Reckoning

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It probably says something for American cities that a teenage svetocha, covered in grime and soot and with blood streaking her arms, can pass largely unnoticed. Just what it says ain’t nice.

I wasn’t on autopilot, but I wasn’t quite myself either. The touch was a loosely waving anemone around me, steering me away from the edges of trouble. I crouched for a good fifteen minutes in a dumpster once, peering out between the lid and the lip of it, my feet slipping a little on greasy crud and my eyes watering from the stench. It covered up the thick aroma of cinnamon rolls boiling up from my skin, though. And while I watched, gagging every few moments and trying desperately not to throw up, I saw things.

Dogs built of smoke and fine hexwork, thin red and blue threads coalescing in steam vapor as they ran through the streets, searching. Little tiny flying things, that same red and blue hexwork, hanging from threads like puppet butterflies. And the black paper-cutout shadows of suckers, blurring through and trailing bright spangled streaks of hatred.

This is a lot of trouble for one little svetocha, don’t you think? I held down my gag reflex by sheer will, again. My sneakers slipped in crud, and a thin cold finger of liquid touched my ankle. Oh, gross. So gross.

I found a residential section, and it took me a good hour to find a car worth stealing. It was a Jeep Wagoneer, spare ignition key left under the front floor mat—don’t ask, some people are just that dumb—and this time I didn’t stop to see if there were insurance papers in the glove box. Because the hunting cries were still rising all over the city in crystal chill columns of hate, the more frequent the closer dawn came. The eastern sky held a faint tinge of gray, but not nearly enough to suit me.

Gran’s owl circled overhead, and with it floating in front of me I penetrated a tangle of side streets and—luck or the touch, I’m not sure—found a freeway on–ramp. 75-86 South; that would take me to 65 South. Then I’d cut west, and I’d be in Houston in a couple days if the car held out, less if I pushed it and drove the whole, what, fourteen hours or so?

Just get clear of the blast zone, Dru. Then hole up somewhere and do some thinking. I’d say this requires some heavy thought, at least.

I jammed the accelerator down. The Jeep picked it up, and the sound of the freeway filled my ears because I had the front windows down. I was never stealing a car without power windows again, dammit.

I wiped at my cheeks, but I found out I wasn’t crying. It was some kind of occasion—everything going to hell and a vampire attack, and for once I wasn’t leaking.

Hooray.

There’s a town near Mobile called Daphne, which is a really pretty name if you don’t know the legend behind it. On the outskirts there’s an abandoned house, set back from the Gulf and slowly sinking into sandy soil. Something underneath the small white frame house is giving way an inch at a time, and the development it was a part of way back in the sixties is a ghost town. Nobody thought that the ocean would start taking nibbles off beneath this particular piece of the shore, but I guess the sea had its own ideas.

All the houses are crazy cockeyed by now, roofs slumping and walls buckling. The whole neighborhood is condemned, and I guess the developer who went out on a limb to convince people this was a great idea ended up shooting himself in one of the homes. Which one, Dad and I never found out.

Sometimes the dead do just leave. It happens.

Johnny Cash’s mournful voice shut off when I cut the engine. The Wagoneer was filthy with dust from the little bit of offroad needed to get here, and for once the Gulf smelled fresh. Just before noon, the sun was up, it was hotter than hell, and even the breeze coming off the water didn’t help. Salt smell filled my nose, I blinked and rubbed at my eyes. Unbuckled my seat belt.

This particular house was familiar. The freshening breeze moaned through half-open windows and whispered through sea grass, and I inhaled deeply. No trouble anywhere, the touch loose and quiescent like a sleeping cat. Gran’s owl had faded out with the dawn. I was grainy-eyed and still smelled of soot and ick, but at least I’d washed the worst of it off at a gas station once the sun was safely up.

It might not even be here. I bit gently at my lower lip as I studied the house. Don’t rush it, even if you think there might be nothing there. Take your time. You’re on your own, no safety net. Do it right.

Same white house, sloping to one side, same broken windows. Same cold breath against the nape when you approach it, your feet crunching on sand and bits of shell scattered from the walk that used to be snow-white. The pavement is cracked; the streets have gaping potholes that could break an axle. I was kind of surprised I’d found it—I’d been navigating on memory and gut instinct alone.

I almost expected to see Dad in front of me, walking soft and easy like he was heading into enemy territory, gun drawn but down. He never approached a cache without gun in hand.

Because if you’re coming back to a cache, things might be bad, and if things are bad, the chance of someone waiting there for you had to be seriously considered. Still, he and I were the only people who knew about this place, right? And two can keep a secret if one is . . .

. . . dead.

Don’t think about that. Get in, get the cache, get out.

I supposed I should be grateful we’d spent so much time below the Mason-Dixon. At least I knew what I was about down here, and I would be in comfortable territory even over into Texas.

Of course, I’d been in comfortable territory at Gran’s, too, and still managed to screw that up hardcore. I didn’t even know how I’d messed up so bad. It’d just happened way too fast to take back.

I toed the door open, a malaika in one hand. A razor-sharp wooden sword was hardly the worst weapon to have around, I guess, but I would’ve preferred a gun. I’d had to unbuckle the leather harness before I got out to pump gas, for God’s sake, and my back wasn’t too happy even under the aspect’s smoothing heat. Driving with a pair of malaika strapped to your back is one way to end up feeling like an arthritic old lady.

The door creaked. The floor rolled in rotting humps, and the white noise of the ocean filled my head. Come here’n take a look at this, Dru-girl. Dad’s voice, calling through the shaky halls. Sharp rotting tang of mildew, each inch of wood swelling, drifts of paper trash in the corners. Looked like nobody had crashed here for long, thank God.

Even normal people can sometimes feel the creepy-chill. And stay away.

I cased the entire house, moving ghost-quiet, working the sightangles like Dad had taught me. Sometimes he had me sweep a house with him, sometimes on my own while he timed me and offered pointers afterward. I’d never really considered it not normal. I mean, I knew other kids didn’t do what I did, but no kid ever thinks their home life is weird. It’s just . . . there. Like your breathing, your heartbeat.

Like gravity. Only all my gravity was gone and I was spinning.

You’re a disease, Dru. You’re bad luck.

My sneakers tracked in the sand, and when I finally made it up the tottering stairs a second time memory filled my head like gasoline fumes. Dad showing me again how to move quietly on steps, how to test each board, how to walk only where he did and the signals to use when I felt something weird. Of course, he could usually tell just by looking at me—I guess I got that look, the one that gave him the singing willies, a lot. You go white as a sheet and your eyes . . . well, they look like your ma’s, he’d told me once. I think he’d had a little too much Beam that night.

He generally had to have a little sauce before he would talk about Mom.

Upstairs in the smaller bedroom, the closet was propped open. The carpet in here was rotten clear through, probably black with mildew underneath, but the day was hot enough that it didn’t soak my knees with yuck when I went down cautiously and felt around inside the closet. It smelled truly ferocious in there, and by the time I found the notch I was halfway to throwing up again. I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything.

The slice of flooring was swollen from the morning damp, but I got it worked up. And hallelujah, the ammo boxes were still there. Four in a row, neat as you please. Which meant I was now armed, had some extra cash, and probably had some ID, ammo, and MREs in there too.

“Oh, thank you,” I whispered, not sure who I was thanking. God, maybe, or Dad for laying down the cache in the first place. There was another cache on my way to Houston, but this one meant I could breathe and I wouldn’t have to stop to gather liquid resources. “Thank you. Holy . . .”

I stopped, my head coming up. Was that a soft footstep? The touch unfolded, swept out in concentric ripples, little waving fingers combing the air, searching for danger.

Nothing. The sooner I got out of here, though, the better. I didn’t stop to look inside the ammo boxes, just loaded them in the Wagoneer’s trunk and piled in, spun the wheel, and left only footsteps and a roostertail of dust as evidence.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

By the time I reached Biloxi I was about ready to lay down and die from exhaustion. The second time I almost veered out of my lane after blinking, I decided it was time to find a hotel. My eyes ached, the rest of me wasn’t far behind, and my mother’s locket flared with alternate ice and molten heat.

Plus I felt like I could eat every trashy bit of fast food I could lay my hands on. With the cardboard it was wrapped in. And the bag. Extra fiber, yum.

I should have driven further. But really, wrecking the Jeep was so not an option. The sun was westering, dipping behind an inky veil of clouds, weather moving in from the Gulf on indigo wings with furnace underlighting. Looked like a storm, and a doozy too. But it would probably make things fresh and clean in the morning. I found a Walmart and used up some of the cash from the cache—the bills smelled of mildew but were otherwise all right—to buy jeans. Panties. T-shirts, a couple tank tops, a couple sports bras I was sure would fit me now, and a couple pairs of cheap sneakers. And, finally, some elastic bands for my stupid hair. If I could just stop losing all my luggage things would be swell. Or at least, better.

Still, better losing some gear than losing my life. Right?

That silver lining was wearing away right quick.

The Comfort Inn had palms in the driveway and a sleep-eyed clerk who didn’t even glance at my fake ID. Which was a relief, since I looked nothing like the picture anymore. The Dru on the ID Dad had put in the second ammo case had darker, almost-frizzed curls, a different-shaped face, and a shy young smile that didn’t quite believe it was being photographed. She was twenty-one according to the birth date.

I was getting older all the time.

I ever catch you usin’ these to buy booze, Dru-girl, I’ll tan your hide.

He sometimes threatened that, but he’d never swatted me even once. Neither had Gran. It was just something they said. And seriously, the threat kept me in line.

I know better than to make waves when someone can just disappear on you.

I’d looked at the little plastic-covered card and felt a funny sensation all over my skin, like I was vanishing.

I rubbed my thumb over the picture before I stuffed it back in the cheap wallet Dad had packed with it. As if it was my mother’s photo in Dad’s billfold—the only picture of her we’d had, and gone now.

Sergej probably had it. And I was so tired I didn’t feel anything at the thought.

I thanked the sleepy clerk kindly and took my room key with a tired flourish. At least I only looked road-grimy, and smelled bad but not bad enough for a normal person to notice.

The lobby was done in the particular type of pink florals that will give you a headache unless you’re an eighty-year-old bleary-eyed grandma who thinks overstuffed couches are cute, but the rooms weren’t bad. Quiet, at least, and the sheets were clean. The water pressure was decent too, and I stood half-asleep in the shower for a long time. The clothes I’d been wearing were useless; I tied them up in a plastic Walmart bag and would dump them in the morning.

It was weird to be alone.

At the Schola I’d had to work to get some time to myself; driving with Graves and Ash meant I was always listening to and anticipating them, and traveling with Christophe meant I was always following him around.

You can hide from them, but not from me.

Was he dead? Possible. Not very likely, Christophe was tough . . . but still. He’d either meet me in Houston or he was on my trail right now. And Graves, his eyes turning darker and darker, tied up or . . .

I tried not to think about it. Failed miserably. How deep was Sergej’s hold on him? Why hadn’t I known?

Dru! Dad’s voice barked, and I jerked, my hand hitting the side of the shower. Quitcher woolgatherin’! You’re asleep on your feet like a mule. Come on, now.

By the time I was in a clean T-shirt and underwear, yawning and scratching and standing in front of the microwave while a Hungry-Man dinner revolved inside, I was well on my way to fretting. Sometimes it gets that way when you’re tired—nothing stays in any sort of proportion.

Of course, I had a bunch of vampires trying to kill me and everyone who hung around me for any length of time got blown up or tortured. Even if I was losing some of my sense of proportion, I figured I had cause.

I had to eat with my fingers. It didn’t bother me much, except it’s hard to do with mashed potatoes. I turned on the television and watched the news while I polished off two more frozen dinners, scooping up the taters and licking them off my fingertips like icing, tearing chunks off the slices of processed turkey. The marionberry crisp was soggy and cold on the first two trays by the time I finished the third, but I ate it all anyway.

I left some of the corn. Never been big on corn.

Nothing on the news about explosions or suckers or sorcerers in Atlanta. That didn’t surprise me much. The air conditioner made a racket, so I turned the TV up a bit. Not a peep about shenanigans in Georgia. Just the regular cavalcade of crime, human interest, and a weather report saying “expect a thunderstorm.” Well, any fool could look out the window and see that.

Rain started in spatters as I brushed my teeth. I spent about a half hour checking the gear from the cache, and when I went to bed I had everything stowed away nice and shipshape.

And I had a loaded baby Glock on my nightstand, carefully pointed away from the bed. I’d cleaned and checked it just like Dad taught me, and everything seemed to be all right. I’d pick up more ammo tomorrow. I was working through soup by then, so tired the urge to yawn just about threatened to crack my jaw. I held off—you shouldn’t yawn while cleaning guns. Then I dragged my sorry carcass up and warded the walls. It took a while. I had to start over two or three times because my concentration kept wavering, the thin fine blue lines slipping through my mental grasp. By the time I finished, I was actively yawning more than I was breathing, the aspect smoothing down over me in soft blurry waves.

I wondered sleepily why warding was blue, and the hexing I’d seen was blue and red. Gran would’ve been interested in that. I felt like I was missing something, but damn if I could think of what. I was just so tired.

The last thing I did was fish the diamond earrings out of my bag and put them on. Just because . . . well, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Nothing could, at this point.

I was ready for anything.

Or so I thought.

The long concrete hall stretched away into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was heading for that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—

—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder, dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

BANG.

CHAPTER TWENTY

By the time the long roll of thunder faded I was on my feet, scooping up the gun. The touch flared inside my head, and in the flickering blue-white glow from the muted television I sensed more than saw the brushed-metal doorknob jiggling.

The touch spilled free of my skull, but told me nothing much. There was something weird—interference. Odd static fuzzed over the TV screen, swallowing the black-and-white movie that had been watching me while I slept. The white noise filled my skull, bouncing around like a pinball.

What the hell? I pulled back, shaking my head.

I ghosted to the wall partitioning bedroom space off from hall-and-bathroom space, gun held low and fingers locked outside the trigger guard. Thunder boomed again, filling the sky, and the thin blue lines of warding in the walls shivered. They were reacting to whoever was outside the door. And not in a good way—whoever-it-was smelled like cloves and sand, and their mental fingers picked at the wards like a kid undoing a sneaker lace.

My mouth tingled, the faint taste of oranges filling my throat and a chill sliding down my spine. I knew that chill.

Brace yourself, Dru. Shit’s about to get weird.

There was the gun. Was I actually going to shoot whoever was coming in?

Fine time to be doubting that, Dru.

The warding sparked, resisting. I almost thought of grabbing hold of it from my side and giving whoever it was a snap, like popping a rubber band hard against their mental fingers. If you hit someone just right like that you can give them a helluva headache. Maybe even knock them out.

But if they could unravel wards like that, they were probably more skilled, and I’d be the one with the headache. My best bet was keeping the touch inside my head and using the damn gun.

Better be ready. Do it like Dad taught you.

The door opened, silently. The wards unraveled, whispering off into nothing like smoke. Soft regular thudding; my ears picked it out. Two of them, and I was hearing their heartbeats.

Well, isn’t that useful. My own heart was in my mouth, warring with the ghost of citrus and the tooth-aching cold. Why just two of them, if they could spring a trap with a rocket launcher on top of a building a couple states away? An advance team? More coming in the windows or watching the hotel?

Now, Dru. It was Dad’s voice, or I might have moved too late. They’re walking right into your angle.

At the last second, the gun jerked down. I got lucky—the first one folded when the bullet shattered his knee. A one-in-a-million shot, and Dad would’ve yelled at me for not taking the body shot. Don’t point that thing if you ain’t prepared to kill somethin’!

The roar of the gunshot was lost in a thumprattle of thunder, lightning lit up the room, and the television screen flashed. The second guy—tall, dark-haired, gold glittering in his ears and at his throat—pitched forward, his hands flying out and the hex sparking red and blue like a firework.

There’s a few different sorts of thrown hexes; this was one of the flat fizzing Frisbee types that make a zshhhhht! noise and go whirling.

My left hand flashed out. In a hex battle, you’re either quick or you’re toast. Dad and I had run across several practitioners over the years, and once or twice it’d been Gran’s careful training that saved both our bacon.

So it was Gran’s owl, now, filling itself in with swift streaks, that burst into being as the hex singed my fingers. The owl hit the second guy in the face with a crunch, and the red and blue hex spun as I caught it like a nail-studded baseball, sharp edges biting my skin.

As long as I wasn’t going head-on, I had a good chance of bending the hex around. Like t’ai chi—stepping aside from the force of the punch and deflecting it, instead of meeting it with equal strength.

I may not be brawny, but I’m fast.

My left arm came back, I whipped it forward as if I was tossing the Frisbee back at him, and the guy lost his hold. Which was another miracle, because generally it’s harder to wrest control away from someone who’s taken the time to build such a pretty, malevolent piece of work as a really good hex.

And this one was a lulu. But I guess the guy was having a hard time focusing with his face full of talons and feathers. The owl exploded, a rain of white down popping out of existence just before his bleeding face came up—

—and his own hex crunched squarely into his lean midriff.

He folded up just like a spider flicked into a candle flame and was actually flung back into the hall, golden electric light shining off a spatter of blood that hung in his wake right before there was another photoflash of lightning and the power failed. Darkness like a wet bandage pressed against my eyes, and in the aftermath of another huge roll of thunder I heard ragged breathing and someone muttering cusswords.

“Bitch!” A boy’s voice, breaking. “You shot my knee!”

He sounded fifteen, tops. Where were the adults who were supposed to handle this thing? Did they even exist? Was he old, too, and trapped in a young-sounding body?

You’re goddamn lucky it wasn’t your head. I said nothing. The emergency lights came up, a dull orange glow, and the hex in the hall was still sparkling and digging into a prone form. Hot acid boiled up inside my throat. He wasn’t looking to leave me a Christmas card. Get moving!

The guy on the floor kept cussing while I stepped into my jeans and boots. I buckled my malaika harness—a trick to do one-handed while you’re covering a squirming guy on the floor. He could have had a gun too, but if he hadn’t shot me by now, I didn’t think he would.

Duffel in one hand, gun in the other, I made it to the wall near the window. Let out a long, shaky breath.

“What did you do?” The boy on the floor had stopped cussing. I wasn’t sure I liked it. He was sounding mighty sharp and focused for someone who’d been shot. “How can you do that? How can you use the jaadu?”

I’m not going to hang around and chat with you, you know. The touch slid free of my skull, little invisible fingers questing for danger. He choked, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. No rain against the windows—it was heat lightning; no wonder everything was all staticky.

Three-floor drop. You can make it easy. I didn’t want to get trapped inside the rest of the hotel, and I didn’t know if these guys had backup. Maybe they were expecting me to go out the window; I didn’t know.

But I also wouldn’t have gone out into that hall, and stepped past that body and the crackling, nasty hex, if you paid me.

“Wait.” The boy on the floor was moving, rolling around. “Rajkumari, wait. For God’s sake, wait—”

Too late. Glass shattered, the stifling hot night full of ozone, wet heat, and the smell of Gulf rot closed around me, and I was gone.

Thank God I hadn’t been stupid enough to park the Jeep in the hotel lot. I still had a couple of bad moments getting to the side street I’d left it on. I kept jumping at shadows. Can you blame me?

The rain started just after I threw the duffel in, hard quartersized drops thudding into dirt and concrete. More lightning played in the billowing clouds like huge veined hands.

I was getting awful tired of thunder. But at least there was nothing unnatural about this storm. My left hand hurt like hell—I wrapped it up in a chunk of fast-food napkins. I didn’t smell blood, but it was weeping, and it burned like I’d held it in boiling water for a while.

And I’d only touched that hex for less than a second. What would it have done if it hit me? For a couple seconds I braced my forehead on the steering wheel while my ribs heaved with deep ragged gasps.

But Dad’s voice inside my head was pitiless. Move it along, honey. You ain’t out of the woods yet.

I flipped the wipers on and got out of there. Seven and a half hours later I was in Houston. But by then things had already gone even further to hell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Finding the Houston Schola wasn’t hard. I mean, yeah, I stopped on the outskirts of the city and bought a map, a bag of peppermints, some boiled peanuts, and some dental floss, and made a quick and dirty pendulum from a wrapped peppermint and the floss while I munched the peanuts and drank some warm Yoo-Hoo. The pendulum gave me the general location—a wedge of the northern part of the city, a slice of expensive real estate if the tingle in my good right-hand fingers told me anything. Close enough, and I was sure I could find it from there.

As it was, I could. But it was a matter of getting close enough and following the sirens while a column of black smoke billowed up. Traffic was snarled, and we slowed to a crawl. As a result, I got a good eyeful.

The good news was that the Houston Schola was kind of still there.

The bad news? Was the kind of. If by kind of you mean “shells of charred and smoking buildings arranged around a scorched quad that might have been pretty gardens if someone hadn’t taken a flamethrower to them.” Emergency personnel were still swarming, and black smoke hung everywhere.

The Jeep crept through heat shimmering up from the pavement and the traffic snarl created by a bunch of what Dad would call lookie-lous, cars slowing down to gawk.

I stared. Little crackling strands of red and blue hexing crawled over every surface. The knots that had held them fast while they did their dirty work were unraveling, and I could almost see how they did it, how they pulled the two strands together and made them work. Gran had never told me about anything like the red strands, and if I just knew a little bit more about the Maharaj I could probably take a stab at untangling it. Or even duplicating the effect.

The touch hurt whenever the red strands got too close, like sunshine on already-burned skin. My left hand throbbed, blistered and raw. I’d disinfected it and wrapped it in gauze, and the rawness didn’t look to be spreading. It was only my left hand; I’d deal.

The main building of the Schola here had actually faced a city street without a lawn and a wall. Its long colonnaded front now looked like a bomb had gone off. Even the wall enclosing the rest of the property was scarred and pulled down in places. There were other buildings, but they were all smoking and laid waste too. At least, all the ones I could see.

“Goddamn,” I whispered, under Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio making his way through High School Confidential.

Dad had always made a face when I turned that song up. The sound track of my childhood is the oldies stations you can get all over America. No matter where you land, Casey Kasem is rockin’ ’em up and countin’ ’em down. He’s a cottage industry. Long live rock’n’roll.

I was almost past the Schola. Traffic was horrible. I had half a tank of gas and I had to think.

It took me an hour to get to the freeway. Heatshimmer bounced off the pavement, Houston like a big dozing concrete animal ready for another long guzzle at the oil teat. The touch jumped like a nervous animal, my brain stroking at the problem of the red and blue threads.

What am I gonna do now?

I stopped outside the city limits for gas and a load of road food. A couple hot dogs, more Yoo-Hoo—this time it was cold—more peanuts, and a couple Tiger Tails. I never liked them, but Dad did, and I put them on the counter before I thought about it. I had to use a basket to carry everything; my left hand was swelling something fierce.

The tired old woman running the register didn’t even blink, just subtracted the total from the leftover of the mildew-smelling fifty I’d given her for the Jeep’s gas and handed me my change, blinking at the television, blaring some talk show, set further down the counter in a nest of Slim Jim cartons.

I found myself thinking of where Christophe would expect me to go so we could meet up, if he’d survived the rooftop. But it was idiotic to expect him to come riding in to save me, even though it was nice when it happened. I told myself several variants of this as I got in the Jeep; the engine turned over softly. Whoever’d had this car had taken care of it. It was holding up just fine.

Not like me. I was two steps from meltdown.

People were dead because of me. Not just the guy I’d hit with his own hex. There was also Piggy Eyes Lyle. Had he survived what I’d done to him?

I was a risk to everyone. I was a goddamn plague.

And Graves and Christophe . . . Jesus. Shanks and Dibs would take care of Graves. Ash too. They would take him out to their people and see if he could be reclaimed. They’d probably have a better idea of how to do it than I ever did. I didn’t even know what I’d done to Ash to un-Break him. Maybe he’d just done it himself.

If Christophe had survived, he was probably tracking me. But.

There were a whole lot of buts flying around.

What if . . . just what if, mind you, a hypothetical…

What if Christophe or Graves—or both of them, let’s talk worst case—what if they were . . . dead?

There it was, the thing I’d been trying not to think. You can’t ever run away from a thought like that. It always finds a way to slip the knife in before you can get far enough. It plays with you like a cat with a mouse, letting you run just so far before it claws you but good.

The Maharaj were seriously bad news. From what it looked like, they could throw hexes even Gran would’ve had a hard time with. Poison and sorcery, and they were backing up Sergej and his vampires. I might have a chance of hiding from the suckers or from the djinni-children, but both? That was a whole different ball of nasty wax.

Especially since I had no safe place left to run to. California, yeah . . . but Remy and his team were human hunters. They cleaned out sucker nests, sure, working the edges. Could they go up against Sergej? The name sent a glass spike of pain through my temples.

No way.

Was it even faintly responsible to bring trouble to their door? Was it what Dad would’ve done?

California was never anything but a pipe dream. You knew it. You knew some damn thing would happen, and you’d bring danger to someone’s door. Dad would kick your ass for leading Sergej right to your fellow hunters. My heart hurt, a piercing, stabbing pain. I’d been dragging Ash and Graves along because I’d been hoping Remy would be able to tell me what to do with both of them.

Way to go, Dru.

I shook my head, dropped the Jeep into gear, and headed back for the freeway.

It occurred to me then, something I should have thought of already. Atlanta. The rocket launcher and the helicopter. Maybe the Maharaj were just that good, maybe the Order had slipped up—I mean, a helicopter on a roof isn’t exactly subtle, you know?

But there was also the possibility that someone had sold us out. Again.

The Jeep’s interior filled with the soft sound of wingbeats under the radio playing Creedence Clearwater Revival. There was a bad moon rising, and she was me.

Gran’s owl didn’t show. It was just softly audible, the wingbeats keeping time with my frantic pulse.

I hit the freeway and just headed north. I had to decide what to do, and I had to keep moving while I did it.

Except in the end, it didn’t matter.

The outskirts of Dallas are not a good place to get caught by the cops. I was going the speed limit, but the red and blue lit up like Christmas in my rearview and I had to make a decision: gun it or pull over?

For a few seconds I thought he was just going to go past me, on a call somewhere else. But no dice. I pulled over, edging as far onto the shoulder as I could, and he followed. Small rocks scattered on the shoulder crunched under our tires, and he was going to run the plate number soon and find out this car was hot as hell.

Great. I added everything up—the malaika still strapped to my back, the gun I wore, the gear in the back, the cash, the two sets of fake ID—and subtracted the cost of having to lose the cops, ditch this car, and steal another one.

It wasn’t even a contest. I waited for the cruiser’s driver’s door to open. Light traffic, dusk had already eaten the sunlight, and it was muggy and hot as hell. I was gonna miss this Jeep.

The touch resonated inside my head like a plucked string. As soon as the door opened, I turned the wheel and stomped the gas. I could almost hear Johnny Law cussing as he piled into his car again.

The Jeep swerved out three lanes; I corrected and drifted back. The touch sparked, I jammed the pedal to the floor and the aspect woke, my fangs tingling as they lengthened, scraping against my lower lip. A bolt of pain went up my left arm, I was squeezing the wheel hard with both hands. Red and blue lit up my rearview and the siren whooped on.

Dad would’ve just killed me. Sure, he’d taught me how to get wheels if I needed them—but it’s always a fool’s game, because getting in a chase is one of the stupidest things you can do. The cops have radios. And computers. And a whole hell of a lot of know-how when it comes to outsmarting dumb criminal drivers.

But I wasn’t a criminal. And I couldn’t risk losing all my gear and being in a cell when the vampires or the funky sorcerers showed up. I just couldn’t. So it was this, or nothing.

My head rang and Gran’s owl exploded into being right above the Jeep’s hood. Feathers puffed, torn away in the slipstream. I actually jumped and let out a shriek, and the Jeep swerved crazily. Years of Dad teaching “self-defensive drivin’” kicked in. The worst thing you can do in a situation like that is overcorrect and turn your car into a flying pancake.

The owl jetted forward, and the Jeep leapt to catch up. The engine thrummed, the tires actually lifted off the pavement when we breasted a short rise, and if I had to do something I was going to have to do it quick before Johnny Law got on the radio and reinforcements showed up to box me in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ditching the Jeep was a little easier than I’d expected. It was a good car, but two of her tires were busted and she was making a wheezing noise by the time I killed the lights and scrambled for the backseat. I kicked the rear passenger door open, bailed out with the duffel, and was on the roof of a nearby abandoned warehouse by the time the chopper found the car again, its bright white beam stabbing down like a shot from an alien abduction film. They’d get my prints, probably, but I couldn’t do anything to help that. The empty ammo boxes in the back next to the can of gas would perplex them a bit, too.

And there went the Tiger Tails, too. Dammit.

I shrank into the shadow of a big silver HVAC unit. It wasn’t humanly possible to get up here, so the cops should ignore it. I’d gone straight up the side of the building like I was a fish being reeled in, the aspect smoothing down over my body like hot oil and my wrists aching as my claws sank into the lip of the roof, my arm tensing to pull me and the duffel over. My left palm was a searscorch of pain, but that didn’t slow me down.

Landing with jarring force, sneakers skidding, and I’d actually crashed into the vent and stayed there. I almost didn’t think to twitch the duffel back out of sight against my feet, everything in me rabbit-jumping as if I still had to run.

Don’t be stupid now. Be smart. Be still.

My pulse dropped now that I was reasonably safe. It was hot, an oppressive wet blanket full of smog-taste and the reek of cooling pavement. More sirens bayed in the distance as more cop cars arrived, bouncing over the train tracks and sending up spumes of oily dust. I kept my eye on the chopper, though, lighting up the fenced railyard next to the warehouse. It was a good guess—through the busted-out parts of the chain-link fencing and among the confusion of the yard and the scrubby kudzu and trash wood was pretty much the only way to run with a hope of losing them.

For a human, that is.

I wasn’t even breathing hard. I watched as the cops swept the area, more of them arriving all the time and searching through the rail yard. The warehouse was locked up below; I know because they circled the whole building looking for a way in. Just in case.

Well, gee, that was easy.

I was just congratulating myself when my temples gave a flare of pain and a ghost of citrus wandered across my tongue. It wasn’t danger candy, but it was enough to make me stiffen.

In the distance, a high glassy cry rose like a spiked silver ribbon.

Suckers.

Shit.

Were they after me, or just hanging around? That was a hunting cry, but it was a long ways away. The suckers could be chasing someone else. Who knew I was here? Who could’ve tracked me when I still wasn’t sure where I was going?

You don’t know, and you can’t take a chance. Get the hell out of here.

Still . . . I was hidden, and the cops were still spreading out and searching. It could be unrelated.

Yeah. And monkeys could fly out your butt, Dru. Come on.

But I waited. I watched them swarm over the Jeep and look for me.

If I could go up a wall like this, evade the cops this easily . . . wow. It was a weird feeling. Creepy. Scary.

Powerful.

Was this what Graves was talking about when he said he didn’t want to go back to being normal?

Then I thought about finding a place to sleep tonight, getting a fresh set of wheels, and figuring out where the hell to go next and what to do while suckers were trying to kill me. I thought of the burned-down hulk of the Houston Schola and wondered if anyone, djamphir or wulfen, had died in the flames. I thought of a broken body lying in a hotel hall with red and blue hexing crawling all over it. I thought of Piggy Eyes Lyle slumped against the newspaper box like a mangled toy and how easy it had been to tear up a cop car, how easy it would’ve been to pull the trigger on that poor county sheriff. I thought of Dad, and Mom, and Gran’s house burning down, and Graves’s eyes turning black as Sergej reached through him. Of Ash screaming while he tried to change back into his human form.

I don’t want this. I never wanted this.

I didn’t even know how to fight back without hurting someone who didn’t deserve it. Or who might’ve deserved it, like Lyle or the hex-kid, but who might not’ve deserved how much of it I dished out.

Another high piercing cry, this one much closer and shading up into what had to be ultrasonic. It drilled through my head, but I was pretty sure the cops clustering around wouldn’t hear it.

Get the hell out of here, Dru. The need to be moving rose under my skin. I couldn’t tell if it was more rabbit-jumping, or if it was the touch warning me. If I started doubting the touch I was dead in the water, but I was also dead if I tired myself out running when I should’ve been staying put and resting so I could run when it was absolutely necessary.

“All right,” I muttered, and took a look around. They were starting to lose hope over in the train yard, and apparently nobody seriously thought I would’ve gone this way. The warehouse slumped under an oppressively heavy sky, hard diamond points of stars trying to pierce the orange glow that was citylight trying to replicate sunset and failing miserably. Other warehouses crowded close, some empty and others just locked up. The spaces between them weren’t overly wide. Not for a djamphir, I guess. Which meant not for a svetocha.

I eyed the closest building, the one that would set me up for leapfrogging to another one, and another. My eyes picked out the likely route with no help from me, and the aspect’s warmth was a balm even under the oppressive heat. My left hand stopped smarting and settled into a heavy ache.

First things first. Wonder if I can jump to that rooftop over there?

Well, no time like the present to find out.

A half-mile away I dropped the duffel and peered down into the street. It’s amazing what a difference so short a distance can make. A neon sign down the street—a pair of legs in fishnet stockings—blinked blearily on a post lifting it up like a sacrificial victim. Underneath it, a red-roofed windowless bulk crouched. The place was called the Lustee Ladee, and I immediately crossed it off my list of Places I Might Conceivably Want To Hide.

On the other hand, there were cars clustered around it like shiny little piglets hooking up to a sow. It was a veritable smorgasbord. A good chunk of people who worked around here were probably parked there, having what I supposed might pass for a good time to a certain type of grown-up dude. I realized my face was squinched up as if I tasted something bad at the thought.

I crouched on the nearest warehouse roof, a muggy breeze touching my messed-up braid but not cooling my forehead one bit, taking my time. You can’t just pick any car. It has to be right—something with some legs and pickup, but that won’t get you pulled over. You also have to consider that a parking lot isn’t the best place. Too much chance of someone strolling out or a bouncer getting nosy, a security camera or something messing everything up.

I was still eyeing my choices when the touch twitched inside my skull, and my head jerked up. My left hand jerked, palm filling with molten pain. There was a low weird sound like silk tearing, and my heart dropped into my stomach with a splash, somersaulted, then leapt up into my throat and did its best to strangle me.

The red and blue sparks came out of nowhere, birthing themselves from the static-laden wind. Swirling, they coalesced, and the shape gathered strength. Long and low, a lean muzzle and four slim legs, a gleam of eyes as smoke appeared too, filling in the spaces between the sparks. The knots resolved too, complex threads catching and holding fast.

It would have probably been awesome if I could just stay still and watch how it was being built. You always want to pick up new stuff where you can.

For a few precious seconds I froze, staring at the thing. I’ve seen extra-weird in plenty of flavors all over the US, but this was . . . Jesus. To do something like this at a distance—was it even at a distance? I didn’t smell any Maharaj around.

Would I know it if they were sneaking up on me, though? The aura—the wax-citrus taste that used to tell me when something was off—had deserted me. Probably because I’d bloomed. I’d have to find other ways of staying alert.

The blisters on my left hand ran with hot prickling painful tingles. The sense of force building was familiar, my eyes hot and dry and my solar plexus tightening. Get up a head of steam and hit that thang before it gets solid, Dru-girl.

My right hand flashed up, touched a malaika hilt. Hawthorn wood, good against lots of things in Gran’s universe. My left jabbed forward, and the touch flared. If you can grab the point at which something unphysical is coming through to build itself in the tangled, snarled fabric of the real, you can disrupt it. I’d done it before, most recently with a big red tentacled thing in the girls’ locker room at the Schola Prima.

Now that had been a doozy.

The hex-dog snarled, crouching as it solidified. Well, maybe solid wasn’t the word, because it was built of smoke and knots of hexwork. But its teeth were chips of obsidian, glittering as its insubstantial lip lifted, and the snarl rippled through it. The knots were tying themselves together with quick jerks, and I didn’t have much time.

My left-hand fingers cramped together, weirdly twisted like I had the rheumatiz. The touch grabbed, slipped, grabbed hold again, and I flung myself backward as the hex dog finished its crouch and sprang. Another ripping sound, this one like wet meat shredded in iron claws, and the thing let out an agonized howl that scraped along every nerve ending I had. My back hit the rooftop, my head bouncing, and the dog exploded in a rain of smoke and icy flashing pellets of something that stung as it showered down.

I couldn’t even feel good about that. Because another sucker hunting-cry lifted, spearing the muggy night, and it was so close I scrambled up, shaking the little bits of almost-ice away. The raw blistering pain in my hand eased a little.

A burst of cloves and incense belled out from the hex-dog’s vibrating, fading “fingerprint” on the snarled tangle of the fleshly world, the smoke shredding. I grabbed the duffel, slinging the longest strap diagonally across my body.

I was not losing my gear again, dammit.

I took off across the roof, sneakers whispering. The smoke wanted to cling to me, but when Gran’s owl hooted softly and arrowed over my shoulder, its wings snapping down and almost brushing my hair, it shredded the vapor away. My body moved smoothly, the world slowing down, encased in the hard clear plastic of supernatural speed as I gathered myself and leapt, flying over the street below and landing soft as a whisper on the top of a gas station’s roof. A short hop, getting some height as my feet touched the hood of a vent, and I was airborne again.

It was like flying. It used to be I’d have to strain every muscle to keep up with Gran’s owl. Now it was the world turning under my feet doing all the work, my sneaker soles touching down to propel me in different directions. Like running with the wulfen through Central Park’s leafdapple shade, feeling like a complex part of a speeding machine. That was the difference, I guess, between running now and running with them: with the wulfen, for a few minutes as we ran, I felt like I belonged.

Now I just wanted to get away.

The owl, glowing white, veered sharply to the left and dove. I followed, hitting the pavement a little harder than I liked and taking off. Behind me, like infection pushing up against the surface of a wound, I felt them.

Suckers. My breath came fast and light, sudden knowledge blooming inside me. I didn’t have the taste of danger candy to warn me, I just had intuition now.

Great.

Gran’s owl let out a soft who, who? Wings snapping, it braked, hard. I skidded to a stop, and the bird turned in a tight circle over me. Part of me was on the ground, ribs flaring and squeezing down as I breathed, and before I knew it I’d reached up and the warm satin hilts of the malaika were in my hands. The duffel was going to weigh me down, but I didn’t have time to drop it.

Because the black-paper cutouts of suckers boiled out of the darkness.

There were so many of them. Two females closing in fast, their irises turning black as the hunting-aura closed over them in a blot of cold fire, both wearing dark jumpsuits, one blonde and one dark-haired but both with ponytails that bounced smartly as they pulled up short. The rest were males.

None of them looked a day over sixteen, but the hate on their young-old faces twisted them up like dripping, nasty tubers. I dropped into first-guard, the aspect rising over me like a cobra’s hood.

I was fully-bloomed and deadly to them. But they had numbers. Which meant I had to think fast. But my thinker was busted. There was just nothing left to do, nowhere to go, and nothing to depend on to save me.

If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting. I swallowed, hard, and then did either the stupidest or smartest thing I could.

I gathered myself, took a deep breath, and screamed as I launched myself at the ones in front of me. If I could break through their ring I could lead them on a chase, and when it came down to that I’d rather be running full speed when the nasty hits me.

I almost made it, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

For a long time there was a whining sound, a bumping and buffeting. I drifted in and out of consciousness inside something cold and metallic. I couldn’t move—my wrists were held down, and my ankles.

Restraints, I realized through a fog. My left hand burned dully through a chemical haze, like I was drugged or something. And I’m in a box.

My eyelids fluttered shut. Thank God I don’t have to pee, I thought hazily, before the dark swallowed me again. After a long while I was vaguely aware of a bump and a screech, and I figured out I was on a plane. That was all I knew. Then the dream came out of nowhere, and this time I was tied down and I had to watch.

The concrete hallway stretched into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was moving toward that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—

—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

BANG.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Christophe hissed, his eyes burning blue. “Are you mad, or simply an idiot?”

Dad shook him off. “What the fuck—”

Christophe shook his sleek dark head, the aspect laying on him in a crackle of static electricity. His fangs were out and snow clung to his knees, clumping on his boots. “Get out of here. Go.”

“You’re him. The man on the phone.” Quick as a wink, Dad had the gun raised. “She told me—”

“Elizabeth told you somewhat of me, yes. But I’m not what you think.” Christophe shoved him, hard. “Get out of here. He will rise soon, and you’re worse than helpless here. Go home!”

“I don’t have a home,” Dad spat back. “They took my home when they killed her, goddammit! All I’ve got . . .” But he stopped there, eyeing Christophe suspiciously. Maybe he’d been about to say something about me? I longed to know. “What are you doing here?”

The door at the end of the hall quivered hungrily. Run! I wanted to yell. Both of you, quit arguing and RUN!

“Paying my debt to Elizabeth Lefevre.” Christophe’s smile wasn’t nice at all. In fact, it was chilling. “You’re all that remains of her. A stupid, silly human.”

Dad regarded him narrowly, his blue eyes at least as cold as Christophe’s. “Then let’s go down there and kick some sucker ass.”

“You’re worse than useless. Come on.” Christophe moved forward, as if to grab Dad and drag him out by force. I silently cheered, static buzzing through me as the vision held.

I’d wanted to know, of course. I’d wanted to know what happened to Dad. And not-wanted at the same time. I’d already seen what happened when vampires killed. The pictures of the blasted oak tree in front of the yellow house we used to live in, something not even human-shaped anymore hanging in the branches, still whirled through my nightmares.

Dad pulled the trigger. A burst of white noise rammed through the image, and my scream lodged in my throat like a rock. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. I was a fly trapped in amber, howling on the inside while Christophe’s body jerked, bright red blood flying.

Dad’s bootheel scraped as he turned and took off down the hall. He was a big man, but he was light on his feet. He vanished through the door as Christophe struggled back up to his feet, face twisted with pain and eyes burning.

“NO!” Christophe yelled, and another burst of static roiled through the image. I held on, my mental grasp slipping as the vision fought me.

No. I want to see. Stubbornness rose inside me. I have to see!

Christophe pushed himself up. Gunfire popped and crackled behind the door, yelling and a rising glassy roar. Christophe’s hands turned into fists. He stood there for a long ten seconds, head cocked as blond highlights slipped through his hair, the aspect flaring and retreating, indecisive. Snow fell from his knees, hitting the floor without melting, and his face was a mask.

Then he turned and walked away, while my father’s dying screams echoed from behind the door that was even now closing like a Venus flytrap on its prey.

I sat straight up, clawing at thin cold air. Metal clashed. My wrist was jerked back as I tried to roll off the hard surface, and I ended up halfway on the floor, my arm stretched above me like I was performing an enthusiastic wave.

What the hell?

A dim stone cube of a room greeted me. An iron door, a shelflike metal toilet, no windows. Light leaked in around the door, through the barred rectangle of an observation slit. Electric light, nice and golden, but not nearly enough of it.

The clashing metal was a short chain attached to the wall and hooked up, probably to keep me from falling off the bed. If I unhooked it, I could just reach the toilet.

Which I did. Hey, you’ve got to be practical when you’re chained to a wall. At least it flushed.

I smelled faintly of cinnamon rolls, and my skin was still sticky from Dallas citysweat. My mouth tasted like zombie dust, but all in all I felt oddly good.

I shuddered, stretched the chain and my arm as far as they would go, and couldn’t peer out the slit in the door.

Dammit.

I was in sock feet, my T-shirt, and jeans. My hair was unbraided, a wild curling mass.

There went all my gear. Again. Dad was always going on about caches and gear, and about how replacing shit was the cost of seriously being on the run. Looked like he was right.

Not that I’d doubted him.

I rattled the chain, examined the plate it was attached to. Bolted to the wall, nice and solid. I even lay on the bed, got both my feet up, wrapped my hands in it, and pulled. My blistered hand shrieked with pain, but I kept at it. The chain groaned a little, but the plate stayed solid. I braced myself carefully, then, inch by inch, put more pressure on the chain. The aspect grew warmer, closing around me until thin curls of steam rose from my skin in the damp chill.

The chain creaked; my breathing quickened. I finally had to loosen up a little. The hook the chain was hung on might have given me some leverage, but it was pretty flimsy. Looked like it could snap . . . but maybe I could tear it out and turn it into a weapon?

Yeah. I’ll stab them to death with an itty-bitty hook. Great idea, Dru. I lay there and contemplated the chain. The cuff clung to my wrist, so small it wouldn’t slip off over my hand even if I tried to take some skin with it. Featureless, light, powdery-silver metal, but it was strong. My claws couldn’t even scratch it, and my wrist ached after trying.

The bolt on the door clanged, a huge echoing sound. I found myself crouching on the bed, my back against the wall and the chain rattling musically. A burst of thick cinnamon boiled up as the aspect coated me, my jaw crackling a little as the fangs slipped free. My mother’s locket was a chip of ice against my breastbone.

The door creaked theatrically as it opened, and a tall figure stepped through. His eyes were black, pupil and iris both swallowing the light coming in from behind him. I blinked twice, not quite believing it.

“Graves?” I whispered.

A flash of green filled his irises, was gone as soon as it appeared. Swallowed by the darkness. His hair was freshly dyed, too. Dead black, hanging over a gaunt, expressionless face. A black dress shirt with pale bone buttons, sleeves rolled up to show muscle in his forearms. New jeans, and a pair of black Converse sneakers. He stood there, head cocked like he had a good idea, those dead eyes focused about three feet above me and his mouth a straight line instead of tilted in a half-sardonic, half-pained smile.

The touch chilled through me, crackling like ice cubes dropped into boiling water, and another shadow moved.

He was shorter than Graves, and curly-headed. A faint hint of swarthiness to his skin, and his profile was purely classic. You could see the similarity to Christophe when he turned his head, both of them in perfect, old-fashioned proportion. Like statues buried in dark volcanic ash for a long, long time. Preserved.

He didn’t look any older than eighteen—until his gaze, sucking-dark from lid to lid, hit you like a wall of floodwater, battering away all resistance.

My left hand seized up in a cramp, and the bolt of pain up my arm was a lifeline. My mother’s locket was so cold I had a vivid mental image of the metal freezing against my skin. Of ripping it free, a centimeter at a time, and the blood running down . . .

“Little bird,” Sergej said. His accent was far more pronounced than Christophe’s, and he sounded absolutely, chillingly jolly. Like he was having a hell of a good time. “Securely caged. You see, I’ve learned not to underestimate you.”

Bullshit you have. My mouth was dry. I heard the click as I swallowed, convulsively. “I don’t think you have.” After all, I’m still breathing.

It was pure bravado. But shit, man, I didn’t have a lot of anything else left.

Thank God I’d emptied my bladder. Looking at that handsome, cheerful, predatory face under its mop of honeybrown curls might just have made me embarrass myself.

His grin widened, fangs sliding free. He wore, of all things, a thin navy-blue T-shirt and new, very dark jeans. And cowboy boots.

The king of the vampires, and he was wearing shitkickers. Shiny new ones; they looked like Tony Lamas.

I got the feeling he’d dressed up for this.

My left hand cramped. Sergej stepped forward, brushing past Graves. Goth Boy flinched slightly, swaying aside. His Connies squeaked a little, a forlorn sound. I tensed, the chain clinking.

Another step. Bootheels clicked on stone. There was a drain set in the middle of the floor, and a shudder worked through me when I thought about why. Sergej was still staring at me, but as long as I kept squeezing my raw-blistered left hand the spiked pain kept me from falling into those horrible black eyes.

The aspect heated up. Like standing in front of an oven on a hot day, only the heat was a balm, smoothing away pain. I hoped it wouldn’t heal my hand completely, I needed the spike of acid hurt to keep me from drowning. His eyes were so black, and the sheen on them was just like an oil slick. Almost rainbow-y, but without the nice colors. This rainbow was all the different gray shades of hate and suffering and the weird joy some people seem to get from nastiness.

Sergej halted. He leaned forward as if into a heavy wind, and inhaled sharply. The aspect flared, and he choked and stepped back, almost mincing in his clicking little boots.

I was still toxic. Thank God.

I actually let out a little sobbing sound of relief, and the snarl that crossed Sergej’s face shoved me further into the wall. He surged forward, but the aspect flared with heat again, and he actually turned purple, the snarl stuttering as he throttled up again. He had to back up and gasp in a couple breaths, his hands tensing, sharp scythelike amber claws sliding free of his fingertips. A tremor rippled through him, and the black of the hunting-aura raveled out from the corners of his eyes in thin gray vein-strands. It looked like crow’s-feet on his weirdly young face, and for a moment I saw the ancient, hungry thing that lived inside his skin.

I choked too, as if he was just as toxic to me. Wingbeats filled the space inside my skull, and the touch flexed. I realized I was trying to backpedal through the wall, forced myself to go still again.

He’d been able to get close enough to my mother for long enough to kill her. And close enough to Anna to get his fangs in her throat. Why wasn’t he able to get close to me?

Not that I wanted him to.

Graves just stood there and stared, vacant. Every once in a while a flash of green would go through his eyes, lighting them up. It was eerie, but right now I was more worried about Sergej, who straightened and shook his hands out, the claws crackling as they slid back in. He tilted his head way back, his coppery throat working, and when he brought his chin down again, his curls falling in a perfect choreographed mess over his face, he was pretty again. A faint shadow lingered around his neck, as if the mottled purple flush had bruised him somehow.

I hope that hurt. Trembling roared through me in waves.

“I won’t kill you yet,” he informed me. “The other svetocha was of little use, and now she is of no use at all.”

For one lunatic second I had no idea who he meant, then it hit me. “Anna . . .” The word fell flat in the stone cube, lay there gasping.

“Dead.” Just like someone else would say moved to Wyoming or something. Like it didn’t matter at all. “No matter, though. I have you. And you will help me walk in sunlight, darling maly ptaszku.”

I shook my head. Anna’d been alive when her Guard—the boys in the red shirts, as if nobody ever told them about Star Trek—took her out of the burning warehouse. And before that, she’d all but forced me to drink her blood.

Was that why I heard her in my head sometimes? Or was it just because I was getting a little crazy with the Cheez Whiz? How could you stay sane with everything you ever depended on whacked away from underneath you, again and again?

Sergej laughed. It was a genuinely delighted little giggle. “Oh, yes. You’ll help. I have plans for you. Do you like my new Broken?” A tilt of his curly head, and Graves flinched again. “He’s really quite resourceful. Fought me the entire way. But I think, when I wring the last drop of blood from you and I feel sunlight on my face for the first time, he’ll stop fighting. And he’ll prove to be valuable. So much more decorative than his beastly little cousins.”

Bile crawled up into my throat. I actually retched, and it echoed in the stone cube.

That just seemed to make Sergej’s day. At least, he chuckled again and turned on his heel. He glided out of the room, silent as death, and Graves followed just as quietly. The door swung shut, the room’s darkness closing around me like a mouth, and the chain jangled as I slumped down on the metal shelf and wrapped my arms around my knees. My left hand still hurt, a hot prickling pain.

I put my face down, my hair closing the entire world out, and I just shook for a while.

Graves.

He hadn’t known me.

He’d just stood there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I don’t know how much later it was. Time loses a lot of meaning when you’re locked in a box. Cold shadows sometimes moved over the little golden rectangle, little tiptapping footsteps too slow or way too fast to be human, drafts of bright-spangled hatred making the door groan each time. I kept bracing myself in different ways, working on the chain and the cuff.

It was my only option. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one that had even a hope of turning out okay. Even probing at the cuff with the touch told me nothing.

There was a long silent time, and I started singing to myself while I yanked this way and that on the chain. My wrist felt bruised and itchy underneath it. I even sweated a little in the damp stony chill. At least I didn’t smell bad. I still reeked like the cinnamon-bun place at the mall, which was a blessing because I hadn’t had a shower in a while.

When the bolt on the door clanged again, I scrambled up to crouch on the shelf-bed, my cheeks guiltily hot. My back hit the wall and I didn’t make a girly little fear-sound.

But it was close.

He eased in, leaving the door open behind him, and did a strange thing.

Graves crouched, right inside the door. He laid his hands flat on the floor and looked at me, and his eyes were back to green. My heart hammered. He even smelled right—a stray breath from the hall brought me a tang of moonsilver wildness and strawberry incense over the dry-fur nastiness of vampires. The bone buttons on his shirt glowed a little, and he looked . . . feral.

Dangerous.

Heat prickled in my eyes. I watched him, braced against the wall, heart thundering.

“He’s asleep,” Graves finally whispered. “Thinks he has me down. Like a good little dog.”

The rock in my throat moved. I made a sound.

“Dru.” He stared at me. A muscle in his cheek flicked. It hit me again, how different he was from the gawky, bird-thin, almost-ugly Goth Boy who’d bought me a cheeseburger and saved my life in a hundred ways ever since. Maybe they weren’t overt, like Christophe’s, but they were just as real. “Say something.”

Yeah, sure. Like I had a whole list of things just lying around to say. My mouth opened. “Ash? Shanks? Dibs?”

He flinched as if I’d hit him. “Dibs is here. The others . . . I don’t know.”

I let out a shaky breath and settled for the obvious. “How do we get out of here?” I even sounded halfway normal, instead of scared out of my mind.

He twitched a little, and the green glow in his irises dimmed for a moment. His whole body tensed, shoulders hunching and the clarity of the change blooming around him. The Other shone out for a brief moment, and sweat sprang up on his caramel skin. Under his coloring, he was pale. A shudder wracked him, and he dug his fingers into the stone like he was going to start kneading bread.

“Dru.” As if reminding himself who I was. “You gotta trust me.”

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options. I nodded. Curls fell in my face. “Okay.”

That brought up a ghost of a smile. It wasn’t anything close to my Goth Boy, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better. Relieved, even. My arms and legs actually went weak for a second, and I sagged against the wall.

He stared at me for another long moment. “They’ve got him. Reynard. Christophe.”

I actually gulped. “Is he—”

“Alive. Thought I’d warn you. It’s pretty bad. But you gotta trust me, Dru. I’m Broken, but . . . please.”

“I already said okay.” The urge to roll my eyes was incredibly strong. “Graves—”

“Never figured out why you did.” He hunched even further. “Tell me. Now, while I can hear you. Why did you even . . . why me?”

For a second I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then it hit me.

If I had a chance to tell him something, this was it. And it couldn’t be like all the other times, when everything I ever wanted to say to him jammed up in my chest like a ball of snarled yarn and I ended up spitting out something so stupid it made me cringe for days afterward to even think about it.

Make it count, Dru. I searched for the words. And, wonder of wonders, they came.

“Because you’re brave,” I told him. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Because you didn’t walk off when it looked like I was in trouble. Because you stuck around even though the Real World’s scary and Ash bit you. Because you made everyone come back to that first Schola while it was burning, to get me out. Because you came back the last time we tangoed with him.” With Sergej, I meant, and Graves shuddered. Hurry up. The words tumbled out over each other, faster and faster. “Because I get you. I like your jokes and I like you and I feel like I can handle anything when you’re around. Because . . .” I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “Because you’re beautiful and I love you. Even if you drive me up the goddamn wall with the back-and-forth and not wanting to be my boyfriend or anything. Okay? That’s why. Because you’re a rock, Graves. You’re a total . . . rock.”

Oh, crap. I started out good and ended up lame. Story of my life.

Graves crouched there, looking at me. His face worked like the gears behind it had gotten snarled. His eyes flamed green, and the high-voltage humming going through him was so loud I was afraid everyone in the world would hear it. He stared for what felt like forever while I tried to think of something else to say. The chain rattled as I shifted, and that shook him out of whatever he was thinking.

“Trust me,” he repeated, and was gone in a heartbeat. The door clanged shut, the bolt shot home, and I slumped against the wall.

“I do.” My whisper barely stirred the air. I thought about this for a few minutes, and I found out I was shaking. My hands vibrated like I was holding onto a weed whacker and my legs gave out. I sat down on the shelf-bed with a thump that clicked my teeth together, hard.

I waited for him to come back. But after a little while, I started working on the chain again. I trusted him, sure.

But it would be even better if I was ready to go when the time came.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I got exactly nowhere. When Sergej came back, he had a black-eyed Graves lock my other wrist down with a short chain attached to a wheelchair. Then he edged closer to me, stretching out his hand, and did something—and the cuff on the chain attached to the wall unfolded in complex clockwork. The touch shivered uneasily, and my stomach growled. I felt light-headed but clear.

And thirsty. The bloodhunger scraped at the back of my throat. I could smell it in both of them—the candy-rotting reek of red blood cells dying inside Sergej’s veins and the sweet red fluid in Graves’s.

“Poor little dear, growing weaker.” Sergej retreated to the door. “Hungry, are we? And thirsty too, I’ll wager. But you’re ever so much more tractable this way.”

Just give me an opening, asshole, and I’ll show you “tractable.” I glanced at Graves, but his face was set and pale, and those black holes where his eyes should be were creeptastic. I lowered myself gingerly into the chair and decided not to say anything.

At least now I was chained to a wheelchair instead of a wall. The chain might be durable and the cuff made of something space age, but wheelchairs are pretty fragile when it comes down to it. Things were looking up.

At least, they were looking up until Graves clumsily buckled the leather restraints over my wrists and ankles. The vampire stood and watched, clicking his tongue occasionally when Graves slowed down. Goth Boy was sweating a little, tiny diamond drops of water standing out on his skin. He kept his head down, his hair shaken into his face.

When it was done, Sergej whooshed past and was out in the hall in an eyeblink. Graves grabbed the back of the wheelchair and began pushing. After the dim stone cube, the hall was a glare, and I blinked several times. Hot water swelled in my eyes as they adjusted. The hall sloped up, and the wheelchair squeaked as Graves set off, following Sergej’s soundless steps. But his right hand came down and touched my shoulder. For a second his fingers dug in, a brief squeeze. Then he took it away.

I was shaking again. Sitting down, though, meant I could put my game face on. My left hand squeezed against itself, knotted up into a fist, and the spike of raw blistered pain was welcome. Even though my hand wasn’t healing from the Frisbee hex, I wasn’t going to complain. Not while it gave me a tool I needed to fight off Sergej’s snakelike stare.

The hall went up, and up, and spiraled. The stone gave way to regular walls, but it still felt underground. Dead air and the sense of weight pressing down on you, all over your body, echoes not quite behaving the way they should. Graves was breathing hard, slowing down as he pushed the chair. Sergej didn’t glance back, but he made another one of those clicking sounds, like he was hurrying up a horse or a dog.

Graves sped up a little. I concentrated on breathing, and on not hearing the soughing of blood in his veins. On not feeling the bloodhunger rasp against the back of my throat, my veins drying out like red sand. The emptiness in my middle, worse than hunger.

I’ve been hungry before. I’ve been plenty scared, too. But this . . . this was . . .

The hall ended in a pair of doors. Big dark wooden doors bound with rusting iron, spattered with crusted, metallic-smelling fluids I didn’t want to look at. Sergej reached up, his slim hands shocking–pale against the rough black wood, and pushed. The golden electric light ran down his curls, and if not for the quicksilver inhuman grace of his movements he would’ve made a pretty picture. He shoved, casually, and the heavy doors swung wide.

A burst of warmer air slid down the hall. The touch filled my head with shadowy pictures, sounds coming through static.

Screaming, begging, please don’t, no. Bright eyes glazed with avid glee over the black of the hunting-aura, claws shearing through bone, blood hanging in the air before it splashed on white and black tiles. High crystalline laughter, murmurings brushing the skin like razors, sobbing victims dragged across the floor and—

My head snapped to the side as if I’d been punched. The touch was much stronger than it had ever been, and it twisted inside me, the cathedral-space suddenly bursting with images. They roared through me in a torrent, and my left hand tingled with fresh hot pain.

That damn cinnamon-roll smell rose from my skin, and now it had a new tang. Warm perfume, a familiar smell.

Be brave, baby girl. A familiar voice. I could feel her breath against my cheek, could feel her arms around my small body as she lifted me. Be very brave now.

My mouth fell open. My fangs lengthened, scraping my lower lip. Mom? But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t.

Because Graves pushed me through the door, the wheelchair squeaked, and a vast space opened up around us. Circular, floored in white and black marble like a cross between an old-timey diner’s linoleum and a high-end hotel’s tiled lobby; tiers of seats rose in coliseum arcs to a stone-ribbed dome. The light was low and bloody, drenching every surface and making every edge weirdly sharp.

The seats were crowded with vampires. Bright eyes, fangs out, their young faces twisting up as they hissed and snarled. They were in every conceivable teenage shape and size, and they were all beautiful in a weird, stomach-clenching way.

I blinked furiously, their hatred scraping hard against the thin skin keeping me separate from the world. The bloodhunger rose, flooding my veins, and it took a second before the shapes I saw snapped into a picture behind my eyes.

At the far end of the circular space, a ragged human shape was spread-eagled, chained to the wall with familiar silvery metal. His head was down, dried blood stiffening his hair, and every inch of bare skin I could see on him—feet, hands, chest through the rips in his shirt, legs through the torn jeans—was battered and covered with tiny cuts. My heart leapt up into my throat, pounding thinly in my wrists and ankles, even behind my eyes.

It was Christophe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I leaned over and retched, even though my stomach was empty. I couldn’t help myself. A swell of nasty laughter cut through the snarling.

In the exact middle of the circle, there was a table and a chair. The table had equipment stacked on it, tubes and glass canisters. The chair was a monstrosity of whipped and curlicued iron, spikes screaming up from its back.

On the other side of the table, a familiar golden head. Dibs crouched, pale and slack-jawed, bruised up one whole side of his face, his dark eyes terribly empty. He was barefoot too, but his blue polo shirt and jeans weren’t torn up. He rocked back and forth a little, his hands clapped to his ears, trying to shut out the din.

My heart squeezed itself up into a rock. Poor Dibs.

Sergej raised his hands, and the sound coming from him shocked everything into silence. It petered out, a high glassy scream that trembled in the ultrasonic and speared the tender meat inside my head. The cry drained away, leaving every surface quivering, and the assembled vampires—there were so many of them, my God—were still as statues.

Across the room, Christophe’s head lifted fractionally, dropped. A gleam of blue showed through his tangled, crusted, hanging hair. It was a shock to see him so dirty and battered. Yet another thing that made me feel like I’d stepped through a door and into an alternate universe, where nothing was right anymore.

I let out a tiny, sobbing sound. It shivered and died in that silence like a small animal crouched in a trap.

Sergej half-turned and grinned at me. Those black eyes sparkled on their surface, and it was then that I figured out what made him the closest thing to a king the vampires had. All the rest of them were made of hatred, true. But Sergej? He was hate boiled down to its bones. He didn’t need a reason. Christophe had told me something had happened on an old battlefield in Europe, and after that his father had . . . changed. Had drunk so much blood, maybe, that something in him swelled up and burst like a tick. Maybe it was the part of him that had stayed human enough to get close to someone and father a kid. Or maybe it was just the part that made every other vampire recognizably human, even if psychotic and killcrazy.

Most suckers were mad dogs. But Sergej was a foaming-at-the-mouth dog who liked it. Gloried in it, even.

“Children.” Sergej spread his fingers. The tips of his claws lengthened, elegantly. “My darlings. Look at what I bring. A svetocha who has eluded us all these years, the one we have been hunting, the scion of two great Houses. She is ours, and our plans are coming to fruition.” He paused, and a swell of murmuring delight went through them. They stared. Some of them whispered to their neighbors, their young-old faces incandescent with hurtful delight.

Dibs had raised his head. He stared at me, his jaw dropping further, and the naked horror on his face hit me right in the chest. Behind me, Graves was trembling again. The wheelchair’s handles groaned faintly as he gripped them.

Wait a minute. Two Houses? And years? What? Gran had to have suspected something was—or several somethings were—after me, the way she kept me scrubbed down and smelling like something else, all those floor washes and strings of wild onion and garlic all around the house. And Dad had kept us moving around, like in Florida before we went to the Dakotas. So something couldn’t get a lock on us, he said, and no more.

I hadn’t asked.

“I will walk in daylight,” Sergej announced. “And when I do, my children, so shall you.”

There used to be a djamphir, a long time ago when the vampires could go out in sunlight. He was called Scarabus, and he killed their king, making sure they could only come out at night. But the way he did it was by drinking a svetocha—his own sister—dry. The stuff in my blood that made me toxic and drove boy djamphir a little crazy was the same stuff that could give Sergej the power to go out in the sunshine.

That was why vampires hunted svetocha down so hard. Either they killed us before we bloomed and got toxic, or they wanted to empty us out like Capri Sun pouches and go wandering around during the day. And Jesus, that thought was enough to send anyone reasonable almost catatonic with fear.

Without the sun to help the Order hold them back, their hate could eat away at the regular world like a cancer.

Christophe’s chin came up. The mad blue gleams of his eyes shone in the dim ruddy light. His fangs were out, and the aspect moved over him in waves. But slowly, sluggish. I could smell how badly he was hurt. The chains holding him against the wall like a fly on a windshield rattled a little, a warning.

That attracted Sergej’s attention. He blurred across the intervening space, coming to a halt a bare three feet from Christophe. The nasty air-tearing sound, like little voices laughing, echoed in the cavernous space. It was the same sound as when a djamphir used more-than-human speed to vanish, and if I’d had anything to eat that would have brought it up in a tasteless rush again. As it was, I was working against the leather cuffs feverishly, my left wrist cold under the metal of the cuff and its length of chain.

“My son.” Sergej didn’t sound so happy now. “What will it take to break you?”

Christophe spat something. It sounded like Polish, and definitely didn’t sound like good morning. The words bruised his lips and turned the air darker. Or maybe it was just the helpless rage in them, beating a frantic consonant-laden tattoo before falling to the black and white marble.

Sergej leaned forward a little, on the balls of his feet. All the same, there was another tension in him, pulling back.

He’s scared, I realized. Of Christophe. The bloodhunger surged, pounding in my veins, the aspect trickling hot strength into me. But too slowly.

“I wonder.” The king of the vampires sounded chill and contemplative. “When I drain the last drop from her, my wolf, will that quench this rebellion?” He swung away, and the hurtful glee came back. He clicked his bootheels as he stalked across the floor and Christophe surged against the chains, fighting.

It hurt me to see. Blood dripped, each plink hitting the floor loud in the magnified silence. If he kept this up, he was going to hurt himself even worse, and anger crested inside me for one red-hot moment.

“Christophe!” I yelled. The light flashed, brighter, crimson instead of low red, and a draft of cinnamon and perfume roiled up from my skin. “Stop it!”

Dibs let out a soft little hurt sound. The vampires were still, staring. Sergej halted as if slapped.

Christophe sagged against the chains. Sergej made a noise like trains colliding.

Sergej was suddenly there, leaning into the sphere of toxicity the aspect gave me. His face mottled purple, and he hissed, everything in him twisting. Maybe it was because Christophe had listened to me—or maybe it was just because he wanted to be the only one doing the talking.

He’s a garden-variety bully. For a moment I felt a surge of hope, of strength, of something warm and comforting. You don’t stumble through the jungle of the public education system in sixteen different states without learning about bullies.

But then the hope crashed. He wasn’t just a bully. He was the king of the vampires, and I was in deep shit. We all were.

And I couldn’t see any damn way out.

Sergej backed off a couple steps. His entire body twisted, shoulders shaking, and he drummed his heels into the stone floor with little cracking sounds. The mottling retreated as he hissed, the sound shaking everything around us. Everything rippled, even the floor. The wheelchair groaned, and I squeezed my left hand. Hard. The sunburst of pain jolted up my arm, cleared my head, and I twisted, working against the straps.

No use.

Sergej’s head tipped back down. He made another one of those little clicking noises, and the wheelchair shook as Graves’s fists tightened again.

He pushed me slowly across the acres of checkerboard squares, closer to the table. I looked at the stuff on it, and swallowed dryly.

So that’s what he’s going to do.

It made a kind of sense. The happy stuff in my blood that drives boy djamphir a little crazy pretty much only functions when it hits the air. But it also breathes out through my skin, and that’s what makes me toxic to suckers now that I’d bloomed and could reliably use the aspect. If Sergej, for some reason or another, couldn’t get through that shell, if my blood was even more toxic when it hit oxygen and he couldn’t get his fangs in me the way he had with Anna, well . . . the best solution was to make sure the blood didn’t hit the air, right? And there was a good way of doing that.

It involved needles and tubing, and something simple to push the blood.

A transfusion.

Sergej must’ve seen it on my face. “It has a certain symmetry, does it not? I was not able to drink from your mother; I had to settle for merely destroying. But you are heir to all her strength, and whatever remnants of dear sweet Anotchka you stole before she died, and a bastard strain of the djinni themselves. I will have it all. This is only the beginning. It will take me weeks to wring the last drop of strength from you.” He indicated Christophe with one short stabbing gesture. “And my son will watch every session.” Another hideously jolly chuckle, and Sergej dropped into his iron throne. He laid his hands along the chair’s arms, and clicked his tongue again.

Graves wheeled me toward the table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I thought he’d make Graves stick the needle in my arm. But instead, Sergej tapped his fingers and stared at Dibs. I yanked against the restraints. Nothing. The wheelchair threatened to tip, but Graves steadied it. He was breathing hard, his pulse ratcheting up into redline, fighting.

It didn’t matter.

“You.” The king of the vampires sounded bored. “Ready the transfusion.”

Dibs rose, slowly. He was still staring at me, his pupils pinpricks and his hair wildly curling over his forehead. High bright flags of color stood out on his cheeks, and I saw the messy fang marks on his neck. Little bruised holes, crusted with dried blood.

Oh, God.

His ribs flared with sharp shallow breaths. He looked scared to death.

“No.”

Even I couldn’t quite believe he’d said it. Everyone was staring at him instead of me now, and despite the relief, I suddenly cast around for something to do to get them to stop looking at him.

Because Sergej’s face changed by a couple of millimeters, and everything in me went cold and loose. Still, he just sat there, staring at Dibs, and when his gelid black gaze drifted over to me I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking.

He was thinking of how easy it would be to find someone else to stick a needle in my arm and get the whole show on the road. Which meant Dibs would be superfluous.

“Dibs.” Hoarse and weary. The bloodhunger twisted inside me, and my working against the restraints wasn’t conscious by now. I was rubbing and twisting to get loose any way I could. It was useless, but that didn’t stop me. “Do what he says.”

“What’s he gonna do, kill me?” A short, choppy laugh, and Dibs folded his arms. Maybe it was to disguise how he was shaking. He was flour-pale, except for those fever spots on his cheeks. “If he does that, he doesn’t have anyone else who knows how to run this. Graves? Don’t make me laugh. He’s not medically trained.”

“He’ll find someone.” I swallowed hard, saliva rasping against the bloodhunger and leaving me dissatisfied. “And, Dibsie? Sweetheart.” The echo of Dad’s hillbilly accent teased at the edges of the words. I never thought I sounded Southern, but right now I could hear it. “He might not kill you. He might do worse.”

Dibs’s pupils flared. Sergej’s stare was a cold weight against my skin.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Dibs whispered. The utter hopelessness crashing into him was terrible to see.

“It’s okay.” Soothing, quiet, like I was talking to a nervous horse. “It’s okay, Dibs. Really.”

The chains across the room clashed as Christophe stirred. I hoped he wasn’t about to do anything stupid. Unless it was tearing himself free and kicking everyone’s ass and getting me out of here. That would not be stupid.

But it was stupid to hope for it at this point. What I had to do now was get them out of this alive.

Good luck with that, Dru. You’re not getting out of this one.

Well, okay. But if I could get them out, or even get them some more time, it was worth it. One small way to make up for being a plague, since if I hadn’t been around, Dibs would be safe at the reform Schola, Graves would be living in his hidey-hole at the mall, and Christophe? Who knew? But he probably wouldn’t be chained to a wall in his dad’s Sooper-Sekrit Evil Hideout.

Which, by the way, had no taste. Gran would’ve called it overdone. Dad would’ve called it a horror-movie whorehouse, most likely.

A funny urge to laugh rose up inside me. I quashed it, but it made me feel . . . not better, I guess, but stronger. Like I could do what I had to.

It was like a jolt of cold water. Everything got very, well, basic.

Dibs was shaking even harder. The shudders went through him in waves. Sub, they called it. Submissive. He wasn’t built for this.

Give him something to focus on. “Dibs.” I wished I could snap my right-hand fingers. “Ash? Shanks? Do you know where they are? And Nat?”

His arms dropped, his hands curling into fists before releasing. The change rippled through him, wiry golden hair moving in fluid streams . . . and retracting. The fang marks on his throat glared. So did the huge circles under his eyes. He looked awful tired. “I . . . Alive. Last I saw.”

I almost sagged with relief. “Then they’re going to bust the doors down soon. Don’t worry. Just do what you have to, right now. Don’t worry about anything else.”

“Are you . . .” He didn’t glance at Sergej. Great pearls of sweat stood out on his pale skin. But the shaking was going down in him. Thank God.

The king of the vampires tapped his claws against the arm of his iron chair. The reptilian clicking turned my stomach into a bowling ball.

I summoned a grin. It felt tight and unnatural, like the skin on my face was cracking. “I’m sure, Dibs. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

I was lying to him, I knew. But he dropped his eyes and took a sliding sideways step toward the table. There were even little packets of alcohol wipes set out, and things in sterile packages.

Sterile. Like I might get infected. The thought called up another screaming lunatic giggle that died in my throat.

I wasn’t going to make it out of this. I was pretty damn sure of that. You’d think it would be the sort of thing that would reduce a girl to the screaming meemies.

But for Dibs’s sake, I was going to be brave. I was going to lose a little blood here.

I just hoped I had enough in me to buy the rest of them some more time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sometimes I have nightmares about what happened next. They always start out with the smile on my face, cracked and faded but plastered there, and my encouraging nods every time Dibs glanced worriedly at me. Then there’s the sting of the needle and the aspect flaming into life, every muscle in me tensing against the intrusion and my fangs tingling, crackling, aching. Then there’s a skip, like a jolted CD player, and a sound like rushing water all through me.

A horrible draining sensation. A deep bruising ache in my arm. The bloodhunger rasping against my veins, like sandpaper flooding my circulatory system. Merciful darkness covering my vision, everything in flashes—Sergej’s hiss as the needle slid in, Dibs’s quiet sobbing, Graves’s quick light breathing, the wheelchair rattling as he twitched, the rising hateful murmur through the assembled nosferat, a thin silvery rattle as Christophe’s chains moved again.

My head fell to the side, my neck turning to rubber. A thin stem to hold my pumpkin head up. I thought I heard my mother’s voice again—Be brave, sweetheart. Be very brave now.

The blood she’d given me was now sliding into her killer’s veins. No oxygen to make it liquid poison for him.

Everything spilled away on that dark rushing water. This wasn’t like Christophe’s fangs in my wrist and the terrible inward-ripping sensation as something was pulled out of me by the roots.

No. This was worse.

Because it was black, and cold, and I was trying to scream, and I was alone, and nobody would hear me. It was like sitting in an empty house and waiting for Dad to come back, or sitting by Gran’s hospital bed while her breathing got shallower and shallower. It was like my mother snuggling me into a hidey-hole in the bottom of a closet, closing me away in the safest place she could, and leaving me in the dark.

I was always being left behind. Like a piece of luggage. Like a toy, set down while a kid runs away to play with something else. Like trash.

Now I was left behind, again, and this time there would be nobody and nothing coming to pick me up.

This was the end of the line.

I heard a sound. I was making it. A chilling, breathless moan. Air escaping past slack lips, a drowning swimmer’s final bubbles rising for the surface like silvery fish while the rest . . . sinks.

Fingers against my face. Cold, with the prickle of claws behind them. He scraped at my skin gently, like he enjoyed the feel of it. Something in me roused, knowing I was in terrible danger. It struggled for the surface . . . and couldn’t make it.

“Take her away,” Sergej said, and giggled.

No chain cuffed to my wrist. No need for it now. I was as weak as a sick kitten. Dibs held the cup of water to my lips; half of it spilled down my T-shirt. Tears slicked his cheeks. I blinked at him. There was a buzzing in my ears, and everything looked two-dimensional.

The touch was weak, too. Contracting, like a slug with salt sprinkled on it. Thin and washed out, the world with most of its color removed, all its solidity evaporated. Just a television show, light played on a flat screen.

“Dru!” Dibs, sobbing now. “Dru, please, wake up. Wake up.”

I don’t think I want to. But I was doing this for him, wasn’t I? So I tried to focus through the haze. My mouth wouldn’t quite work right.

“Dibsh?” I slurred. Tried again. “Shamuel?”

Because I’d always thought it was kind of funny when Christophe called him Samuel. A weird, floaty laugh came out of me, my lips loose and numb. I sounded drunk.

He made a low hurt noise. That snapped me back into some kind of sense.

Buck up, Dru. You’re still breathing. Things could be worse.

As “comforting things to think” went, it kind of sucked.

I forced my eyes to open all the way. It wasn’t the cell. It was a bedroom. No windows, the blank stone walls faintly sheened with something like greasy sweat. But the bed was a four-poster, done in faded pink, hanging curtains fuzzed with what looked like a century’s worth of dust. A small brass lamp on a flimsy black-painted nightstand, its shade a bell of dark pink Tiffany glass, Art Deco and probably worth something. There was also a cut-crystal water pitcher. My left-hand fingers itched a little, and a terrible lassitude filled every inch of me.

A girl I’d hung out with in seventh grade had told me about having mono once. About being so tired she didn’t even want to get up to pee. About how her whole body didn’t even seem to belong to her. Just a lump I was hanging around in until a bus came, was the way she put it.

Sarah. Her name was Sarah Holmes. She had black hair.

I hadn’t thought about her in ages. We’d moved on after Dad and I cleared out a roach-spirit infestation and did a little hexbreaking on the side. But now I wanted to see her again and tell her that I understood. And to apologize for promising to be her friend, when I knew I was going to be leaving.

Dibs’s face loomed over mine. His eyes were red and inflamed, and his cheeks were chapped under the tearstains. He looked like he’d been crying for a long time.

Christ. Locked up in this room with me almost dead on the bed? No wonder.

“Hi,” I croaked. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.” For some reason that set him off again, but I didn’t worry about it. I was thinking through mud, each separate thought very slow and stretched out. “Dibs. Kiddo. Calm down.”

“I c-c-can’t s-s-smell you!” The water glass shook in his hands. “You were s-s-so still, and I—”

“Whooooaaaa.” I drew the word out. “Chill, Dibsie. Calm down. Nice and easy.” I am comforting a submissive werwulf. Wow. For some reason it seemed funny. Horribly, bleakly funny. It would take too much energy to laugh, though. “How . . .” I struggled to find the right question to ask. “How long? Have I been . . . out?”

“Hours,” he whispered. “I was scared.” Half-defiant, his lower lip pooching a little. There was some grit in Dibs, even if he was sub. He certainly didn’t take any crap when it was time to bandage someone up.

“Me too, kid.” I tried to move, got pretty much nowhere. But I felt a little sharper now. The aspect’s warmth was gone; I never thought I’d miss it. It was freezing in here. The cold crept into my fingers and toes in a way that should have alarmed me. “Dibs. My hand. Left hand.”

“What?” As usual, once he got something to do, he calmed right down. The stutter eased up and the frantic jittering in his muscles settled into an occasional twitch. “Oh, yeah. Blisters and stuff. I b-bandaged it. Looked pretty rough, and not healing r-right. What is it?”

I don’t know. A hex so bad it burned me, but it’s turning out to be useful. I didn’t have the energy to explain. “Poke it.”

“What?” He stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Poke it. Squeeze it.” Give it a beat and dance to it, just make it hurt. I brought my attention back with a start. “Make it hurt.”

“But—” He set the water glass down. “Dru.”

“Make. It. Hurt.” I didn’t have any patience left, either. “Please.”

“Okay.” He leaned over me, grabbed my left hand, and squeezed with more than human strength.

A lightning bolt went up my arm, detonated in my shoulder. I yelped, Dibs yelped too and dropped my hand. He was all the way across the room before you could shout Dixie, pressed up against the dark, weeping stone wall. For just a moment the Other shone out through his wide fearful eyes, a flash of orange snarling, and fur rippled under his skin, not quite breaking free.

Even if he was shy and frightened, Dibs was still wulfen. He could kick some serious ass if he was motivated.

The trouble, I guess, was getting him motivated enough to forget he was scared.

The jolt of pain cleared my head. It also made the touch ring like a bell, expanding for a brief second before I dropped back into my tired aching body with a click, the exact same sound as Dad chambering a round.

Okay. I propped myself shakily on my elbows. Random curls fell in my face, and I tasted copper. My mouth was dry and aching. My teeth weren’t sensitive at all. Well, that was a relief—but there was none of the aspect, and the world looked dull. It could’ve been just the dim pinkish light.

Or maybe I was just seeing with normal eyes now.

If I was, how did people live like this? With shutters over their eyes and cotton wool in their ears? It was worse than being blind.

My arms gave out. I sank back down into the bed. It was chokingsoft, and my nose tickled from the dust. But I felt clear. Like I was made of glass, drained and wiped clean. At least I could think now.

I licked my lips, wished I hadn’t. My dry tongue rasped, and the bloodhunger at the back of my throat was a slow creeping burn. “Door. Locked?”

Dibs eased away from the wall. “Nothing to pick it with, either. I checked. I thought if I c-could g-get you o-out—”

“Calm down, Dibs.” I appreciate the thought. Really, I do. I focused on breathing. In, out, in, out. “Okay. Anything in here that can serve as a weapon? Is the bed breakable?”

“Wood. Not hawthorn. I could break it up, maybe make stakes, but they’ll just laugh at us before they take off our heads like Pez dispensers.” He swallowed hard, his chin lifting. His curls fell back, and for a moment I got a flash of what he’d look like if he ever got older, instead of being teenage all the time.

Pez dispensers? You’re gruesome. That’s good. “Good point. Can I have some more water?”

I didn’t really need it. I just wanted to give him something to do while I poked at the beehive inside my head and figured out something amazing that would get us out of this.

Unfortunately my beehive wasn’t producing much beyond a steady whispered oh my God we’re all gonna die and prolly me first, hooray and oh shit.

He was halfway across the room before he stopped, his head cocking. I strained my ears, heard nothing but my own pulse. “What is it?” I whispered. “Sucker?”

“N-no.” Dibs flushed, and his eyes turned orange. He half-turned and crouched, fluidly, his splayed hands gently touching the stone floor. He didn’t quite change, but the Other rippled under his skin and bulked his shoulders, and he exhaled, a growl thrumming out of his narrow chest before he went still and completely quiet, waiting.

Well, great. Then what the hell is it? I tried pitching from side to side, but my body wouldn’t obey me. A twitch or two was all I could manage. Dust puffed up from the velvet coverlet, and the urge to sneeze tickled me all the way down to my toes.

Great. Just great. I managed to hitch one hip up. I could think and I could send the signals, but they weren’t getting through to my arms and legs. It was like swimming in glue. I couldn’t hear a damn thing, and the touch was dead. It might as well have been dumb meat inside my skull, for all the good it did me. Even squeezing my left hand into a fist, concentrating like hell to make my fingers draw up clumsily, didn’t help. The pain just slid up my arm like swamp water, losing its insistent edge.

The door scraped. A key, turning in a rusty lock. How old was this room? Did I even want to know? The heavy bed and the lamp reminded me of the Schola Prima, and I suddenly wished I’d never left. Everything I did just made a bigger mess, and now things were as bad as they could get.

I winced inwardly. You’re never supposed to even think that. Because it’s just an invitation for the world, Real or otherwise, to throw something even more incredibly fucked up at you.

The door squealed as it was pushed open. Dibs settled, bracing himself like a cat who sees the mouse but isn’t quite ready to spring.

Graves slipped through. I let out a blurt of sound, his eyes a green flash in the dimness, but it was too late.

Dibs leapt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They tumbled out into the hall. Normally wulfen growl when they fight, but Dibs was dead silent—and deadly serious. If you’ve never seen a for-real wulfen brawl, rather than just them playing around or shoving for dominance . . . well, it’s something. It’s a blur of motion, the Other surfacing in both of them, fur and muscle rippling. They move like they’re shouldering through tall grass most of the time, compared to a djamphir’s quick graceful slink, but the rolling fluid hurtfulness of a serious fight among them is another grace entirely.

A grace that burns.

Thuds. A whimper. A scraping, claws against stone.

“I’m trying to help.” Graves, harshly, a loup-garou’s mental dominance pressing down behind the words. “God damn you, Dibs, I’m trying to help!”

It didn’t sound like Dibs believed him. More scraping, and a low sullen growl that rattled everything in the room.

“If you don’t shut up they’ll come!” Half-frantic, now. “It’s day, it’s day and they’re mostly asleep; shut the fuck up!”

The growl turned off like a faucet. Two more thuds, shaking the door so that it swung, while I tried to roll the rest of the way over. My left hand was a fist, but the pain wasn’t helping. It had turned into a dull ache like sunburn, and that was bad.

That was very bad.

“How can I . . .” Dibs, sharper than I’d ever heard him. “Traitor. Traitor.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.” I’d never heard Graves sound so cold. “Fighting him off is hard enough without you jumping on me.”

A long static-laden silence. Then a short choked sound, another massive thump, and a long dragging noise.

Graves shouldered in through the door. He had my duffel straps in one hand, my malaika harness tangling and the wooden swords dragging along with the duffel. One-handed, because he was hauling an unconscious Dibs along in his other fist. He put his head down, his shoulders hulked a little as the change filled him out. His eyes flamed green, and he hauled everything inside, swung the door mostly-to, and turned on one booted heel.

Wearing boots now. Not Converse.

That was good, right? Green eyes was better. My brain tried to process this and vapor-locked.

We stared at each other. I tried to look like I could get up and kick some ass. Probably failed miserably. Because his face changed a little. He turned almost gray under his ethnic coloring, and his eyes slitted as a wave of trembling passed through him. His hands tensed, fingers coming up into claws, and when the fit passed, he was sweating again.

He shook his hair down into his face, a quick nervous movement. “Hi. He’ll wake up in a bit.”

I managed a nod. “I . . . I can’t . . .” Tried once again to get my balky body to do something, anything.

“Don’t worry.” He crossed the room in long swinging strides. “I’ve got it figured out, Dru.” He halted at my bedside, staring down from under the mess of his freshly-dyed hair. “You need blood.”

It took a second for the meaning behind the words to hit home. “Graves—”

“Don’t.” He put one knee on the bed. Dust rose. “Just listen, okay?”

The urge to sneeze tickled my nose again; I held off with an eye-watering effort. He took my silence for agreement, I guess, because he lowered himself gingerly down. The bed creaked a little, and he worked one arm underneath me. He was scorch–hot, feverish through his clothes. His boots against my sock feet; it wasn’t really apparent how much taller he was when he was lying down. His arm curled up and I settled against him like a sack of potatoes.

My cheeks were on fire. “Graves,” I whispered. Don’t. This isn’t safe.

“Shhh.” Like someone would overhear us. “Listen to me.”

His trembling came back, and this time it infected me too. I was numb all over, my teeth chattering despite the heat coming off him.

“It’s high noon,” he finally whispered. “Sun’s at its highest. For a little while, I’m free, because he’s resting. We don’t have long. You have to bite me, then we’ll get out of here. Then I’m gonna run as fast and as far as I can until I’m sure he can’t get inside my head again. When I’m sure, when I’m strong enough, I’ll find you. You’ll go back to the Order. They’ll protect you. Don’t argue with me, Dru. Just do it.”

“I can’t—”

“You can.” He sounded so sure. I couldn’t see his face, because my nose was against his shoulder. He didn’t smell like loup-garou now. Instead it was just a healthy boy-smell, cigarette smoke and whatever harsh soap they gave him here. He kept himself clean no matter what, and now I wondered about that. “You have to, Dru. You’ve taken this asshole on and toasted his cookies before. This ain’t no different.”

“You don’t understand.” It was easier to say it with my face in his shoulder. “I can’t bite you. I know what it’s like. It’s horrible. And I—”

“You have to. Dibs can’t give you what you need to get out of here. He’s too sub. Just do it, Dru.”

How could I explain? I knew what it was like to have a djamphir bite you, to have something invisible, the core of what you were, something like your soul, pulled out by the roots, bit by bit. It hurt.

There was no way I could do that to Graves. I just couldn’t.

Because it made me like the suckers. Like the things Dad would’ve hunted.

Like the thing that killed him. And my mother. The thing that was sleeping somewhere else in this huge stone pile, with my blood running around in its veins.

Oh, God. “Just get out of here,” I managed. “Take Dibs. Just go.”

He scooched around a bit, making himself comfortable. His arm tightened, and my nose ended up in his throat. His leg curled over both of mine, and his free hand came up and stroked my tangled hair.

“The only one,” he murmured. His chin dipped a little bit. “You know that, Dru? You’re the only person who’s ever believed in me. You know what that’ll do to a guy?”

What? “I—”

“It makes him want to live up to it.” A sarcastic, bitter little half-laugh, just like the Goth Boy I used to know. The birdlike one who was a little ugly, sure, until you got to know him and saw what had been under the ugly all along. The true beauty.

Sometimes it hides deep, that truth.

Graves made a quick little movement, nestling down. “Only I’m not like you. I was broken before he did it. I even just got half-bit. Half-turned, halfass like everything else in my stupid life before I met you. Maybe it’s better that way, like Christophe says.” He shuddered. “Maybe I’m broke anyway, but at least this way I’m useful.”

“Graves. Goddammit.” My throat was on fire. The bloodhunger, sensing a pulse very close to my fangs. They didn’t crackle or lengthen, but my teeth were sensitive again. No hot-oil feeling from the aspect either, but I was suddenly very thirsty. “I can’t bite you. It’s just . . . I can’t.”

It wasn’t my teeth crackling. It was his wrist. His free hand left my hair, and his arm tightened. His index-finger nail lengthened, sliding free, wicked sharp and tipped with translucence like a cat’s claw. “Don’t punk out on me, kid.” Sarcasm now, but under it the shaking still running through us both as if we were on one of those beds that went earthquake when you dropped a quarter in.

The claw tip scraped delicately against the softest part of his throat. For a moment the cut was white, his wrist held oddly because of the angle, and at the very end of the scratch he dug in a little.

A bright drop of crimson appeared.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The tiny crimson drop was the only thing in the room that didn’t look washed-out. It was a rich ruby jewel, and my mouth actually watered. Which only made the thirsty worse.

Then the smell of it hit me. Copper, wildness, icy moonlight, and the strawberry-incense tang of him. It scraped across the bloodhunger and lit every vein in my body like a tangle of neon.

My fangs slid free, my jaw making little popping, shifting sounds. It hurt, like an overstressed muscle. Each individual tooth rooted in my jaw tingled, exquisitely sensitive.

“Graves,” I whispered. With a faint lisp, so I didn’t scrape my tongue on the sharp bits. It sounded ridiculous.

“Dru.” He slid his free fingers through my hair again and hugged me. My nose mashed against the underside of his jaw, a little bit of stubble roughening up, and my tight-closed lips met the beads of blood. The smell of it crawled through my nose and lit up everything inside my head, like a match flame touching gas fumes. “Just do it. Please. I . . . please, Dru. I want you to.”

Oh, God— My head twitched on my weak, aching neck. My lips skinned back from my teeth. I fought it, but my body knew better than I did. It pulled me forward . . . but oh, God.

I tried to be gentle.

My fangs knew just where to press. My tongue lapped once, gathering the trickle from the small cut, and a shiver went through him. His arm tightened under me, his leg tightened over both of mine, and he pulled me into his body like we were raindrops on a window, the moment before they slide together.

My fangs slid in. A burst of sweet, hot perfume filled my mouth, and I drew on it as gently as I could.

Graves’s head tipped back. But his arms and legs tensed, twining us together, tighter and tighter. I swallowed. It slid down my throat like silk and exploded in my stomach, and the touch came back to roaring life. My fangs drove in deeper, strength flooding my arms and legs again, and he made an odd sound, like all the air had been punched out of him.

It poured into my mouth again, heat and life and light. But with it came a flood of images, swirling through the touch and blasting straight into my brain.

. . . “Stupid little—” The words became a roar, the spilled paint bright blue against the garage floor as the fosterdaddy’s slap caught him right on the cheek. Red pain, falling, hitting the side of the car with a dead crack and the pain a red monster, swallowing him whole.

. . . crouching on the playground while the bigger kid swings his foot, kick catching right under the ribs, falling and hearing their laughter. The teachers were hurrying to bust it up, but he just hunched and sobbed, because it was too late.

. . . sobbing in the middle of the night, hearing the scream as Mom’s latest boyfriend took the belt to her, writhing in shame and pain because he was too little, too afraid. Never, he swears to himself, never be helpless again, never never never . . .

. . . the blue-eyed girl turned in a circle, and his heart was a stone in his chest. “It’s nice,” she said, looking at the posters and the books and the shabby little room he’d managed to cobble together. His hideaway, where he retreated to lick his wounds every day. “It’s cozy.” And just like that, she turned the whole place into a clubhouse, because he wasn’t in here alone.

. . . she was beautiful, even soaked and shivering, with the gun in her hand. Her eyes blazed, and the grinding in his shoulder from the thing that had bit him was a flaming brand. “Dru. Don’t leave me. Please.” Because she had that look, his mother’s look every time she vanished and the social workers came sniffing around. The look that said he was nothing but baggage, and she was better off without him, because he’d make her sink like a rock. So he pulled himself up, as tall as he could. Don’t care what I have to do. “Dru.” Trying not to sound like he was pleading. And when she nodded, the gun pointed at the floor and the tears sliding unnoticed down her cheeks, the relief in him was enough to make the hamburger mess of his shoulder suddenly inconsequential.

Because for the first time, someone didn’t shrug him off. She set her shoulders and nodded. “All right,” she said, and he suddenly understood everything had changed, that he wasn’t going to get left behind, that she was going to take him with her. He’d say anything, do whatever he had to—she asked questions, he answered. And finally she nodded again. “All right, Graves. You and me. Let’s go.”

And it was enough. More than he’d ever thought he’d get.

I swallowed again. The heat slammed through me, a good cracking-clean hit like a baseball against the sweet spot of a bat. They poured into me, the images, and seeing myself through his eyes was like vanishing. Because he hadn’t seen the frizzy-haired, scared-to-death, mousy Dru. No, to him I’d looked like a supernova, flaming and deadly beautiful, an escape from the dead-end world he’d been born into.

And Jesus, I’d known it had to have been bad for him—nobody with a well-adjusted family life lives in a forgotten office in a mall, for Chrissake—but I hadn’t known how bad. He’d never said anything about it. At least, nothing directly. And I hadn’t asked because, well, you don’t ask about shit like that. You just leave everything open in case they want to say something, and you try not to squeeze any raw parts.

When Ash’s teeth had ground in his flesh and the change agents worked in with Ash’s saliva, Graves had been born again. Dragged out of the dead end and plonked on the highway. He didn’t want to look back.

And now I could guess at all the broken places inside him, where Sergej had his claws. Except I had hold of everything else, and I pulled, the touch flexing as his blood filled my mouth again and he made another harsh grating noise. I wasn’t gentle this time, fangs sinking in deeper and my mouth sucking greedily, my arms suddenly around him and the hot sweet taste coating every inch of my mouth and throat and all the way down into my stomach. Summer heat-haze spread out, fighting back the cold swimming weakness.

He might have thrashed, but we were holding each other so tightly it didn’t do more than ripple through us both as the blood poured down my throat. I’d lost track of how many times I’d swallowed, and that was dangerous, wasn’t it? Djamphir never took more than a certain amount, I didn’t know why, but—

Wait, that’s three, it’s always three, why?

Everything else vanished. Red light blinded me, his pulse thudding frantically, a drumbeat my own heart struggled to match. I pulled again, something old and slow and black as an oily nighttime river sluggishly waking, rising through layers of sleep, its teeth ivory-sharp and champing with a sound like billiard balls hitting each other, bloody foam spattering thin cruel lips.

I swallowed again. Heat and strength poured into me, the touch roaring like ocean breakers, the world coming back. My eyes flew open; a tingling flood swept down my skin. Graves’s arms solid and real around me. His fingers wrapped in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt as he pressed my head forward, and for a long moment we were those two raindrops again. Merged together, running down a window as a radio blared something with a driving beat and the wind roared through open windows, life returning in a green spring flood.

I jerked back, trying to free myself from his arms. He didn’t ease up, steel running through his muscles, locking down. He was still shaking, a jittering earthquake pouring through him as he made another hoarse dry sound. He was on the edge of the bed, dust rising in swirls, and something inside both of us stretched . . . and snapped, an almost-physical sound that blew more dust up. This time the cloud of particles made shapes, long elegant heads with sharp teeth, slim paws, and running fluid lines. I sensed more than saw them, and the old blind thing with its dark clawed fingers squeezing Graves’s brain howled in fruitless rage as I shredded at it, scrubbing with a brush made of the way I felt about him.

A bright, hot, clean feeling.

Another jet of bright hot life slid down my throat, hit my stomach, and exploded. This time the images were a kaleidoscope, color and motion unreeling under the touch, spinning so fast I couldn’t process them. They were all me, but me seen through his eyes. Me sleeping, me hunched over a lunch tray, me studying a book, me covered in mud and muck and gunk—all shot through with a rose-colored feeling, soft in some places, scary-hard and spiky in others. His heart in his throat and his pulse rising, and one more swallow would give me everything, would break all the walls between us and . . .

I tore away. The bloodhunger snarled, vibrating in my chest with that odd clear-crystal ringing sound, and a hot draft of sticky cinnamon and warm perfume drifted up.

It was like being reborn. The aspect smoothed over me, downy wings beating in time with my pulse, and I held Graves, my cheek against his shoulder. The hunger retreated, step by step.

You have control, Dru. Christophe’s voice, and why was I hearing him? I didn’t want to hear him while I was holding my Goth Boy.

Graves shook. For a moment I thought he was crying. But he was laughing, the kind of crazy-sane laughter that erupts when you find out you’re not dead after all. His arms had loosened a little, but he was still definitely holding me. He smelled of ashes now, curiously pale, the ghost of incense. Cold, and weak. But his pulse still thundered, and he didn’t let go of me.

For a long moment I struggled with the urge to bury my fangs in him again and drain every last drop. To not stop, because it was so good. And because I was in my own skin now, separate and oddly bereft.

The laughter shuddered to a stop. He exhaled, hard. Then, a quiet croak. “Do you need more?”

God. No. I want more, that’s the problem. I shook my head, clamping my lips shut. Buried my face in his shoulder and fought the hunger, step by step, back into its little box. His fingers slid free of my hair, and he stroked the tangled curls down.

And for just that moment, the darkness behind my eyelids held no danger. But there was no time. I knew, as surely as I knew my own name, that somewhere in the stone warren we were trapped in, Sergej was waking up.

And boy, was he going to be pissed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Graves stumbled, the water glass dripping in his hand, and sat down on the bed. Hard.

He wasn’t too steady on his feet. And he looked terrible—gaunt, ashen, huge circles under his burning-green eyes. My fingers flew, buckling the malaika on; I knelt and started digging in the duffel. Ammo, and the spare gun in its holster. Thank God. Plus a pair of canvas shoes, not as good as boots but I grabbed them anyway. I left the cash, the rest of the clothes, and the fake ID; I grabbed a black hoodie and the ammo bag. The lump of fresh strength behind my breastbone scorched, comfortingly. My left hand tingled like it was asleep but waking up.

“Jesus.” Graves made it up to his feet, took two staggering steps, and tossed the water in Dibs’s slack face.

That did the trick. Dibs sat up with a yelp, scrambled back until he hit the wall, and stared wildly at us.

I zipped the duffel back closed. “Can you get you and Dibs out of here? Is there an exit?”

Graves nodded. “There’s one or two. I been prowling around during the day—wait. What are you—”

“Christophe’s down there. You two get out. If I can get Christophe free, we’ll rendezvous—wait, where are we? What city? Do you know?”

“What did you do?” Dibs braced his shoulders against the wall. He stared at me, his eyes wide and terrified like a little kid’s after a nightmare. “Dru?”

“Relax. I’m going to be fine.” It was sort of a lie, sure. But it was all I had. “Where are we? Do either of you know?”

“You can’t go down there. Someone’s always around. Dru—” Graves sat down on the bed again. Or rather, his legs gave out and he just dropped. “You can’t.”

I strapped the holster on, tested it. Good. Swiped at my hair, found a ponytail elastic in one of the hoodie’s pockets. A moment’s worth of work gave me a halfass braid-ponytail-thing that would keep my hair back, at least.

My fingers dove into the ammo bag, found a clip, and I popped it in, chambered a round, slid the gun back in the holster and buckled the ammo bag’s nylon belt. “I am not leaving anyone behind here.” I sounded flat and terribly adult.

Just like Dad.

“Now’s our best chance,” I continued. “Do you know where the hell we are?”

“Fargo.” Dibs shuddered. “North Dakota. We’re outside Fargo by about ten miles. Dru, what did you . . . did you drink? From him?”

Fargo. They must’ve put me in a plane to get me up here. For a moment my skin chilled, thinking of being trapped in that metal box again. I was actually thinking now, and it was a relief. Back to being my bad old tough-girl self, with a lump of warmth in my stomach sending waves of heat and strength through the rest of me.

I didn’t want to think about it. I had all I could do nerving myself up for what I had to do next. I plopped down on the floor and yanked the shoes on.

Graves stripped his hair back from his forehead. It lay lank and dead against his fingers, the dye swallowing light. He was sweating, the ashen tone to his skin more pronounced. He looked absolutely hideous. “I made her. Shut up, Dibs. Look, Dru, he’ll wake up. Leave Christophe, goddammit. He wouldn’t—”

“I wouldn’t leave you behind.” I rose, my body obeying me smoothly now.

How long did I have before the strength in Graves’s blood ran out? I wasn’t sure. So I had to do this quick.

I ghosted to the door, the touch rippling out in concentric rings. Nobody around, but the air was full of the breathlessness right before a thunderstorm. It was beginning to feel almost normal, that sense of crisis approaching. “I won’t leave him behind either,” I finished, still in that queer flat tone.

“What is it with you and him?” Graves’s lip lifted, white teeth showing. Even his gums were pale.

Bloodless.

Don’t think about that, Dru. Think about what you got to do next.

I reached up with my right hand. Snapped the malaika free. Probably my best bet in a house full of suckers. If the Maharaj showed up, we’d see how good I was with hexing, and a silver-grain round or two might discourage them in a hell of a hurry too.

And if I ran out of ammo, I’d figure something else out.

I glanced down. My left hand was whole now, no trace of the burning. I couldn’t see if the blisters were still hanging around, but it felt like they were. Half-healed and tender. It still tingled when I flexed my fingers, but it felt all right.

“Dru. Goddammit.” Graves surged to his feet. “What is it with Christophe? Is it that he’s djamphir?”

I couldn’t believe he was even asking. “No. It’s because he’s my friend.”

“What am I, then?”

Oh, for the love of . . . “Well, you don’t want to be my boyfriend, so I don’t know. You tell me. But tell me after we meet up. You and Dibs get the hell out of here. There’s cash and blank IDs in the duffel; you can get on a train and get back to the Prima. Go there, tell everyone what’s going down, and wait for me.”

“Wait.” Dibs was on his feet now. The bruising up and down his face glared at me; he reeked of worry and ammonia fear, sharp-stinging my freshly-tuned nose. His T-shirt fluttered a little bit, ripped from whatever tango he and Graves had gotten into in the hall. “Dru, you can’t—”

My lips skinned back from my teeth now. My jaw crackled as my fangs slipped loose, tender and aching; I could still smell the blood on the air and the dry-fur reek of nosferat.

Dibs almost swallowed his tongue. He shrank back against the wall, trembling. Graves stared at me, his face twisting for a second.

Before, I would’ve called the expression disgust. But the touch was still resonating inside my head, the complex stew of his emotions my own for a moment. It wasn’t disgust, I realized.

It was pain. Because even when the fangs that made me something dirty, something like Sergej, came out, he still thought I was beautiful. And the pain came from that broken place inside him.

The place where he thought he wasn’t worth a damn.

I was across the room before I knew it. I grabbed his shoulder with my left hand, bent down, and pressed my lips on his. He stiffened, but his mouth opened, and I think it was the first time in my life I’d ever kissed like I was a boy. If you know what I mean, great, if you don’t, well, I can’t explain it any clearer.

Or maybe I can. It was the first time I took a kiss instead of accepting one, the first time I didn’t think that the person I was kissing might refuse. No, I wanted it. I wanted to feel his mouth, and I did. I took it.

And I liked it.

He was breathing heavily by the time I straightened my arm, pushing myself away. I stared down at him, his green eyes opening slowly, heavy-lidded. No shadow of black in them now.

Good.

Make it good, Dru. If it’s the last thing he ever hears from you, make it good. Don’t get lame at the end. “I love you.” The bloodhunger twisted under the words, but I pushed it back. “I’ve always loved you. Get the hell out of here with Dibs so I don’t have to worry about you both. I’ll see you at the Prima.”

Gran’s owl hooted softly. I could sense it circling the room, trembling just on the edge of the visible. I gathered myself, staring into Graves’s eyes, and I moved.

The air tore and sparkled behind me. It was the first time I ever used the djamphir vanish-trick too, going so fast the air collapses behind you with the ripping sound of nasty whispering laughter.

It wasn’t that I could do it now that I’d bloomed. It wasn’t even that I knew it was a pretty goddamn dramatic exit.

It was that it was so easy, with the taste of his blood smoking in my mouth. And it was so easy to think of pushing him back on the bed and greedily getting my fangs in. And drinking until there was nothing left.

There really wasn’t anything separating me from the vampires now, was there?

I sure as hell hoped not. Because I was going to need everything I had to get out of here. I wanted to get Christophe free, sure.

But there was a bigger project I had, so to speak.

I wanted to kill the thing that killed my parents. And with a loup-garou’s dominance burning in me, his blood whispering in my veins, and the rage beating under my heartbeat, there would never be a better time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The owl flew at shoulder height, navigating me up through a stone tunnel, turning right, then up a familiar slope. The last time I’d seen this I’d been in the wheelchair, Graves fighting Sergej’s mental pressure and my entire body straining to escape. I was up the slope in a flash, and I hit the doors at the end like a bomb going off. They crashed inward, wood splintering, and the crack they made probably woke up every damn vampire in a hundred-mile radius.

It didn’t matter. The huge amphitheater opened under the owl’s belly like a flower, and its eyes were mine. Part of me felt the fierce joy of flight, wind rushing through feathers with a low sweet sound, and the other part of me snapped my right-hand malaika free and tore through three nosferat in a welter of black-spatter blood. They didn’t even have time to scream their high chill hunting-cries.

Like this, Anna’s voice echoed, her training rising under my skin. I was spinning, soles of my shoes squeaking oddly on the smooth stone, and as the malaika sliced through sucker flesh the nosferat choked and turned purple, rot exploding through them.

I was going too fast to stop so I didn’t, crashing into the table with the transfusion equipment. My shoes touched down, glass shattered, the table splintered as I stamped with incredible force and was airborne. My other foot lightly brushed the arm of Sergej’s iron chair, propelling me forward, and I almost hit Christophe’s chained body dead-on. Skidding sideways, the owl wheeling and diving, nosferatu sleeping in piles or draped over the stone seat-steps beginning to shake themselves awake.

Christophe’s head jerked up. His eyes glittered. Under the mask of bruising and blood, his expression was impossible to see. But I thought I caught a flash of it—sheer horror.

It was child’s play. Both malaika hilts in my left hand now, my right flashed out and the metal of the chains tore with a screech. The lump of heat in my stomach dropped a little, turned into a nova in my belly. I ripped him free as casually as I might rescue a kitten from a yarn-snarl, and he slid bonelessly toward the floor just as the first wave of angry, awake suckers hit the floor and streaked for me, their faces open screams of hate and their hunting-cries rising in shattering crescendo. Fury rose under my skin.

It wasn’t my anger. It was Graves’s, and in that moment I understood a lot about the wulfen.

The Other isn’t really something, well, other. It’s in everyone. Werwulfen can just bring it out. It’s why they’re all about agreement and consensus. They need to be, with the claws and the teeth and the superstrength and the 220 line right into the heart of the darkness.

I screamed, a high chill cry that tore through the sucker yells like a bullet through glass. The aspect flamed, and the touch flared out in concentric rings. They started dropping before they even got close enough for me to use the malaika on them.

Christophe, behind me. Metal slithered. I could tell without looking he was struggling free of the chains. I was hoping he had enough left in him to run. I skipped forward, giving him enough room to maneuver, but hoping I could still keep him close enough that my shell of toxicity would slow the suckers down. Then they were on me, their faces mottled and their bodies failing them no matter how fast they tried to pile on. The malaika flickered, wooden tongues, and Christophe’s voice in the practice room shouted.

Left, left, with precision! Straighten your knee! Keep the circles; remember your reach!

I couldn’t tell if it was me he was yelling at, or Anna, or my mother. He’d trained all three of us, and even though he hadn’t finished with me, I had the benefit of Anna’s long years. Hell, I probably had all of Anna that was left in the world.

That was a happy-dappy thought, but I was going too fast to do more than register a flicker of it.

I struck with both blades, my foot flashing out to catch a choking sucker’s knee, snapping it with a dry-stick breaking sound as the wooden blades whistled, cleaving air and flesh both. Black ichor spattered, hung in the air, and I drove forward some more, the rage lighting up inside me like a star.

“Dru!” Christophe, shouting. “Dru, God damn you, run!”

Oh, no. I am not finished here. I was through with running. I half-spun, and he was on his feet, shaken free of the chains. He leapt, and the nosferat jumping for my back splattered in a wash of rotting foulness. The smell was incredible, titanic, and Christophe’s claws flicked as he tore the remaining life out of the thing.

So he was able to fight.

Good.

They came for us, a wave of young-old faces shining with hatred, the females hanging back and the males moving forward. I recognized this from other fights—the females were jumpers; the males would try to distract and overwhelm and the females would drop in to hopefully finish the prey off. They drew closer, closing the ring as Christophe’s back met mine and he shoved, both of us sliding out into the middle of the wide-open space. Room to maneuver, and Sergej’s iron chair with its black spikes reaching up like frozen fingers.

Get the high ground, Dru. Now it was Dad. Battle’s won with the high ground. Leastways, lots of the time.

“Christophe?” My ribs heaved, my heartbeat coming fast and light. “We’re outside of Fargo, near as I can tell from Dibs. Pick a direction and go. Meet me at the Prima.”

He breathed something in Polish that definitely wasn’t polite; I could tell just from the tone. “What are you doing?”

“Rescuing your half-vampire ass.” What, are you blind? “Get out of here.”

“I’ll hold them. You run.” He coughed, and the vampires pressed forward. The heat in my belly dilated again. How much had I taken from Graves? Too much? How long would it last? When it ran out, what would I do? Would he and Dibs get out safe? “Do you hear me, svetocha? Run. For your life, and for mine—”

“No.” The malaika whirred gently, cleaving air. “Not this time, Chris. This time, you run.”

And I flung myself forward.

I figured if I kept moving fast enough, their ring wouldn’t be able to close on us. The flaw in that was that Christophe wouldn’t be able to take advantage of my little bubble of free air, so to speak, and he looked like hell. But I could just keep them away from him by appearing the bigger threat, right? Which meant I had to get down to some serious business.

I skidded and leapt, crashing into a knot of five males. The malaika flickered, whirring like windup toys, and the world opened up inside my head. It was a chorus of the dead, all talking at the same time.

Gran, bandaging my knee and giving me one of her peculiar, all-seeing looks: You do what you got to. You mind me, now, Dru.

Dad, holding the other side of the heavy bag while he barked encouragement: Get in there, girl! Harder, faster! It’s you or them; make those sonsabitches sorry they was born!

Mom’s voice, from the shady long-ago time of Before: My brave girl, I love you. I love you so much.

Anna, amused and vicious while she examined her crimsonlacquered fingernails: They’re going to try to mass and separate you from Christophe. He’s bleeding and weakened. You could even let them have him. It’s what he deserves.

A high painful screech of metal tearing behind me, but I had my hands full. I stamped, left-hand malaika cleaving air with a low sweet sound, carving half a male sucker’s face off. He was blond and didn’t look any older than fourteen, baby-faced, clutching at his throat as he fell like a heap of dirty laundry. Those blond curls reminded me of Dibs shaking in terror, the fang marks in his neck and his tear-chapped cheeks.

The bloodhunger woke in a sheet of flame. It was the same old feeling: I was a girl made of sparkling glass, and inside that glass was a flood of thick red rage. Only now, for the first time, I didn’t try to hold back from it.

No. I opened myself up completely, I let it take me.

Black blood flew, stinking and thin. The rage swelled, sweetly painful like scratching at a mosquito bite, not caring that you’re shredding the skin, just knowing how good it feels. They came like waves, attacking, and I danced, feet sliding through a scrim of thin black stinking oil and the malaika turned into extensions of my arms. Gran’s owl arrowed down, tearing through them, claws crunching and shredding, its wings steel-edged scythes. It looked wicked and predatory now, its golden eyes coins of flame, and I followed.

Christophe yelled something and I spun, my half-braid floating as Graves’s blood burned inside me, something rippling under my skin as if I was a wulfen and about to change. It flowed over me like a river, and the nosferat scattered. Some were screaming—not their high glassy hunting cries, but lower, still-hateful squeals and shrieks.

Cries of fear. Of pain.

The realization hit me crossways, my stomach turning over with a sick thump. They were suckers. They hated, and they killed—

—but they sounded human.

The female hit me with a boneshattering jolt. I flew, weightless for an eternal moment, and she was already dying, her claws only scratching weakly instead of digging into my belly.

Crunch. The wall stopped us both, the aspect flaring with heat, and she slumped. Her face was twisted, purple, ugly, and still hateful. But maybe once she’d been a child. Nosferatu had mothers just like djamphir did, unless they were an incomplete kill. Bitten, infected, and turned into this.

Was it the turning that made them hate everything? I’d never thought about it before.

And now was the wrong time to start. Still . . .

Gran’s owl circled the auditorium. Christophe skidded to a stop, bare battered feet splashing in the muck. He held something, and I had to blink a couple times before I realized what it was.

One of the spikes from his father’s chair, held loosely by the thin end like a baseball bat, the blunt sharp-edged tip of it dripping as sucker blood ran down its length. He glanced up over my head, blue eyes colder than winter sky, and turned.

Broken bodies littered the bowl-shaped expanse. Two suckers left alive, crouching in front of Christophe. Both male, slight and dark, and terribly young-looking even while they snarled, their top and lower canines springing free.

Christophe laughed. A low, terrible sound. “Come, then,” he said, very softly. “Come and die.”

Silence, broken only by the drip, drip of thin liquid from the tip of the barbed spike he held. The suckers glanced at each other, their jaws crackling as they distended further, sharp ivory in the low bloody light.

They broke and ran, vanishing with that nasty laughing sound. Their tiptapping footsteps receded, and Christophe slumped. He let out a long breath, and Gran’s owl hooted softly. I could still feel it circling, but when I glanced up there was nothing. Just the directionless red glow, and the smell. The female vampire’s body slumped aside; I scrabbled away from it along the wall.

I actually gagged. Nausea twisted my stomach before the aspect rose again on a wave of heat, and I smelled cinnamon through the reek. That only made it worse. Christophe backed up toward me, and a thin thread of his apple-pie scent reached me too.

That helped. But still. So many of them. Had I done that?

We. We’d done it. Christophe and me.

Christophe turned on one bare heel. His feet were healing, bruises retreating as the aspect crackled over him, heat-lightning. His hair was slicked back, dark under the matted blood, and a muscle in his cheek flicked. A sudden graceful movement and he knelt, his free hand coming down. His fingers met my shoulder, and it was like a spark snapping. I almost twitched.

“Are you hurt?” Level and furious.

I took stock. I was alive. All my appendages. The rage had vanished, like water on hot pavement. The back of my throat was dry and rasping. “N-no.” I sounded hoarse, but the thread of silk in my tone wasn’t mine.

It was Anna’s, and it horrified me. Even my voice wasn’t my own anymore. I’d changed. All the broken bodies lying strewn on the floor told me how much. It was like vanishing. Again.

Who am I now?

“Come, then. We have to get you out of here.”

My chin set. I pressed back against the wall, and my legs took care of levering me up. His hand fell away. The aspect flowed up from my feet, working in, delicious oily warmth. A tremor slid through the center of my bones, but I ignored it. “I’m not leaving. I came down here to rescue you.”

“You succeeded admirably.” One corner of his mouth lifted a millimeter, but then he reached for me again with his free hand, aiming for my right wrist. I stepped aside, sliding along the wall. Nervously.

Like I didn’t want him to touch me.

I swallowed, hard. “Get out of here. Dibs and Graves are heading out, you should take care of them. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got things to do.”

“Dru.” Calm, quiet, and very cold. “You are coming with me.”

I shook my head. Everything I wanted to say boiled up inside me. Hit the wall of what I suspected about him, everything I knew, and how much I doubted everything he’d ever told me.

I’m a plague. Everything I care about gets hurt or dies. I’m here, and I’m going to stay here. I’m not leaving until I kill the thing that killed my parents. “Just go.” I couldn’t make the words any louder than a whisper, because my throat had closed up. “I want you to go. I can’t stand to lose you too.”

He opened his mouth, probably to argue, but a strange whooshing sound filled the auditorium like water poured into a cup. A spike of diamond pain speared my temples, and Sergej laughed.

“Oh, children.” His voice filled the entire vast space as well, and I slumped against the wall. “You make it so easy.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Christophe spun, but Sergej was already moving. I leapt, the world dragging at me with weird clear-plastic fingers, as if superspeed wouldn’t even be enough. My right-hand malaika flicked, and black blood flew.

I was too slow. He was already past me, my soles slipping in the foul-smelling guck, and Christophe screamed. It was a high despairing cry, with a djamphir’s hiss-growl behind it. The crash of the two of them colliding shivered the air into fragments. The entire auditorium rocked, and a sheet of black blood splashed up. They hit the stone wall, and cracks radiated through the sheer, bloodred rock.

Christophe!

Slipping, scrabbling, wishing I had boots or real sneakers instead of these crap flimsy things, needed traction, I wrenched myself the opposite direction and Gran’s owl rocketed past me in living color, claws outstretched and wings glinting with sharp-edged metal. In the bloody glow it was a spot of clean white, banking sharply. I threw myself after it just as Sergej turned, blinking through space with the eerie stuttering speed of a badass sucker.

Fast, he’s fast, got to slow him down—Something in me stretched, instinctively, and I twisted again, my foot touching down lightly and sending up another spray of that black, thin, sickening fluid. They were just never going to get it clean in here. But I guess cleaning isn’t high on a vampire to-do list, really.

Gran’s owl arrowed down, and it hit Sergej’s head with a crunch much larger than a bird could produce. He went forward, tucking and rolling with jerky, weird precision, as if he was a clockwork instead of flesh and blood.

“Coward!” I yelled, pelting for him. “You fucking coward!”

The words stung the air. He rose from the wash of rotting blood on the floor, chunks of decayed flesh clinging to him, his curls tumbled and that black, oily gaze striking like a snake.

I screamed, a hawk-cry of rising effort. There was finally enough air in my lungs—and Gran’s owl shot past me, claws out and its golden eyes a streak of brilliance. Hit him square, and it wasn’t just me hitting him.

It was the photograph I’d seen just once, the yellow house I found sometimes in my nightmares—the oak tree shading the front porch blasted by some terrible evil, a rag of flesh and bone hanging in its branches; my mother’s body hung there like a Christmas ornament. It was the long corridor my father had walked down, toward a slowly opening door that exhaled cold evil—and my father’s body standing at the back door of the house in the Dakotas, its blue eyes clouded with the film of death and its fleshless fingers tapping at the glass. It was Gran’s house burning and the dark pain in Graves’s eyes, the scars I’d seen on Christophe’s back and the cold nightmare of the blood drawn out of my veins while Sergej laughed.

There were other things, too. Dibs, flinching and terrified, sobbing. Dylan from the first Schola I’d ever attended, probably dead because he’d been blown from the inside; August, showing up bloody and battered in the nick of time. Anna, who had tried to kill me in her own way, sure, but . . . she didn’t deserve what happened to her.

Nobody deserved what this thing had done to them.

Sergej skidded back, one slim iron-hard hand flashing up. He hit Gran’s owl, hard, and the impact smashed through me, throwing me sideways. I went tumbling, splashing through the foulness, and before I slid to a stop Sergej was on me, his hands around my throat, and he squeezed.

My hands lay encased in cement. The malaika suddenly weighed a ton, and something crackled in my throat. Little black spots danced at the edges of my vision, and a shrill inner voice screamed at me to do something, to move—but the lump of heat in my stomach was fading, and the rage had deserted me.

Because the twisting hate in his face was what I felt. It was the rage, and it was mine, too.

It was how I was like him.

The aspect flamed, and he coughed. The purple mottling rose in his perfect, planed cheeks. But he laughed, a gleeful, hateful sound that exhaled rot in my face. “Stronger!” he chuckled. “Inoculated against your poison, little child-bird!” He braced himself, leaning close, and laughed in my face, rank breath filling the world. “There will be other svetocha. I will walk in the daylight. I will leave your body for the crows to—”

A meaty thunk interrupted. Sergej stiffened, and my aspect flared again. I got my right hand up, braced with malaika hilt, and clocked him a good one across the head.

He pitched to the side, and Christophe’s face rose over his shoulder. Christophe was smeared with even more vampire blood, and the left side of his face looked smashed-wrong. He was oddly twisted, and I realized why—something in him had been crushed. By something I mean bones—the entire left side of his ribs was caved in. But he held onto the iron spike grimly and shoved it further into Sergej’s back, his lips skinning back from his teeth. In that one moment, he looked more like his father than I’d ever believed possible.

The sharp thin tip of the spike punched out through Sergej’s chest. The vampire king writhed, inhaling, the purple mottles sliding up his face with grasping, ugly fingers. He looked ancient now, not always-seventeen and too beautiful to be real.

No, this was the face of something old and terrible, something so far removed from human it wasn’t even related anymore. The bloody directionless light pulsed, stuttering, and I realized it was coming from him.

Oh, Jesus. Nausea grabbed my entire body, a wracking spasm of revulsion. I was on my knees as Sergej scrabbled back. I’d stabbed him with an iron lamp-stand last time, and it had only put him down temporarily.

“No!” Christophe grabbed my arm. “Dru! NO!”

He shoved me, with more strength than I would’ve thought possible. I flew back, my left-hand malaika clattering free. Shit, dropped my sword, junior move, can’t do that—Then I hit the wall, hard enough to stun. Little stars danced in front of my eyes, and I whooped in a breath.

Christophe limped, dragging his left foot. It was a weird, snake-like motion, and Sergej was curling up like a bait worm on a hook. The king of the vampires was making a noise, a queer rattling that scraped against my skin, and the red light deepened. Instead of fresh blood, the light was clotting on every surface, fouling and streaking.

I whooped in another breath, coughed and retched. Still had my right-hand malaika. Dragged myself up the wall, the aspect’s strength a warm glow, but fading now. The voices eased, whispering instead of screaming inside my head, and the touch brushed over my skin with feather-soft caresses. It felt . . . clean.

Thank God. But I already felt filthy way down inside, where scrubbing wouldn’t reach.

Where the rage came from.

Christophe grabbed the cruel clawed end of the spike jutting up from his father’s back. “I warned you,” he rasped, and the aspect boiled free of him, waves of power visible now in the dull punky glow. “I told you if you touched her, you would die.”

He sounded so calm.

Sergej said something, the spiked consonants of a foreign language. Ragged, and full of so much fury, so much twisted hate, it turned my stomach all over again.

“Yes,” Christophe said. “You are my father. And I hate you for it.”

It happened so fast. One moment he was there, holding the iron spike. The next, he jammed the spike all the way through. It hit the stone with a screech, and sparks flew.

But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was Sergej twisting, his feet flailing, an animal in a trap. And Christophe on him, the horrid sound of bones grinding as he grabbed his father, wrenched Sergej’s head aside, and buried his fangs right where the shoulder met the neck.

The red light flared. Then I was moving, every step taking a hundred years. “Christophe!” I was moving through syrup, through mud, through concrete. “Christophe! No!”

Sergej howled. The sound was immense, every key on an ancient bony organ hit at once, wheezing and screaming. It blew my hair back, and the touch turned to acid inside my head. The cry cut short on a gurgle that stood a good chance of starring in every nightmare I’d have for the rest of my life, as if I didn’t already have so much nightmare material already.

I was on my knees, sliding, and it was a good thing I’d dropped my left-hand blade. Because my fingers curled in Christophe’s slicked-back hair, and I yanked his head back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Or at least, I tried to. I got exactly nowhere.

His shoulders hunched. Something ripped as he used his teeth, settling more firmly into his father’s neck. Blood sprayed, black and viscous, not thin like the other suckers’. It smoked, and the thought of that oozing down my throat was enough to make me feel even sicker.

I set my feet and yanked again, but it was as if he’d been turned to stone. He gulped, greedily, and the sound forced bile up into my throat. The thought that if I threw up, I’d be throwing up blood—Graves’s blood, at that—did not help.

“Christophe.” I swallowed hard. “Christophe, please. Listen to me. You’re not him. Don’t be him. Please. Please, Christophe, stop. Stop it. Please. I’m begging you, stop.”

Everything paused. I had my fingers in his blood-clotted hair, and a current roared through him and into me. The touch flamed into life, and I almost reeled. But I didn’t let go of Christophe’s head. I couldn’t.

“Please,” I whispered. “Please, Christophe. Don’t do this.”

He shuddered, his ribs popping out and mending with horrifying, meaty sounds.

Then Christophe threw his head back and screamed. It was a long, despairing cry, but at least it got him away from his father. Who twitched again, horribly vital, and I could feel him gathering himself. Like a tornado or a thunderstorm approaching.

I brought my right hand up, my knees dripping as I rose too, the perfect angle unreeling inside me. The malaika made its low sweet sound, but it was lost in the noise Christophe was making. I might have screamed too, but it was lost in Christophe’s cry as well. All the loneliness, all the pain, all the betrayal in the world was in that sound, and the wooden sword whooshed down.

I put everything into it. It wasn’t just me. The dead filled me, all of them, whispering and chattering in a vast silence wrapped around me.

This was the way to kill him. Not with hate, not with taking in his blood and everything about him. Instead, it was my mother’s hand on the malaika’s hilt, and my father’s. Even Gran’s ancient, liver-spotted hand, her fingers calloused from a lifetime of work and her eyes sharp with take-no-prisoners compassion. It was Graves’s hand, too—even though he wasn’t dead, it was the hand of the boy he could’ve been, tight against mine. And Anna’s, red nails gleaming, as I felt the tears slicking my cheeks and understood it was for her too. Even though she’d tried to kill me, I wept for the girl she could have been.

The person I would have to try to be, so I didn’t turn out like this horrible, twitching thing on the floor.

The blade carved cleanly, and Christophe’s cry cut off as if I’d sliced him. For a nightmarish moment I thought I had, and it was probably a mercy the dull reddish light failed completely then, snuffed out like a candle flame. The darkness that descended was absolute, the silence a ringing tone.

My knees hit the stone floor with a splashing thump. Another thump brought a hot wad of something up in my throat, because I could imagine Sergej’s head hitting the floor. It rolled away like a big granite ball, making more noise than it should, and I dropped my malaika.

I was sobbing. Little hitching gasps turned into spasms, racking convulsions, I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked back and forth. The silence was so immense, and the dark was so deep. It was like the needle in my arm and the cold again, and I curled in on myself.

“Dru.” A whisper. “Dru.”

He reached me in the darkness, and part of me wanted to scrabble back and away. My skin crawled when he touched me, but the rest of me fell into him. Something against my forehead, a soft pressure. His lips. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my bloody, tear-streaked, dirty face, everywhere he could reach. I didn’t care. The shakes had me now, like a vicious dog shaking a toy, stuffing flying everywhere. Everything inside me was shaking loose, shaking free; there was nothing to hold onto.

Nothing except Christophe, there in the dark.

He held me, murmuring my name, holding me bruising-tight. Kissed my hair, my forehead, again. He couldn’t reach the rest of me because I’d buried my face in his neck. We clung together like survivors of some huge natural disaster, and the sobs retreated like an ocean wave.

He was saying something else, over and over again, in between repeating my name.

“Thank you,” he would mutter, hoarsely, ragged, into my hair. “Dziekuje, Dru, milna. Thank you.”

Jesus Christ, for what? But then he stiffened, and his head came up. I felt the movement in the dark, and I swallowed the last of the sobs, folding my lips over my teeth and pushing them down.

We’d just killed the king of the vampires.

And in the distance, muffled but still distinct, I heard gunfire.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

He somehow found both my malaika. Pressed them into my hands. The wooden hilts were warm and satiny. “Are you hurt? Anywhere?”

I shook my head, realized he probably couldn’t see. It was so dark it had actual physical weight. I had to cough twice before I could even think about talking. The bile in my throat burned, and the heat in my middle was fading. “N-no. I don’t th-think so.” Now I was stuttering, just like Dibs. If he felt anything like this, I didn’t blame him. “Tired, though.”

“Thank God.” He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers sinking in, and pulled me forward. This time he was smack-dab on the button, and I don’t know why I was surprised. If he could find my malaika, he could certainly find my mouth.

There was blood on his lips, but it tasted like spice. An apple pie just pulled from a hot oven, and a desert wind—sand and the windows down, right at dusk, when you’re out on those roads that arrow for the horizon and the city is behind you; you’re doing eighty and you’re not going to stop anytime soon. The touch, bruised and aching, shivered as a bolt of feeling went through me—something hot, and scary, and wild. It poured a different kind of strength into me, and when he broke away I actually gasped.

He didn’t even pause. “Listen to me. That’s probably the Order. We might have to fight our way out to them. Don’t worry, the nosferatu will be weakened and confused now, with their king dead.” The businesslike, mocking tone was back, just like the old Christophe. But under it was a raw edge I wasn’t sure I liked.

I’d never heard him sound scared before. And the idea that some of Sergej’s blood might have been on his lips—

I didn’t want to think about that.

“The aura-dark may hit me. I don’t know how much I took before you . . . stopped me.” His tone gentled. “Dru?”

“What?” I swayed, he held me upright.

“Thank you. You . . . this is not the time. But I want you to know something.”

Oh, God, what now? “Can’t it wait until we—”

“No. It can’t.” He eased up on my shoulders a little, and I suddenly wished I could see his face. “Dru. You make me want to be . . . better. Instead of what I . . . am.”

Better? You fought off your father. For me. Again.

And then bit him and drank his blood. But if he hadn’t, what might’ve happened? Would I have been able to . . .

I didn’t want to think about that either. There was so much I didn’t want to think about, it wasn’t even funny.

“You saved me,” I whispered. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” Now he sounded bitter. “Is it ever going to be enough?”

I swallowed hard. I could still taste him on my lips. And the fading heat of Graves’s blood was a stone in my lower belly. “Christophe . . .”

“The loup-garou. Graves.” Back to the businesslike mockery. “He bled for you, didn’t he.”

“That’s how I could come d-down here and r-rescue—”

“I’ve bled for you too, Dru.”

My feet slid a little in vampire blood, splashing. It still smelled horrific in here, and I wanted some light. I wanted to be outside so bad I was shaking. I wanted to run until I dropped, just to get away. “Christophe, for Christ’s sake, can we just please get out of here? This is not helping!”

I tried not to sound panicked, and I failed miserably.

But he was just not going to let it go. His hands fell away from my shoulders. “How much is enough, Dru? What do I have to do? Tell me. Now, while we have time.”

What the fuck? Here we were knee-deep in rotting vampire, gunfire getting closer all the time, God alone knew how we were going to get out of here even if that was the Order coming for us, and he wanted to have this discussion with me?

“We need to get out of here.” A wave of exhaustion crashed through me, and I swayed. “I don’t feel so good. Come on, Christophe. We’ll talk later.”

“Now is all I have, Dru. It’s all I’ll ever have.” But his fingers curled around my left forearm, gently this time. “But you’re right. This way. You can’t see, can you.”

“No.” I stumbled after him. “Christophe, look. It’s not a contest. It’s not—”

“Dru.” Kindly, now. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked. Shut up.”

Well, wasn’t that a fine how-do-you-do. But I couldn’t just be quiet. It was too dark, and if I stopped talking I had the idea that he might just vanish, leaving me down here. Alone. And blind. “How can you see?”

He pulled me aside; I sensed something in our way. It was probably a mound of corpses, and I almost lost the battle with my stomach there and then.

A jagged little laugh burst out of him. “It’s one advantage Kouroi have over svetocha. Even the darkness brings no relief.”

He was back to being maddening and cryptic. The relief that flooded me was probably pointless, but it still made me stagger.

He steadied me. “Dru?”

“I’m fine. I just . . . you sound like you. Like normal. It’s good.” And to top it all off, my eyes welled up again. Two fat tears trickled down my cheeks, sliding through a crust of crap I immediately added to the long and growing list of things I never wanted to think about again. “I like it,” I added lamely, trying not to sound like I was having a complete and total meltdown. Not to sound like I was shaking, and crying, and sick, and scared out of my mind, and feeling dirty all the way down to my bones.

Christophe actually paused, down there in the dark. “You . . .” He let out a long, shaky breath. “Once again, kochana, you save me from myself.” He laughed again, but it was a sound so sharp it could cut. It actually hurt to hear. “Come, this way.”

I tried to cry quietly while I followed him. But I don’t think I managed.

I blinked furiously when he pushed a huge heavy door open, the hinges squealing. Even the dim light beyond was scorching, and I let out a little hitching sound of relief. The gunfire was in the opposite direction, but it was moving closer.

And this was actual, honest-to-God daylight. Cloud-filtered sunshine falling through small round windows like portholes high up on the stone walls. “Oh, sweet Mary and sonny Jesus,” I blurted. It was one of Gran’s favorites wouldja-look-at-that expressions, with a heavy dose of boy-am-I-glad.

Christophe glanced at me. We both looked like hell, dipped in seventeen different flavors of gunk and nastiness. But he was almost pristine under it, with the same old air of I could just step out of all this grime and be perfect again in a heartbeat. It was hard to believe he’d had his ribs smashed in and the rest of him battered to a pulp.

“Wow. You’re okay.” I could have smacked myself for Stating The Lamely Obvious once again. The warmth in my stomach stuttered, and I swayed.

Christophe gave a slight, pained nod. “He had stolen quite a bit. I managed, it seems, to steal some of it back.”

Oh, okay. Great. Fantastic. Wonderful. “You know your way around here?”

“Logic, svetocha.” He peered down the hall, blinking as well. “This is the way I was brought in. I marked it in memory. Come.”

We set off down the hall, my shoes squishing and Christophe’s bare feet leaving black marks. He didn’t let go of my arm, and I didn’t mind. The touch of his skin on mine, even through the dirt, sent a warm current through me. We stepped out into the sunlight, and I made another relieved little noise. I couldn’t help myself.

“Sunlight, and I am not in the aura-dark.” Christophe glanced up. “Clouds are breaking. Just in time.”

I opened my mouth to ask him just in time for what, but before I could there was a howl and a scrabbling sound. The other end of the corridor had another iron-bound wooden door, and something hit it with incredible force. Gunfire thundered, loud and close, and Christophe pushed me against the wall. My shoulder hit with a bruising jolt, and he was in front of me, his shoulders up and his claws lengthening, the deadly tension in him making the touch resound like a brass bell inside my head.

“Dru.” Christophe didn’t glance back. “Don’t worry. If this is nosferat, the sunlight will hamper them.”

I nodded stupidly, realized once again that he couldn’t see me. “We’ve done the hard part.” My voice shook. My tough-girl card was so definitely going to get pulled. “This will be easy.”

And amazingly, Christophe laughed. The door shivered, splintering. Long cracks popped free of its surface.

When it flew open, I was ready for anything other than what happened.

Ash landed on all fours, and was halfway down the hall before he dug in with his claws, stone shrieking. His eyes danced, he was shirtless, muscle moving under his pale skin. Grass stuck to his hair, and he wore a wide feral grin.

“BANG!” he yelled, and the wulfen flowed in behind him, shifting through changeform and back into boyshape. And there was Nat, skidding to a stop, her sleek hair ruffled and the relief bursting over her beautiful soot-streaked face like a sunrise. Shanks, his head wrapped in a glaring-white bandage, flowed out of changeform and threw his head back, letting out a howl that rattled the thick glass in the porthole windows.

The ruins of the door were still quivering when August stepped through, his blond hair lighting up as the daylight intensified. And there, right behind him, supple quick Hiro appeared, his short black hair lifting up in vital spikes as the aspect crested over him and he lifted something to his mouth. It was a comm cell, I realized, and his dark eyes glowed as his lips shaped the words.

She’s here. We found her, repeat, we found her, she’s alive. Stand-by for retrieval protocol.

I burst out sobbing and stumbled away from the wall. Nat’s arms closed around me, and the rest of the wulfen took up Shanks’s howl. It was a joyous sound, high and glassy, uncomfortably like the suckers’ hunting-cries.

But this time I welcomed it, even as it raised the hair all over me and pulled at the raw aching places inside my head, still smoking and tender from all that hate and death.

It meant I was safe, and I gave myself up to the shaking and the crying so hard I couldn’t speak as they closed around me and started carrying me away.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

It was a whirlwind. Across a square of cracked concrete, then out into a cornfield under a cloudy late-spring sky. The young corn was flattened, and I felt a brief burst of regret. It smelled nice and green, and the clouds were breaking. The sunlight, welcome as it was, seemed pale.

There were helicopters, their downdraft battering at even more corn. I was lifted in like a sack of potatoes, then there was Nat and Ash on either side of me and Christophe across, the ground falling away as the bird accelerated. I leaned on Nat, who reeked of smoke and the clean healthy musk of werwulf, her cat-like blue eyes glowing as she put her arm around me and touched my hair, hugging me a little every now and again. I sagged against her and half passed out, not caring. Everything inside me went all gooshy, all the tension and the pain and the struggle running out like water.

I only roused myself once. “Graves? Dibs?” I had to shout over the noise. It took me a couple tries.

Nat leaned close, her breath hot on my ear. “We found ’em. Everyone’s okay. Relax!”

And I did. I sagged into her, and across the way, Christophe’s eyes glowed. The aspect slid over him in a wave, his hair slicking back and his fangs peeking out from under his top lip, but I didn’t care.

The heat from Graves’s blood was gone. I’d used it all up. That was okay. I’d done what I set out to do.

My eyelids fell down, and I was gratefully, finally gone.

I heard voices, but it didn’t matter. I was numb. I didn’t feel like being in charge of anything anymore. I just drifted in a pleasant gray haze.

“. . . in shock,” someone said. “She’s bloomed, we don’t have to type her. Get the transfusion kit!”

“But that would—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Christophe snarled. “This? This is hers. Get the kit, now!”

Sound of movement. It was comfortable where I was, nice and soft, nothing scary. I didn’t even mind that I couldn’t move. It was just . . . drifting.

It felt good.

“Dru?” Christophe, very close to my ear. “Dru, kochana, little one, hold on. Don’t go. Fight it.”

Fight what? There wasn’t anything around here to fight. I’d taken care of all the important stuff.

Now I could rest.

A sting, on the inside of my arm. It felt familiar, and for a moment I was back in the wheelchair, strapped down, and the darkness was folding around me. Cold and dark, the absence of anything—

“Dru!” Graves, his voice hoarse and cracked. “Dru! Goddammit, don’t! Don’t!”

“Get him out of here,” someone said.

“No.” Christophe’s voice cut across his. But it was wrong—he sounded breathless, disconnected. Like something was wrong. “Let him call her. She’ll listen.” A gasp. “Give her everything. As much as she needs, do you hear me?”

“What if it drains you? What if you die?” Dibs, now. I felt a faint flash of interest—so he was okay? And he wasn’t stuttering? But there was that thing in my arm, and a burning spreading through me, pins and needles in my fingers and toes.

I didn’t like it. I wanted the numbness back.

“I don’t care, Samuel.” Christophe sighed, a tired sound. “I don’t care. Everything, do you hear me? Every drop.” The words slurred. “Take . . . as much as . . .”

The gray around me flushed pink. It crept up like the dawn, and the pins and needles swept through me. They hurt, jabbing into flesh that had been drowsily warm just a few minutes ago, and I felt something hard underneath me.

“He almost drained her.” Dibs, but not sounding terrified. “By transfusion. Then Graves . . . he made her drink, like he said. She got enough to get her through whatever happened down there, but she’s in shock and it’s—”

“Reynard!” Another familiar voice. Bruce, with his English accent, the sort-of head of the Order. I mean, technically I was the head, but he took care of everything while I was being trained. I could almost see him, his proud nose and caramel skin, his preppy jeans and starched dress shirts.

Check that. I could see him. The pink haze drew back, shapes looming up like rocks through fog. It was a room, oddly familiar with its sturdy walls and a gurney in the center of its stone-flagged floor, hospital machines standing at attention. The shape on the gurney was so still, and I saw without any real surprise a mop of curling hair and my own face tilted to the side, my mouth slack and everything about my body unfamiliar. I was so still, and so pale even through the pink tint.

I looked just like Sleeping Beauty.

Christophe sat next to the bed. Dibs checked the needle in his arm, and a thin ribbon of crimson slid across the small folding table, up to the hollow of my left arm. Dibs glanced up, worried, and Bruce took two steps into the room. He looked horrified.

The body on the gurney twitched. The pins and needles stabbed through me, rising up my arms and legs. It hurt, and the pink tone deepened. Other colors began to steal in.

On the other side. Graves leaned against a machine measuring a slow, erratic pulse. He had my other hand, and he leaned down, whispering into my ear. I couldn’t hear it, but it looked important. I strained to hear, but the other djamphir crowding into the room started murmuring. Hiro was there in his usual high-collared silk shirt, his arms folded, leaning against the wall near the door while his dark gaze focused on Christophe.

“He’s determined to kill himself to save her,” he said quietly. “Let him, Bruce. He’s earned it.”

A trio of dark-haired djamphir in white medical coats hovered uncertainly. Ash crouched in the corner, staring straight at the unspace my not-body occupied, his gaze disturbingly direct. He rocked back and forth, his hands flat on the floor, and someone had at least managed to get the grass out of his hair.

“We can’t afford to lose either of them.” Bruce ran his hands back through his dark hair. It stood up wildly, and that was wrong. He was always so calm. “The Maharaj will only negotiate with her. And it’s that Divakarun brat, the one Christophe cultivated.”

“Negotiate what?” Hiro sounded interested, but he was watching Christophe.

“They think she might be one of theirs. Or related, or something. I can’t even begin to guess.” Bruce took another step. “Good God, what a mess.”

Christophe slumped in the chair. The bruises were just shadows, but he hadn’t cleaned up and a mask of filth still clung to him. Even through the rosy haze I could see his color graying out, and that wasn’t good.

He swayed, and Dibs steadied him. The blond wulfen glanced at the machines, booping and beeping along. “Pulse still erratic. Her respiration’s down too. Graves, is she responding? At all?”

The excruciating tingle jolted all the way up my arms, suddenly. The body on the bed twitched again. My head tipped back, almost colliding with Graves’s. He jerked back, but his lips kept moving. His bruises were fading too, and his eyes flashed green for a moment. But there were heavy lines scored on his face. He looked older now—eighteen instead of maybe-sixteen-honest, except for the lines slicing down from the outside of his nostrils, bracketing his mouth. That looked a lot older, shocking when compared to the rest of his face.

He leaned in again, and with his free hand, he reached up, smoothing the hair away from my face. I tried to feel his fingers, couldn’t.

Dru?

The directionless voice went all through me. It wasn’t Gran, or Dad, for once. If I’d been in my body I would’ve jumped. As it was I jerked again, and the machines started beeping again.

“Pulse is up.” Dibs leaned forward, hovering over Christophe. “Just a little more.”

“More,” Christophe slurred, a long sigh of a word. “More. Everything.”

Dru. My darling, my brave little girl. The voice came again, wrapping around me with the comfort of a silken blanket. Now is not your time.

I was suddenly aware of my lips. The body on the bed sighed. Every djamphir in the room went still.

“Mommy?” A child’s voice, as if I was five years old and lost in a dream, and a sudden hot flush of embarrassment went through me. The machines went crazy, and Dibs let out a nervous sigh.

Christophe half-fell sideways. Dibs caught him.

“No more!” Bruce said, sharply. “It’s killing him!”

“Leave it.” Hiro had Bruce’s arm, and the tension between them bloomed a hurtful crimson. “Can’t you see it’s what he wants?”

Dru. My mother’s voice again, not sharp, but commanding. Now isn’t your time. Go back.

I struggled. I didn’t want to go back into that body on the bed. Here I was free. I could go toward that voice, and something inside me—maybe it was the touch, but I don’t think so—told me that if I did, clear rational light would break over me and this room would fade, and there would be something like flying. That light would enfold me, and they would be there. All of them. All the people I missed, all the people who hadn’t come back for me.

I hesitated for an endless moment. Christophe slumped further, and the rosiness of the scene faded. Now it looked like one of those hand-tinted old-timey photographs, faint blushes of color where the light hit, except for the scarlet ribbon between his arm and mine, looping in complicated swirls. That ribbon glowed with its own light, and Dibs glanced worriedly at my body on the bed, a line between his blond eyebrows.

“I’m taking him off,” Dibs announced. “He can’t take much more of this.”

“Don’t.” Hiro just said it, flatly, the way he would tell someone not to step in a pile of something foul.

“Hiro—” Bruce objected, surging forward.

The Japanese djamphir pulled him back. “Let him choose the manner of his death, Stirling. It is the least we owe him. He’s lucky.”

“Lucky?” Dibs actually rounded on them, his eyes sparking orange. “I’m taking him off—”

Christophe’s lips peeled back; his gums were bloodless, his fangs shrinking. He was losing his solidity, his outlines fuzzing. Graves’s fingers tensed in my hair as the machines went wild, beeping frantically.

And now I could hear what he was saying to that body on the bed. My body.

“Please. Don’t go.” He kept repeating it, over and over again. “Please, Dru. Please. Don’t go. Please.”

And I knew that tone, the pleading, the fear that was sitting like a spiked ball in his chest. He’d been left behind too, maybe more than I had.

If I left now, who would pick him up?

My good girl, my mother’s voice whispered. Live. Go back, and live.

I smelled her, then. Warm perfume and spice, her hair falling in my face as she picked me up. I was a little girl, nestled in her strong arms, and she was everything good and bright and clean. Every little girl thinks her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, but mine was.

She really was.

I love you, baby. It faded, that light and the sense of her presence, but I could still feel her arms around me. I love you so much. I am always with you.

The room spun around me, like soapy water sliding down a drain. Whirling, the earth’s rotation twisting everything, my unbody compressing as darkness ate the edges of the vision. Static roared in my ears, and I tilted, slid, spun, time stretching as Christophe’s eyes opened halfway and he stared as if he could see me too. His arm lay on the small table, the bright red ribbon unfurling from it, but his other hand reached out, toward me. Fingers outstretched, pleading.

Everything accelerated, the machines screaming and Bruce tearing his arm free of Hiro’s grasp, Dibs shouting as Christophe slid out of the folding chair and Graves making a sound that cut right through me. It wasn’t a cry or a moan or a scream, it was just the faint terrible snap of a heart breaking, snap—

—ped back into my body, flesh closing around me like heavy water dragging a tired swimmer down. I sat straight up, dried blood and dirt a crackglaze on my skin, and screamed. The three white-jacketed djamphir descended on me, Graves grabbing my shoulders and holding me down as I thrashed, saying my name over and over again. Ash let out a loud, exuberant yell, and Bruce actually yelled too, more out of surprise than anything else.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A familiar white room, sunshine pouring through the skylights and my mother’s books on their familiar stripped-pine bookshelves, the bed white as an angel’s wings, the vanity’s mirror glowing and the Schola Prima utterly silent in its daytime sleep. I pushed myself up on my elbows, grimacing, but at least the worst of the dirt and dried blood was gone.

I felt warm all over. Hungry, but surprisingly good. And I was, true to form, almost completely unclothed. At least whoever had put me to bed had left me my panties.

I clutched the clean white sheet to my chest. The pounding of my pulse calmed down a little while I breathed, and the shaking came in waves. It was the trembles I used to get after a really bad time with Dad, like when I had to take him to the emergency room to get the big chunk taken out of his calf treated. After all the lies had been told and the doctors had whisked him away, I’d sat in a hard plastic ER chair and shook like this.

It meant everything was over.

After a little while, I got up. My clothes were still in the dresser and the closet; I grabbed a handful and headed for the white-tiled bathroom. My duffel lay inside the door, and my malaika were hung on their usual peg next to the vanity.

It was like I’d never left.

The bathroom was just the same—scrubbed clean, full of light, the towels smelling of bleach and fabric softener. I stood under the stinging spray for a long time—that’s one good thing about the Schola, the hot water never runs out. My hands looked different when I examined them. Longer, fingers tapered, my palms more cupped. My left palm was still red, faint flowerlike traceries where the blisters had been. It didn’t hurt when I squeezed it shut, though.

When I swiped the condensation from the mirror, the face that greeted me was . . . odd. It was pretty much the same as it had been since I’d bloomed. There was the definite heart shape now, my nose proud instead of gawky, my cheekbones higher, everything pared down.

But it was different, because I could see my mother in it. I could see Dad’s quirk of disbelief in my eyebrow, and Gran’s take-no-guff look when my chin set and my eyes flashed. My hair dripped as I studied myself, seeing them. I touched one cheek, running my fingers over it like I could reach through and touch one of them, or maybe all of them, if I just pushed hard enough.

Someone coughed out in the bedroom. I scrambled to get dressed, and as soon as I was decent I whipped the door open and piled out, scrubbing at my hair with a fresh towel.

Nat set the silver-domed tray down on the small table by the door. Her catlike blue eyes gleamed, every sleek hair in place and her outfit, as usual, perfect. The cream linen jacket hid the gun in its shoulder holster, but it peeped out as she half-turned, looking over her shoulder at me, and her slacks looked freshly ironed. “You’re probably all turned around,” she greeted me. “I figured you’d be awake soon, it’s been twenty—oof!”

I threw my arms around her, the towel hitting the floor with a plop. After a moment she hugged me back, so hard my bones creaked. I breathed her in, her strange musky perfume, and my eyes prickled.

I did not cry, though. I was done cried out.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted into her shoulder. “I was a dick to you, a total dick. I’m sorry. I promised if I came back I’d apologize. I’m so sorry, Nat. I—”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t be retarded.” But she was still hugging me, fiercely. “Because if you do, I’m going to cry, then you’ll cry, and we’re all—”

“All gonna cry,” I chorused with her, and burst into screamy laughter. She did too, and my heart blew up two sizes just like a balloon. She patted my back, and when we let go of each other she was actually sniffling.

“You had me worried there for a bit, kid.” She dabbed delicately under her eyes with her fingertips. “Don’t make my mascara run, dammit.”

“Sorry.” I tried to sound chastened. “Everyone. How is everyone? Christophe, Graves, Shanks, Dibs—everyone?”

“Fine. Well, all right. Let’s see, Dibs is snarling like he’s an alpha, Bobby’s highly amused and keeps saying he should’ve known you’d decapitate the king of the vampires, Benjamin and the crew are beside themselves and polishing their weapons. The Council wants to see you, and your friend Augustine says to tell you he’s going to make you some toast, for some reason.”

I half-choked on a laugh. It felt good to laugh, but painful, like popping a really righteous zit. “Graves?”

Her face changed a little. The laughter died in my chest.

“He’s . . . packing.”

“Packing?”

“He’s . . . well.” She shrugged, spread her hands. “He’s going on retreat. That’s what we call it.”

It was just like being punched in the stomach. And I should know. “What?”

Nat’s mouth turned down at the corners, uncomfortably. She actually fidgeted, shifting her weight. “It’s something wulfen do. When they’re, um, hurt bad, but not on the outside. Inside. Shanks has kin upstate; they sent word he was welcome to come. He’s . . . Dibs won’t say what happened. But, well, he had him.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “Sergej.” The name came out in a long sibilant rush.

And for once, it didn’t drive glass shards through my head. “He’s dead,” I said, numbly. “Or at least, I hope so. Christophe . . .”

“Yeah, Reynard explained. Said Graves put everything on the line, broke free of Sergej’s hold long enough to give you . . . what you needed.” A flush crept up her cheeks. “And that you took him on and cut his head off. Congratulations. But Graves is still . . . hurt. It’s different for wulfen, Dru. Sometimes you can get hurt inside, and you need to go away and sort it out.”

Every inch of good feeling I’d managed to scrape together ran out like water from a busted glass. “He’s leaving?”

Was it possible for her to look any more uncomfortable? She actually wouldn’t meet my eyes, looking down like the floor was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

“Nat.” I crossed my arms over my stomach. “Please.”

“He might already be gone.” She still wouldn’t look at me. “He didn’t want you to see him, thought it would be easier—”

Oh, no. No. Shit all over that. I was past her, suddenly, grabbing for the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, so I yanked the door open and ran out into the hall. The touch lit up inside my head, and I swear I could taste his blood again, sliding down my throat. Moonlight and that strawberry incense, and something that wasn’t an identifiable taste. It was just him, my Goth Boy, and I pounded down the corridor, hearing shouts behind me. Nat, and of course Benjamin and the others.

It didn’t matter.

I just ran.

Have you ever had that dream where you’re running, but you can’t move fast enough? Where the entire world is wet concrete, glorping around you, while you’re searching for something and knowing you won’t ever find it? Heart pounding, stitch grabbing your ribs with clawed fingers, the breath tearing in and out of your lungs while everything around you is suddenly, eerily slow?

But I had the touch, and I burst out the front door of the Schola just as the black SUVs were rousing themselves. Two of them, just starting to pull away.

“No!” I yelled, skidding to a stop. “NO!”

The brake lights popped on. They sat there and idled for a few seconds. My hands were fists at my sides, and my cheeks were wet. My hair was probably an unholy mess, and my feet throbbed. Of course—I was only in socks. Goddammit.

“No.” I stared at the cars. The touch settled, feathers brushing up and down my entire body. “No. Please, no.”

The second SUV’s engine cut off. The back passenger door opened, and he slid out slowly.

Like an old man.

Black jeans, black T-shirt, boots, no long black coat now. Instead it was a hip-length leather jacket, probably borrowed from Shanks.

My sock feet crunched in gravel. I was off the steps in a heart-beat, and he met me halfway. I grabbed him like he was a lifering, and I realized the yelling was me.

“No, goddammit, you can’t leave, not just like that, you just can’t! You can’t just leave me!”

“Calm down,” he began, but I ran right over the top of him.

“Calm down? I don’t think so! What the hell are you thinking? What the fucking hell is wrong with you? You can’t just leave me here and ride off into the sunset, for fuck’s sake! What do you think you’re—”

“Dru.” He tried to untangle himself, but I held on grimly. “Come on. Take a breath. Let me explain.”

“I wish you would!” I yelled. I grabbed the front of his jacket and actually shook him. His hair swung, I shook him so hard. “I wish you goddamn well would explain, for once!”

“Dru.” Sharp, now. “Shut up.”

I did. I held onto his jacket and planted my feet. Stared at the notch of the top of his sternum, where the collarbones met it. Coppery skin on his throat, vulnerable because he’d just shaved. There were two little red marks on his throat, but I didn’t want to look at them. They were right over his pulse, and I’d put them there. So I just stared at that notch instead.

Silence. It was a beautiful summer morning, and my heart was on fire and cracking at the same time.

“Is it because I suck blood?” I said, finally. In a very small voice. “Because that’s disgusting. I know.”

His fingers curled around my shoulders. It was his turn to shake me, twice, my head bobbling a little bit. “No. Dru, dammit, look at me. Look.”

I looked up.

His eyes were still green. But there were huge dark circles under them, and his jaw was set. He looked like he was in pain, and his cheeks were hollowed out.

He looked awful.

But the corner of his mouth tilted up slightly, and there was a shadow of the Graves I knew. He let go of me long enough to dig in his coat pocket, and when he pulled out a battered pack of Pall Malls I wasn’t surprised.

I let go of him. He lit up, inhaled deeply, and offered me the smoke. I shook my head, my nose wrinkling, and the small smile got a bit larger.

Just a bit.

When I was just about to grab him and start screaming with frustration again, he lowered the cigarette. Twin dragons of smoke curled out of his nostrils. “It’s not you.” His shoulders hunched. “Cliché. Sorry. I wanted it to be easier on you. Because I . . . there’s some things you can’t fix, Dru. You’re great at fixing things. If anyone could do it, you could. But you can’t do this one.” A long pause, and he swallowed, hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing. “You can’t fix me. I’m broke.”

“You’re not making any sense.” The rock in my throat made it hard to talk.

“Sergej.” His face twisted for a moment. “He was inside my head, Dru. It wasn’t the vampires that burned your grandmother’s house. It was me.”

I just stared at him, my mouth ajar.

“Christophe caught me. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t fight him off. Not all the way.”

“But I . . .” I fixed that! I cleaned it away!

I wanted to yell it. But deep down, I knew better.

You can scrub and scrub, but sometimes something doesn’t just go away. It . . . it stains you. Like finding your father’s ambulatory corpse on your back step, and shooting him over and over because he means to kill you.

He was a zombie, right? He would have killed me.

But he was my dad, and I’d done that. I’d done it, and something inside me was yanked sideways. There wasn’t any going back, and there wasn’t a way to feel clean again.

Maybe it was the touch telling me this. Frustration swamped me, hot and harsh. “It’s my fault.” My hands twitched. I wanted to grab him again, but I restrained myself. “If I hadn’t—”

“Don’t.” A subvocal thunder slid out of him, a wulfen’s warning growl. I froze. “Don’t you dare. Sometimes shit just happens, Dru. It’s not your fault. It never was.” He tossed the cigarette, a flick of his fingers sending it in a perfect arc. The sunshine beat down on both of us, the dead dyed-black mass of his hair swallowing it.

When he took my shoulders again, it was gentle. He drew me forward and slid his arms around me, and I hugged him. He was too skinny, feverish–hot with a loup-garou’s heightened metabolism. A thin sick tremor ran through him, like a high-voltage wire right before it snaps.

“Listen,” he said into my hair. “I’m only gonna say this once, so listen good.”

I nodded, breathing him in, my face in his chest. Squeezed my eyes shut.

His breath was a warm spot in my wet hair. The breeze swirled around us, full of the green growing of summer and cut grass. “I’m coming back. But I got to fix myself. The wulfen, they’ll help. But here’s the thing, Dru. I’m not worth you.” He took a deep breath, and the way his arms tightened made the protest die in my throat. “But I’m gonna be. I told you before, but you didn’t understand. Hell, you might not understand now. But you’ve got to trust me on this one.” His arms tightened. “You have got to let me go. Can you do that?”

It’s not fair! I wanted to stamp and scream and hit something. Instead, I swallowed, hard. Had to try twice before the words would come. “Do you promise? To come back?”

“I promise.” He sounded sure, at least.

“Do you swear?” So I was five years old again. So what?

“I swear. I . . .” He tensed, and I felt him swallow convulsively, too. “I’ve got to be worth you, Dru. I’ve got to get strong, so nobody can use me like that again.”

“Please.” There was nothing else I could say. “Graves. Please . . .”

But when he stepped back, I let him go. It tore inside me, way down deep where all the worst hurts settle. He took another step back, the gravel crunching, and when I finally looked back up at him, it was a shock to see.

The tears trickled down his cheeks. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his jaw was set. He opened his mouth, shut it. Opened it again, and what came out shocked me even more.

“I love you. Okay? I promise.” Another step back, his green gaze holding mine. “Hey.” His throat worked, like he was catching the words halfway and pulling them back. “Dru. What’s that short for, anyway?”

I actually felt my heart break. It cracked right in half, and a sobbing little laugh that sounded like a cry came out. Got caught at the back of my palate, right where the bloodhunger lived. I forced it down.

“I’ll tell you when you come back,” I managed. It was all I could say.

I guess it must have been the right thing. Because he turned on one heel and headed back for the open passenger door, head up, stepping like he was walking on quicksand or something that might throw him at any moment.

He grabbed the door. But just before he got in, he looked back over his shoulder, and that soundless flash of communication passed between us.

Once, in Dad’s truck in a snowstorm, I’d clung to him. Because we were both wrecked, and when you’re wrecked, the only thing you can do is hold onto whatever you can.

Hold on hard.

We were still shipwrecked, Graves and me. But that look told me everything. He was still holding on. As hard as he could.

It just wasn’t enough.

He ducked down, the door slammed, and the brake lights flashed. There was a pause, but then the SUVs rolled away, bumping up onto the paved drive. Two cars meant guards. He’d probably get wherever he needed to safely.

I stood there and watched as they receded down the Schola’s long driveway. The trees arched over, leafdapple shade like water pouring over the cars, and my fingers itched. For the first time in a long time I wanted to draw, and I knew exactly what I’d draw. I’d try to capture the way the leaves held the sunlight, the red of the brake lights crimson dots, like fangmarks.

What I couldn’t draw was the way my heart finished cracking and fell, and the feeling that took its place in my chest. A kind of emptiness, like a church in the middle of the week, full of murmuring space.

Sometimes you do grow up in an instant. I think that was the first moment I started thinking like an adult.

And I hated it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Hiro laid a pair of my sneakers on the table right in front of me, his jaw set and his dark gaze level. His face might have been carved from caramel wood, and he winced a little if he moved too quickly.

I didn’t want to think about it.

“I don’t get it.” I sat, numb all over, in the high-backed wooden chair, my arms crossed defensively. “Why do I have to do this?”

“They’re envoys,” Bruce said again, patiently, his dark eyes worried. He magnanimously refused to note that my face was tear-streaked and I was visibly shaking. “The Maharaj wish to see you—”

“So they can have another crack at hexing me to death? Or poisoning me? I don’t think so.” I pulled more tightly into myself, leaning forward a little. The long mirror-shiny table in the Council room was just the same; the silver samovar glinting against the wall where food was usually arranged looked like an old friend. “Can’t you just talk to them? Like, you’re the one who’s really in charge. I’m just a figurehead.” And it’s probably a lot safer for everyone that way too. You know what the hell you’re doing. Mostly.

Bruce spread his hands. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a white button-down that was less than perfectly pressed. His dark hair was messy, and his proud Middle Eastern face was about as close to haggard as a model-attractive djamphir could get. “They think you may be . . . one of theirs. Or related, somehow.”

“Great.” If I hugged myself any harder I was going to crack in half. “I don’t give a good goddamn what they—”

“Milady.” Hiro, softly and respectfully. But the single word cut through what I’d planned on saying. “Please. Listen.”

I wiped at my cheeks with the flat of my right hand. The rock in my throat didn’t get any smaller, no matter how many times I tried to force it down. “Fine.” I sounded ungracious, to say the least.

“Thank you.” He stood, slim and straight, his gray silk high-collared shirt unwrinkled and his eyes, as well, shadowed with exhaustion. It was the first time I’d seen that, either on him or on Bruce, and I suddenly wondered where the rest of the Council was. “Milady, you are able to do . . . certain things svetocha are not traditionally able to do. We were unsure where these talents came from; the djinni-children may believe you have some strain of their blood from your . . . human . . . side.” He took a deep breath, half-flinching again like his ribs pained him. “The Maharaj have severe prohibitions against harming a female who can use their particular sorceries. The fact that you were attacked, that you were harmed, creates a very large problem for them. A . . . debt, if you will. And that debt is a way we may pressure them into abandoning their former neutrality against, as well as their recent alliance with, the nosferat. This is an opportunity. One that is exceedingly rare, one we must press, and one we must ask you to accede to.”

I killed Sergej. Isn’t that enough? I shook my head. A single curl fell in my face, bounced. “I don’t want to talk to them.” Leave me alone. Jesus.

“You are the only one they will speak to, Milady. Especially since Reynard is . . .” A single shrug. Hiro was economical with his body language. Just one of those things that told you he was older, as djamphir go.

Way older.

“Christophe?” A sick thump in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t even asked about him. “What’s wrong with Christophe?”

“Nothing.” Bruce almost twitched. “He’s simply resting. But he is unavailable.”

I fixed him with a glare. “What’s wrong with him? Did it . . . did I hurt him? The blood, did it—”

“He’s resting. He’s survived worse.” Bruce sighed. It wasn’t a Dylan-worthy sigh, but it was close. Dylan had been a world-champion patient-suffering sigh-er. “Milady. Dru. Please. A formal alliance with the Maharaj—not just a truce—will save lives. Djamphir lives, wulfen lives, and that means human lives as well. I know your loup-garou has left—”

It was like a pinch on a fresh bruise. “Don’t talk about him.” I gingerly uncurled my arms. Reached for my sneakers, suddenly glad it was Hiro who had gone up and gotten them. I didn’t feel like I could face Nat right now. “How come the Maharaj think I’m . . .” I let the question trail off. Two great Houses, Sergej hissed in my memory, and I shuddered.

Great. Djamphir were part sucker, and now they were thinking I was part something else. Where was the human part of me supposed to fit, I wondered?

“Because you killed one of your attackers with his own sorcery.” Bruce grasped the back of a chair—the one just to my left, the one Christophe sometimes sat in at Council meetings. When he wasn’t up pacing the room like a caged animal. “And later, something about a smokedog, a kuttee, sent to track you. I do not know the whole, Dru. They will not speak unless it is to you. You are our hope.”

I never asked for this. It was too late, though. This was what I had.

Everything inside me shifted sideways another little bit and settled unexpectedly. I wasn’t used to the whirling sensation fetching up against something, but it did. It held fast, like catching your jeans on a stubborn nail.

I killed Sergej. Yeah, Christophe helped . . . but I was the one that did it.

But it wasn’t just that. I’d bled to buy Dibs and Christophe some more time. I’d done the right thing. It was what Dad might’ve called “findin’ out where ya iron’s at” and Gran would have just nodded with the particular line to her mouth that meant she was pleased.

I had done that. The nail I fetched up against was knowing, without a doubt, that I’d done them proud.

The Council room was silent and breathless, no windows, just the door to the antechamber with its couches and fireplace. I always thought djamphir would want some light and air, until I figured out that it was too easy to take a shot or send a sucker through some plate glass.

My fingers fumbled with the laces. I could almost feel Hiro staring at me. My hair fell down, curtaining my face. I couldn’t hide forever, though, and when I had my shoes tied I looked up. “Sergej.” The name didn’t burn now. It was just a word. “He thought that, too. That I was maybe one of them, I think.”

They exchanged a Significant Look. Bruce’s shoulders hunched a little. “Hiro and I will be there.” He sounded, of all things, defensive. “There is nothing to fear. You won’t see Augustine, but he will be there too. There will be others, in Shadow. You’re safe now.”

“Until there is another to take Sergej’s place,” Hiro murmured.

I froze, staring at him. Well, it had to be too good to be true, didn’t it? That was the way adulthood rolled. I was beginning to get the idea.

“Yes,” he continued, pitiless. “There are always more, Milady. We have barely managed to hold them back. Now, with the nosferat confused and the Maharaj perhaps willing to come to an accord . . . we could do much more. You are young, and it is not right to ask, but we are asking.” He put his hands together, as if he was about to make one of those funny little bows of his. “We would even beg you, svetocha. Help us.”

My head dropped forward. I stared at my hands. My fingernails were bitten down, just like my mother’s. I smelled cinnamon, a thread of warm perfume drifting up from my skin, and I wondered if they smelled it too. The touch brushed inside my head, soft feathers. “Where’s the rest of the Council? Alton and Ezra?”

Bruce let out a short, pained breath. “Alton was in Houston. Ezra was coordinating in Atlanta. Neither of them have reported in.”

“That’s not good.” My fingers tightened. My hands turned into fists, knotting up in my lap, an ache sliding up my bones and settling in my shoulders.

“There’s still hope. Dru—” Bruce, pleading, and all of a sudden I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I’ll do it. I’ll talk to them.” I didn’t recognize my own voice, that new, flat, grown-up tone. “If it’s that important, I’ll do it.”

There really wasn’t any choice. If—when Graves came back, I was going to have something to show for all this. And all of them—the dead who had struck through me to end Sergej—pretty much demanded that I step up, and keep stepping up, for as long as I could.

For as long as I had to.

So what if my heart was cracking? I looked up, scrubbing at my cheeks again, and blinked. Took a deep breath, then put my palms flat on the table and pushed myself upright. Rolled my shoulders back and settled them, and I didn’t have to even look at Bruce to see the relief written on his face. Hiro dipped forward—one of those little bows of his, and it was a wonder how he could look so damn respectful while he was doing it. Respectful, but completely aware of his own kickassery at the same time.

I couldn’t help myself. Every time he did that, I bowed back. When in Rome, right? And he smiled each time, too, a patient grave smile. I suddenly realized why it was familiar—because Gran had smiled that way sometimes too, when I’d done something that must have reminded her of Dad.

And there was another new thing: it didn’t hurt to think of them. Well, at least not as much. The ache was still there, but it just . . . it was different. Less sharp. I’d done what I set out to do, right?

Some part of me must’ve thought that would fix everything. Things just don’t get fixed, though. Things get broken, and sometimes they stay that way.

You just have to glue them together and hope it holds.

“Fine,” I said again. “All right. Let’s get it over with.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

After all that, the Maharaj were pretty much anticlimactic. It was in the huge, glass-roofed room I’d been in once before, when Christophe was on Trial and Anna had emptied an assault rifle at me. This time I sat in the high-backed, red-hung chair on the dais, and the shadows around the edges of the room were full of the staticky sense of something watching that told me there were not just one or two djamphir doing the little “don’t look here” trick they’re so fond of.

The sleek seal-headed Maharaj boy who had poisoned me actually got down on his knees; the other two—dark-eyed, proud-nosed, both with the same gold earring and the same scent of spice and dry burning sand—swept me bows that were right off an old pirate movie.

Leander—and yes, I remembered his name; he’d poisoned me, you don’t forget that—begged my forgiveness in between a long string of foreign words. He even called me “Rajkumari Faulk,” and I twitched like I’d been stuck with a pin.

Because “Faulk” was Gran’s maiden name.

Bruce had warned me, so I let Leander get all the way to the end before accepting with a nod that was supposed to be queenly but was probably just scared stiff instead. At that point Hiro moved forward, and they eyed him the way cobras might eye a mongoose. There was some diplomatic blather, a schedule set up for further talks, and the “provisional agreement” was that the djinni-children and the Order were allies against the nosferat and other things.

I just had to sit there, gripping the chair arms, braced for anything that might occur. Anything other than what actually happened.

The Maharaj bowed twice more at me, backed away about ten feet, and bowed again. Then a djamphir teacher I recognized materialized out of thin air with the familiar sound of nasty chattering laughter and escorted them out of the room.

I managed to cover up the violent start that gave me. But only just.

And then it was done. Piece of cake.

I was at Christophe’s bedside when he woke up that evening, as dusk filled the windows and the Schola began to wake up as well. Benjamin, his dark hair still emo-swooped across his forehead, was right outside the door, standing guard. It was like I’d never left.

Except everything was different.

“Relax,” I said as soon as Christophe’s eyes opened, pale cold starving blue. “Everything’s copacetic. The Council debriefed me and there’s another diplomatic thingie scheduled for tomorrow.”

He blinked, staring up at me. It was a private infirmary room, windowless and bare except for the bed. Wulfen and djamphir both heal pretty quickly. If you’re hurt enough to need the infirmary, it’s really bad. But also, Christophe didn’t have a room of his own. He moved around a lot, kept things hidden.

I could see why.

His eyes were very blue. He blinked, once, and it was like a light switch flicking. I could see the thoughts sliding together inside his skull. “The Maharaj.”

I nodded. Leaned the chair I’d snagged out in the infirmary proper back on two of its legs, balancing. “We had the first meet this afternoon. Something about me being able to throw hexes; I tangled with a couple of them in Dallas. It’s a big deal if they kill a girl who can throw a hex, I guess. They think Gran’s family might’ve been a bastard branch, or something.” I swallowed, hard. “Anyway, Bruce and Hiro will do all the talking tomorrow. I just have to sit there and not get kidnapped or murdered. Should be fun.”

The covers slid as he pushed himself up on his elbows. At least when he passed out, nobody undressed him. He was still dirty, but he looked tons better.

I leaned back in the chair. It squeaked a little. Don’t do that, Gran would’ve said. Fall right on your ass, Dru-girl. You mind me, now.

“Are you well?” He finished sitting up, gingerly, testing his body’s responses.

I shrugged. Who knew what would happen or who would try to kill me next if someone decided I was even more of a freak than I already was? Besides, Gran couldn’t be Maharaj. She was a backwoods hexer, and she’d been human all the way.

But would you have known if she wasn’t? And how can you do some of the things you can do? Leander sounded pretty sure, and he even knew Gran’s maiden name.

I told that little internal nagging voice to shut up and go away, shrugged. “I’ll deal.” I gave it a beat, decided to add more. “Graves is gone.”

Christophe blinked again. That was all the response I got.

Well, great. “He’s got some things to work out.” It sounded lame. “So do I. So . . .”

“Dru.” He slid his feet out of the bed. Still barefoot, his jeans flayed at the knees and stiff with crusted stuff I didn’t even want to think about. “You don’t have to. You’re tired, and—”

I shook my head. My braid bumped my back. I could probably fight another clutch of suckers with my hair done this tight. “I gotta do this while I got the courage, Chris. So just listen, okay?”

He went still, perched on the edge of the bed. He just watched me, his face closed. Shuttered.

Guarded, like he was afraid of what I might say.

I lost my nerve. “You probably want to get cleaned up or something, right?” Or pee. Because all I want to do when I wake up after almost-dying is find a commode.

He shook his head a little, a brief economical movement. “It can wait.”

Well, dammit, there went that escape. The chair’s front legs thudded down. I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees.

“Okay,” I began. “You’re too old for me. You’re scary. It’s creepy that you were so all over my mom and now you’re all over me. And you . . .” You watched my father go down that hall, I wanted to say. But all of a sudden, it didn’t seem right. Dad had shot him, if the vision was a true-seein and not just a really vivid nightmare. Visions were like that, they twisted together dream and reality, and Gran always warned me not to trust what couldn’t be verified.

But still.

I couldn’t punk out now. So I licked my lips nervously and plunged ahead. “You were there when my father died. Weren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Christophe actually flinched. “If I could have saved him—”

“You probably would have.” I nodded, and he shut up. “Because you owed it to my mom. Right?”

A single nod.

“I couldn’t figure out if you wanted me so bad because you thought I could kill Sergej, or if it was me. Something really about me.”

That got to him. He flinched again, and I held up a hand. Wonder of wonders, he stayed quiet. But his jaw was clenched so tight he was fixing to shatter his teeth.

My imagination just works too damn well.

I had to continue now. I couldn’t just leave it like that. “But every time I’ve been really in trouble, you’ve been there. You probably tried to break me out of that Sooper-Sekrit Vampire Hideout all by your lonesome, didn’t you? That’s how he caught you.”

Another nod. He watched me like I was a snake getting ready to bite, and I was suddenly so tired.

Grown-up shit is hard.

“You told Dibs to hook up the transfusion. You didn’t care if it killed you. I needed blood, you were going to save me, it was that simple. Right?”

“Tak,” he breathed, then shook himself. “Yes. That simple. Dru.” Soft, like he was pleading.

“Christophe.” All the air ran out of me, I had to gasp it back in. “I get that you’re interested, okay? But I’m not . . . ready. For anything. With anyone. Okay? I don’t even know what I’m going to do tomorrow when I wake up.” Besides be grateful if nobody tries to take my head off or shoot me or drain my blood, that is. “I’ve got no damn clue at all. So, you can either be okay with that, or I can transfer to another Schola. I’ve talked to Bruce about it. He’ll have kittens, and Hiro will have penguins, and August will completely throw a fit, but I’ve made up my mind. It’s up to you.”

He absorbed this. Time ticked away, and the Schola woke up completely. A faint faraway murmur of voices as djamphir got ready—the younger ones for classes, the older students for patrol, the teachers and other older ones for citywide patrol, mission support, or class time.

It was comforting, hearing that murmur. Knowing what it was.

Kind of like I belonged. For once. Like I’d found a place to fit into, a key in a lock.

“Dru.” He leaned forward a little, toward me. “Is there . . . a chance? Any chance?”

I thought it over. He deserved an answer.

So did I. I just had to find one I could live with.

“I don’t know.” I pushed the chair back and stood up. “When I said I wasn’t ready, I meant it. Okay? Can you live with that?”

I almost said can you trust me, but that . . . it wouldn’t have been right. It just wouldn’t.

“Yes.” No hesitation. “I can wait. Until you know, kochana. One way.” A slight shrug, his shoulder lifting elegantly, even though he was filthy. “Or the other.”

“Really?” That’s . . . um, well. I hadn’t expected that. I’d expected a no. Or some waffling. A little prevarication.

This time he smiled. It was the smile he kept just for me, a soft, private expression. “Really. I know the value of patience, skowroneczko moja. It must be my age.”

Must be. “Well.” I rubbed my palms on my jeans. “Okay. I’ll let you get cleaned up, then. I . . . yeah.” Now I was floundering. I backed up a bit, bumping the chair, and he just sat there and looked at me, still smiling. I managed to turn around and head for the door.

Just before I got there, though, he spoke up again.

“Dru.” Very soft. “Thank you.”

Jesus. I just basically rejected you, right? “For what?”

“For . . . believing. In me.”

You know what that will do to a guy? I shook Graves’s voice away. “No problem,” I said over my shoulder. Found the doorknob with a shaking hand. “No problem at all, Chris. First one’s free.”