Betrayals

CHAPTER 10

“Let me get this straight.” Dylan’s hair was wildly mussed, his aspect shining through as he struggled to retain his composure. The way his fangs kept popping out and retreating was not happy or helpful. “Three dead nosferatu on your trail, you’re beat up and covered in their blood, and you can’t remember what happened?”

I couldn’t stop shivering. I just nodded. My hair dripped muddy water, and I smelled like I’d been dipped in death.

Graves had his arm around the blanket he’d wrapped me in, and he made a restless movement. “Come on. Let’s get you somewhere warm.” He gave Dylan a green-eyed glare and started up the hill, half holding me up.

“Wait a goddamn second.” Dylan didn’t think much of this. “The Schola was broken into. They went right for her classroom. She somehow escaped a trio of hunters, none of whom we can identify yet, all three of them eviscerated out here in the damn woods. She needs to tell us what happened so we can—”

“Have her die of hypothermia? Good plan. Jesus Christ, you guys are jackasses.” The hem of Graves’ coat flapped as he sped up. “Look at her, dammit. Her lips are blue and she’s covered in crap. Is she bleeding? Do you even care? No wonder there’s no girls around.”

I wondered what that had to do with anything, couldn’t figure it out, and hiccupped out another long string of half-hysterical, muffled laughter. I kept glancing around and flinching whenever I saw white moonlight.

Dylan’s eyes glittered in the dimness. “Shut up, dogboy. Just because you’re a prince among your kind doesn’t mean you can—”

That hot pocket of rage bubbled up inside me. This was getting ridiculous, but I welcomed the heat, because it was anything other than the dazed, panicked numbness. “Dylan,” I heard myself say, between two choked giggles and a coughing snort, since there was mud in my nose. “You call him a nasty name again and I’m going to knock your teeth out.” I found that my wet feet could still grip the ground, and, even better, my weak shivering legs could still carry me. “Graves…” The word died in a spate of deep bronchial almost-retches.

“Just relax, kiddo,” Graves muttered. His arm was tense over my shoulder, pulling me closer to his warmth. The food around here was bulking him up big-time. Or maybe I just felt so small, the way I hardly ever do. “Christ.”

Yeah, I felt small. And vulnerable. And very, very terrified.

Dylan shook his head like I hadn’t even said anything. “Why did you leave the Schola, Dru?”

Because something was coming to kill me, duh. When Gran’s owl shows up, I follow. It’s that simple. I was too tired to even begin explaining.

A running mass of shapes clustered at the top of the hill. Some had thought to bring flashlights, and golden beams scoured the darkness. It was useless, djamphir and wulfen could both see way better than the average human after sunset. But those swords of light were a welcome sight, because they weren’t greasefog or moonlight on a crazy wulfen’s pelt, and I let out a half-sob. Graves’ arm tightened again over my shoulders. “It’s okay,” he called. “We found her!”

Dylan cursed. They started down, a mass of boyshapes. The wulfen leapt ahead, some of them blurring between fur and skin in that clay-under-water way they do, and I swallowed another harsh sound. It’s always weird to see them change and to hear the crackle of bone shifting, flesh running, and fur sprouting….

Yeah. It about makes your lunch want to escape, even if you haven’t had any. And even if you were used to Bigtime Weird.

“Goddammit.” Dylan made a short, sharp movement, and his voice dropped into a hurt-angry whisper. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Dru.”

Yeah, I don’t think you could help me even if I did talk to you. There’s just not enough words in the world. My brain hurt, and the rest of me was clumsy and cold.

I couldn’t stop coughing. Or laughing, little hitching noises that spilled out of my throat between the harsh rasping. Graves just pulled me along, and the wulfen reached us in a tide of fur and bright eyes. They flowed around me, some of them clapping Graves on the shoulder, most of them sliding between human form and furry, loping kind-of-quadruped. The sudden babble, after the silence and terror of the woods, broke over us both.

“Is she okay?”

“She all right?”

“Dru?” Dibs stepped close, was pushed aside, but not before his fingers brushed my wrist, a fleeting, warm touch. I let out another choking sound.

“Is she all right?”

Behind them, the djamphir came crowding. Irving was pale, his curls springing as his aspect slid over him and retreated. They started asking if I was okay, too, but Graves just dragged me through, the wulfen moving with him and somehow everyone getting out of his way, until we got to the doors on the east side of the Schola.

The doors were blown outward, shards of wood lying over the steps, and I blinked. I didn’t do that.

But maybe something behind me had. Once more, Gran’s owl had led me out of danger. Or into it, depending.

And oh God but another memory was rising up, the owl on my window ledge the last morning I ever saw Dad alive. I started coughing in earnest.

I didn’t want to think about that. I’d rather cough my lungs out.

The hall I’d run down was a mess, splattered with smoking black sucker blood, the carpet torn up and the waist-high paneling gouged. Paler wood in the deep furrows glared at me. “J-j-j-j—” I was trying to express my dismay, but Graves just kept going at a good clip, his arm a steel bar over my shoulders. My feet dragged uselessly most of the time. He actually shouldered a few kids out of the way, a snarl running just under the surface of the babble of voices.

I gathered there had been two teams of suckers, one that had burst in near the sparring chapel and made a lot of ruckus, and a trio of “hunters” who had quietly infiltrated the west wing of the Schola, the one I’d had my first class of the evening in. I must have just escaped them.

That was an uncomfortable thought. My feet dragged along the floor. I left dirty clumps wherever I tried to step, but Graves was doing all the work of moving us along. As long as he was doing such a handy job of it, I didn’t care.

The sparring chapel was a long way away, and it seemed awful cold. My teeth were still chattering, and everything seemed very far away, even the noise as some kind of scuffle and yelling started.

We reached the deserted chapel, every footfall echoing. Graves palmed open the door on the girls’ side, and a gasp went up behind us. He just kept going, dragging me through, and the door whooshed shut. Thick, silky steam billowed, and I coughed again.

“Goddammit,” he said quietly, and hauled me across the tiled floor. The word bounced back at us through the vapor in the air. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I d-d-d—” I was about to say I didn’t know, gave up. He looked down at me, his face sallow in the steam-filled light, and his jaw set. When he looked like that, serious and determined, you could see where he would be handsome. The girls would go for him big-time, especially in any urban place where they don’t value cookie-cutter looks as much. A bolt of shameful, nameless heat went through me at the thought.

“You want me to help with your clothes?” The blanket fell with a sodden plop, and he shucked his coat, almost tearing the sleeve because he couldn’t get out of it and hold me upright at the same time very well. “Or, um, I can just stay at the door. In case.”

“H-h-h-help. M-me.” The shivers were making it hard to think or breathe. I grabbed at the hem of my sweater with clumsy-cold swollen fingers. Graves pulled it up as he braced me; I got lost in it for a second and finally struggled out of the heavy, wet wool. It landed with a splutching sound, and I wondered how much water I’d been lying in out in the woods, and why it wasn’t more frozen when ice was everywhere.

Ribbons of steam in the air were white and heavy. I didn’t want to think about it.

The entire world went glaring white for a minute, and the next thing I knew Graves was holding me up and awkwardly peeling the sleeves of the flannel shirt off my goose bump-covered arms. I struggled out of my T-shirt, swaying as he held me up. My teeth clicked like castanets, and he went for my jeans while looking grimly up over my shoulder. My bra was wet too, but thankfully not dirty.

My fingers were like wet sausages, too clumsy to do much. The jeans were loose, and he let out a low whistle when he saw the bruises ringing my shoulder, my ribs, and the fresh ones beginning on my arms and the side of my right leg. My socks were filthy, and I’d lost a sneaker somewhere. I honestly didn’t remember where. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone.

His hands were scorching hot; he dragged me to the lip of the closest tub and paused for only half a second, looking up at the ceiling like he was gathering himself. His beat-up black nylon wallet landed on the floor three feet away, and he pitched down the steps and into the huge tub with me, fully clothed, his shoes giving one forlorn underwater squeak before I lost my footing and cried out miserably. It felt like being dipped in hot lava, but he held onto me, guiding me down.

I’d never been in the baths in my underwear. The feeling was weird, like sitting in a hot tub full of Jell-O while wearing a swimsuit that definitely wasn’t made for this sort of thing.

“Dru?” For the first time that evening, he sounded scared. “Come on. Say something.”

The chattering had stopped, but I was still shivering. Somehow my arm had ended up around his waist, and he settled onto the seat right next to me. The surface of the bath crackled against his sweater. I gasped again, my skin pain-peeled like after a sunburn, and tipped my head back.

Bubbling not-water turned gray, dirt swirling through it before it was whisked away by the current.

A leaf fell out of my hair, hit the turbulent surface, and was pulled under. The not-water was neck-deep on me, and only chest-deep on him.

“Dru?” Now he sounded close to panic, and I realized I was making another low, keening sound.

My throat was full of something too hot and nasty to be tears. “Say something, dammit.”

I swallowed the weird moaning sound I was making. My mouth opened. “S-s-s-something.” I paused. “D-d-dam-mmit.”

He snorted. The laugh caught him sideways, his usual bitter, sarcastic little bark, and I was too grateful to still be alive to really think about the fact of being half-naked in a tub with a boy.

Besides, it was Graves. And his arm was still around me. I put my head down on his shoulder and forgot about everything other than the stinging heat pushing its pins and needles into my flesh.

I hadn’t been this close to him since we’d both squeezed onto a helicopter lifting out of a Midwest snowstorm. I’d been crying then, too.

Now I wondered about all sorts of things. Especially about him having to fight the first night he got here. Getting Dibs alone and having him explain a few things seemed like a good idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. My head was so heavy, and Graves’ shoulder was bony but comfortable.

“Talk to me,” he pressed. “Don’t pass out on me, Dru. Hey, I got a question.”

“Huh.” An affirmative noise was about all I could come up with. So do I. Why didn’t Ash kill me? And how in God’s name do I start telling you about all this when it doesn’t make any sense even to me?

“What’s Dru short for?”

Jesus. It was my turn to half-snort a laugh. “D-don’t ask.”

“Too late. I been wondering all this time.”

The shivers started easing up. My jaw was sore when it finally unclenched. “Tell you l-later.”

“Mh. So you wanna tell me what happened?” Gently, carefully, like he was lifting up a Band-Aid and checking underneath it.

“I—” The water bubbled. The door banged a little, like someone was leaning on it. The sound echoed through the locker room. I blinked, waking up inside my own head. “Oh jeez. You’re in here.”

“Uh, yeah.” He didn’t sound surprised. “Was thinking you might fall and hurt yourself or something. Drown. If you’re okay, or—”

I kept my head on his shoulder. Pressed it down a little and made my arm tense up. “Don’t. Don’t leave.” My teeth ached. Even my hair ached. “There was… I saw… okay, it was my grandmother’s owl.” A brief flare of panic worked up inside me, I’d never really wanted to tell anyone about it, and the habit of the secret was hard to break.

But this was Graves. And he didn’t disappoint me. He just accepted it. “Owl.” Nodded, his sharp chin dipping. “Okay.”

“And it led me outside, and I ran. I think it was trying to get me away from the suckers. I ended up in some bushes and I saw…” The rest of it spilled out in an incoherent jumble, but he nodded every once in a while. I liked that about him. He was so smart you didn’t have to hold his hand and walk him through everything. He could fill in the blanks on his own.

“You’re sure it was the same one?” His eyes had half-lidded. The not-water began to calm down, bubbling and fizzing. It stung my scratched hands and spread up my shoulder in little waxy dollops, heat sinking in.

I suddenly wanted to wash my hair. My scalp crawled. My heart had finished its pounding and finally settled down. “I guess. How many werwulfen with white streaks on their heads have we seen?”

“Point.” His head dipped in another nod. His hair, getting damp from the steam, fell in his eyes.

He tossed it out with a shaking, sudden motion.

I let out a sigh. I couldn’t keep it in any longer. It came out in a whisper. “I saw Christophe. During the day.” It was more like three or four days ago, but I didn’t want to tell him that.

Graves stiffened. A full thirty seconds ticked by, him staring at the mirrored wall through veils of steam. “Jesus, Dru.”

Like it was my fault. “I couldn’t get you alone to tell you.”

“So you tried this?” But he was joking. He shifted uneasily, moving as if his arm was cramping, but he left it where it was, his fingers no longer burning my other shoulder. “Where did you see him?”

“He came in through my window. You can’t tell anyone.”

He rolled his eyes. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the movement. And the rolling of teenage eyes has a noiseless noise all its own. “Duh. But what was he doing coming through your window?”

Hell if I know, kid. “Giving me some things. Stuff like my mother owned. And telling me some things.”

“How the hell did he have things that belonged to your mother?”

Trust Graves to boil everything down to its essentials. “They aren’t; they’re just like hers. And, well, I guess he knew her.” I hadn’t thought about it just that way before. He’d certainly sounded like he knew her. And now that I thought about it, he’d said specifically that the wooden swords weren’t hers. I opened my mouth to go on with explanations.

But he asked the other sixty-four-thousand-dollar question before I could. “Just how old is he, anyway? And who is he?”

“I dunno.” I slid down a little further into the not-water’s embrace, and another cloud of dirt from my wet hair went through the bubbling jelly. Jeez. How much guck did I get rolled in? “I’m more worried about Ash not killing me. He had the chance. He got rid of those other suckers, and—”

“You saw that?”

“I saw one. Stands to reason he did the other two.” A tremor went through the center of my bones.

“Jesus.” I could have died. There’s no way out of that classroom, and three suckers…” He was right nose to nose with me, Graves. Nose to nose.” My brain kept making a funny hitching stop when it got to the memory, replaying it, throwing up its hands in horror, and stalling like an engine. “And the fog…”

But I didn’t want to think about the fog ever again. Thank God it hadn’t touched me. If it had… I didn’t know quite what would have happened, but it would have been bad. I knew that much, all the way down to my quivering, aching bones.

It’s hard to argue with certainty like that.

Graves was more worried about essentials. “A wulf working alone did that? And he just… what, ran away?”

“Guess he heard the rest of you coming.” The shaking intensified. It wasn’t shivering. It was my body rebelling against everything. I wanted a cheeseburger, and I wanted to curl up and sleep, and I wanted things I couldn’t even name. Most of all, I wanted to just shut my eyes and make all this madness go away.

My head was still on his shoulder. He was still holding me. He was still fully clothed and hadn’t said a word about it. A long silence passed between us, full of steam and the funny burpchuckle bubbling of the not-water. It hissed a little bit as I slid down some more, more of the dirt in my hair getting whisked free.

“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered finally. It scared me more than I wanted to admit. I was used to knowing what the procedure was in every situation; I was used to Dad knowing what I didn’t and giving me orders when I was out of my depth.

I mean, Dad never let me flounder. Not like some parents, who will just sit there and watch you flail around. I’ve seen that a lot, and it always looks to me like the adults want the kid to fail. Maybe it makes them feel better when we do, or something.

Graves sighed. “Okay.” His shoulders came up, the one I’d propped my head on, digging into my cheekbone. “We should get you cleaned up. And Dylan’s going to have a cow.”

“Why wasn’t he there?” As soon as I said it out loud, I regretted it. “Someone always came to get me when the bell rang before. This time, nobody.”

“Yeah.” Not-water splashed as he moved. “I was thinking that too. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He untangled himself from me, and I had to lift my head. The burning had settled into a more soothing heat, soaking in. My back hurt, but not as much as it could have.

“Graves?”

“Huh?” He swung back, and for the second time that night I was face-to-face with a shapechanger.

But this one had bright green eyes, and his dyed-black hair hung in damp strings, and he was the same half-ugly kid who had been the only person I could depend on since a zombie smashed its way through my kitchen door.

Less than a month, and my entire life was in the kind of mess only the Real World could make. I had no idea how to start fixing it, but he was here, and he hadn’t let me down yet.

We stared at each other for a long moment. My throat was dry. I was pretty sure dirt was smeared all over my face and my hair was sticking up like Medusa’s. But I leaned forward just a little, and if he hadn’t turned his head a little bit, my lips wouldn’t have landed on his cheek.

His skin was softer than I’d have thought under the stubble showing up, and I had to sniff because my nose was full. But I pressed my lips against his cheek and felt like an idiot. What had I been about to do?

Okay, Dru. Time to play this cool. “Thanks. I mean, for getting me in here, and all.” I retreated, suddenly very aware I was just in panties and a bra that were probably now ruined, and that he had dumped himself into the tub without even taking his shirt off. And I probably had dirt all over my stupid face. “You’re always, you know, around. When I need you. Thanks.”

Of all the things to say.

OhmyfuckingGOD, Dru, how stupid can you be? I made it over to the other side of the tub and hoped the heat would hide the red marching up my neck to plant itself in my cheeks.

Graves actually coughed. It was kind of decent of him. “No problem.” He headed for the stairs out of the tub, awkwardly swilling a lot of crackling wax around. He floundered up and out, almost slipped, grabbed the edge of the tub. “First one’s. Yeah. Free.”

He was probably just as embarrassed as I was. I sank back into the tub, reached out, and held onto the edge myself. I was feeling kind of like my arms and legs might fail me at any moment.

I hunched in the bath for a long while, shivering and shaking, and the only thing that got me out of there was the thought that one of the teachers might think I was drowning and come in to “rescue” me.

Or, you know, kill me. Because it seemed pretty obvious that the Schola, where Christophe had promised me I’d be safe, was a pretty damn dangerous place.