Betrayals

CHAPTER 21

My vision returned in fits and starts, and a little while later I could walk. The stuff jammed in my nose was clear tubing attached to an oxygen canister slung over Dibs’ shoulder as he braced me on my left side. Graves was on my right, his hair wildly mussed and his coat singed. Blood painted the right side of his face, and his jaw was set.

My heart almost burst. My arm tightened, and he gave me a sideways look. “Hey,” he said, quietly. “How you, kiddo?”

My mouth was full of poison. I spat again to clear it, and Dibs giggled, a high, nervous sound. “Peachy,” I managed. “Wha’ happen?”

“All hell broke loose.” Graves barely looked where he was going. Trees pressed close, the night like a wet washcloth over the eyes. I wasn’t blind; it was just dark. Country-dark. There was a sense of stealthy movement, and the glitters and lamps of eyes around me told me I was in the middle of a group of wulfen. “They got into the school. There was a vampire with red hair, she just looked at things and they started exploding. Shanks and Dylan—”

“Save your breath,” came Christophe’s harsh voice. “We’re not free yet.”

“Christophe?” I had to know. “Where were you? I thought—”

“Around and about. Be quiet now.” He didn’t bother sugarcoating the command, but then his tone softened. “You seem to delight in doing the worst, most dangerous thing possible. Try to restrain yourself for a day or two, hmm?”

I’m just trying to stay alive, Christophe. Thanks. I wished I could put my head down on Graves’ shoulder, settled for putting one foot in front of the other. I was reeling, step to side-step. The oxygen felt good and cool on my burning throat. My teeth weren’t aching anymore. Much.

My head dropped forward. I sighed. Coughed again, trying to do it quietly. There was a pause, all the wulfen stopping at once.

A howl lifted in the distance. Vampire. The hatred in it scraped inside my skull, the taste of wax oranges on my tongue over the foul-ness, and I found out I was shaking again. I didn’t have the energy to pull myself up inside my head and block it out.

“God and Hell both damn it,” Christophe said quietly, but with a coldness to the words that turned the darkness into danger.

“Shit.” Shanks sounded like he seconded that emotion. “Let’s hurry it up, people.”

“What happened?” I whispered. Graves just shook his head. His arm tightened around me, like he wanted to pull me away from Dibs. The small blond werwulf was quivering too. I couldn’t tell whether I was shaking him or he was as scared as I was.

“Someone just died. We can hope it was the Burner, she would be a high-priority target. Without her, the nosferatu are merely dangerous, not overwhelming,” Christophe said softly. “Just breathe, Dru. Do we have another oxygen tank?”

“Just the one.” Shanks moved away. They glided noiselessly through the forest. My eyes were doing funny things, piercing the gloom one moment and showing me moving shapes, sticks, and the texture of bark. My teeth would give a sudden burst of pain; then the darkness would return.

All the questions I couldn’t ask swirled around inside my head. My right arm tightened over Graves’ shoulders. “I thought you were inside.” My voice was a harsh croak. “God.”

“Is that why you ran into a burning building?” He sounded shocked. Go figure.

I thought I could throw the vampires off my trail. It was too hard to explain and I didn’t have the breath. I tried anyway. “Well, yeah. That, and—”

“Quiet.” Christophe was a deeper shadow, his eyes glowing weirdly blue. Most of the wulfen’s eyes just glimmered dully. Shanks’ were actually yellow, and I could tell whenever Graves blinked because the green gleams next to me would vanish for a moment and my heart would stop again.

The motion suddenly halted. Everyone froze. I leaned on Graves. His hand, spread against my sore ribs on my left side, tensed just a little, fingers gone hard. I tried not to breathe too loudly. The oxygen bottle made a small sound, and I winced. Dibs and I shook together, my teeth clenched to stop their chattering.

Little noises filled the woods around us. I couldn’t tell if they were the regular cacophony of the woods at night, because it’s rarely ever silent out in the country, or if it was something else. I felt very small, and very soft and pink in the middle of the wulfen.

“We need cover,” Shanks mouthed. He leaned toward the shape that was Christophe, their eyes glowing at each other. “How drained are you?”

Christophe blinked, slowly, deliberately. The blue glow of his eyes came back, settled on me. “And I thought you would take convincing.”

A movement that could have been a shrug. “I don’t want to die. And I’m responsible for them.”

“Granted.” The single word had sharp edges. “I’ll need to drink.”

The four words fell like a stone into a glassy pool and vanished without a trace. There was a collective sharp inhale among the wulfen.

“Wait a second.” Graves sounded like he was having trouble with this. I tried to hold my head up.

It dipped forward. Curls had come free of my braid and bobbled in front of my face. “What are we talking about here?”

Shanks didn’t even bother to listen. “You can’t take it from one of mine. So it’s me, or…”

A sliding motion. Graves sucked in a sharp breath, and Christophe was suddenly right in front of me.

“Dru,” he said softly. The hurtfulness was gone from his voice. “I need your help.”

I swallowed. My throat was full of smoky acid. “Yeah. Sure. What?”

Christophe moved in closer, but not as close as he had been before. Still, I could feel his heat. “Give me your hand.”

“Oh hell no.” Graves shifted his weight, like he was going to pull me back and away.

I stayed where I was, digging my feet into the ground. “What are you going to do?”

“I need to borrow something of yours. It will come back, I promise. It will save all of us.” Those blue eyes held mine, glowing in the darkness. Was it just me, or were they not quite as cold as they used to be? He smelled like smoke too, and under it was the edge of apple pies, spice and goodness.

Jesus. Even after all that he smelled like a bakery. “You’re going to have to give me the keys this time, Dru.”

It wouldn’t make sense to anyone other than Graves and me. I’d refused to trust him once before, and it had ended up with Sergej almost having me for lunch. Now we were out in the middle of the woods with vampires looking for us, and there were a bunch of terrified kids here in the dark.

Kids who had done their best to save me. Kids who would be in the cafeteria or heading for their first classes right now if not for me.

Way to go, Dru. You just get everyone in trouble, don’t you?

I licked my dry, smoke-tarnished lips. “It’ll get them out of here?”

“All of us.” Christophe sounded utterly sure. “I just need to borrow something of yours.”

What, the wooden swords? I left them behind, couldn’t carry them. “All right. What?” My throat was full of something. Graves shifted again, but I stayed where I was.

“You don’t have to,” Dibs whispered. He sounded scared to death. “Dru…”

“Give me your hand,” Christophe repeated. “Either one.”

I slid my heavy left arm free of Dibs’ shoulders. Blindly stuck my left hand out in his general direction. “I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but do it.” I leaned into Graves, who was shaking now too. I couldn’t tell if it was the stress of holding me up or something else. “They’re getting closer.” I didn’t know how I knew. The sounds in the woods drew close, nasty tittering laughter and the padding of booted feet.

Warm fingers clasped my wrist. Christophe ran his fingertips down the center of my palm, and a weird feeling shot up my arm.

I had to know. “Christophe?”

He went utterly still. “What, skowroneczo moja?”

“Where were you?” Was I bait? What were you doing? You said you’d be gone, but here you are.

“I was making arrangements to come collect my little bird.” His fingers bit in, and he raised my hand, palm up. “You don’t think I’d leave you, do you?” There was a gleam of teeth under the lamps of his eyes, and all of a sudden I knew what he was going to do. The knowledge sprang full-blown into my head, and if I hadn’t been so scared, exhausted, lonely, pained, you name it, I might have tried to backpedal. Graves let out another strangled sound, his arm tightening as I lost all the strength left in my legs.

And Christophe drove his fangs into my wrist, just where the radial pulse beats. It was like rusty spikes spearing through my arm, the pain branching up nerves to detonate in my head, and a horrible draining sensation spilled through me.

It hurt. Have you ever been so sick dying seems like an okay thing because it will make the feeling stop? Have you ever felt something inside you, something you never noticed before, something rooted deep in your chest, getting ripped up inch by inch? Stubbornly resisting, something twined around your ribs and internal organs being torn free.

I collapsed. A wave of coldness dilated around my mother’s locket, held trapped against my skin.

Graves made a soft, hurt little sound, holding me up. “Dru—” he whispered.

The drawing pull came again. This time it stretched up into my brain, a bony hand digging clawed fingers up my throat and into my skull the hard way, squeezing the tender meat I thought with.

Memories splashed and whirled, draining away.

Graves was holding me up now. I was trying to scream, but I couldn’t. My voice box had frozen up. Everything about me had frozen. One thought managed to escape the relentless, digging agony.

“please don’t please don’t not again please don’tdon’tdon’t”

But it came one more time, and this time was the worst because the digging, awful fingers weren’t pulling at anything physical. Instead they were scraping and burrowing and twisting into me. The part of me that wasn’t anything but me, the invisible core of what I was.

I’d call it the soul, but I don’t think the word fits. It’s as close as I can get.

Digging scraping pulling tearing ripping, invisible things inside me being pulled away, and something left me in a huge gush. My head tipped back, breath locked in my throat. Graves made another small horrified sound and tried to pull me away.

Christophe jerked his head back, fangs sliding free of my flesh, and something wrapped itself tightly around my wrist, below his bruising-hard grip on my forearm. He exhaled, shuddering, and Graves tried to pull me away again. My arm stretched like Silly Putty between them, my shoulder screaming, and I couldn’t make a sound.

The winter-blue of Christophe’s irises clouded, dark striations like food coloring dropped in water threading through the light. They still glowed even more intensely, in a way that shouldn’t have made sense. “Sweet,” he hissed, and made an odd hitching movement. His chin dipped, and his fingers tightened bruising-hard on my wrist, like he was going to do that again.

I wanted to scream, couldn’t. Nothing worked. My body just hung there, frozen and unresponsive.

“Christophe.” Shanks sounded nervous. “Um, Christophe?”

The world trembled on a knife edge. Blackness crowded in around the corners. My head tipped further back. Graves held me up, both arms around me now. I was so tired it was work to breathe.

In, out, in, out, my ribs almost refused to rise. There was air outside my face, but it was just so hard to bring it in. Instead, the sea of atmosphere pushed down on me, crushing.

“Jesus,” Graves whispered. “What did you do to her?”

Another gleam of teeth below Christophe’s darkened eyes. “I just borrowed her for a while, dogboy.” The casual, hurtful edge to the words abraded the inside of my head like an ice scraper against a windshield. I flinched. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to let one of them get their ugly fangs in moja ksi aniczko.”

Pain and dragging weariness pulled on every nerve and muscle in my body. Behind us, another chilling howl lifted into the night.

“We need cover,” Shanks said urgently. “And—”

“I know what you need. Shut up.” Christophe touched my face, stepping close and sliding his fingertips against my dirty cheek. I flinched. Graves dragged me back, and how weird was it that he stepped silently? All around us, the woods creaked and sighed in the darkness. The snarl running under the surface of Graves’ skin bounced around, echoing, inside my skull.

They faced each other, the two boys, and I was suddenly very sure something bad was about to happen. The moment hung, suspended in the cold night air.

“They’re getting closer,” someone whispered.

Christophe laughed. It was a bitter little sound, not unlike Graves’ sarcastic, pained bark. “I’m not saving you,” he said, very quietly. “I’m saving her. Remember that.”

He turned and literally vanished. The air made a weird popping sound, collapsing where he’d stood, and one of the wulfen sniffed deeply. Shanks cursed, but softly. Thick white wetness boiled in the air, rising from the ground where Christophe had stood. It rose in veiny, ropy fingers, curls of it touching my legs.

The touch made my skin crawl. It was exactly the kind of greasy fog the suckers had shown up in.

Wait a minute. What did he just do?

“Bloodfog,” one of them said. “It’ll cover us, and he’ll hunt them. Let’s go.”

At that point everything just turned weird and soupy gray. Dibs helped Graves heft me up on his back like I was a little kid getting piggybacks. I tried to say I was sorry, but the words wouldn’t come.

They started moving through the forest, everything blurring together. My head bobbled and joggled against Graves’ shoulder, and I heard him cursing steadily under his breath. The places inside me where everything had been ripped up twinged and settled, throbbing like a sore tooth. It was like a headache, only not in my head. In the invisible places where I lived that weren’t connected with any muscle or bone.

“Graves…” I whispered against his shoulder. Then the darkness swallowed me, and everything inside me still hurt. I fell down into the hole where things had been ripped free, and small chill voices laughed while I did.