A Tithe of Blood and Ashes (The Drake Chronicles Book 7) by Alyxandra Harvey Page B

behind them, came a swarm of Drake brothers: Quinn, Connor, and Logan.
    “Incoming!” Quinn hollered cheerfully, as he yanked one away from me in mid-leap. As usual, he was like a rock star, all slow motion hair and fast action fight. “Hi Lucy.”
    “Duck!” I returned, throwing a stake at the Hel-Blar directly behind him. It pierced his ragged shirt and stuck in his flesh, but didn’t touch his heart. He howled. I glanced behind me. “Dad, get back in the truck!” I thought he yelled the same thing to me, but I was too busy ducking the Hel-Blar Logan tossed through the air.
    There was one more Hel-Blar, coming out from behind the trees. He was fast, a suggestion of movement in the heavily fallen snow. I didn’t have time to shout out a warning. Logan turned, but his hands were empty. He’d used all of his stakes.
    And then Nicholas dropped out of a tree. He knocked the Hel-Blar on its back and staked it to the ground in one movement. He landed on one knee, like a knight in a painting. He grinned up at me.
    I grinned back. “Hot, Drake.”
    “Back at you, Hamilton.”
    He rose to his feet but I didn’t wait for him to cross the road, but met halfway in a snow bank. We were like magnets, or stars falling to earth. We always found each other.
    I rose on my tiptoes to kiss him just as he pulled me up against his chest. Our lips were winter-cold, vampire-cold . The kiss burned through everything: battle, exams, fathers waiting in a plume of truck exhaust. It was Nicholas’s tongue touching mine, his hands curling into loops of my jeans, my fingers sketching the muscles of his back through his shirt. It was only a brief, hot moment, but it felt like it went on forever.
    “Your exams are almost over, right?” He murmured, smiling against my mouth. “I miss you.”
    “Two more,” I replied, kissing him again.
    His grey eyes might be pale as ice, but they burned like the inside of a star. He looked politely away from the scrape on my temple. “You’re hurt.”
    “Embarrassed more than anything,” I said. I guess I’d gotten used to darting in and out of undead danger without too much bother. The last time I’d been hurt like this was when I followed Solange out into the forest. I’d slipped in the river and cracked my head. And now I’d been beaten up by a tree. I was not exactly at my most badass. I blamed it on the unholy hour of the morning and the fact that my brain was full of useless dates instead of killing blows.
    I stepped back when I heard Dad’s boots crunching in the snow. “Also? What the hell?” I asked, nodding to the ashes. “Was there a Hel-Blar sale somewhere?”
    “We routed a nest,” Quinn explained.
    Connor snorted. “We found a nest, you mean, and then, as usual, you jumped in it like it was the ballpit at the carnival.”
    “Same thing,” he grinned.
    Logan wiped ashes off the black cravat he wore around his neck with a grimace. “Damn it, Quinn.”
    “It’ll wash out,” Quinn replied, retrieving stakes from the road.
    “Did you see anyone else out there?” I asked. “An old woman in a cloak?”
    “No,” Nicholas replied. “Why?”
    “I thought I saw something,” I shrugged. “Snow blindness, I guess.”
    Dad slanted me a strange look. “Time to go.” He practically threw me back into the truck. “Thanks boys. Go home now,” he said.
    He jumped in the driver’s seat and locked the doors. His hands were shaking. Poor Dad, he was just no good around violence. “Dad, I’m okay.”
    He was the colour of curdled milk. “You’re bleeding.”
    “It barely hurts.” Probably because there was snow stuck inside the scrape. I fished a bandaid out of my backpack mostly so he’d stop staring at it and freaking out.
    “I’ll drive you back home,” Dad said, releasing a trembling breath. “I’ll write you a note for your exam.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think killing a vampire will get me out of an exam on killing vampires.” I reached for my