The Blood Queen (Sentinel Falls Trilogy #3)

1. CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Noa

The shadows were a living thing, something I could taste and smell. Pine and rain. Blood. The color of ash and dead trees, filled with the raucous, greedy screams from the birds and the breakable things that slowly died.

Through the strident noise, I heard a woman’s voice.

“Noa?”

My eyelids fluttered.

Shadows wavered like water when a pebble drops. Translucent light, growing brighter. From outside my gray world, other noises intruded. A steady beeping. The cadence matched the thudding of my heart.

I tried to breathe. Something thick and foreign filled my throat. Was I drowning? Being smothered?

My hands jerked upward—I managed an inch, no more, before soft bands tightened around my wrists. When I pressed with my hips, more bands tightened, chafing at my waist. Ankles.

Beneath my clenched hands, something cold and… wet?

“Noa,” the woman said again. “You’ve been gone a long time. It’s safe to wake up.”

“She can’t hear you.” A second voice, male, brusque enough to agitate the shadows and curl my fingers.

“Her hands are moving,” the woman said. “Her heart rate says she’s conscious.”

“We can’t take the chance,” the man shot back, sharp enough to startle the beeping machine, change the rhythm. “Put her back under.”

“Where’s the nymph?”

“Still gone. Along with the other one. You want another fire?”

Fire?

I’d been burning… creatures. Amal’s monsters. I remembered the mud, black with blood. The rancid carnage sticking to my lips, in my throat.

“Do it now,” the male ordered. “Or I’ll do it myself.”

My focus arrowed toward the scuffing of shoes against a floor. The scrape of metal. Then a spreading warmth. An uneasy rush in my veins, pushing me downward.

Even with my eyes closed, I sensed the lessening light, the moving shadows, and I was lost again. Where the birds cried and men battled. Glinting sunlight on steel; the sickening, sweet stench of blood and gore. Shouts from a distant ridge where flags snapped in the wind. Where trees swayed and branches twisted.

A form emerged from the gray, taking shape and speaking with Julien’s voice. My lady…

Pain, slicing like a knife plunge, clenching every muscle. My joints cracked from disuse. My useless body flopped, but the images in the shadows were wild and turbulent. Punishing. Men and creatures. Laura. Levi. Charcoaled grass and a rotten hill. Julien became a black smear that rushed through the air, ripping apart a grunting pig while I stared at the mud, red-tinted and heavy, splattering on my jeans.

The vampire’s voice again, echoing, eerily growling , Don’t make yourself a target… move.

I tried. Moving, that is, but my body was a numbed vessel and I was locked there for the ride. The memories, images kept flowing, flowing...

Bedisa.

Grayson’s voice. I recognized it, as if another blade was carving into my heart.

What the hell are you doing here?

Not pleasing Fate today.

Men fight at the side of creatures. Get to Fallon.

Pressure, pounding in my head. An ominous cracking. Then my voice, screaming, Levi’s all right! All right! Followed by the lie. Going to find Fallon now.

Julien?

Still with me. I saw him—the vampire—my protector. My friend, disappearing, blinking back into view. Tearing through the enemy. I saw myself too, battling. The others. Levi, clenching his spear. Brin, her dark hair a sweeping fan each time she turned. The ominous silver stripe flashing in the sunlight…

“Noa, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

The woman again, annoying, her voice insistent. I would not squeeze her hand. Could not. Something was wrong with me. I was sane enough to understand that, but the dark had a tight hold. The seductive pull of a blacked-out movie theater with the action playing on the big screen.

My lips were dry. I wanted to swallow but had no saliva. No water.

I twisted my head to the side, needing to see what eluded me…

Chaos. Creatures, bodies, men fighting. Wet blood that made the mud glisten like a scarab’s back. A man in ancient armor, there and then gone. A girl I’d trusted, swinging a sword with more lethality than I expected. Questions, rising like the mushrooms I’d once admired in a forest, the pale pink mushroom caps turning in my direction…

See it, see it, see it…

A spear, piercing through Julien’s chest, back to front. The tip glinting in the sunlight.

The shock, widening his eyes.

His gaze, dropping to the wound, then up toward Brin. Turning toward me—

My gaze, turning from Julien toward Brin, watching the flames pulse from her outstretched hands—

No! The screaming in my mind. Julien… flames licking across his shadowed outline, bursting upward, a flaming phoenix.

Me… sliding into a dark, vicious place, wanting Brin’s blood.

Dropping to my knees beside Levi.

Breathing, breathing…

See it, see it, see it!

Ashes.

Not him, not Julien…

He was one of them. Brin, laughing. Nothing more than a betraying blood sucker. I wanted him to burn, like he —she nodded toward Levi— he needed to bleed .

Why? My voice choked.

You picked the wrong side . Her sneer. Flames leaping from my splayed fingers.

Near my head, the beeping raged, louder, faster, jumping from whatever machine was making the noise. My eyelids beat and beat against the stupor that held them tight. My hands strained against the restraints. The bed creaked.

“Noa?” The woman, agitated, calling to someone else. “Find her grandfather. He’s a healer.”

My fingers spasmed. So close. Behind my eyelids, my eyes hurt from the strain, from watching the images playing out in front of me.

The ash, coating my palms.

Levi, bleeding out.

Julien, gone.

But the man who had plunged the spear… where was he?

SEE IT, SEE IT, SEE IT!

A sob blocked my throat.