Betrayals

CHAPTER 22

I came back to myself slowly, in fits and starts. First there was gray light, coming through two horizontal cracks. A single spot of warmth against my chest, like someone had breathed on me.

Voices. Shanks and Graves, mostly.

“She still out?” Grudging concern. The tall werwulf didn’t sound happy.

“Like a light. I can’t believe you suggested that.” Graves, tired and unhappy too. The movement under me hadn’t stopped. Wind touched my hair. For the first time I smelled something other than smoke. Leaf sludge, fresh air, the iron smell of very early or very, very late.

“We had to. Jesus Christ.” Feet hitting the ground. “All right, everyone. Let’s get moving.”

The horizontal slices of light thinned and vanished. I drowned in blackness again. Something inside me felt different, but I couldn’t figure out what.

A sound like feathers surrounded me. I waited for the owl, but it didn’t show up. Its wings beat frantically, a muffled heartbeat. The horizontal bars of light dawned again, and I realized they were my eyelids opening a little to let in morning.

Voices, arguing. I felt like I’d been ripped apart and put back together wrong. My arms were around something, and a tree trunk was braced against my back. My feet dangled. I hitched in a breath. It was a relief to find that breathing wasn’t a huge struggle anymore. My lungs and ribs had decided to work together, and the air was no longer heavy as lead.

“The wampyr have gone to earth, if Reynard left any alive. We have to move now, and get to a safe place.”

“Like where? And Shanks is half-dead. We can’t leave him.”

“You’re not in charge. We’re already carrying her. You gonna carry him too?”

“Fuck you I’m not in charge. We’re not leaving anyone behind.” It was Graves, like I’d never heard him. Angry, determined, and with that growl under the edge of the words. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and he wasn’t about to take any shit.

I realized my mouth was open, dry, and tasted like something had died in it. I closed it and tried an experimental movement. The haze of light coming in through my eyelids sharpened.

“Please. Who do you think you’re kidding? The djamphir might think you’re gonna control us, but you’re not.”

Movement. I was shifted to the side. A small sound escaped me, like I was caught in a nightmare.

Go figure.

“Let’s get this figured out right now,” Graves said, quietly. The growl turned into a sharp crackling, as if bones under plastic wrap were snapping into dust.

Oh boy. The thought was sharp and clear, and it was another relief. A little bit of warmth stole back into me, the locket oddly heavy under my shirt. The ripped-up places inside me quivered like scabs. With thought came being again. I was.

Dru. I’m Dru. And that’s Graves.

Life, color, and sound all rushed back into me. I opened my eyes and found out I was slumped against Dibs, who had gone pale, his eyes wide. He stared at the clearing, which was ringed by wulfen in various hunching poses. Some of them even lay stretched flat on the forest floor.

Oily-white, almost-glowing fog drifted cotton-packed between the trees, and birds were calling uncertainly. It even smelled like dawn, if you’ve ever been out when the sun comes up, you know what I mean. It’s the metallic scent of sunlight hitting the atmosphere and everyone needing a good shot of caffeine.

Graves and another black-haired boy were the only ones standing up in the middle of the clearing.

Beads of water touched Graves’ messy hair. The fog was so thick it was like being caught in a bubble, swallowing the rest of the world.

The shape at my feet was Shanks, stretched out at full-length, dried blood in a shocking spill down the side of his face. His clothes were ripped to shreds, and more blood, black and still-smoking as well as red and human, crusted him. He looked like he was in bad shape, cheese-pale and with his sides heaving as he breathed in shallow gasps.

Graves leaned forward. The other boy, slim, black hair cut short, big dark eyes almost glowing with anger, rocked back on his heels as if he’d been punched. The invisible tension between them boiled like heat-haze above pavement on a tar-melting-hot day.

“Don’t fucking mess with me right now, man.” Graves said every word very slowly and very clearly, his lips moving as he enunciated. He had to, because his jaw was shifting. Still, the command-voice came out clean and clear. The other boy rocked back even further on his heels, dropping his shoulders and dipping his chin.

“We’ll all die,” the other kid whined, but all the starch had gone out of him. “You’re not ready.”

“Not ready my ass,” Graves snapped. “I was born ready, dick-wipe. You want to test me now, you go ahead, but it’ll waste valuable time. We get caught, you’ll die just like the rest of us. So stop being an asshole and shut the fuck up.”

Silence, as ticking-tense as the moment between stepping off a diving board and the instant you hit the water. I leaned against Dibs and looked down at Shanks. His eyes were half-closed, little gleams peeking out from under the eyelids. There was no sign of iris or pupil, just blind white.

Something was wrong. The world looked flat, oddly two-dimensional. I tilted my head back, trying to hear something, anything, with the touch. Trying to unloose the fist and send little questing fingers out to take in the world.

My pulse leapt up, hard and high in my throat. There was nothing there.

Stop it. You’re just tired. God knew I was exhausted. But it was like being blind. I’d never realized before how the touch lay under every thought, bubbling and boiling and showing me the depths of things.

It was gone, and I was blind. I hated the feeling.

I found I could stand on my own two feet. Dibs still clutched at me, though. His skin was hot against mine, and he smelled just like a regular boy, without the undertone of cold fur and danger.

Is this what it’s like to be normal? Shaking spilled through me. The trees looked dead. The fog was flat. And Graves and the rest—

No, wait. Graves looked normal. He stared at the other boy, green eyes piercing and a high blush of color on his cheekbones, the slight suggestion of epicanthic folds vanishing as his face shifted to more hawklike than half-Asian. Other than that, he looked just the same as usual, except a little more unwashed. His coat was singed and plastered with mud up the side, his hair was wildly mussed, and a bolt of something hot and hard went through my chest as the other black-haired boy dropped his eyes. Graves kept staring until the kid actually crouched, as if the green gaze was a heavy weight.

It looked like a grainy color film I’d seen on late-night cable in a weird little motel outside a teensy town named Zavalla in Texas. It was a nature special on satellite cable about wolf packs, and all about how wolves will give in and give up so the more dominant wolf keeps his position and the less dominant one doesn’t get killed. There was a lot of snapping and snarling, but killing everyone who wanted to maybe get a little higher on the ladder was bad evolutionary logic.

I blinked. My eyes were full of crusty stuff. And Graves really did look like the only real 3-D human being standing there. Even with his hair in messy strings and his coat singed, he looked…

I don’t have a word for the way he looked. Solid. Comforting. Like he was the one piece of the world that was holding the whole damn thing up. I let out a small sipping breath, trying not to taste the smoke smell rising up all around me or the stink of danger in the air. And that was another thing too, everything smelled washed out. Insipid. Not as real and true as it should have.

There was that spot of warmth against my chest, though. That was comforting.

“Now,” Graves finally said, “anyone else want to piss me off? Anyone else think this is a goddamn democracy?”

I swallowed, hard. My throat clicked, but nobody paid any attention. He’d drawn himself up to his full height, and turned slowly in a circle, looking at everyone.

“We’re a pack.” He halted once he’d made a full circle, and looked down at the kid in front of him. It might’ve looked weird anywhere else, but here in the woods surrounded by fog it looked perfectly normal.

Well, not normal. But natural. It looked like he belonged here, splashed with mud and scorch, his eyes burning and his coat straining across shoulders that had grown broader. It was the loup-garou burning in him, turning him into something other than the weirdo bird-thin Goth Boy hiding in the corners of your average school.

His hands were whiteknuckle fists. “We don’t leave someone behind. We’ve all been left behind one way or another, we ain’t gonna do it to nobody else. Anyone got a problem with that?”

Seconds ticked away. The tension went out of the air, but Graves tilted his head. A few of the boys sat up, and the black-haired boy made a quick inquiring movement.

“You hear that?” Dibs whispered. Either his skin was burning hot or mine was ice cold. I wasn’t sure which. “Choppers. Again.”

“What if it’s the Order?” someone wanted to know. “I mean, coming to get us?”

“Too fucking late,” the black-haired boy muttered. Peter, my weary brain finally whispered.

That’s his name.

Graves scrubbed at his chin with long fingers. “We’ll move as far as we can under the fog. We can’t trust that it might be the right kind of people up there looking for us.”

“Are we on our own, now? No more Order?” Dibs piped up. He was dirty and disheveled as the rest of us, his round blond face creased with worry. But he didn’t look as scared as he’d always looked in the cafeteria.

“Don’t know yet.” Graves sighed. “We’ll move as long as we have cover, then hide until nightfall. By then Christophe will be around again.”

“So will the nosferatu.” This boy, long and brown-haired, lay on his back with an arm over his face. He wore a flannel shirt that had seen better days and a messy bandage tied around his head, a dark bloody patch over his left temple. “I got an idea.”

“Shoot,” Graves said immediately.

“I’ve got family around here, not kincousins, my aunts married into them. Maybe we should go to ground. It’s a short shot from the last town we passed. We’re all exhausted, the girl don’t smell like herself, and if we dive now, we’ll have a better chance of running at full strength tonight, or even better, tomorrow when the sun rises.”

Graves half-turned and looked across the clearing, straight at me. I looked back, as steadily as I could while hanging onto Dibs and sandwiched against a tree trunk.

He was looking to me for direction, I realized. Back in his snow-piled hometown, I’d been the one who knew what to do when it all went sideways. At least, I’d known what to do when the burning dog and the streak-headed werwulf tried to kill us. I’d gotten Graves to my house. I’d been the one who had the books and the guns and the knowledge, however patchy.

We looked at each other. What the fuck do we do now? he was asking.

I tried to think. “What do we have?” My throat was sore, and the words didn’t have the weight I was used to hearing behind them. They were made of paper. “In the way of supplies.”

Because I knew how to do this. It didn’t depend on the touch or the aspect or anything else. It was just doing what I’d been taught. We were in hostile territory, and we had an objective, the objective was not dying.

First you find out what you have, Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, ’cause you don’t get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.

It turned out to be a load of cash, my bag, the clothes on our backs, some switchblades, the oxygen tank, a medikit Dibs was carrying as well, and two packs of cigarettes. Shanks lay on the ground, breathing shallowly. He didn’t look good.

It was a relief to have my brain working again. Every muscle I had hurt like hell, and the weird two-dimensionality of the world was new and awful. My head ached, but I’d done this sort of thing a lot with Dad, him throwing scenarios at me, teaching me how to plan.

“We didn’t have enough time to get to the armory.” Peter very carefully slid his switchblade back in his pocket. “They hit us so fast. And a Burner. Jesus.”

At least we’ve got money. I leaned against the tree instead of Dibs. My left wrist was wrapped in a very capable pressure bandage. Shut my eyes, squeezing out the light, and took a deep breath.

Come on, Dru. You know how to do this. “So our choices are to run on the money we’ve got and try to make the city tonight with the wounded, or hide at Andy’s family’s house until tomorrow.” I paused. “Do we even know where to go once we get to the city limits?”

“Shanks knows.” Andy had sat up, and he was looking at me like I’d grown a new head. “My aunts are loyal. They’d hide us even if it was the Dark Times.”

“I’m just not sure we won’t bring them trouble.” I blinked again, tried to focus. The world still didn’t look right, and a funny quivering feeling was pushing its way up through my chest. I didn’t need a dictionary to know it was called fear. A whole new brand of being afraid, an unsteady heat like indigestion underneath the warm spot of Mom’s locket. I was beginning to realize there were shades of fear just like on a color wheel, all of them slightly different but still awful. I looked up at Graves again. “You’re not going to like this.”

“What?” He leaned on the other side of the tree I was holding onto, his messy hair shaken down over his eyes again. Goth Boy was back on display. His earring winked once, silver shining.

“My dad trained me for this type of thing. I can hit the next town and find some transportation. I can vanish, and that means they won’t have a reason to chase—”

“No.” Graves shook his head. “Hell no.”

“Let her finish.” Peter crouched next to Shanks. His face twisted up bitterly as he looked down at the other boy.

Graves stiffened. “You shut up. They’ll chase us whether you’re with us or not, Dru, and what part of this do you not understand? I’m not leaving you.”

“If vampires will attack a whole school full of people trained to fight them to kill me, what makes you think they won’t attack a wulfen’s house? And… Sergej… might be on his way too. Come on.” I braced myself against the tree. No spike of pain went through my head, but several of the wulfen shivered at the name.

“It’s a compound,” Andy piped up. “The kin, they believe in the old ways. There’s my aunts and the uncles, grandparents, my cousins—”

Great. More people to die. “It’s a better idea if I just go it alone. I can make it to the next town, get some food and some wheels, and—”

Graves made a spitting sound of annoyance. “Add carjacking or theft to your list of things to do today? No dice, Dru. Look at you, you can’t even stand up.”

He was right. I held onto the tree. “I could kick your ass.” But it was bravado. We both knew it, and he shook his hair back and gave me a fey toothy grin. In a couple years that smile would be a heart-stopper.

Who was I kidding? He was a heart-stopper now. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Or had it been hiding in him, just waiting to come out?

“Anytime you think you’re man enough, sweetheart.” He shook himself all over, let go of the tree, and I wondered where the scared kid had gone. The one who had hugged me on the cold stairs while something awful knocked at my front door, something old, and foul, and smelling of rusty blood. “All right, Andy. Lead the way. Tony, Beau, you two carry Shanks. Does he need another shot, Dibs?”

“Can’t.” The blond boy shook his head. “If I give him more sedative he might get too tired to breathe or heal.”

The fog pressed close, as if it was listening. It reflected the sunlight oddly, shapes moving in its curtained depths. The wulfen started moving. Graves stepped around the tree and looked down at me. He looked taller, or maybe it was because I was so goddamn tired even though I was awake and mostly upright. The light had grown stronger, and the thopping sound of helicopters faded into the distance. I didn’t even know which direction we were going, or where we were.

Two of the wulfen heaved Shanks up. He looked pretty bad. Graves stepped close to me, picked up my left arm, and ducked so it settled across his shoulders. “I’m not leaving anyone behind,” he said, fierce and low. “Not anyone. Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry.” I tried to pitch it low, too. “If I hadn’t—”

“Shut up.” He took a few experimental steps. Once I let go of the tree, the ground swayed drunkenly underfoot. “Come on.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” someone said, and I surprised myself by giggling. The sound was very small and lonely, but Graves looked at me, and the corner of his mouth tilted up a little. Just a little.

The empty places inside me didn’t feel quite so big after that.

I need to borrow something…. It will come back, I promise.

I didn’t ask where Christophe was. I was too busy trying to keep upright. And besides, if I had to really admit the truth, I didn’t want to know. Not while my wrist pulsed, hot and sore. Not while the world looked like a paper cutout and the space inside my head where the touch should be was glaringly empty. Not while I was still scared, and hungry, and smelling of smoke.

It was better to lean in close to Graves and smell whatever shampoo he’d used before everything went bad. A breath of it clung to him under the smell of outdoors, smoke, and healthy young male who needs his daily shower.

We moved into the weird fog, steadying each other. And vanished like ghosts.