Jealousy

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

My back hit the door. I scrabbled for the knob with clumsy fingers, caught in a nightmare. Ash backed up two swift steps, hunched further, and kept growling. Tension ran through him, but the three remaining vampires—one a slight pale female with long dark hair, the other two a matched set of blonds, all with black, black eyes—stared at me. Their narrow white hands hung at their sides like strangled birds, and for a hellish moment I was back in that empty palatial fake adobe in the Dakotas with a ton of snow outside and fiercer cold inside.

The house where Sergej had tried to kill me. His eyes had been like this, too, sucking holes of black tar starred with speckled dust. None of these three had the sheer weight in their gaze to crush all independent thought, but it was bad enough when they opened their mouths and hissed at me. The female dropped back, moving with oily grace.

The worst thing about them was that they looked about fifteen. Sergej himself had looked no older than Christophe, except for his eyes. And oh, God, but the fangs slid free of their upper lips, curving down to touch their chins. Not like a djamphir’s smaller canines that only touch the lower lip—no, a full-blown vampire’s teeth mean business. Their jaws distend when they hiss, too. Just like a snake trying to get down a big egg.

The female crouched slowly. Her joints moved in weird, inhuman ways. They just moved wrong, worse than seeing a crowd of djamphir or werwulfen at once. Ash’s warning growl deepened a notch or two. My sweat-slick fingers found the doorknob, twisted—and slipped.

Shit. Of course. The door was locked. It led outside, of course it was locked. The two male vampires moved forward. The klaxon was still going on, the sound of shouts and running feet almost drowned in it.

Think, goddamn you! Think!

But my thinker was busted. My head gave an amazing flare of pain, and the scene unreeled in front of me. The males were going to swarm Ash, and if they could hold him down the female was crouched, ready to spring right over the top of them and collide with me. I’d seen the pictures, what vampire claws do to flesh. I didn’t even have my switchblade—I’d just slid the key in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I should have left, with or without Graves. But I promised not to leave him behind.

More cries. A howl of despair—maybe there were more suckers up causing chaos all over the Schola. And here I’d thought it was so safe.

Be honest, Dru. You knew it wasn’t safe here. But you’re tired, aren’t you. Sick of all this.

I swallowed hard. Freed my fingers from the slippery doorknob and shook them out, drew myself up.

If I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting.

I don’t know if Ash figured out their plan, but his hindquarters bunched, fur rippling, and he flung himself forward, colliding with the two males. I raised my hands, both of them fists, and almost choked on the taste of rotten, candled citrus.

And everything . . . stopped.

Roaring filled my ears. My mother’s locket flared with molten heat; the fang marks on my left wrist twitched like fishhooks in flesh. I had time to see every stone in the walls, every hairline crack as my pupils dilated and the dim hallway turned scorch-bright. The female vampire hung in the air; she’d cleared the tangled frozen mass of the boys duking it out and was stretched out like Superman, her fingernails turned to ten amber-burnished claws, each about four inches long and pointed at me. Her skin was perfect, matte, and poreless, her hair a floating banner writhing with horrible life.

Everything sparkled, encased in hard clear plastic. There was nowhere to go—if I could have ducked aside, I would have. The snap like a rubber band that would bring the world up to its regular speed hovered on the edge of my consciousness, held back by mental muscles hardened by the practice Gran had hammered into me in her own way when I was still a toddler.

Did she have any idea what she was training me for?

Something in me I’d never noticed before dilated. Warmth bloomed at the crown of my head, flowed down my skin to my numb-tingling sock feet. My teeth stung a little, the fangs sliding free, and the comfort of the aspect fought with uneasy disgust.

Because they had fangs, too. Bigger ones, sure—but the same kind.

My knees hit the stone floor with a jolt and I pitched forward, rolling.

Snap!

A bone-jarring crunch, a howl and a fresh splatter of acidic black blood. Wetness splashed me. I let out a short miserable cry of panic and disgust, kept rolling. The smell was every foul rotting thing in the world wrapped up together and powdered with rotten eggs, choking-thick in the confined space. The female hit the door with another massive hollow gonging sound, and Ash was down, scrabbling on the floor with the last surviving male. He wasn’t growling anymore. Neither of them made a sound.

The female vampire slid down, landed on her feet, and reversed with unnatural, fluid speed. I hit the wall hard, fetching up half-dazed and shaking the noise out of my head, the comforting warmth of the aspect still encasing me. My pulse thundered in my ears like feathered wings.

She saw me again, and the hate dancing in those black eyes was enough to make me sick. I threw out my hands, as if I was tossing a dodgeball, a great painless gout of force leaving me. It was like hexing the American history teacher back in the same classroom where I’d met Graves, the sense of steam bleeding through a valve, a relief like lancing a wound.

Only this time I wouldn’t feel guilty and pull the hex back like snapping a towel. No, this time it was for real, and I wanted to kill the thing in a female body that was looking to kill me.

The hex flew true and hit her squarely just as she was getting ready to leap. It flung her back against the door again with another crunch, and a high crazed laugh burst out of me. Because the force was building again—

—and Gran’s owl streaked down the hall, talons outstretched. There was no missing this time either. The bird claws bit deep, black blood exploded, and the female let out a scream so terrible it shook the hall and blew my hair back on a hot stinking draft. I slid farther along the wall as Ash struggled free of the broken body of the last male. He collapsed, hauled himself up again on slippery paws.

My hands slid in hot, greasy vampire blood. I choked again, crab-pedaling back along the wall, my legs pistoning wildly.

The female sucker lurched forward as Gran’s owl flapped its wings, each beat muffled and almost touching her hair. The claws were still tangled in her face, and the force streaming through me crested again as the talons bit deeper.

Light burst down the hall. A red streak arrowed past Ash, who sagged aside onto my feet. I barely saw the small doglike creature with a high-held rufous brush of a black-tipped tail as it leapt on the female, biting and clawing. She screamed again, but it was the miserable sound of an animal in a trap.

I grabbed at Ash’s pelt. He was bleeding badly, red fluid staining the lake of rotting black we both sat simmering in. The bandage Dibs had wrapped so carefully around my wrist flopped loose, squelching and steaming.

The light was too bright. Someone had flicked a switch and the incandescents overhead were blazing. I wondered, in one of those split-second thoughts that happen when things go crazy, what they paid each year for lightbulbs in this place.

He hurtled down the hall, deadly silent, and I pulled harder, trying to get Ash closer to me. Christophe, his hair slick and dark and the aspect shining on him like a halo, tore the female vampire’s throat out. Black blood gushed. Her body slumped aside and he jabbed down, the polished wooden stake in his bleeding hands whistling as it clove the air to bury itself with a sick meaty thump in her chest.

He turned on one booted heel. His thin black V-neck sweater was torn, a stripe of red blood painted one perfect, high-arched cheek-bone, and his eyes blazed unholy blue. His fangs were out, his entire face a mask of effort and ferocity. His jeans were ripped all over, and he was splashed up to the thighs with black blood.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy and so terrified at the same time. “Ch-Ch-Chr—” I stuttered over his name. Gran’s owl had vanished, and the little red animal—it was no bigger than a cat—rubbed against Christophe’s shin, its narrow black nose raised inquisitively. I flinched and realized what it was.

A fox. Christophe’s aspect in animal form.

Ash sagged against my legs. My teeth tingled, the aspect enfolding me. Christophe dropped the stake. It clattered on the floor, and he stalked forward. I would have backpedaled, but the wall was behind me and there was nowhere to go, especially with pound upon pound of deadweight wulfen on my lap.

He went to his knees, splashing in the vampire blood. Steam rose as the black ichor ate at fabric. I wanted to haul Ash out of it. I didn’t have the strength or the leverage.

Christophe reached over the Broken wulf and grabbed my bruised shoulders, his fingers sinking in. His face contorted, and he yelled something at me. I just stared. Besides, he was speaking in some weird foreign tongue, the same one that tinted his English when he was sleepy or upset.

And they say I have an accent just because I grew up with Gran and below the Mason-Dixon. Let me tell you something: People up North bite off every syllable like they want to chew it to death instead of tasting it proper.

Christophe inhaled sharply, throat working as he swallowed. Tried again, and this time the words were recognizable English. “Are you hurt?”

I took stock. I ached all over. My teeth felt like lightning was running through them. The warm-oil feeling of the aspect bathed the hurt and the bruises, but it couldn’t erase them completely.

He shook me. My head bobbled. He kept yelling. “Goddamn you, Dru, are you hurt?”

I finally shook my head. Found my voice. “Ash. Ash.” My hands were full of the Broken’s pelt, and I didn’t like the way he was just lying there against me. You can tell when someone’s hurt bad by the way they slump, not even unconsciously holding themselves together.

“Thank God,” Christophe whispered and pulled me away from the wall. He got his arms around me, and I smelled spiced-apple pies. The smell filled my nose. He pressed his lips against my aching temple and was saying something in a ragged, broken tone, but I didn’t care. Ash was caught between us, bleeding and unconscious.

I wanted to cry. But my eyes were full of hot graininess, and all I could see, my head tilted at a weird awkward angle, was a high curving arc of vampire blood, splashed smoking against the gray stone wall.