Page 155 of Flames and Blood

“Yes,” she sighs, and finally the tension goes out of her.

Later, when she’s nearly under, her thumb finds the place on my neck again and stops there.

“It’s almost completely gone,” she says.

“I know.”

“I’m doing it again in the morning.”

“I’m counting on it,” I say, and she’s asleep before she can tell me what she thinks of that.

Chapter 37

Kalli

It’s finally snowing properly, fat flakes instead of thin ones, and I stand in the yard rubbing my arm, which is protesting against the cold weather.

Gideon is across the yard arguing with one of the youngsters about whether a vampire can be cold, which he clearly can, going by how close he’s standing to the fire barrel while he insists otherwise. Two of the boys who used to go quiet around him are teaching him a game with a ball and a wall. He’s terrible at it. Nobody is being polite about how terrible he is.

Then the sound comes up out of the valley, and every head in that yard turns at once.

I know what it is before I see it. I’ve just never heard one from up here.

“That’s for us,” Gideon says when he reaches me.

“A helicopter.”

“Bastien sent it. He’d rather we came to him than sat in a truck for two days, and he isn’t a man who enjoys being told no.”

It clears the rock and comes down onto the flat ground beyond the gate, and the snow goes up in a ring around it, and half the mountain comes out to look.

“Why have we never done this before?” I say. “Any of it. There were people in that compound, and you drove.”

“Because a machine like that tells everybody within fifty miles exactly where it’s going.” He watches it settle. “Your people have been hidden two hundred years. Nobody was going to land one here while you were keeping your clan private.”

“And now?”

“Now the Cravens have flown onto this rock, and Aurora has your clan on its books, and your mother has taken a call from a vampire lord.” He shrugs. “You’re not hidden anymore, Kalli. That happened three weeks ago. This is just the first time anyone’s said it out loud.”

My mother comes out through the arch while I’m still looking at it.

She’s dressed for the yard, not for a council, and Hesper is behind her with a coat she has plainly refused to put on. She stops beside me and looks at the helicopter the way she’d look at a badly parked truck.

“I don’t like it,” she says.

“Nobody asked you to.”

“No.” She gives a delicate sniff, then takes in a breath. “Before you go. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

Aldis is at the gate. Hesper is two steps back with the coat. Half a dozen others have stopped what they were doing.

“I’ve been thinking about the seat,” my mother says. “I’ve come to know your vampire, and I can see why you chose him. I’ve had time since to sort out which of my original reservations were principle and which were pride.” She looks at me. “So I’m asking, once. Come back to the line.”

“No.”

Nobody in the yard moves.

“Not forever,” I tell her. “But not now. I’m not taking it back as a prize for having survived something, and there’s work I have to do first.”