Defiance

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I dropped three floors and landed like a whisper, the aspect snapping over my skin like a rubber band again. That was one of the first things Christophe had taught me. If I’d been raised djamphir, I probably could have been doing some of this stuff all along. And nobody had thought to teach me what was, to them, such a basic skill.

There was that, at least. Christophe didn’t take anything for granted when it came to training me. He started with stuff even djamphir babies knew.

Stop thinking about him, Dru.

The balcony here gave onto a number of classrooms and a long wood-floored room with mirrors along the side. I’d’ve thought it was for ballet, but the lines painted on the floor were weird. I wanted to ask, but I also didn’t want anyone to know I was using it like a freeway. The windows were all locked, but on one of them, the lock was broken.

Don’t ask—I’ll just say that it’s really easy to hex a lock. Gran always went on and on about how you need to be careful with that because people need their privacy and everything. But I figure Gran would’ve been the first one to tell me that having an escape route all picked out from my room would be a good idea.

Thinking of Gran here at the Schola made me smile. A goofy grin, I could tell just from the way it felt against the bones of my face. It was also painful, but in a sweet way.

Except that it led to me thinking about Dad, and that freezing day when his corpse had come looking for me. A shiver went through me, and I shoved the memory away as hard as I could. With an almost-physical jerk that made the coat swish a little.

I padded through the long, dark room. The mirrors were dusty, and it always smelled stuffy, like nobody had been breathing in here for a long time. I twisted my ponytail up as I walked, digging another elastic out of my pocket to keep it in a sloppy bun. Nathalie was just going to have a fit over brushing it out later.

I wished she was right beside me, kind of. It would’ve been nice. It would’ve been even nicer if Graves was right next to me, slinking along quietly, that sarcastic little smile on his face and . . .

God, will you just stop it? Sticking the knife in.

The double doors were quiet when I put my hand against them. I extended the fingers of the touch, didn’t feel anyone breathing outside. Still clear. No little static-laden pools of don’t look here that would have meant a teacher or one of the guys meant to watch me. Graves’s coat brushed my ankles. I could kind of see why he wore it everywhere. It was armor between me and the world. Like a snail’s shell. There were plenty of pockets, too. I didn’t want to stash anything in here—it felt like putting stuff in someone else’s purse, you know? You just don’t.

But I could see where a kid who liked to be prepared for anything would find it comforting. I might even invest in one of these coats if—when—we got him back.

Except we might not. It’s been weeks, you can’t track him, and going out there to get him isn’t a good idea. Everyone keeps telling you that.

I was getting to the point where I wasn’t sure how much of what everyone was telling me was in Graves’s best interest. Or mine.

The hall outside was dark. Marble busts glowered across the hall at each other, perched on their carved pedestals. I waited a little bit, breathing softly and making sure. Then I slipped out and headed for the stairs at the end.

From there, it would be a short crisscross and a dash across one of the quads, and I could hook around and find the little copse of trees where I’d lost Graves’s trail last time. With his earring and his coat, I stood a better chance of seeing something. Getting some kind of clue.

It couldn’t hurt. And seriously, if I had to stay up in that room and just pace until Nathalie came to check on me, I’d go nuts. Out here, with Graves’s coat making that familiar whispering sound, I could pretend I was Goth Boy, stretching my legs to imitate his loping, gangly stride. It was just one step from the pretending to the seeing, and if I was patient enough, it would happen.

If it didn’t, well, I’d just keep trying. At least it was something I could do.

What was that? A noise, behind me?

I shot a nervous glance over my shoulder. The hall was deserted, the marble busts absolutely still between falls of dusty velvet. Still, something was off. Anxiety tightened my stomach into a squirming ball. It was ruining my concentration.

I sped up a little, but that didn’t help either. I took another glance over my shoulder. Nothing in the hall but dim dusty shadows.

When I turned back around, Christophe was suddenly there.

I actually flinched and let out a strangled shriek. I backpedaled furiously, almost tripping on the coat’s long hem. He moved in on me with spooky darting speed. Herding me, just the way I hated. I ended up with my back against the wood paneling right next to a long curtain of faded red velvet. He’d backed me right up into the wall.

He kept coming until he was nose to nose with me. A warm draft of apple-pie scent touched my face, and his eyes glowed bright blue in the dark.

“Jesus!” All my breath jolted away, leaving me starving for air. I felt like I’d been caught sneaking out my bedroom window.

Kind of funny, because I had.

Christophe studied me. I wasn’t used to anyone getting this close, or staring into my eyes like they wanted to read the wrinkles on my brain. Plus, he was probably not happy with me. I didn’t need the touch to tell me that.

I slid to my left, instinctively, wanting to get away, but his hand darted forward and spread on the wall next to my shoulder. His other hand did the same, and now I was practically in his arms.

Wait, isn’t he mad at me? I froze, trying to think of what to do next. No good. Body buzzing like a lightning rod. Brain vapor-locked.

“I think we should talk.” The aspect slid through him briefly, his fangs peeking out from under his top lip, halting, and retreating.

“Um,” was my totally profound response. “Uh, Christophe—” Jesus. Did he have to follow me everywhere?

“Have I been in any way unclear?” Quietly, as if he was asking me for a cup of coffee.

Huh? “Uh, what? Look, Christophe, I—”

He leaned in even further, and his nose touched my hair. He inhaled, deeply, and the flush that went through was so incredibly hot I was amazed my clothes didn’t start smoking. The apple-pie smell wrapped around me, and I wondered if it came from him drinking human blood.

My own teeth tingled at the thought, right down to their roots. The bloodhunger turned over inside my bones, uneasy.

Oh, God.

When he spoke, warm breath tickled my hair and touched my ear. “Have I been in any way unclear about my feelings?”

What the hell? I could barely get enough air in. Graves’s coat was way too big, but it was suddenly feeling heavy and uncomfortable. “I, um. I . . . Christophe, what?”

“Skowroneczko moja.” His right hand slid up the outside of my shoulder, along Graves’s coat, and he was touching my hair as well as breathing in my ear. All the blood sort of rushed to my head and made a sound like pulsing static. “I won’t push, and I don’t pry. All I ask is a little attention. A little consideration.”

My brain seized up. Attention? He was around all the time. Who else did I pay attention to? “What?”

He inhaled again. He was smelling my hair. Jeez.

Oh, wow. This was a lot more intense than kissing him. That just kind of . . . happened, you know? I could say that I just let him do it, it wasn’t really me.

This was something else. Because he smelled good, male and spice and that golden apple scent all mixed in, and the bloodhunger half–woke at the back of my throat. It didn’t send glass shivers through me, and it didn’t make me want to drink. It made my skin feel too small, and it made me move restlessly. Not to get away, though.

I didn’t precisely want to get away.

It was so different from anything else I’ve ever done. I mean, catching a quick makeout session with a middling-cute boy in the band room was one thing, because I knew I’d be gone in a couple weeks anyway. I didn’t get involved across sixteen states, but I did experiment, okay?

Graves’s coat made a sound against the wall as I moved, fetching up against Christophe’s other arm.

Graves . . . he’d kept backing up when it was time to get a little closer, so to speak. If he’d been all over me like this, I’d’ve . . .

What? What would I have done? It was so hard to think with Christophe so close. Especially when he leaned all the way in, pressing himself against me.

It was . . . nice. It was like the whole world had been shut out, and there was just him. Like he was a wall between me and everything that had happened since the night Dad hadn’t come home. I could relax, be open fingers instead of a closed-up fist. I could let a little of myself go, because he was there.

“I don’t mean to be cruel,” Christophe murmured. “I just want you prepared. I want you safe. Is that so hard to understand?”

He didn’t sound angry, thank God. For the umpteenth time that night, I was shaking. It wasn’t fear, though. It was relief so deep and wide I wasn’t sure I could stand up. My knees had gone noodle-gooshy and I found out my hands had crept up around his neck, fingers lacing together like I was afraid he was going to get away. Vanish, somehow, like everything and everyone else that had made me feel safe.

Everything tangled up inside me, and I let out a long sigh. My breath touched his neck, and he shivered. Like it was pleasant. My teeth tingled more fiercely, my jaw shifting, and the fangs were sharp aching points.

I inhaled sharply, and that was a mistake. Because I could smell the fluid in his veins, copper and spice, heat lightning and the smell of the desert when you drive with the windows down after dark and you’re not stopping anytime soon.

The hunger woke up the rest of the way. I turned stiff as a board against the wall, fighting off the urge to push my chin forward, mouth opening, and go for the pulse I could suddenly hear.

“Go ahead.” Christophe’s head tilted back slightly. The shaking had invaded him, too. Like there was an earthquake, and the only people noticing it were us. “I trust you. You’re all I have, Dru.”

What? “Chr-chr—” I was trying to say his name, but my tongue was clumsy around the fangs. They pricked, sharply, and I tasted my own blood. It stroked the hunger, red crawling up over the darkness behind my eyelids, and my hands untangled enough to shove violently at him. He stumbled back a step, and I clapped my right hand over my mouth like I was trying to stop myself from puking.

He grabbed my shoulders. “It’s all right. Shhh, it’s all right.” He said something else, too, but too low and confused for me to hear it.

I tried to back up through the wall. He held me still, and my stomach cramped in on itself. I shook my head, holding my mouth closed, trying not to smell him. Not because it was offensive, but because he smelled so goddamn good.

Or the blood did. I couldn’t tell them apart now. What if that apple-pie smell was him smelling like a snack, for God’s sake? Like a Hostess apple pie, just waiting for me to tear the wrapping off and take a bite?

My knees gave way. I slid down the wall, and he came with me. Graves’s coat tangled up my feet, and if Christophe hadn’t been holding on to me, I would have ended up sprawled instead of sitting on the floor.

“Now.” He sounded completely calm. “Where are you going? Let me guess. Anywhere you can, to get away.”

Not really. I kept my hand clapped tight over my mouth. He crouched on his heels like it was as comfortable as breathing, leaned forward a little. His fingers tweezed at the heavy material of the coat, on the right where it was shredded by something’s claws and I’d carefully stitched it together.

“Or,” he said, quietly, “you’re looking for someone.”

The bloodhunger retreated, snarling, step by step. After a little while, I could peel my hand away from my mouth. My teeth tingled, but they were only bluntly human. “Christophe—” I sounded like all the air had been punched out of me.

“He’ll be alive.” Christophe’s hands dangled, loose and expressive. Even that looked graceful and planned. “But he won’t be unchanged. Sergej will use him as bait to catch you. You’re the real prize.”

The name sent a twinge of pain through my head. I wasn’t sure if it was the word itself, or the load of hate and contempt Christophe’s voice carried every time he said it.

And there was something bothering me lately. My mouth started working again, thank God. “Why won’t he just go after Anna? She’s easier to get to, isn’t she? What with sending him information all the time and stuff.”

“You’re the bigger threat, Dru.” As if talking to an idiot. “He’s already corrupted Anna. You? You’ve not only fought him off, but you’re incorruptible. He lives to twist things, kochana. You wouldn’t understand.”

Great. What? “Okay, sure. Look, Christophe—”

He reached up. I almost flinched, but he only tucked a fallen curl behind my ear. His fingertips brushed my cheek. Warm skin, soft and forgiving. But my shoulder hurt, the bruise throbbing. His fingertips slid down, touched under my chin, and I found out I was staring at his chest before he pushed gently and I was forced to look up at his shadowed face.

“Will you at least consider me an option?” A bitter little half-smile, and his shoulders hunched slightly. “I don’t know how much more open I can be. About how I . . .”

Oh, my God. The tangle of feelings inside me snarled even further. “I like you.” There, it was out. It was said. Had I been lying to Graves, or to myself? “I really do. You’re . . . different.”

I could have kicked myself. “Different”? That was all I could come up with?

Now there was a ghost of amusement in his expression. One half of his mouth curled up, a quiet, companionable almost-grin. “Is that the word you’d choose?”

I grabbed my courage with both hands, so to speak. “Yeah. One of them, anyway.”

A single nod. Then he went still, in that way older djamphir have. “What happened between you and the loup-garou?”

Oh, for God’s sake. But then I realized he probably wasn’t asking about the state of the union, so to speak. He was asking about something else. Or at least, I was only going to answer him as if he was asking about something else. “You mean, that day? He, uh, he found me. After Anna and I had a . . . a fight. She had the gym cleared and came to do something, I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall, because Christophe’s attention was so focused. It was like having a laser drilling right through me. All this time, and he was the only person who really looked at me.

Even Nat sometimes didn’t see me. She saw a svetocha, that was all. Something I had to live up to. Something I had no idea of how to live up to, when I was just regular me.

Just Dru.

I swallowed hard, continued. “I got busted up a bit. Graves . . . he wanted to know who’d done it. I didn’t want to say.” I couldn’t get the words out. I was stupid. “He got mad. Stamped off.”

Another single nod, breaking his eerie stillness. “Leaving you unprotected.”

Defending Graves was like defending Dad. The urge was immediate, overwhelming, and instinctive. “I didn’t—”

He made a sharp slashing movement with one hand. “I know you’ll hear no word against him. But no matter how angry he was, leaving you alone should not have been an option.”

Meaning, probably, I wouldn’t do that. But Christophe had left me alone before, hadn’t he? Or let me think he wasn’t hanging around.

I slumped against the wall. “Can we get off this subject?”

He shrugged. I waited for him to say something else, but he just rose, fluidly, and held out a hand. I took it—there was no reason not to—and he hauled me up as if I weighed less than a feather. The leashed strength was frightening. Especially since I’d seen him use it.

When I had my balance, I tried to pull my hand back. His fingers tightened, briefly, before he let go. Just to make sure I knew he was choosing to turn me loose, I guess.

Or just because he didn’t want to let go.

“Dru.” He was looking away now, up the deserted, shadowed hall.

The busts gleamed as they watched with blank eyes, each one a djamphir famous in the Real World for something or another, but not to be found in any ordinary history books. I suddenly wondered if they minded. Brought myself back to reality with a twitch. “What?”

He kept staring away. “I don’t mistake you for your mother. She was the closest I had to . . . a friend. A real friend. She taught me much.” He stopped, inhaled sharply as if the words pained him, and dropped his chin a little. “But I didn’t have trouble sleeping or eating when I thought of her in danger. I didn’t feel my heart tear itself out of my chest when she looked sad. I did not ever fear for her the way I fear for you.” The aspect settled over him in a wave, and I could see it rising from him like heat shimmers from pavement on a scorcher of a day. “I don’t blame you if it’s not . . . enough. I’m tainted, I know as much. Just . . . let me stay near you. Please.”

What could I say to that? Especially since my heart gave a huge painful leap. Somehow I crossed the space between us, and when I put my arms around him, he hugged me back. I didn’t smell his blood now. I just smelled him, that maddening apple-pie-and-male blend that yanked everything inside me sideways. It helped that when I laid my head on his chest I could hear his heartbeat going like a clock. Tick-tock, tock-tick, each beat strong and steady.

Right then it didn’t matter that he was like a twister, or that he was infuriating when it came to sparring, or that my shoulder still hurt. What mattered was the way he slumped against me, sighing a little, and the way I finally felt like I was . . . home. It mattered that he always came back for me, and it mattered that he’d said those things to me.

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me, ever.

That was the first time I ever really kissed him. As in, the first time I kissed him without waiting for him to try for me.

And it was great.