some handsome young man to flirt with you.”

  She couldn’t imagine any young man would notice her, even in the beautiful white silk gown she’d been given to wear. She still felt skinny and hungry and smudged with dirt and hadn’t the vaguest notion how to dance anymore. She had confidence only in her abilities to steal food and to find the best rooftops on which to hide when the riots broke out.

  She forced herself to leave the kitchen mostly because the thought of the dozens of guests upstairs terrified her so. Before Paris, she had lived on a grand family estate in the countryside. The house had marble floors and silk settees and dusty vineyards where she could eat grapes until her fingers turned purple. But then her parents had been taken.

  What was a Christmas ball to the threat of the guillotine?

  She found her way to the drawing room, where the guests had gathered for the midnight supper. Her uncle had leaped at the chance to re-create his own favorite childhood memories of Réveillon under the guise of making his niece more comfortable. He wasn’t fooling anyone. They could all see how thrilled he was to be serving tourtiere and champagne to his friends. He stood by the main hearth, which was draped with evergreen branches and white lilies from the hothouse. His waistcoat was holly-berry red, barely containing his cheerful girth.

  “Ah, here she is,” he said.

  Isabeau concentrated on smiling, on not tripping on the hem of her gown and not wiping her sweaty palms on her skirts, on anything but the curious and pitying eyes tracking her progress. “My niece, Lady Isabeau St. Croix,” her uncle announced. In Paris she had introduced herself as Citoyenne Isabeau. It was safer.

  “Oh, my dear,” an old woman fluttered at her, the ostrich feather in her hair bobbing sympathetically. “How awful. How perfectly awful.”

  “Madame.” She didn’t know what else to say to that, so she curtsied.

  “Those barbarians,” she continued. “Never mind that now, you’re quite safe here. We English know the natural order of things.”

  Another sentence she had no reply for. The woman seemed genuine, though, and she smelled like peppermint oil. Her satin gloves were trimmed with red bows when she patted Isabeau’s hand. “My nephew is around here somewhere, I’m certain he would love to partner you in a dance.”

  “Merci, madame.” She had every intention of hiding behind one of the giant evergreen displays before succumbing to any such fate.

  The drawing room was even more beautiful than Isabeau could have imagined. She had helped set out the bowls of gilded pine cones and holly leaves dusted with silver and tied the ribbons around the pine boughs fastened to every window. But at night, with dozens of beeswax candles burning and the frigid winter wind pushing at the glass, it was magical. And just as stuffy as she had feared, thanks to the hot air laced with cloying perfumes and floral hair oils filling every corner of the room. She edged toward the doors leading out to the gardens.

  The rosebushes and yew hedges were edged with a delicate frost, as if lace had been tossed everywhere. The moon was a soft glow behind thick clouds. She shivered a little when snow began to fall gently, but didn’t go back inside. She could hear icy carriage wheels creaking from the road and the sounds of music from the room behind her. The snow made everything pale as a pearl. She smiled.

  “With a smile like that, I forbid you ever to frown again.”

  She whirled at the voice, shoulders tensing. She’d only been living in the pampered townhouse for a little while and already she was losing her edge. She ought to have heard his footsteps, or at least th
e door opening.

  “Forgive my intrusion,” he said smoothly, bowing. “And my impertinence, seeing as we have yet to be properly introduced. But you could only be the mysterious Isabel St. Cross.”

  “Isabeau,” she corrected him softly. She’d never known a man like him. He only looked to be in his twenties, but he carried himself with an elegance and a confidence of one much older. His eyes were gray, nearly colorless in the winter garden.

  “Philip Marshall, Earl of Greyhaven, at your service.” When he kissed the back of her hand, his touch was cool, as if he’d been standing in the snow too long. She was suddenly nervous and felt inexplicably trapped, like the time she’d been caught behind a fire set in the streets to keep the city guards at bay.

  “I should return,” she murmured. She was only eighteen years old, after all, and the only reason she’d been permitted to attend the ball was because it was Christmastime. It was probably unseemly for her to be outside unchaperoned, even if he was an earl. She couldn’t remember. Her aunt had listed off so many rules, they were bleeding together. She’d known them all before the Revolution. Now she only knew she felt an odd desire to stand closer to him, and not just because she had forgotten her wrap inside.

  He released her hand, arched an eyebrow. The faint light from the parlor glinted on the silver buttons of his brocade coat. “Surely a girl who survived the French mobs isn’t afraid of me?”

  She lifted her chin defensively.

  “Mais non, monsieur. Je n’ai pas peur.” She had to concentrate to speak English; temper or distraction always slipped her back into French. “Pardon.” She shook her head, annoyed with her lapse. “I am not afraid.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he approved. “Wine?” He handed her a glass she hadn’t realized he was holding. Hadn’t Benoit been pushing her to dance and flirt? Normal girls her age would be thrilled to be standing here with a handsome earl. She should drink and eat candied violets and dance until her satin slippers wore thin. She accepted the cup.

  “Merci, monsieur.” The mulled wine was warm and laced with cinnamon and some other indefinable taste, like copper or liquorice. Or blood. She frowned inwardly. She was letting her misgivings make her silly.

  “You are lovely,” he said. “And I am so tired of these English roses, too meek to enjoy anything but the quadrille and weak lemonade. You are a welcome change, Miss Cross. A welcome change indeed.”

  She blushed. The wine was making her feel warm, befuddled. It was nice. Snowflakes landed on her eyelashes, dissolved instantly. They landed on her lips and she licked at them as if they were sugar. His silvery eyes glinted like animal eyes, like a fox in a henhouse.

  “If this were a gothic novel,” he drawled, “there would be ghosts and vampires, and you would be afraid.”

  She thought of the books she read late at night in the library, sensationalist novels like Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho and Burger’s Lenore, all fraught with villains and undead creatures who roamed the nights with insatiable appetites.

  “Don’t be silly.” She laughed. “I don’t believe in vampires.”

  CHAPTER 1

  LOGAN

  It had been a hell of a week.

  Cleaning up after a psychotic vampire queen wasn’t easy at the best of times. It was much worse when your mother was the one who’d dispatched the old queen, you and your brothers were suddenly princes, and your baby sister was being stalked by a centuries-old homicidal vampire.

  Like I said, hell of a week.

  At least we’d all survived, even Aunt Hyacinth, whose face was now so scarred she wouldn’t lift the veil off her Victorian hat or leave her room. Helios-Ra vampire hunters did that to her—right before one of their new agents started dating my baby sister.

  That’s just weird.

  Still, he saved her life less than two weeks ago, so we’re willing to overlook a little making out.

  As long as I never, ever have to know about it.

  I mean, sure, Kieran’s a good enough guy—but Solange is my only sister. Enough said.

  “Quit brooding, Lord Byron.” My brother Quinn smirked at me, shoving me with his shoulder. “There are no girls here to impress with your Prince of Darkness routine.”

  “As if.” Quinn was the one who used the whole vampire mystique thing to get the girls. I just happened to like dressing in old frock coats and pirate shirts; that some girls liked it was incidental. Well, mostly.

  “Any word yet on the Hound princess?” Quinn asked.

  “Nothing yet.” Dad had invited the reclusive Hound tribe to the table for negotiations now that Mom was the new vampire queen, ruler of all the disparate tribes. Sounds melodramatic and medieval, but that’s a vampire for you.

  “Think she’s cute?”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  Quinn grinned. “Mostly.”

  The royal caves behind us had been left in shambles after the battle that took out Lady Natasha. The dust of staked vampires was swept up and the shards of broken mirrors carted out in boxfuls. There were still at least a dozen left hanging on the wall. Lady Natasha had really liked looking at herself. Some of the ravens carved on her whitethorn throne were chipped, some decapitated. Everyone was busy with some task or another, cleaning, arranging, or just staring at my mother as she sat at the end of the hall scowling at my father, who wouldn’t stop talking about peace treaties.

  The tension vibrating the air was harder to clean out than the ashes of our dead.

  Everyone was watching their backs: the old royalists loyal to Lady Natasha, the ones loyal to the House of Drake and my mother, and the ones caught in between. Lucy would have been running around with white sage chanting some Vedic mantra to cleanse our auras if she were here. But she was forbidden to come to the caves until the worst of the politics had been sorted out. She shouldn’t have been staying with us either, but her parents’ drive home was interrupted by their ancient van and some ancient part that fell out on the highway. They were stuck in a small town and Lucy was stuck with us. Humans were fragile at the best of times, and Solange’s best friend didn’t have the basic self-preservation of a gnat. If there was trouble, she always jumped right in feetfirst. If she hadn’t started it in the first place, of course.

  Between her and my sister, we had our hands full. Vampire politics paled in comparison.

  “Now she’s cute,” Quinn murmured appreciatively as one of the courtiers dragged a box of what looked like the remains of a broken table. “I’ll just go help her out. It’s the princely thing to do.”

  “You’re an ass,” I told him fondly.

  “You’re just jealous because I’m so much prettier,” he tossed out over his shoulder as he left to charm yet another girl.

  He never reached her.

  She straightened suddenly, stepping onto a footstool that gave her a good view of the length of the hall, and my parents in particular. She pulled a crossbow loaded with three wickedly pointed stakes out of the bag.

  Not a broken table after all.

  And no matter how prepared you are, or how careful, there’s always an opening somewhere.

  Mom taught us that.

  The girl aimed and squeezed the trigger, barely making a sound. We might not even have noticed her at all if we hadn’t been actively watching her. The stakes hissed out of the crossbow, hurtling through the air with deadly accuracy.

  Or what would have been deadly accuracy had Quinn not been close enough to grab her leg and yank her off the stool.

  The shot went wide, but not quite wide enough. She tumbled to the hand-embroidered rug, Quinn’s fangs extending so fast they caught the lamplight. My own stung my gums, my lips lifting off the rest of my teeth.

  I didn’t have time to reach her or my parents.

  I only had time enough to whip the dagger at my belt out into the trajectory of the stakes. It caught one and split it into two, the pieces biting into a huge wooden cupboard, the knife into the back of a chair. My nostrils burned.

&
nbsp; Poison.

  Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. Guards turned, eyes widening, fangs flashing. Swords gleamed, lace ribbons fluttered, and boots clomped onto the wall as the best of them flipped out of the way of the other two stakes. A wire birdcage toppled, spilling the stubs of half-burned candles. Beeswax joined the sharp, sweet smell of the poison. One of the stakes caught a thin pale courtier in the shoulder when he failed to lean backward quickly enough. He yelled and even that sound seemed too slow and stretched out until it distorted. His blood splattered onto the tiles laid into the ground between the edges of the carpets.

  The third stake went unerringly on its way, straight toward my mother’s heart.

  The girl smiled once, even as she fought to free herself from Quinn’s grim hold.

  Which just went to show how little she knew my mother.

  My father whirled to put himself between her and the stake, as two of my other brothers, Marcus and Connor, somersaulted to his side to form a wider barrier.

  Even as my mother leaped into the air and tumbled over their heads, refusing to use a shield made of her husband and sons.

  She landed a little to the left and stuck out her arm, safely encased in a leather bracer, and knocked the stake right out of the air. It hit a tapestry and fell into a basket, looking innocuous. Guards closed in. There was so much snarling, the royal caves sounded more like cougar enclosures at the zoo. Mom fought her way free of her overeager guards as the girl was hauled away from Quinn.

  “I want her alive!” Dad was shouting.

  Too late.

  The assassin-girl was clearly prepared, and knew enough not to be captured and questioned by the enemy. The inside of her vest was rigged with a slender hidden stake. She pulled a small piece of rope sewn into the armhole of her vest and smiled. There was a very small thwack sound and then she crumbled into ashes. Her clothes fell into a pile.

  Dad swore, very loudly and very creatively.

  Mom’s fists clenched. “Quinn, Logan. With me. Now.” She shot a glare at Marcus and Connor. “You too.”