Betrayals

CHAPTER 17

The disused classroom was in the bowels of the Schola, and it had an empty chalkboard on the curved wall. When filled with wulfen, the entire room had a nervous, fidgeting feel to it.

“So they’re not teaching you anything.” Shanks nodded. “Yeah, we wondered about that.”

What else had they wondered about me? “I, uh, just don’t go. It’s all remedial shit I could get in normal high school.”

Graves shook his head. “Skipping isn’t allowed for anyone else. It’s a trip to detention, and who wants that? So why let you do it? I mean, you’re special and all,” he ignored Shanks’ snicker, “but it don’t make sense, and putting you in remedial classes doesn’t make sense either. Especially with the chance of you-know-who finding out you’re here, they should want you trained and trained hard, so you have a better chance of surviving.”

“And then there’s Christophe.” Shanks was settled on a dusty brown couch, taking up most of it with his long legs. A ripple ran through the rest of the wulfen at the name. “He hasn’t been around for years, but they’re scared of him.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Dibs piped up. “He’s dangerous. Just look at his kill record. He’s never wanted to make himself liked, either.”

“Well, people have been calling him a traitor for a long time, but never to his face.” Shanks shrugged. He’d picked most of the leaves out of his hair. “And he did bring her in. I know Juan’s cousin, I talked to him last week during phonetime. When Christophe was tryin’ to save your asses, someone was tryin’ to kill him. The battle-group got a directive to kill a nosferat, and he didn’t realize it wasn’t a wampyr but Christophe until the guy had held off every one of them and had plenty of chances to kill “im but didn’t, and he was djamphir to boot. And he fucked up you-know-who but good, to rescue her.”

A hot flush went through me. Did they know about Christophe and Sergej? And now that I’d gotten some sleep and run until I was close to a cardiac arrest, I felt like I was thinking clearly. If Dylan thought Anna was right, why would he be telling me Christophe was going to train me? If he didn’t, why did he stay quiet when she accused him?

Why did he say he was on my side? And what was Anna’s whole game with the file and the pictures of the house my mother had died in front of?

I didn’t remember enough about the night Mom died. I didn’t want to remember about that night. I was five years old, for chrissake.

I tried working it out again inside my head. Christophe said Dylan was loyal. I’d carried that note between them like a message, and Dylan was supposed to find me if there was another vampire attack. But I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, even Dylan, that I’d seen Christophe.

That didn’t make sense either. But I’d been so confused from the heat of Christophe’s body against mine….

Don’t think about that, Dru. Jesus. But what else was there to think of? The single blond hair caught on my nightstand? Other secrets, other lies, all pressing down on me?

“Something’s off,” another wulfen said. “They just watch her. And then there was the other night.”

“Yeah.” Graves leaned forward next to me. He still hadn’t taken his coat off, and I understood why. It was chilly in the classroom, especially with sweat drying on my skin. “Nobody came to pick her up from the classroom and get her to her room. Isn’t that a little suspicious, given how they’re watching her?”

I stared at the cracked chalkboard. How long had it been since I’d seen an actual chalkboard?

Most schools had whiteboards nowadays. “Dylan said he didn’t know who was supposed to be watching me. The duty roster disappeared, and—” I stopped short. I could have gone on, but I was taking Dylan’s word for an awful lot, and I couldn’t say any more without explaining the whole Anna thing.

I was pretty sure talking about another svetocha wasn’t a good idea, if she was supposed to be a big secret.

But it didn’t look like I was such a big secret, maybe. Had Ash killed every sucker there? If they were from Sergej and none of them came back, he wouldn’t know for sure I was here, unless the traitor, whoever it was, could manage to tell him. Or a sucker could survive the next attack and go tell him.

The pieces fit together inside my head. Christophe must have realized this, it was why he was coming back to get me out.

It was anyone’s guess whether he’d get back in time. My mouth was dry and my heart was still thumping along.

“Shit.” Shanks rubbed at his chin. “I didn’t know that.” His dark eyes rested on me for a long moment. “That true?”

I nodded. “Someone was supposed to come and get me, or the teacher’s supposed to take me to my room. That’s what happened every other time. But that time Blondie vanished as soon as class was out. And nobody else came.”

“Blondie?” Someone chuckled. “Oh wow.”

“Kruger.” Shanks didn’t look amused. “And his helpful lectures. So how did you get out of there?”

“I saw…” The usual habit of keeping the woo-woo a secret made me pause. I plunged ahead.

This, at least, was one secret I could get off my chest. “I saw an owl. My grandmother’s owl. Whenever there’s trouble, it shows up and tells me to get out.” I took a deep breath. “And so I ran. But when I was outside… I saw a wulfen.”

“Who?” Shanks could really bore a hole in someone with those eyes. He leaned forward, tense and expectant, like I was going to produce something he could chase down and bite.

“His name’s Ash. He’s got a streak on his head—”

“He’s a Broken,” someone supplied. “The last Silverhead. You-know-who’s wulf.”

Shanks waved a hand. “Yeah, I know about the Silverhead. You saw him?”

“I didn’t just see him. He killed the suckers chasing me. He was pretty beat up afterward. He sniffed me, but he didn’t hurt me.” It wasn’t coming out right. “I mean—”

“He sniffed you?” They were peppering me with questions now, one after another.

“How did he sniff you?”

“How close was he?”

“Was he bleeding?”

Shanks held up a hand. “Slow down, everyone. Jesus. First things first, okay?” He looked at me speculatively for a long, tense-ticking twenty seconds. “Dru.” It was the first time he’d said my name without sneering. “Do you have any idea why you’re here and not at the main Schola? Or even a big Schola?”

“The main…” I sounded as blank as I must’ve looked. “Isn’t this, like, a main Schola? A big one?”

“Shit, no.” He laughed, and some of the other older boys did too. It wasn’t nice laughter, but it wasn’t pointed at me, either. “This is like reform school. We’re the troublemakers, the retards. The actual Schola for this district, the first Schola ever made, is in the Big Apple. Down over the state line. I wondered why you were way the hell out here.”

Oh. “Nobody…” It made sense now. And of course Anna would have been coming from a bigger city, right? It was all over her.

“Nobody said to your face that you were on the short bus?” He shrugged. “That’s interesting. But you shouldn’t trust what they tell you even if they open up their mouths. Nosferatu lie, and half-vamps are right behind them sometimes. We’re just dumb muscle and they’re supplying the tactics, they say. So they get to order us around.”

“But we’re surviving now,” Dibs piped up. “Not like it was. My grandfather told me about the Dark Times. They aren’t so far away.” A murmur of assent greeted the words.

“Dark Times, man.” Another dark wulfen shuddered. “At least we’re not slaves now.”

“Yeah, well.” Shanks shrugged. “They still treat us like shit even if they don’t murder and enslave us. It’s not a huge step up, but I’ll take it. Most of the time.”

“That always bothered me,” I had to tell Graves. “The way Christophe treated you.” The other, more tremendous secret swelled behind my ribs. I pushed it down. Tell nobody, he’d said. And they didn’t need to know I was leaving soon anyway, did they?

Graves shook his head, black hair falling in his glowing eyes. The restlessness in him was evident. “This really isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Patience,” a lean lanky wulf with broad shoulders and a blond buzz-cut said. His hair wasn’t long enough for me to stare at him. “This is how consensus works.”

“What exactly are we discussing here?” I wanted to know. I was tired of stumbling around and having people drop information on me. I wanted to do something.

Shanks held up a finger. “You’re at a small satellite full of delinquents instead of the main Schola. Could be to throw people off the scent, but—” another finger “Ash knows you’re here. Which means you-know-who could know. He killed the nosferatu who attacked last time, but we don’t know if he killed all of them.” One more finger, the nail chewed all the way down. “They’re lying to you about a whole hell of a lot, and refusing to train you.”

“Christophe said there was a traitor in the Order,” I said, slowly.

Shanks nodded. “Whoever signed the directive to send Juan and his pack after him, right? Okay. Huh.”

Everyone thought this over. At least, I was thinking furiously, and everyone around me had a creased forehead. Graves fidgeted a little, then a little more. He opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at me.

“What?” I sounded more irritated than I really was. “What are you sitting on?”

“You’re bait.” The words came out flat and sharp. “Christophe wants to know who the traitor is, so he’s dangling you out in front of someone. You were his bait for Sergej, too. Maybe he did specifically send you here.”

The room went cold when he said Sergej, and several of the wulfen shivered. It wasn’t like Christophe saying it, with the tinge of hatred instead of outright fear. It still sent a glass spike of pain through my head.

Graves didn’t seem to notice. “He was all over getting you out of town once he realized the bad guy knew where you were, but before that? He was just hanging around, waiting for something before he’d make his move. Your dad had his phone number. They talked at least once. And the teachers here, some of them might be wanting to train you, but they’ve gotten orders not to, probably from…” He trailed off. “I don’t have that part of it yet. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be training you even if you are supposed to be just dangled out in front of the suckers. But I’d bet my last smoke you’re bait, Dru.”

Stay here, Dru. Trust me. Everything fell into place. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find a flaw in that logic. “It would explain a lot. But what about Ash?”

“What about him? Just be grateful he didn’t open your guts up.” Shanks laughed, a cold sound.

“What if he needs help?” I persisted. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I—”

“You want to help a Broken? You want to help Ash? He was probably confused, or he didn’t want to kill you just yet because you-know-who wants the pleasure.”

“But when he was after me before he damn well wanted to kill me!” I was shouting before I realized it. My chest ached with the enormity of the confusion. “He saved my life the other night, there’s got to be a reason!”

Graves grabbed my shoulder. “Calm down.”

Calm down? He wanted me to calm down? Oh, hell no.

I was about ready to explode. “All this talking doesn’t get anything done! What if we could find Ash? We could try to help him, and then we’d have a chance of finding something, anything else out.”

“Why are you so set on this?” Shanks wanted to know. “You were poking pretty hard about saving a Broken in class the other day, too.”

Right before we got into it and I kicked your ass. I went cold all over, goose bumps standing up on my skin. Right before I wanted to drink blood. Just like a sucker. “You didn’t see his eyes.”

Almost defeated, I slumped back into the couch. “You just didn’t. I want to help him.”

“He’s been you-know-who’s wulf for a long time. Since the Dark Times, when you-know-who used him for hunting his kin. There aren’t any other Silverheads left, just Ash.” Dibs shivered. His tone was soft, scared, and terribly sad.

My hands were fists. I took a deep breath. “But he didn’t hurt me. And he killed how many suckers? This wouldn’t be a bad thing on our side.”

A ripple ran through them, like ink threading into water, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“Sides. You djamphir are all the same. Sooner or later you start talking about sides.” Shanks’ lip curled up. “Then it’s time for wulfen to do the dirty work while you lay back and—”

The ball of fury inside my chest swelled. My teeth tingled, and I felt something sharp touching my lower lip on each side. I rocketed up to my feet. “Fuck you.”

“Let’s just calm down—” Graves began.

“Calm down my ass! I almost died, and this asshole’s acting like everything’s my fault!”

Frustration boiled sharply under my skin, prickles and pokings. Every secret I was keeping jostling for release. “If we’re gonna start the you’re just like the rest of them shit, then how about finding someone else to pick on? I didn’t ask to be born part sucker! I didn’t fucking know until everyone was trying to kill me and my dad never came back!” I had to stop to take a deep breath. Everyone was staring at me. “Now nobody will tell me what the fuck is going on, and I’m sick of it! I’m sick of feeling like I’ve done something wrong just by breathing! I didn’t ask for this!”

“Nobody’s saying you—” Graves started. To give him some credit, he was trying to smooth the ruffled waters, or something. But I was done with being soothed.

“Yes they are!” I jabbed an accusing finger at Shanks. “That’s exactly what he’s saying! That I deserve all this shit somehow because of what I was born like!”

The air changed just as I ran out of breath, and a ripple ran through the room again. This one was cold, a breath of warning. Graves grabbed for my shoulder, but I ducked away from him. If anyone touched me right now I was going to go absolutely postal.

The bloodhunger was a roiling ball of fury inside my chest, and it was hard to push it down and lock it away. Did all the other djamphir feel like this? All the time, or just when the aspect came over them?

How did they stand it? How could anyone stand it?

“Oh Jesus.” A wulfen in a crouch by the door lifted his head and sniffed. “Djamphir on the way. Must be a teacher.”

“Crap.” Shanks bounded to his feet. “We’ll have to split up. If they catch us out here with her—”

“Don’t worry about it.” I had already spun on my heel and was headed for the door.

He let out a snorting laugh. “What are you gonna do, tell on us?”

“I should,” I tossed over my shoulder, picking up my weary feet. “But I’m not like you assholes. My dad raised me right, dammit. I’m going to draw whoever it is off so you can go back to the dorms and fuck yourselves.”

I hit the hall at a run and plunged into the corridor. Here in this wing it was cold, and my shoes were wet and covered in dirt. I made a lot of noise, feet slapping, yelling anything that came into my head, usually four-letter words, bouncing back eerily at me from the stone and paneling.

That, at least, would distract any teacher coming down here. The wulfen of them could go back to the dorms and play pinochle or spin the bottle or whatever, for all I cared.

I burst out into the lunchroom. Which was strangely deserted, sunlight falling from the high windows. The chairs were all stacked on the tables, and I picked one stack and pulled it down with a bouncing clatter. That ought to bring someone out. My heart pounded, and the sheer injustice of it all rose up to choke me. The ball of fury behind my ribs smoked and boiled so hard my eyes leaked heat and water.

“FUCK THIS PLACE!” I yelled. “I WANT SOME ANSWERS!”

“You don’t need to scream,” someone said behind me, and I whirled. Dylan stepped out of the shadows with a creak of leather, stopping just short of a bar of heavy yellow sunlight. “You should be more careful. If I can catch you out during the day, so can someone else.”

It took a couple seconds for my heart to climb down out of my throat. “Jesus Christ!”

“Nope. Just me.” A crooked smile lifted the corners of his lips. But his dark eyes were serious, and there were bruised-looking rings underneath them. “We don’t have much time, Dru. Come on.”

You know, any other day I probably just would have gone with him. But not today. I was tired of following people around, tired of being led by the nose. “Where? Does what’s-her-face want to see me again?”

Dylan sighed, an aggravated, familiar sound. The sleepless rings under his eyes matched the tension around his mouth, and his hair was messy too. “You should hope not. Come on, Dru. Please. I’ve got something to show you.”

I folded my arms and refused to budge. “Why should I hope not?”

“Because I’m not so sure Milady can be trusted.” He stepped back, retreating from the sunlight. “Are you coming, or do I have to wait for another time when I’m on duty to watch you?”

“You were on duty?”

He shrugged. “Why do you think I let you out with your little friend? At least I’m sure he and his wulfen won’t kill you, even if they are delinquents and thieves.” Another two steps back. Dylan’s eyes glittered, the aspect sliding over him and retreating in waves, sending fingers of ebony highlighting through his hair. “Dru. Believe me. You want to see this, and it’s not safe to talk up here.”

Up here? I sighed. It was what everyone said: Trust me, Dru. Believe me, Dru. Let me do what I want, Dru.

I was helpless, the way I’d been all along. And the idea that Christophe maybe wasn’t coming back for me, that he was using me as bait, that I might be stuck here for a while, it was enough to take the fight right out of anyone.

My shoulders slumped. The dampness on my cheeks clung to my fingers as I scrubbed at it.

I followed.