Defiance

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sweet. It was so sweet.

I’d been pushing the hunger down, keeping it at bay, for a long time now. Christophe said I was stronger than it. But I wasn’t. Not right now, with the rich copper in a haze around me and my entire body aching and the aspect bursting over my skin in a wave of sizzling. My lips, smashed against Anna’s cold neck, opened, and the fangs slipped free.

I tried to rip myself away. Her fingers closed on my nape, iron-hard. “God damn you,” she whispered. “Drink. Drink so you can save them.”

I wasn’t listening. It was like someone holding a kitten’s nose in a dish of milk. A hungry kitten.

No. Not hungry.

A thirsty kitten.

My fangs slid into her skin so easily, and a gush of hot perfume filled my mouth. Anna was saying something, whispering in some foreign language, and the touch turned it into words inside my head.

“Hate you,” she was saying. “Hate you, Reynard, and you deserve it.”

It made me sick. She even tasted bad. You know how you think perfume is going to taste good because it smells so good? But it doesn’t; it tastes like alcohol and acrylic.

Don’t tell me you haven’t tried it.

The worst part of it was the touch, lighting up the inside of my head like the Fourth of July. Whispering, hinting, showing me things.

Anna watching as Christophe crouched easily, all his attention on the street below. Her heart hurt, a sweet sharp pain, and she studied his perfect profile again. He wasn’t paying attention, which meant she could look all she wanted. “Why are we up here again?”

She just wanted to hear him talk. But he gave her an irritated glance, the rest of his face set and only his eyes sparking. “Pay attention, svetocha.” And the sting as the barbs behind the words hit home—she folded her arms, swallowing the sudden pressure in her throat.

She smoothed the skirt. It was exactly the right red, complementing her skin, and she’d learned the patience necessary to do up all the tiny buttons. Just see him ignore her in this—she made certain her eyeliner was perfect, and admired the heavy ruby drops in her ears. They sparkled just like she did.

But when she reached the Council chamber, there was a surprise.

The other svetocha sat sobbing in Bruce’s chair, and Christophe knelt by her side, looking up into her face. The rest of the Council gathered around, identical worry on every face. The other girl was nothing special, a curly-headed mouse in torn blue jeans and a white shirt that seriously needed laundering. She stank of nosferat and fear, and flinched when Christophe moved to touch her shoulder.

Anna stood in the doorway, her jaw suspiciously loose. He had never tried to touch her that way.

“They just . . . kept screaming,” the girl said dully, and Christophe leaned forward to catch her words.

“All’s well, ksiezniczko.” And Reynard was murmuring, not the curt monosyllables he affected with her, oh, no. He was trying to be soothing.

Soothing. To this sobbing little bitch, whoever she was.

Anna hunched in her bed, shoulders shaking. The racking would not stop; her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, tears slicking her fevered cheeks. She rocked back and forth, but quietly, so the djamphir on guard at the door wouldn’t hear.

She would die before she let them hear. Christophe’s words, clear and hateful, tolled in her head like church bells.

You, Anna? I could never love you. You love yourself far too much to need my help.

It isn’t true, she keened to herself, rocking, rocking. It isn’t true! I need, I NEED you . . .

But he was gone, and she was crying, and there was no comfort in the silken bed or the clothes on their hangers or the expensive perfumes and lotions racked on her vanity. Even the admiring, jealous eyes of the other Kouroi were not enough.

There was a hole in her, and it twisted . . .

The next mouthful hit the back of my throat and went down in a long, rasping gulp. Her fingers slipped out of my hair, and I tore myself away. Scrabbled back, crab-walking on my palms and sneaker heels, the malaika tangling inside their sheaths and scraping the concrete floor.

The malaika hilts hit the wall. I gasped, scrubbing at my mouth with the back of my hand, and Anna’s eyes were half-closed. Her head lolled on the slender stem of her white neck.

I’d bitten right where Sergej had. Every inch of skin on me crawled with loathing. My stomach cramped hard, closing up like a fist. I understood a lot more about Anna now than I ever wanted to.

“Milady?” The twin holding her felt for a pulse. “She’s . . . she’s alive. Barely.”

Oh, thank God. Thank you, God. New strength surged through me. The aspect came back, smoothing away all the aching and spreading blonde through my hair like a fast-forward at a pricey salon. Bloodhunger scraped at the back of my throat, the walls between me here and now and the past suddenly paper-thin. The touch threatened to spill me into a whirlpool of Anna’s memories, time fracturing and splintering as the hall outside turned a dark wine red, filling up with danger.

“Shit.” Kip chambered a round. “Incoming!”

I heard them, tasted the hate flying like clouds of bees around them. The lights were too bright, but closing my eyes didn’t help because the touch showed me everything anyway, as if the walls were clear and I was a glass girl full of red liquid—an unholy mixture of perfumed blood and pure, deadly rage.

Christophe’s blood wasn’t like this, I thought, and another iron cramp of nausea hit me. There wasn’t time, though, because Kip was already out in the hall, firing and screaming like he intended to make this his last stand.

It just might be, Anna’s blood whispered in my veins. There’s too many of them, and he’s wounded. Training rose up, lattices of information and reaction snapping together inside my head. There was so much—I’d barely scratched the surface with Christophe.

Thinking about him was like lighting a match in the room full of explosive gas my skull had become. I rocketed to my feet, tearing the malaika free of their sheaths. Another explosion, this one so close it rocked the entire hall, and I sucked in an endless breath.

“Get out of here!” I yelled, and piled out the door.