Betrayals

CHAPTER 8

Branches slapped at my face and hands. I leapt over a fallen log, crunched down in a pile of leaves, and fell. Scudgy leafmuck splorched up through my fingers. The darkness scored itself with little diamond holes of moonlight, sharp frozen reflections. I scrambled to my feet and took off again, dodging a creeping streamer of fog. The locket was a lump of ice on my chest.

Behind me, another howl lifted to the cold sky. This one was edged with broken glass and razors.

It burrowed into my head, scraping against the inside of my skull.

They’ve found my trail. I didn’t know who they were, or even why I was so sure they’d run across my scent. I just… knew, the way you know how to breathe or to pull your hand back from a hot stove. The way I knew to avoid the creeping little fingers of vapor rising from the ground.

The same way I knew to keep running. No matter how many times I fell.

I scrambled and floundered on. The owl’s soft passionless who? who? slid through the woods, bouncing off the steel-hard bole of each frozen tree. There was a kind of halfass trail running along the leaf-strewn floor; I broke through the hard shell of a deep puddle and gasped as icy water grabbed at my ankles. Leapt and landed badly, my ankle almost rolling, stumbled on. The owl called again, hurry up, Dru.

Another inhuman scream lit the night, digging into the meat behind my eyes with razor claws. I let out a miserable, thin, gasping cry and stumbled forward, my hands coming up to clasp my head until the pain was cut off in mid-howl, just like a flipped switch.

What the hell was that? But I had no time to figure it out. I pulled myself into a fist inside my skull, just like Gran taught me. When another scream lifted out of the night, somewhere off to my left and a good ways away, it didn’t scrape along the inside of my head. It just ran hard over my skin like a wire brush dripping with acid, and if I hadn’t been throwing myself forward so hard, I probably would have yelled, too, in miserable surprise and pain.

That’s the trouble with getting involved in the Real World. Once you’re in, you can’t shut it out and go back to daylight nine-to-five. You’re stuck running through the woods at night, risking a broken leg and even worse, while something horrible chases you.

The thin track petered out, the way false trails in the woods do. One minute you think you’re following the road back to somewhere you know; the next you leap sideways to avoid fog that shouldn’t be moving like that, tip into a bunch of friendly thorn bushes, and wonder what the hell happened.

Except when you’re running for your life, those bushes aren’t friends. They spear through your clothes and rip at your skin, and by the time you thrash almost free, the footsteps behind you have drawn much nearer. So near you can hear every shift of weight and crackle of twigs breaking, each splutch of muck on the forest floor as they leap, higher and faster than a human ever could.

Gran’s owl was now nowhere in sight. I froze, tangled in a bunch of thorny vines, and tried to control my gasping. My lungs were on fire; my heart was just about ready to bust out through my ribs and go sailing.

But I tried to be still and quiet. The bushes crackled, thorns scraping. One of them touched my cheek, a cold pinprick. I wanted to shut my eyes, lying tangled on my side, but the idea of being in the dark woods with my eyes closed just didn’t work.

Even the fog was making a sound now. A small rasping, like scales against glass.

My hip, pressed against the cold ground, turned almost numb. Wetness seeped into my sweater and jeans. A cloud hung in front of my face, my own breath, gauzy and translucent.

The footsteps slid around me. There seemed to be two sets, circling each other. I squeezed my eyes shut, lost the battle with myself again, opened them. A line of thorns pressed into my sweater’s back. My sneakers were soaked and my feet were so cold they had vanished into numbness.

Crashing. Snapping branches. Moonlight trickled in, spots of false color whirling in front of my light-starved eyes. The greasy white vapor pulled close, questing through tree branches and reaching down to puddle against frozen leaves with that tiny, horrible sound.

Soft, stealthy movement under the crashing. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and locked my teeth over a helpless noise. Swallowed hard. The fog was creeping closer, closer, little drablets of it touching under leaves. It looked like claw-tipped fingers plucking at the fabric of the forest floor.

Something moved in my field of vision. Once I saw it, everything resolved into sharp focus.

Anything moving is easier to see at night. The trouble comes when whatever it is stops and goes motionless, but this figure had a patch of shaggy white up near the top. It moved like a wulfen, with thoughtless grace, the fur blurring its outlines as it sidestepped a long white rope of seeking fog.

There was only one streak-headed werwulf I knew of, and I’d already tangled with him before. I’d shot him in the jaw, but not before he bit Graves. Christophe had shot him, too, right in front of Dad’s truck. Sergej’s pet, a wulfen broken to his will.

I didn’t think he was here to offer me cookies.

Ohshit. It’s Ash. I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you’re hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It’s stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it’s going to go on living.

Ash stopped, head upflung, and sniffed. The tickle got worse. His head ducked a little, lean muzzle dipping, testing the air. He stepped sideways, utterly silent, and stopped again. The fog cringed away from him.

Keep moving. Oh God, let him keep moving.

Another soft call from Gran’s owl marred the sudden silence, but I couldn’t see it. The crashing and snapping had stopped. Everything was still, even the spots and shafts of moonlight holding their breath, trapped in reflective veils of white vapor.

Too late I remembered the stiletto in my ass pocket. If I’d thought to get it out, I could be armed now, instead of lying helpless in a tangle of thorns.

The streak-headed werwulf took another three steps, quick and eerily graceful, to the side. His head turned, and the mad gleam of his eyes seemed to pierce the darkness and burn into my skin.

Did he see me? God, oh God. Did he? My hand twitched, wanting to get at the knife. But if I did, I’d have to roll over and make noise. And good luck getting it out of my jeans in time to do anything about the werwulf.

God, how I wished for a gun. Any gun, even a.22. A nine-millimeter would be better. A.45 or an assault rifle would be the best. And someone to work it who had a bead on this thing would be awful nice too.

And while I’m dreaming, I’d really like a pony. My heart hammered, thudded, and basically tried to make me gasp again. I couldn’t even start moving my hand toward my pocket, if I could see movement at night, a wulfen damn sure could. If he couldn’t already smell me.

Why was he hesitating?

The tension stretched, unbearable second after unbearable second, and the taste of wax and dead oranges burst on my tongue, so hard I almost gagged.

I hate that. My eyes rolled as I tried not to swallow it, my mouth was full of spit, Jesus Christ, I was going to start drooling now. I know that taste isn’t real, I know there’s nothing in my mouth, but fuck if I’m ever going to swallow it.

The streak-headed werwulf folded down like a toy, a slow fluid movement. His shape rippled, becoming more slump-shouldered animal than vaguely human. The white streak got more vivid, or maybe it was a spot of moonlight pulsing on his pelt. A slight wheezing, chuffing noise came out of him. He was facing away from me, and I wondered if some of the teachers from the Schola were in the woods now.

Ohplease. Please, God. Help me out a little here, come on. Please.

Another shape resolved out of the moon-and-tree chiaroscuro, fog melding around it in a cloak of greasy cotton. Vaguely humanoid, tall and broad-shouldered. The moonlight picked out a white blur of face and two white blurs of hands, the rest just a shadow.

“Isn’t this nice,” the newcomer hissed, an affront to the silence filling the woods. The rasp underneath the words ran over my skin like a wire brush, again. I tried not to flinch. “Where is the little bitch? I can smell her.”

Ash growled. The growl held not even the approximation of words, but it was chock-full of warning. Fur rippled, and the white streak on his head glowed.

“Shut up and find her!” The words held a slight lisp, and I knew why.

Because the tongue didn’t work right around fangs. This was a sucker, a nosferat. I could tell by the way his voice sucked at the world around it, oily and cold.

And it sounded like he was after me.

Well, duh, Dru. Big deal. Stay still. The maddening tickle got worse. It was like a sharp stick digging into the back of my throat. Reflex tears built up in my eyes, hot and aching. A thin finger of fog was creeping closer and closer to my feet, and I knew that it would touch me, and when it did the sucker would know I was here, and—

The werwulf’s growl changed pitch and tone.

“Don’t presume to bark at me, beast. The Master wants—”

I didn’t get to find out what the Master wanted, because the werwulf sprang away from me.

He collided with the sucker like a runaway freight train, a crunch that echoed between the fog-hung trees. The sucker let out an amazing, blood-chilling howl. They rolled over and over, hitting and splintering trees, bones and teeth snapping.

Move move move! Dad’s bark in my head, as if I was on the heavy bag again, popping punches and sweating, wanting to make him proud. Or as if we were dealing with those roach spirits again, me passing ammo through the window with shaking hands and—

I scrambled to my feet, thorns raking every exposed edge and pulling at my sweater like they were trying to tell me to stay down, and bolted. Leapt over the fingers of vapor crawling over the ground like I was doing football tryouts or something, skipping too fast to really keep my balance. It didn’t matter where I was heading, as long as it was away.

The woods got deeper and denser, and I tore through them. Trees whipped past, some of them clutching at me like they were on the sucker’s side, trying to slow me down. More thorny vines snaked across my path, but the fog had retreated. I floundered through, making a hell of a lot of noise, and heard a high, chilling howl behind me.

I thought wulfen howls were bad when I heard them in my own garage. Hearing the high, glassy cry in the middle of the woods at night is infinitely worse, because the howl sounds like it could be words if you just listen hard enough. The horrible thing is that it pulls on that deep hidden part in every person, the blind animal part.

The part that knows you’re the prey.

But the worst thing about it?

Is when it sounds right behind you, and something hits from behind, tumbling you into another thorn-spiked mess of vines and branches, leaf mold and dirt filling your nose, and a huge, hot, hairy hand winds in your hair.