Defiance

CHAPTER FIVE

“Room service,” Christophe said pleasantly. “You take good care of her, Skyrunner.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” Nathalie slid the gun back in its holster and took the tray. “Do you seek admittance to the lady’s presence, Reynard?”

“Do I dare?” He grinned, rueful, and I touched the vanity’s painted surface. Ran my fingers over the heavy silver comb, the wooden box holding tissues. It felt like sacrilege to set any of my stuff on here. “If the lady is so disposed, mademoiselle.”

“That’s right, you mind your manners.” Nathalie turned smartly on her heel and marched away. “Lock the door, will you? Here, Dru. Your hot milk. And look, sugar cookies. The kitchen thinks you deserve a treat.”

“Sugar cookies?” That perked me right up. Milk and cookies, like I was five years old again. I didn’t mind, tonight. It was actually . . . soothing. To think I was safe here, finally. At last.

“I think chocolate chip might’ve been a better choice, but the kitchen apparently had other ideas.” Nat grinned, a flash of white teeth.

“I’m not even going to ask who does the cooking.” I always wondered, though. What was behind that mask of billowing steam that hid the kitchen’s interior?

“You don’t want to know.” Christophe slid the door shut. “The Broken is bedded down for the night. He’s amazingly amenable. All Robert has to do is invoke your name, and he follows like a lamb.”

Shanks had been slowly getting to know Ash, and they seemed to get along. Kind of. Dibs still refused to go anywhere near Ash if he wasn’t wounded, and a lot of the other wulfen seemed to feel pretty much the same way.

Everyone was waiting for him to go mad and start killing people. Or run back to Sergej.

Nathalie actually shivered. The vanity had plenty of room, so she slid the tray onto it, bumping aside the brush and comb and silver-backed mirror. “Jesus.”

“Quite.” But Christophe was looking at me in the mirror. “How are you?”

I shrugged. It was like he just forgot about Nathalie standing there when he looked at me. I can’t explain it, but if you’ve ever had it happen to you, you know. It’s like someone is trying to look under your skin, like you’re all alone with them no matter who else is in the room.

Like they’re seeing nobody but you, even in a crowd.

I reached for the embossed teapot on the tray, but Nathalie got there first. She poured, taking a long deep surreptitious sniff.

Because wulfen can smell poison. Most of the time.

I rolled my eyes. There were three little porcelain cups on the tray, but I could bet Christophe wouldn’t be taking a little warm milk.

He surprised me, though, by leaning over my shoulder to snatch a cookie. The draft of his apple pie smell was actually soothing. If he was here, nothing could get to me. “No weeping. If you’ve thrown up, you’ve done it privately. You’re a little pale, and you smell of old blood and resignation instead of fresh spill and fear. All in all, you’re taking this quite well.”

Is that a compliment? What do I say? “Gee, thanks”? I picked up a cookie. Perfectly round, perfectly golden, perfectly browned on the bottom. It was kind of nice to bite into it and destroy the perfection. No shortening in these; I could taste real butter and crunch the sugar crystals. “Yeah.” My stomach tried to close up, but now I was damned if I would let anyone know I felt like heaving. “I guess.”

“Jesus, Reynard, how gruesome can you get?” Nathalie made little shooing motions with both cups. “Go away. Go sit over there and let her have a cup of milk.”

That was another reason to like her. Christophe wasn’t so intense when she was around. She was a layer of insulation, and she ordered him around with such cocky self-assurance I kind of envied her.

Christophe grinned, movie-worthy teeth glinting, and ruffled his fingers across the top of my head before grabbing another cookie and retreating to the bed. Where he dropped down, as if the whole place belonged to him, and proceeded to keep watching me.

I rolled my eyes. Nathalie fussed over me until I ate a few cookies and drank off enough milk to satisfy her. She roamed around unnecessarily putting the room to rights while I sat and ran my fingers over the vanity’s edge, and when she came back to collect the tray I tried not to look relieved.

Sometimes when she pampered me I felt even more like I didn’t belong here. Like someone was going to come in and tell me there had been a mistake and would I please leave now? And I’d find myself on the street outside the Schola, or sitting in that food court in the mall back in the Dakotas, shivering and trying to think of what to do next.

“I’ll be back at five sharp this evening.” She cast a significant glance at Christophe, winked at me. “Behave yourself.”

He waved languidly. Nathalie retreated, the silver dress over her arm and the heavy tray balanced on one spread hand as if it was made of paper. I finished off the last cookie and moved the brush and comb around.

Nat swept the door closed. Christophe slid off the bed and padded across hardwood. He threw the locks, stood for a moment, and nodded. Didn’t put the heavy iron bar in its brackets, though, just retreated to the bed and sank down again with a slight but very satisfied sigh.

I gathered myself up, as Gran would have said. Come on. Ask. I waited until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “So has anyone found—”

He beat me to the punch. “If I had any news about the loup-garou’s whereabouts, Dru, I would have given it to you immediately. We’re still looking.”

“You wouldn’t think the king of the vampires would be that hard to find.” It was bad-tempered of me, I knew it. I just couldn’t stop myself. “If Ash could find me, he could find Graves—”

“You seem to be the only person Ash is interested in finding.” He didn’t visibly hold on to his temper, but it was close. “America is a big place; he could have your friend hidden in Canada or Mexico, for all we know. Or even further afield. It’s not beyond his power, and we don’t even know that he would keep the loup-garou with him. We’re looking. Finding Anna is challenge enough, but once we find her, we’ll have more of an idea where your friend is likely to be.” He let the sentence die. It was the same thing, said the same way almost every night.

I’d already tried tracking with a map of the US and a pendulum. Even with Graves’s coat—I’d mended the rips and tears in it, sewn up the torn-loose sleeve—spread out under the map, it was no good. There was static interference, the touch just echoing inside my head and the pendulum moving erratically instead of swinging out and locking onto his heartbeat.

I should have known Sergej would have ways of keeping even someone with the touch from finding him, or finding someone he didn’t want found. Of course he would. I hadn’t quite worked up to using my own blood in a finding yet.

That kind of magic leaves traces someone could use to hex you right back. If things kept on like this, though, I might get the courage to even do that. Even if Gran had warned me to never, ever use the red stuff unless someone was gonna die for real, no foolin’, you mind me now Dru.

She had all sorts of ideas about blood. Nowadays I wondered about that.

My hands turned into fists. Long narrow fingers, thumb on the outside so it don’t get broken when you punch, the scar across my left-hand knuckles from that one time in Macon when Dad and I were taking care of a hotel that had a resident angry ghost. I could still smell the burning from that night sometimes, and hear the window shivering as I punched it, desperate for a way out with Dad right behind me and the holy water bubbling in its plastic container, reacting to the fury of a swollen, fiery thing that didn’t like being dead—and hated everything that had escaped death so far.

We’d gone back during daylight and kicked the ghost’s ass but good. Still, the whole place had burned down. It hadn’t been a win, more like a draw. On the other hand, we’d both survived.

I rubbed at the scar. When I bloomed, would it go away? Maybe. Maybe my hands would look different then, too. And maybe they’d all stop fussing over me and let me do something useful for once.

Not soon enough. “I hate this. I hate thinking of . . . What if he’s torturing him? Sergej.” The name sent a glass spike of hate through my head. Christophe didn’t flinch, but his jaw set.

It was my fault Graves was captured. If it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be living in the Dakotas. Sure, his life hadn’t been exactly normal, but at least he hadn’t been at risk of dying at the hands of a crazed king vampire, right?

Right.

Christophe took a deep breath. “It isn’t likely. The boy is loup-garou , not wulfen. He won’t be as easy to break as—”

“But all it takes is time, right? And it’s been weeks. He could be anywhere now. He could even be . . .”

Dead. With no heartbeat for the pendulum to lock onto at all. It curdled in my throat. I didn’t want to say it. Not here in this pretty white room.

Christophe uncurled from the bed. The aspect slid through him once as he approached me, disappeared. He leaned down over my shoulder, his face next to mine and his blue gaze holding mine in the mirror.

Seen this way, we had an odd similarity of bone structure. We didn’t quite look related, but certainly like we came from the same country, especially with my hair pulled back. What was gawky on me was spare angular beauty on him. He leaned in close enough that his cheek was next to mine. And that made the skin on that whole side of my body heat up. The flush went all the way through me.

His tone was just the same, low and even, every word chosen carefully and the spaces between them echoing with a foreign tongue. “If he is dead, you cannot help him. If he is still alive, you will do him exactly no good by haring off and getting caught by Sergej yourself.” His mouth turned down, briefly, before he continued. “Not to mention you could waste several of the Order in an assault to free you, because we would certainly throw everything we have into the attempt. Your task is the hardest, Dru. It is to wait and to train. I would change it if I could.”

My chin jutted stubbornly. He read the mutiny on my face, plain as a billboard.

“Don’t even think about it.” The aspect ruffled through him again, blond-streaked hair turning dark and sleek, laying flat against his skull. The whispering sound of its shifting was like the ocean far away. “If I had to come fetch you, Dru, I would be very displeased. And despite what you think, every time I’ve gone up against my father”—his lip curled, fangs sliding free—“I’ve achieved no better than a draw.”

I was about to point out that he’d rescued me from his father, but then I thought of how close a thing it had been. The snow and the cold and the wulfen and Graves staring through the crack-starred windshield through a mask of bruising and bright blood.

There. I’d thought his name again. Graves. I winced.

The aspect retreated, and Christophe’s fangs disappeared. A djamphir’s fangs are meant for puncturing flesh, but they have almost no growth in the lower fangs. A nosferat’s are bigger yet, and ugly, and big on both upper and lower jaw. They deform the entire mouth, so that when suckers hiss, they look like a snake fixing to swallow an egg.

“I swear we will find him. But it takes time.” He straightened, apparently considering that to be that. “I’m on guard tonight. May I stay?”

I struggled with myself for a few seconds, gave up. “For a little while,” I said finally, and his whole face changed. It wasn’t the slow, dangerous grin he used when he wanted to scare someone. No, this was a genuine smile, ducking his head a little like he was pleased. And it warmed me right down to my bare toes.

Even if I didn’t really want it to. But some part of me did, right? Some part of me must, given the way I got all gooshy inside and how my internal thermostat went out of whack whenever he got close.

I couldn’t even figure out why. I mean, I didn’t like him that way, did I? I’d told Graves I didn’t. But here I was, and pretty much everything in me just wouldn’t listen. I kept doing weird things whenever I got a whiff of Apple Pie Boy.

Even though I knew he probably smelled like that because he fed from the vein. Like a sucker. A “glutter,” the wulfen called it—a djamphir that drank human blood.

They don’t have to. But it kickstarts them, gives them greater strength and speed and accelerated healing. The tradeoff is the risk of the aura-dark, an allergy to sunshine that can induce anaphylactic shock. Still, some djamphir do it. They aren’t supposed to . . . but they do, for that extra strength and speed. I hadn’t worked out if Christophe smelled like that because he drank, or because . . . I don’t know, some other reason. I couldn’t figure out where he’d find the time to bite someone, hanging around and training me all the livelong night, but still.

And was I a coward, because I didn’t ask? I had enough to worry about, right?

Right?

He stayed for a bit, and we talked about other things. Mostly about the paranormal biology textbook and where the tutor had left off, what the chemical processes were that allowed djamphir to sniff a victim’s or a nosferat’s blood and tell things about them—age, sex, sometimes even hair color. And what was the standard method for taking down a well-organized hunting pack of older nosferat instead of a Master and acolytes. Equals don’t often pack up, because they’re jealous and nasty even to each other, but it had happened sometimes and the Order knew how to deal with it.

I swear, sometimes I learned more from him in the last few hours of my “day” than from all the tutors. He never acted like my questions were stupid, or like I should have known everything in the first place, the way some of the other djamphir did.

So it got harder and harder, each dawn, to watch him walk out into the hall. Then to shut the door and know he was leaning against it on the other side and wishing he could stay inside while he heard me flip the locks and settle the bar in its brackets, the warding strengthening as I touched it.

But I kept sending him out each night. Because when I crawled into bed and dragged the long black coat up from underneath the covers—Nathalie always replaced it when she changed the sheets, and she didn’t say a word—and hugged it, smelling the fading breath of cigarette smoke and healthy young loup-garou, I didn’t want Christophe to see.