I hit the floor and rolled, came up in a crouch. The knife was nowhere to be seen, and Christophe bent his leg a little, shaking it out. He should have looked ridiculous on one leg, but instead he looked like a cat flicking one paw, the rest of him perfectly poised.
Stay down. If he comes at you, you’ve got a better chance of shaking him off. I flicked a glance at the door. No help there, it would cost me too many precious seconds to unlock, unbar, unchain it.
“Good,” he said. “Looking for escape, since I’m too fast. Very good. But I’m already here and you have no weapons, moj ptaszku. What do you do?”
No weapons my ass. There’s always a weapon. I cast around, found nothing but knickknacks for throwing, and heard the muffled beat of feathered wings again. They brushed the air of the room. My hair lifted on a faint breeze that seemed to come from nowhere, and I went very still.
I half-expected to see Gran’s owl. But nothing happened. I watched Christophe carefully.
“There it is.” He nodded. His hair had gone slick and dark as his aspect rose to the surface. You could either have a weak aspect or a strong one, and the ones that came out “externalized” in another form, usually an animal nobody normal could see, were the strongest of all.
It was also the part the bloodhunger came from. A deep, dark place that drove you crazy when you smelled the red stuff.
Christophe sank down, slowly, until he was crouching. One hand was tented on the carpet for balance, and his gaze never left mine. “You’re very close to blooming, Dru. You have a certain natural facility, especially when you’re in a high emotional state. But you can’t count on that. It could be that you haven’t been allowed into sparring sessions because they’re designing a program for you, or importing teachers. Or there could be other reasons.”
Something told me he was more in the “other reasons” camp. Still not telling me what he knew, or what he guessed. “Dylan said it was because you weren’t back yet.” I didn’t relax. Neither did he.
The tension was a rope between us, a nameless heat through my bones.
“Ah, Dylan. How is he?” The smile that spread over Christophe’s face wasn’t nice at all. It was the grin of a cat in front of a mouse hole. “Did he tell you he was in love with her?”
Huh? “What?”
“We all were. She was a moment of light, your mother. Sergej stole her away, though not before she left us of her own will. We were all…” He straightened slowly. The stiletto spun around his fingers, silver-loaded blade blurring in a complex series of half-arcs as his hand flicked. “That’s enough for today, Dru. You can stand up.”
I stayed where I was. This was more than I’d gotten out of anyone, and besides, I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t jump me again just to prove a point.
I should have been more scared. But I wasn’t, despite the fact that my heart was pounding hard enough to force its way out through my throat-pulse. My breath came in short, sharp little puffs, and all of me tingled with adrenaline.
It was the first time since I’d gotten here that I felt actually awake and reasonably alive, instead of numb and terrified.
“Stubborn as usual.” He sighed, tossed the knife back on the nightstand. It clattered against the lamp’s base. “I have about a half hour until I can leave. I won’t waste it tossing you around the room.”
“Gee, thanks.” I couldn’t sound more sarcastic, but I was willing to give it a try. My breathing evened out. “What are you here for, then? Tea and cookies?” My mouth wanted to water. He smelled like cookies. Cinnamon ones, with dabs of apple-pie filling.
But my stomach had shrunk to the size of a dime. Climbing in through the window plus “a half hour until I can leave” didn’t equal anything good. I had that much figured out, at least.
Every speck of amusement was gone. He looked a lot older, suddenly, even though his face hadn’t changed. “To find you and make sure you’re safe.”
Well, isn’t that nice of you. My heart gave another pounding leap. I made my knees work, pushing the rest of me slowly up. My shoulder ached fiercely. “They won’t even let me go outside alone.”
“It’s not outside that worries me. Much.” Christophe let out a sigh. The sweater clung to him, and his jeans were soaked through, especially the knees. Which brought up another question.
“How the hell did you get in the window, anyway? And what are you worried about in here?”
“A traitor.” He looked at the bed, visibly decided he’d better not sit on it, and stretched his hands in a curiously helpless motion. “Someone who gave away the location of an Order-approved safe house, one even I wasn’t supposed to know about, to Sergej. Which, incidentally, made it possible for him to lie in wait for both of us.”
I tried not to shiver at the thought. Christophe flying through the wreckage of the wall on the truck’s hood, just like Superman. Graves behind the wheel, terrified and hanging on. And me, almost drowning in Sergej’s dark, oily eyes. “But we kicked his ass, right? Even though someone gave that away. And—”
Christophe shook his head, and for a moment he looked sad. He moved and I flinched, but it was just to walk over to the computer chair and drop down as it squawked slightly. “It was a draw, Dru.
Barely that. If it hadn’t been daytime, if Juan and the others hadn’t believed me rather than a control directive, if your friend hadn’t trusted me, if you hadn’t already fought Sergej with more skill and power than anyone expected, if, if, if. You would have died.” The snarl that crossed his face was there and gone in an instant, so fast I might have imagined it. “I would have lost you.”
He said it like it had just occurred to him.
Another uncomfortable silence filled the room up, pushed against the curtains and made the rain-filtered light seem dimmer. I stared at him.
“And you’re not supposed to be here.” He took a deep breath. “I assumed you’d be sent to the main Schola. I don’t know how you ended up in this satellite, among…well, this type.”
Well, we’d already answered that question, this wasn’t the only Schola. But what was he going on about? “What type? Wulfen? There are djamphir here, too, you know.”
“Never mind. Maybe… they… decided you’d be safer at a smaller school. And it does make things easier for me.”
“What kind of things?” I sounded suspicious even to myself. My cheeks were on fire again, and my knees didn’t feel too steady.
“Things like watching over my careless little bird until she blooms. This Schola is fairly well known to me. No, your mother was never here.”
Thanks, Christophe. I didn’t ask. But it felt sneakingly good to know. Another one of those uncomfortable quiet spaces between us. I tried not to hunch my shoulders. “What else haven’t you told me?”
“Nothing important. Nothing critical. But you want me to talk?” His chin tipped down and he stared at me. “So, skowroneczko moja, come sit at my feet and listen. We don’t have much time. And I have something to give you.”
CHAPTER 5
I sat on my bed, my arms wrapped around my knees. Sometimes I moved so my legs didn’t fall asleep. Most of the time, though, I just sat and stared at the thin gray daylight coating the window, sleet beating in waves now. He’d gone out through the window and just… vanished, even though I ran across the room and stuck my head out like an idiot, peering after him.
Christophe left behind the fading smell of baking apple pies, wet footprints on the carpet, a soaking towel with spots of rust, a sodden computer chair… and the two wooden things.
Practice swords? I touched one handle. It was warm, the wood worn down and oiled, dark with use. Fine-grained, and very hard.
No. Christophe had touched one of them, just the way I was touching it now, running his fingers gently over the curves. These are malaika, made of hawthorn. They are not made for practice.
These are for killing things that walk the night, and they were made for a svetocha’s hands. Very few djamphir are skilled in the use of
the Kouroi’s traditional blade anymore.
But what good are wooden swords? Long, slightly curving, oddly leaf-shaped blades. They looked like they belonged in a high-budget chop-saki movie, the kind I’d seen a hundred times on late-late-night cable while waiting for Dad to come back.
I winced at the thought. It was much easier and nicer to think of Christophe’s measured, even voice.
Hawthorn is deadly to nosferatu, and even deadlier when wielded by a Kouroi. How much more deadly, then, when wielded by you? Be good, and you’ll learn to use them. When it’s safer, and I come back.
And he’d left them here. Weapons. They might have been wood, but their edges were bastard sharp. To prove it, Christophe had sliced off a little bit of his hair. The small lock of blond-streaked brown lay on the nightstand next to the stiletto. A keepsake, he’d said. So you know I’ll return.
And I’d blushed, again, like an idiot. It was absurdly comforting to know that someone would be coming back for me. Now that I’d lost everything, everyone, else.
I stared down at the swords, the hot flush dying in my cheeks, sliding back down my throat to settle in my chest next to the acid bubble. The locket was a warm spot on my breastbone.
Pale gray light ran over every curve. They looked like they belonged here on the bed, against the rucked-up velvet of the quilt cover. More than I did, at least. There was a fresh scab on my unshaved knee, a rash of red rug burn on my other leg.
As the afternoon wended toward evening, I got up. My legs were a little unsteady from sitting curled up on the bed for so long. I carried one of the wooden swords into the bathroom. There was a mirror over the sink, a nice big one. The light in here was good too, warm gold from the dusty bulbs.
It ran over my tangled hair and the hollows under my eyes.
Just one average teenage girl, rangy and awkward. Cheekbones too big for her face, blue eyes a different shade than Christophe’s. My eyes were all Dad’s, right down to the faint lavender lines in the irises. My hair was Mom’s, but without the sleek glossiness of her ringlets. The curls tangled every which way, but they weren’t the halo of frizz they used to be.
I wasn’t breaking out anymore. The bath, I guess. I couldn’t even feel good about that. I was too dead-pale. Between the rings under my eyes and the two fever spots on my cheeks, I looked like a ghost.
And I should know. I’ve seen a few.
I lifted the sword, tipped its curve down, back up. “Malaika,” I whispered. It did look like it belonged here. With the velvet and the satin and the chipped stone.
But not me. The circles under my eyes were the remains of bruises. My upper lip was too thin, lower lip too fat, my nose too long, and my hair was hopeless. The plaid shirt was a glaring mixture of red and yellow and green, and my sleeping boxers had penguins on them. They were still crawling up my ass crack.
Yeah. I’d never win any prizes.
I was tough, though. Wasn’t I? I could spot Dad, no matter what he was benching. I’d gotten Graves away from a crazed wulfen and out of a deserted mall, through a snowstorm, and faced down Sergej on my own. So what if I’d had to be rescued? I’d still gone a couple rounds with him, shot him in the head, and managed to come out still breathing.
Dad. And Gran. And Mom. All gone.
Something too hot and sharp to be tears rose up in my throat. I was the only one left.
If you are a good girl, go to classes no matter how boring, and keep your ears open; I’ll teach you how to use these. Your mother was a master of the malaika. I don’t know why she left hers behind. He had touched a hilt again, his fingers oddly gentle and his mouth drawn down bitterly. I have the pair she used in a safe place. When you’re ready, they’re yours.
My breath hitched in my throat. I let myself remember my mother. It was the most painful of all, because… well, just because.
Her hair always smelled of warmth and fresh perfume. Her heart-shaped face and the prettiness of even her smallest gestures. Her dark eyes and Dad’s picture of her kept in his wallet, with a shiny place rubbed in the plastic over her face.
That shiny place was still there, though the picture was gone. If I dug out Dad’s billfold, I would find the photo missing and the place where I always ran my thumb while getting out a twenty or a fifty would glare at me. If I stared long enough, I could probably even see the curves and lines of her face from a long time ago.
Oh God. I pushed away the memory that wanted to rise to the surface, but not nearly quick enough.
You can’t ever stop thinking something quick enough. Something that hurts always gets the knife in too fast for you to slam a lid on it and shove it away.
We’re going to play the game, Dru. She’d hidden me in a closet and gone out to fight Sergej.
Dad had left me at the house and gone to face Sergej alone. Gran had tried to stay with me, but old age had taken her. Her body had failed right out from under her, and I could tell she’d hated leaving me. She’d held on all through summer, but the first cold wind coming up the valley had been too much for her, and the hospital…
There it was again, a hurtful thought. I let out a long, slow breath, as if I was working through a cramp. It didn’t help. This cramp was on the inside, someplace no deep breathing could touch.
I wasn’t as pretty as Mom, or as smart as Dad. I wasn’t good at everything I touched, like either of them. I was just one scrawny punk-ass girl.
I met my own gaze in the mirror. I didn’t look like I should be holding the wooden sword. I clasped it awkwardly in one hand, away from my body like a baseball bat I was afraid might bite me.
Just me. Just Dru.
The girl in the mirror was smiling a little, which I suppose meant I was, even though my face felt frozen. I cautiously put my hand down, let the sword dangle.
I stamped back to the bed and slid the swords underneath the dust ruffle with Dad’s billfold. I wasn’t supposed to let anyone know I had them. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone I’d seen Christophe, but there was one person I had to tell. If Graves wasn’t too busy running around with his new friends, if I could get him alone, he could… what could he do?
Was it even fair to dump this on him too and ask him to help me figure it out and deal with it?
Most of all, I wasn’t supposed to let anyone know I had a job now, one Christophe had given me.
And that was trying to find out who at the Schola had wanted me dead bad enough to betray Christophe as well.
So I’m not pretty or smart or any other hundred things. But I’m stubborn. And tough.
It was time to start using what I had.
CHAPTER 6
Cafeteria noise washed over me in waves. Catcalls, conversations, laughter, everyone was at breakfast. I stabbed at my scrambled eggs with a fork. The pancakes had been steaming hot and fresh; now they just sat there.
Like me, just sitting here. It was just after dusk, class started in forty-five minutes, and I was really feeling the urge to go back to bed. I mean, I’ve never loved school, and I was determined to start doing something, even if it was putting up with the stupid remedial classes.
But getting up and getting dressed, braiding my hair back, and dealing with the cafeteria was really testing that determination. My shoulder still ached from the little tango with Christophe, but not as bad as it could have. Those baths worked wonders.
A shadow fell over me. I was hard-put not to twitch. But it was just a young blond wulfen with dark eyes and a gentle face. He was pale and gripped his tray so hard his knuckles were white. He looked about ready to break something from sheer nervousness.
I seconded that emotion.
His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear whatever he was saying under the noise. The screen of steam that the food came through hissed underneath all the crowd sounds.
“What?” My fork clattered on my tray. He flinched, shoulders hunching under a blue cable-knit sweater. He was built slight and narrow-hipped for a wulfen, but long corded muscle stood out on his forearms benea
th the pushed-up sweater cuffs.
“Dibs,” he croaked. “Name’s Dibs.”
I closed my mouth with a snap. I’ve seen shy all over the United States, and this kid had a bad case of it. My conscience poked at me, hard.
I pushed out the chair next to me. “Hi. I’m Dru.”
The way his face lit up, you’d have thought I’d just given him a winning lottery ticket. He dropped down, and his tray held a huge pile of raw meat slopping over the edge of a plate. I saw two T-bone steaks and a mess of hamburger, and my stomach turned over. I swallowed and reached for my coffee.
“Hi.” He scratched at his leg through his jeans and grinned. White teeth gleamed, and his hair was a buttergloss sheen. Girls would probably love him, he had the big-eyed look of a nervous deer. “I, um. Hi.”
“Hey.” I took a mouthful of scrambled eggs. Tried not to look at his plate. “So what is it?”
“What?” He looked genuinely confused.
“Nobody wants to talk to me. Why are you here?” I was glad of the company, especially since Graves was nowhere in sight. But I’ve been the new girl in schools all over the country. You don’t ever trust the first boy who wanders up to you. Or at least, you learn to look for what they might be thinking they can get out of the new kid in town.
Of course, Graves had been the first one to approach me back in the Dakotas. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. It had been lucky, I guess. Maybe.
Not so lucky for him, since he’d got bitten and ended up here.
“You looked lonely.” He hunched over his plate, his long fingers almost but not quite touching the meat. “And they bet I wouldn’t do it, since I’m sub. Sometimes you have to show them they’re wrong, even the doms.”
“Sub?” Doms? Oh boy.
“I, um, was born that way. Born, not bitten, and born sub, too.” He blinked. “You don’t know about that, huh? Graves said you knew a lot, but not some stuff.”
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