Jealousy

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I ghosted across the stone floor on numb feet. If they got to the door before I could unlock it, I would be caught in here with no place to run. And Ash . . .

I was sweating so bad the key almost squirted out of my fingers. I slid it into the lock with a rasping metallic sound, and the footsteps stopped. I couldn’t tell how far away they were, but the consciousness of danger made my palms wet and my thudding heartbeats blur together like hummingbird wings.

Oh, crap.

Ash slid forward, noiseless and straining. The textures of his fur rasped against my jeans. A completely, totally inappropriate giggle crawled up in my throat, drowned in the horrible citrus tang. I’m about to let the werwulf out for the night. It’s just like letting out the cat, only there’s no scratching or spraying.

I twisted the key just as the footsteps ran forward, tippy-tapping closer. The sounds echoed, and a bright spear of crystalline hate lashed across the inside of my skull. I let out a garbled half-scream and tried to shove the door open with every ounce of strength I could scrape up. My back seized, but Ash was already moving. He hit the door like a freight train, so hard the steel crumpled. It banged into the wall and gave a hollow gong! that would have been funny if a high glassy cry hadn’t split the air from up above immediately afterward. I stumbled out after him, desperate to be out of that little room.

A headache sank bony claws into my skull. I breathed out, pulling the touch up like a clenched fist. It was the only way I could keep myself separate, the only way I could tune out the hatred humming all around me.

That’s the thing about suckers. They hate so, so much. Sometimes I wonder if they replace their blood with pure liquid revulsion. The footsteps poured through the halls of the Schola Prima, drawing closer and closer. So many of them. Yet there was no warning bell, no alarm like at the other Schola.

Ash made a short chuffing sound, turning in a circle so fast his fur made a whispering noise. He all but pee-danced in place, and I stepped nervously out into the hall.

He lunged toward me, and I flinched back down the hall. He stopped short, considered me, lunged again. I stepped back, and he stopped.

Oh.

I got the idea, but it took all the courage I could scrape together to half-turn and set off, one hand touching the wall because I wasn’t too steady on my feet. He padded behind me, occasionally almost dancing in place when I slowed down, impatience in every fluidly moving line of him. Blood roared in my ears, almost drowning out the horrible little tip-tapping footsteps, and the most horrible thought in the world floated through my head.

Is he trying to get me someplace safe or is he driving me toward them?

Hell of a thing to think. I’d just been sleeping in the same room with him, and I’d been trusting him all this time. But oh, God, the nasty little mistrustful idea just wouldn’t go away.

The hall ran into a T-junction at this end. I glanced back nervously, my hair getting in my eyes, and I gulped in an unsteady breath. “Ash?” I whispered. “I, I don’t know—”

He bumped into me. I jumped and almost ran into the wall. He slid past, his shoulder then his chest and his flank touching my hip in one long stripe. His narrow graceful head looked left and right, and I heard the footsteps again. Like Q-tips tapping a drumhead, each one distinct but fuzzy.

They were even closer. Don’t ask me how I knew.

Ash kept his head cocked. Then he looked back at me, and the awful human madness in his glowing eyes dimmed a little. He flowed back and pushed me toward the right.

I didn’t know where this hall went. If I went down here, I’d be trusting him completely.

You were just sleepin’n there with him at’n the door, Dru. Too late now. Gran’s voice, practical and stinging. My cheeks were wet and hot.

I won’t lie. I did spit. I couldn’t stand the taste in my mouth, but it didn’t go away. My head hurt, a vise squeezing my temples. My bladder was incredibly full, and I was cold. My mother’s locket, touching my chest, was a chip of ice. My fingers were wooden.

Closer. They were closer. My breath actually fogged, I was so cold.

I slid around the corner to the right. There was a door at the end, a big massive oak-bound thing. The type that, here at the Schola, led outside.

I let out a soft sob of relief. But the cold crested, poured over me in a wave of ice like I was back in the snow in the Dakotas. And there was a hiss behind me.

“—Sssssssvetosssssha—”

I almost fell against the wall. Ash’s growl rose from the subsonic, rattling everything around us.

And if you’ve never heard a pissed-off werwulf howling as he takes on four vampires in an echoing stone hall, wow, you’ve really missed out.

Not really.

Get moving! They catch you in here, you die! Dad’s bark, the way it always sounded in my head when something bad was happening. I pushed away from the wall, my knees full of water, and almost fell. It was like being in a really bad dream, one where you can’t run because your entire body is too heavy to move, and the things behind you are breathing on your neck. Hot meaty breath, or cold, cold, knife-sharp breath.

I had to look back. I couldn’t not look back. The noise was incredible.

A thrashing mass of squealing, growling, bones snapping, and crunching writhed in the hall. Eyes like lamps, and there were only three of them now because black vampire blood exploded, painting the walls with its acid stink. I half-screamed again, a throaty whisper because I’d lost all my air.

Ash hunkered down, snarling. The vampire he’d killed flopped bonelessly on the floor, bleeding a wide puddle of brackish black. The bright copper taste of adrenaline cut through wax oranges on my tongue as I backpedaled, stone floor rasping skin off my palm and yanking the bandage around my wrist loose, my sock feet scrabbling. Trying to get away because their hate poured through my unprotected head and set all of me on fire. A cold gemlike fire, pure frozen evil burning as it scraped every inch of my shivering skin.

I screamed, Ash making that low freight-train noise, the vampires hissing as they cringed back. And to top it all off, a klaxon split the air with its own wild howl. The Schola Prima took a deep breath and woke, but it was too late. Because the slim pale vampires, all in black gear with leather loops and professional-looking buckles, surged forward, and I knew Ash couldn’t hold them off forever.