“You’re the bigger threat, Dru.” As if talking to an idiot. “He’s already corrupted Anna. You? You’ve not only fought him off, but you’re incorruptible. He lives to twist things, kochana. You wouldn’t understand.”
Great. What? “Okay, sure. Look, Christophe—”
He reached up. I almost flinched, but he only tucked a fallen curl behind my ear. His fingertips brushed my cheek. Warm skin, soft and forgiving. But my shoulder hurt, the bruise throbbing. His fingertips slid down, touched under my chin, and I found out I was staring at his chest before he pushed gently and I was forced to look up at his shadowed face.
“Will you at least consider me an option?” A bitter little half-smile, and his shoulders hunched slightly. “I don’t know how much more open I can be. About how I . . .”
Oh, my God. The tangle of feelings inside me snarled even further. “I like you.” There, it was out. It was said. Had I been lying to Graves, or to myself? “I really do. You’re . . . different.”
I could have kicked myself. “Different”? That was all I could come up with?
Now there was a ghost of amusement in his expression. One half of his mouth curled up, a quiet, companionable almost-grin. “Is that the word you’d choose?”
I grabbed my courage with both hands, so to speak. “Yeah. One of them, anyway.”
A single nod. Then he went still, in that way older djamphir have. “What happened between you and the loup-garou?”
Oh, for God’s sake. But then I realized he probably wasn’t asking about the state of the union, so to speak. He was asking about something else. Or at least, I was only going to answer him as if he was asking about something else. “You mean, that day? He, uh, he found me. After Anna and I had a . . . a fight. She had the gym cleared and came to do something, I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall, because Christophe’s attention was so focused. It was like having a laser drilling right through me. All this time, and he was the only person who really looked at me.
Even Nat sometimes didn’t see me. She saw a svetocha, that was all. Something I had to live up to. Something I had no idea of how to live up to, when I was just regular me.
Just Dru.
I swallowed hard, continued. “I got busted up a bit. Graves . . . he wanted to know who’d done it. I didn’t want to say.” I couldn’t get the words out. I was stupid. “He got mad. Stamped off.”
Another single nod, breaking his eerie stillness. “Leaving you unprotected.”
Defending Graves was like defending Dad. The urge was immediate, overwhelming, and instinctive. “I didn’t—”
He made a sharp slashing movement with one hand. “I know you’ll hear no word against him. But no matter how angry he was, leaving you alone should not have been an option.”
Meaning, probably, I wouldn’t do that. But Christophe had left me alone before, hadn’t he? Or let me think he wasn’t hanging around.
I slumped against the wall. “Can we get off this subject?”
He shrugged. I waited for him to say something else, but he just rose, fluidly, and held out a hand. I took it—there was no reason not to—and he hauled me up as if I weighed less than a feather. The leashed strength was frightening. Especially since I’d seen him use it.
When I had my balance, I tried to pull my hand back. His fingers tightened, briefly, before he let go. Just to make sure I knew he was choosing to turn me loose, I guess.
Or just because he didn’t want to let go.
“Dru.” He was looking away now, up the deserted, shadowed hall.
The busts gleamed as they watched with blank eyes, each one a djamphir famous in the Real World for something or another, but not to be found in any ordinary history books. I suddenly wondered if they minded. Brought myself back to reality with a twitch. “What?”
He kept staring away. “I don’t mistake you for your mother. She was the closest I had to . . . a friend. A real friend. She taught me much.” He stopped, inhaled sharply as if the words pained him, and dropped his chin a little. “But I didn’t have trouble sleeping or eating when I thought of her in danger. I didn’t feel my heart tear itself out of my chest when she looked sad. I did not ever fear for her the way I fear for you.” The aspect settled over him in a wave, and I could see it rising from him like heat shimmers from pavement on a scorcher of a day. “I don’t blame you if it’s not . . . enough. I’m tainted, I know as much. Just . . . let me stay near you. Please.”
What could I say to that? Especially since my heart gave a huge painful leap. Somehow I crossed the space between us, and when I put my arms around him, he hugged me back. I didn’t smell his blood now. I just smelled him, that maddening apple-pie-and-male blend that yanked everything inside me sideways. It helped that when I laid my head on his chest I could hear his heartbeat going like a clock. Tick-tock, tock-tick, each beat strong and steady.
Right then it didn’t matter that he was like a twister, or that he was infuriating when it came to sparring, or that my shoulder still hurt. What mattered was the way he slumped against me, sighing a little, and the way I finally felt like I was . . . home. It mattered that he always came back for me, and it mattered that he’d said those things to me.
Nobody had ever said anything like that to me, ever.
That was the first time I ever really kissed him. As in, the first time I kissed him without waiting for him to try for me.
And it was great.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the middle of the day, the long sleepy time when sunshine comes down like golden honey, and someone was shaking me awake. I wanted to roll over and stick my head under the pillow. The thought—it’s not time for school, leeme lone—was familiar because it’d hit me every morning when the alarm went off, no matter where in the country we were.
“Milady.” Nathalie, whispering fiercely. “Dru, please, wake up.”
I sat straight up, almost cracking my forehead against hers because she was bending down. She jerked back gracefully, and I got a good lungful of her perfume. She wore a strange musky blend from a little blue bottle, and it suited her. Right now, though, it had a weird coppery edge.
I know that smell. Fear.
“Christophe?” It was the first word out of my mouth. I blinked, rubbed at my eyes. “What the hell?”
“He’s gone. Benjamin is down the hall. It’s Ash.” Her dark eyes were wide, and her sleek hair was mussed. Just a little. “We’ll take you to him, Shanks and me. But hurry up. Please.”
I scrambled up out of the white bed. I’d fallen asleep in Christophe’s arms, still wearing Graves’s coat. Sometime during the night I’d shucked the coat and my jeans and crawled under the covers. I was hoping I’d done it while I was alone.
I grabbed for my jeans, but Nathalie was quicker. She hooked them up off the floor and shook her head. “Clean clothes. You never know. It’s not that urgent.”
“Benjy could come along any moment,” Shanks hissed from the door. He was in a gray T-shirt and comfortably ripped-around-the-knee jeans, but his dark hair stood up wildly in all directions. It was such a change from his usual emo-boy fringe I began to get a bad feeling. “He always checks when there’s a wulf on guard. Don’t trust us.”
Nat snorted. “She has time to get clean underwear on, Robbie. Jeez.”
I seconded that emotion, and I was damn glad I still had a T-shirt and panties on. I mean, it was just Shanks, but still.
“You’re such a girl.” He tensed, leaning toward the door and cocking his head as if he heard something.
“What’s going on with Ash?” I moved as quietly as I could toward the dresser.
“Best you come see.” Nathalie glided past me and in seconds had T-shirt, panties, and jeans in her capable hands. Today she was in a purple V-neck and a black scarf, and her jeans looked faintly tinged with purple, too. She even had purple Uggs, and they didn’t look ridiculous like they would if I was in them. “Hurry.”
I did. Three minutes later we were heading
down the hall for the stairs, away from the end where Benjamin’s closed door glowered. I didn’t ask why we were slipping away like this. If Shanks thought there was a good reason, there was a good reason.
But where was Christophe?
We were on the stairs before I could ask. “Where’s Christophe?”
“Gone.” Shanks shrugged, hopping down the stairs two at a time. “He left before dawn. Most of the Council went with him. Think Leon went, too. Left me and Benjamin and the twins to stand watch over you. Then Ash started . . . well.”
“What’s going on with him?” I got no answer. “Nat?”
“You’ll have to see for yourself.” She brought up the rear, her footsteps silent. I was the only one making any noise, and not a lot of it. “He’s not dying, if that’s what you’re worrying about. At least, I don’t think he is.”
“Great.” I rubbed at my eyes, getting rid of sleep crusties. “And you don’t want Benjamin to know, because . . . ?” I could probably guess.
Shanks snorted. “Instinct. Christophe and the others left in a hurry. Something about a daylight run, gathering intel.”
I stopped dead. Nat bumped into me, got me going again. I hate being herded, but she managed to do it without irritating me. “A daylight run? Intel?”
“Yeah. A compromised site or something. Pretty hush-hush.” Shanks tossed me a look over his shoulder. “What do you think?”
I think they’re going after Anna. “Jesus.” A sick feeling began right under my breastbone. “I think I shouldn’t have said tomorrow.”
“Care to share? Just askin’.”
“Anna sent a note. And . . . something of Graves’s.” I brushed my hair back, wishing I’d thought to grab a ponytail elastic. I realized in the middle of the motion that I didn’t want to show the earring, and let the curls fall back down.
“Shit.” Shanks didn’t speed up, but he did put his head down.
I am just going to kill Christophe. I concentrated on not tripping down the stairs. He’d been so nice last night, holding me, not saying much. Just being there, until I finally fell asleep. And I’d been grateful.
I was pretty prepared to find Ash howling and battering at the walls of his room. The plain concrete-and-stone hall was silent, though.
Silent as the grave.
I wished I hadn’t thought that, swallowed hard. “Is he—”
There was a sound from inside the cell. A scraping crackle, as if he was trying the change again. My heart sped up, a high hard hummingbird beating against my ribs.
Nat handed me a thick brown elastic. “I heard it when I checked him, about ten minutes ago. Take a look.”
“You’ve been checking him?” I got my hair pulled sloppily back and stepped up to the door.
“Of course I have.” She said it like, Are you stupid? I decided not to ask.
The observation slit gave off a gleam—daylight, from a small, thickly barred window high on the opposite wall. I went up on tiptoes, grabbed the edge of the slit, and hauled myself up to take a look.
There wasn’t much to see. Ash lay on the floor, shaking like he was having a seizure. Fur roiled, his spine arched, and he clawed at the stone floor. There were deep slices crisscrossing it—he’d been scratching for a while. The patches of white skin were growing. Each time the fur crawled back up to reclaim him, it was beaten back.
I dropped back down, lunged for the key. Shanks grabbed at it, but he was too slow, for once. “Wait a second—”
“He’s changing back!” I yelled, fumbling with the key. “This is great, he’s actually changing back!”
“We don’t know that yet. He could hurt you, Dru, he ain’t rational right now!”
“He’s never been exactly rational.” I shoved the key into the hole, twisted it. The lock gave with a slight groan. I wrenched the door open, just as I realized I couldn’t hear the crackling anymore.
Oh please, no. I peered into the dimly lit cell, pushed the door a little wider, and slipped inside. It was too late to back out now, so I made it across the cell to where he lay, ready to jump back if he started looking like he was going to claw at me. Thick silence swallowed everything inside the cell, and I half-bent, my fingers out, meaning to touch him.
He lay on the floor, the fur still reaching up in ropes and twists. His body was rigid, his eyes rolling and glowing glassy orange. Like they were on fire, molten something poured into his sockets.
Ash’s mouth opened, and he screamed.
It was a long, despairing cry, and it chilled me right down to the core. It blew my hair back, and the touch sparked into life inside my head. A cascade of horrific images, dead bodies and hot blood and despair, roared through my skull.
I dropped to my knees, the sudden impact jolting up through my thighs and jarring every bone in my body. It was agony, bones twisting and every inch of flesh crawling with jellied fire. It burned and it clung, but even worse than the burning and the breaking bone was the soft evil creeping inside my head, its clawed fingers digging at the very core of what made me, me.
It only lasted a few seconds, but those seconds were a lifetime. Something in me twisted, pulling. As if I had hold of an invisible rope and all Gran’s careful training from the time I was a toddler had hardened the invisible muscles I was using to pull. I hauled, a cry to match Ash’s rising out of me, and for a moment we were screaming in unison. I was on my knees, body tilted all the way back, my hands out and knotted into fists like I was pulling on something. It wasn’t a rope now; it was chains wrapped around my wrists. Cold metal chains that burned, and the force on the other end was a riptide of deep black hate.
I’d seen that black before in a sucker’s eyes. In a cold lifeless house in a snowstorm, where Sergej had expected to trap Christophe and got me instead. Slim handsome Sergej, with his teenage face and his honey-brown curls and those black eyes, their hourglass pupils tarns for wild creatures to sink and die in.
I pulled. My knees slipped, I was yanked forward, and suddenly something grabbed me from the other side. For a moment I was horribly stretched; the thing on the other end of the chains had sunk its claws into me and was pulling me just like taffy. Someone else was yelling, and Ash’s howl broke on a high throat-cut gurgle as he ran out of breath. So did mine, and for a long horrible moment I couldn’t see anything but a deep velvet blackness starred with amazing little points of color. My lungs seized up, I couldn’t breathe, the thing pulling on Ash was going to win—every ounce of stubbornness I had crawled up inside me and I gave it one last lunging, tearing, hideously silent effort.
Something tore inside me. A veil made of wet paper, ripped right in half.
There was a wet crunching noise and a pop! The smell of wet salt showered over me, and the pressure retreated. I fell over backward onto Shanks, my elbow sinking into something soft, and he let out an actual squeal. My head rang like a gong and my arms felt like someone had tried to tear them off. I blinked, and for a second the hazy thought I shoulda stayed in bed occurred to me, like the world’s slowest genius moment.
My breath whooped back in again. I was too grateful for my lungs working to care that I was making coughing, gagging sounds.
Someone let out a small, sobbing noise. My head hurt viciously, and I smelled copper.
Blood. The hunger yawned inside me, opening its red eyes. Tugged on my veins, but faintly.
I got the retching under control. Lay there for a second. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. “Ohshit,” I whispered, hoarse and rasping. “Nat?”
“Right here.” From the door, a shocked whisper.
“Shanks?” I had to know. I blinked the blood out of my eyes. Was that why my head hurt so bad? The torn thing inside me quivered, too. What had I just done?
Shanks moaned, stirring. “You broke my nuts.”
So that was what my elbow had hit. “Sorry.” My voice cracked. My throat was sore, too, and the bloodhunger rasped unhappily at the back of my throat. I knew I was lying on him, but I coul
dn’t get up the gumption to move.
“Mother Moon,” Nat whispered. I’d never heard her sound actually shocked before. It was a revelation. “Oh, Mother Moon.”
“And Father Fucking Sky, she broke my nuts.” Shanks curled up; I slid bonelessly down to the stone floor. The claw marks were sharp and fresh, one of them scratching against my wrist as I lay there. It took all the energy I had left to turn my head. My vision cleared. The blackness retreated, bit by bit, like a movie’s first scene opening up.
The long pale shape curled in on itself like Shanks. A muscled back, three jagged scars swiping down across the skin. He was fish-belly white, with a shock of dark hair. It looked like it hadn’t been cut for a while. He shuddered, naked on cold stone, and when his head moved, I saw the streak of white at his temple. It reached all the way back like a skunk stripe now, and the white hairs had a silvery cast.
Like moonlight.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
Muscle moved under that too-white skin as he shook. He coughed, a terrible wet retching sound, and I realized he was crying.
That somehow gave me the strength to move. I rolled, awkwardly, one of my sneaker soles skritching against the floor. Managed to make it to hands and knees. That was as far as I could get. I was shaking like I’d just run five miles without letup. My bladder was near to bursting, and I wished I’d taken the time to brush my teeth. Blood slicked the left side of my face, hot and maddening, I licked my lips and wished I hadn’t because I could taste it, a flood of red and jumbled images of my own face swirling through me.
Dammit. The torn-open spot inside of me quivered again, like it wasn’t quite sure what to do with itself. I had a hazy idea it was going to start hurting pretty soon, but I was too tired to care.
“Ash,” I croaked. “Ash.”
He twitched. The sobbing was like a toddler’s, messy and huge.
I couldn’t get up. So I crawled.
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