Betrayals

CHAPTER 29

“The freeway! Take the freeway!” My elbow whapped Ash’s face. I leaned forward and screamed. “Right side, right side, on-ramp! ON-RAMP!”

“SHUT UP!” Shanks yanked the wheel. We hit the on-ramp doing at least seventy, and he swore with astonishing creativity. Street-lamps whizzed by. Something hit the trunk and the car fishtailed, righted itself. I choked, the taste of rotten wax oranges filling my mouth again, and wished I could spit. A spot of fierce cold bloomed on my chest, I flinched.

A tremendous weight crashed down on the back of the car. Graves, Dibs, and I all screamed, a three-part chorus of surprised terror. The glass didn’t break completely, and Christophe’s gun spoke again as his leg loosened almost free of the headrest. His booted foot narrowly missed my face. I threw my head back and got a confused impression of shadows, red eyes glaring down, a flicker of brazen hair and a spot of orange light with a blue center.

It was the Burner. Her hand was full of flame, and she stared down through the crazy-cracked glass, her eyes full of unholy crimson fire. She screamed, a rising crescendo of hate, and Christophe fired again.

The car zigged and the vampire’s weight was thrown away. The entire back window was starred with breakage. The blue-threading flame whispered between the cracks and snuffed itself out as I let out a short puffing breath, my skin tingling with the warmth of the aspect.

Christophe’s leg moved again. He slithered back down into the car, and the first thing he did was drop his gun, lean over the seat, and grab my shoulders. “Are you all right? Dru? Are you hurt?”

What the—“I’m fine!” I had to pitch my squeaking voice over the roaring wind from the window.

Shanks wove in and out of thin traffic. Thankfully, we were going the right way, the only thing in front of us was taillights. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. The aspect receded, blond streaks sliding back through his hair as the wind kissed it.

He didn’t let go of my shoulders. “Slow down, Robert. That was the Burner, and she will burn no more. Not with half her head gone.”

“Yeah. Okay.” The wildness filling the car slackened a bit. “Jesus. Are you sure we’re clear?”

“Sure enough. But don’t stop for a while.” Christophe gave me a thorough once-over, and his eyes dropped to the wulfen’s head in my lap. Splashes of streetlight and reflected headlamp-shine bounced across his face. “You should have left him behind.” His lips shaped the words; they were lost in the slipstream.

My fingers were still tangled in Ash’s hair. My chin lifted a little, and my face settled against itself. I stared at Christophe, my gaze moving over his perfectly proportioned features. I could draw him, if I ever had the time and the paper. But how could I capture the way he was looking steadily at me, thoughts moving behind the cold blue of his eyes?

My heart hadn’t stopped pounding yet. But, thank God, I didn’t blush. I was too terrified. One thin pane of automotive glass between me and a flame-slinging sucker. Jesus.

“He’s sedated,” Dibs said. “I can’t give him more, but that should keep him calm. Why isn’t he changing back?”

“He can’t change back, that’s what Broken means.” Shanks’ dark eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. It had gotten knocked askew sometime in the last scrambled fifteen minutes, and he adjusted it as the car slowed down a little more, achieving a freeway-respectable sixty instead of a wild looping seventy-plus.

“Shit, really?” Dibs actually flinched, as if he expected Ash to wake up and start making trouble.

“Why, I mean, um, this is the one? The one you were talking about? The last Silverhead?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, but my eyes never left Christophe’s face. “This is Ash. We’re going to help him. As much as we can. How far are we from the Schola?”

The djamphir let go of me. He studied me for another few moments, then slid down in his seat and rolled his window up. The sudden almost-silence was deafening. “Not long now. Keep heading south. We should hit the expressway in an hour or so.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll be stopping for coffee.” Shanks yawned, but he was still glancing in the rearview every now and again. Looking at me? Or at Ash, slumped across everyone’s lap in the backseat? At Graves, who had straightened and now stared ahead, a muscle in his jaw ticking? Or at Dibs, who was startlingly pale as he dug in his medical bag?

Or maybe just staring at the back window, where the print of a vampire’s fist still reverberated in the cracked glass right over my head, bits of it melting together as if a blowtorch had kissed it. What would have happened if that hand had broken through?

I didn’t want to think about it.

“I don’t know if we can, with him in the car.” Christophe let out a chill little laugh. “Just keep moving until the sun’s up. One problem at a time.”

It was good advice. I looked down. Ash had stopped bleeding. The rips and gouges in his flesh were starting to close up. It’s eerie to see a wulfen heal; you get the feeling that if you look away the skin will twitch and the damage unreel itself like in a bad movie.

Silence and uneasy half-light filled the car. I let out a sharp, long breath. My shoulders ached. I stared at the back of Christophe’s head. He ran his fingers back through blond-streaked hair, the highlights falling into place. How did he look so perfect all the time? It was goddamn unnatural.

But then, so was I, right?

I peeled my left hand away from Ash’s blood-clotted fur and reached over. Graves grabbed my fingers, and when he squeezed, a scalding jolt of relief went straight up my arm and exploded in my heart. “We’re almost there,” I said to the lean hairy face in my lap, to the silence, to Graves, and to my own heart, palpitating inside my rib cage like a squirrel on a wheel. “Everything will be all right.”

Nobody else said anything. I suppose I should have been grateful, but instead I just felt shaky and unsteady, like I might start crying. My tough-girl face was gone for good.

The city painted the sky above it with orange, rapidly turning to gray as the sun came up. Christophe handed two coffees and the herbal tea back; Graves passed Dibs his tea. I took a Styrofoam cup of coffee and tried not to look at Christophe. My hair was a wild mess, and I felt greasy all over. Being jammed up against the door with a werwulf’s heavy head in my lap also made my back really unhappy. I was bruised and aching all over.

“Less than a mile,” Christophe said, and dug in the bag. “Egg McMuffin, Dru?”

“Ugh.” But my stomach protested. I had to eat something. “Yeah, I guess. What are we going to do when we get there?”

“You’ll have questions to answer. So will other people—” he started doling out packets of wrapped grease, “since they won’t know you exist until you show up at their front door. With a Broken, two wulfen, and a loup-garou.” He even sounded cheerful. “It will be interesting, that’s for sure.”

Graves handed me an Egg McMuffin and two searing-hot hash browns. His eyebrows had drawn together. “Wait a second. What are you going to be doing while—”

“I don’t want to give them another chance to kill me.” Christophe gave him another handful of fast food. “And I have other business.”

“So you’re sending us in somewhere, again, where you know there’s a traitor.” Graves kept passing food to Dibs. “Nice.”

“This is where I thought you were going in the first place.” Christophe’s tone was deceptively mild. “You two were whisked away to a back-country reform school satellite instead of the one place I could be reasonably sure you were safe. This time I’m going to make sure you get in the front door, and make such a commotion Dru’s presence and survival cannot be hidden. Others on the Council and the Schola will begin to ask questions, especially once you’re debriefed.” He paused. “I don’t know quite what they’ll make of the Broken, though.”

The Broken. Not even Ash. And the way he said it was chill and disdainful.

“I’m betting once he cycles through the sedation, he’ll start throwing himself at any wall in his way to get back to Sergej.” Christophe sighed. “It will be a mercy if he dies.”

I took a huge bite of overprocessed English muffin, sausage that had no relationship to meat, and greasy egg. Said nothing.

“You’re not going to stick around to sponsor her?” Shanks accepted a McMuffin and tore through the wrapping with his teeth, spat it aside, and kept one hand on the wheel. Traffic was clumping up, since it was morning. “I mean, that’s a one-way ticket to—”

“She’ll probably insist on you being kept as her guard. There might be a few others eager for the honor.” Christophe shrugged, juggled a hash brown from hand to hand. “If Dylan survived, he’s probably gotten a report in somehow.”

I swallowed hastily. “He said his contacts weren’t responding. Like Augustine. He said Augie’s disappeared.”

“Don’t fear for August. He’s canny.” Christophe set the crackling paper bag aside. The whole car smelled like salt, blood, fast food, and unwashed teenage bodies. Not to mention sick werwulf. Ash twitched as Shanks slammed on the brakes and hit the horn.

“Moron!” he yelled. “Stay in your own goddamn lane!”

“City driving.” Christophe didn’t even sound fazed. “In any case, Dru, my concern is getting you in the Schola’s doors. Not worrying for Augustine. Six more blocks and a right, Robert.”

“I got it.” A light turned green ahead. Shanks eased the car forward. I kept eating, barely tasting the food. My hands trembled, and I didn’t think it was from hunger.

Traffic parted like waves. The gray, smoky clouds were shredding, and I saw flashes of blue sky.

Sunshine meant we were safe. At least from the vampires.

My mother’s locket hid under my sweater. It was comfortingly warm, skin-warm. Like normal metal.

“You know who it was.” My voice surprised me. “In the transcript. Christophe, you know.”

He shook his head. Took a crunching bite of hash brown. His teeth were as white as Ash’s. White as Graves’ wide smile now, too. “I suspect, Dru. I don’t know.” A long pause, as another block rolled by. “But I’ll find out. And then, God help whoever is playing this game.”

It’s not a game. This is my life we’re talking about. I took a scalding gulp of coffee. It didn’t help. The same nameless instinct that had made me refuse to leave without Ash told me Christophe knew more than he was telling. Though you didn’t have to be a genius to figure that out. He always knew more than he was telling. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve told you. Do you remember? I have a reason now. Turn here, Bobby.”

“I know.” The car wallowed to the right.

The engine sounded a little unhappy, and I didn’t blame it. “Christophe—” My cheeks were on fire again. Why was I blushing like a… like a girl, for God’s sake?

“Hush, Dru. Two blocks up on the left. Do you see it?”

“I see it.” Shanks slowed down. “I take it you don’t want a chauffeur?”

The djamphir laughed. “Why start now? Take care of her, boys.”

Graves glanced at me.

“Wait a second.” I had my hands full of breakfast and Ash was stirring in my lap, little gleams showing under his eyelids. “Don’t tell me you’re going to—”

Too late. The car almost stopped, Christophe’s door opened, and by the time I got half my protest out it had slammed. He darted between two parked cars and vanished down an alley between two brownstones.

“I can’t believe this.” But I could. It was pretty much the way everything was going now.

“Don’t worry.” Shanks actually stuffed the rest of his muffin in his mouth and chewed two or three times, then gulped. “Shit, he took my coffee. Anyway, Dru, we’re home free.”

“Yeah.” Graves gave me an eloquent sidelong look, just as Shanks sped up a little. The two blocks slid underneath the car’s tired tires, and just as he turned left through a half-open wrought-iron gate, sunlight burst down the street, dipping everything in gold. “Home free. Until someone else tries to kill us.”

“Great.” I almost dropped the McMuffin on Ash’s face. Then I began chewing. Whatever happened next, I’d probably need a full stomach to handle it.

A wet black driveway unreeled, trees arching on either side. The tips of their fingering branches held delicate green buds. When we came out of the double line of greenery, sunshine splashed across a huge white stone building. The lawns were immaculate. There were a pair of concrete lions standing guard at the end of the driveway, too, and I thought I saw one of them twitch. But it could have been just the blinding, fresh morning light.

It looked familiar, but I realized the other Schola had been a smaller, grayer copy of this place. It had seemed really grand and imposing, but this was the Real Deal. I swallowed sudden dryness, doused with a last gulp of overcooked coffee. I dropped the cup near my feet and hoped my numb legs would hold me up when we finally got out of the car.

“Thank God,” Shanks said, softly. “We’re safe.”

I looked down at my lap. Ash’s eyes had shut again, the gleam under the lids gone now. “I hope so.” I finished the last bit of my muffin. Dibs sighed, a sound of pure relief.

Shanks pulled up to the steps leading to the front door. He cut the engine, and I sensed that people inside the big pile of white stone were aware of our arrival. Any moment now the door would open, and we’d have questions to answer and things to do and…

The huge, iron-bound double door at the top of the gleaming white stairs was already opening, revealing a slice of darkness inside for just a moment before slim teenage forms boiled out. They were all boys, and all djamphir.

Which ones were enemies?

“I sure as hell hope so,” I repeated, and reached for the door handle.