Reckoning

by Lili St. Crow

  “You gonna eat?” Graves ambled back in, his chin set stubbornly and his eyes dark. Almost black.

  I looked back down at the skillets, the pop and fizzle of bacon filling my head for a moment.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “But there’s work to be done first. Come on, you two. Tuck in.”

  The wide loft held Gran’s big four-poster and my smaller corn crib, and the mattresses reeked of mildew even though we’d wrapped them in plastic. But the quilts, packed in mothballs and plastic, were still good. The moths hadn’t gotten at them at all.

  I meant to carry my brand-new sleeping bag downstairs after a while. I thought if I sent the boys up to get settled and gave them enough time, they’d be out cold and I’d be able to sneak my bag downstairs and stretch it in front of the door.

  Plus, there were things to do to close the house up for the night. I finished by warding the walls again, watching the faint blue lines running through the wood take on fresh life. They didn’t need to be redone so much as refreshed, and it was amazingly easy. I just had to remember to think up high enough to get the second story involved. I could almost hear Gran muttering to herself while she followed me around the open room that was the entire first floor, checking my work.

  I was hungry, but my stomach had closed up tighter than a fist. The effort of warding made my head swim, and every bone in my body ached down deep. I sat down on the loveseat to rest, just for a second. It was an old horsehair thing, meant for company—Gran always sat in her rocking chair and I used the old hassock, or I sat at her feet while she knitted. The bare bulb in the kitchen gave off a mellow glow, and if I shut my eyes and inhaled, I could almost smell her.

  Tobacco juice, a faint astringent old-lady smell, baby powder, and the musky yeasty scent of cooking good things and working hard all day. Her spinning wheel sat under a drop cloth I’d told the boys not to touch, but I could almost hear its hissthumpwhirr and her occasional soft mutters as she spoke to God or told me things.

  I loved to listen to Gran talk. She was always rambling, said it was a product of living alone. Dad was never the chatty type, but days with Gran were a constant stream of information, admonition, attention. Do it this way, hold that end up, good girl . . . I could tell him, now what’s the price of cotton, but he wouldn’t listen . . . Yes, you look like your daddy, that’s a look like a mule, fetch me my scissors and go check the coop for eggs. My, you’re good at findin’ eggs, it’s a true talent, Dru-baby. Come now, no use wastin’ sunshine.

  She taught by example, but the talking was something else. A lifeline, maybe.

  I folded over and pulled my feet up, lying on the dusty loveseat. It felt good, even if the thing was harder than the floor and slippery too. The fire glowed through the stove’s grate, and the good scent of seasoned wood burning—I’d banked it just before I warded everything—was like a warm blanket.

  Blanket. I didn’t have one; I’d left them all upstairs. I was going to get cold if I settled here for long.

  I didn’t care.

  My eyes drifted shut. I was so, so tired. The wards in the walls hummed to themselves, and that was something new, too. I’d never heard wards before, singing in high crystal voices that turned into harmonies where the knots laid over doors and windows twisted.

  Well, Dru. You got here, and you got both of them here. Tomorrow you start figuring out a longer-term plan. But you did what you set out to do, and there hasn’t been a vampire attack. Yet.

  I told myself not to borrow trouble. Curled up even tighter on the love seat. It just felt so damn good to stop moving, to stop concentrating so fiercely on the next thing, and the next, and the next . . .

  That was the first night I slept, really slept, since rescuing Graves. Every muscle in my body eased its useless tension, relaxing all at once. I went down into darkness, and there were no dreams.

  Except one.

  INTERMEZZO

  He crouched, easily, on the edge of the rooftop, blue eyes burning and his sharply handsome face haggard. Lines etched themselves onto teenage flesh, and for a moment you could see just how old Christophe really was.

  The city spread out below him, jewels of light and concrete canyons, the exhaust-laden wind ruffling his slicked-back, darkened hair. The aspect flickered through him, his fangs sliding free and retreating as dull hopeless rage flitted over his features.

  He’d never looked like this before.

  “We need you,” someone said behind him. Bruce moved in the shadow of an HVAC vent, restlessly. The crisp British accent made every word a precise little bullet. “Don’t throw your life away, Reynard. It’s no way to honor her memory.”

  Christophe actually flinched. Something I’d never seen him do before, something that seemed utterly alien to the maddeningly calm djamphir I knew. “She’s alive.”

  “How could she have survived that? We found traces—you saw the blood. She wasn’t even half-trained, despite our best efforts. Sergej”—The name sent a glass spike of pain through my dreaming head, and both of them tensed—“took her because Leon betrayed her, and Anna probably helped.”

  “So now you’re willing to impute blame to Milady.” Christophe’s shoulders straightened. He lifted his right hand. Something gleamed slightly in his palm, and my dreaming self’s gaze was riveted to it. “Really, ibn Allas. You never used to be this quick to call Anna’s behavior what it is.”

  “Anna is a spoiled child. She’s never grown up.” Amazingly, Bruce almost snarled, his lip lifting and white fangs flashing for just a moment, the aspect curling through his hair. “But speaking of that doesn’t help this situation. We didn’t find her body, or Anna’s, but we’re still looking. The whole place is a mess.” He took a deep breath, shoving the aspect down. “If he had both of them, we would know. He would be walking in daylight and we would be under siege.” Bruce’s dark eyes glittered. He looked like a wreck, too—his clothes were singed and torn, one half of his face deeply bruised, and he slumped wearily. “Please, Reynard. The Order needs you.”

  “My little bird needs me more. I told you, keep her safe and you have my allegiance. This? This is not safe.” Christophe straightened, and now I could see his clothes were in rags too. Vampire blood smoked on him, the steam rising hard to see because of the fume of rage covering him.

  “We don’t even know—” Bruce began, helplessly, his hands spread. Trying to smooth the waters, like he always did.

  Christophe rose with slow, dangerous grace, balanced on the very edge of the roof. “I know. If she was dead, ibn Allas, I would be, too. I would kill them all until they dragged me down. My heart is still beating, therefore, she is still alive.” The lines on his face smoothed out. The gleam closed itself up in his fist, fingers clenching, his face settling into chill certainty.

  If he’d ever looked at me this way, I would’ve never let him touch me. I would have been too busy backpedaling and getting out of his way.

  “Give us time. We’ll help, we’ll bargain with the Maharaj—”

  “Don’t mention the djinni-children to me; they don’t care for our troubles.” Christophe laughed, a bitter little chuckle. “And your help gave Leontus the chance to betray her. I took you at your word, Bruce. I believed you when you said he would guard her all the more carefully because of Eleanor’s death. I believed him.”

  “I believed him too!” Bruce yelled, but it was too late. Christophe had already leapt, straight off the ledge, plummeting into the screaming wind—

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I sat straight up on the loveseat, my fingers clawing at empty air like I was going to grab Christophe’s sweater and pull him back. One of Gran’s quilts slid to the floor in a heap. I did actually throw myself backward, hitting the high hard back of the loveseat and giving myself a good jolt.

  Graves tore out of the sleeping bag and leapt to his feet. Sometime during the night he must’ve crept downstairs, because he was on the floor next to the loveseat. My heart hammered, pounding in my throat, and my fangs tingled. For
one nightmarish moment I didn’t know where I was, and the scream caught in my throat.

  The deep thrumming rattling everything not nailed down was a growl. It came from Graves’s chest, and his eyes were wide, green, and blank. The Other—the thing wulfen use to change and loup-garou use for mental dominance—rippled under his skin, his shoulders bulking up as he hunched them, ready for attack.

  I clapped my hand over my mouth. The touch throbbed inside my head, little invisible fingers soaking in the anger radiating from him in red-violet waves. Beyond that, the glow of the wards sparked, bright blue. Out in the meadow, nothing. Just static, the formless buzz of the country before your ears adjust and start hearing the wind and the crick and the animals again. It’s like they have to shift between city and country tuning.

  Morning sunlight filtered through the shutters, bars of gold with dust dancing in them. Graves’s growl petered out. He half-turned, glanced at me with that empty green-glowing gaze, and for the first time since I’d met him, Goth Boy looked completely dangerous.

  I swallowed, hard. “I’m okay,” I managed through my clenching fingers. “I just . . . I had a dream.” About Christophe. The words stuck in my throat. “Jesus. What are you doing?”

  He just stood there. The anger leaked away, bit by bit. Sense stole back into his mad green eyes, and for a moment I wondered why I wasn’t scared of him, especially since he looked ready to rumble.

  I mean, I was apprehensive, yeah. But he hadn’t been fixing to hurt me. No, he’d been focused on the door.

  In case something was coming through it.

  Something like that makes you think. It really does. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to think about it.

  Graves eyed me sidelong for a long while. Finally, the last of the anger died down. I saw it creep back into him, sinking under his caramel skin. You couldn’t see the marks of torture on him anymore, and the anger was something new.

  Not anger. Rage. He didn’t have that before. I was the one who had that before.

  I guess being tortured by vampires will do that to you. Guilt bit me hard, deep inside my chest, again. “Graves?” It was hard to talk, because my fangs were out and my hand was clapped so tight over my mouth I could barely move my lips.

  I didn’t want him to see. To remember that he’d seen me with my face in Anna’s throat, drinking her blood.

  He crouched, suddenly, and his hands moved. I almost flinched before I realized he was smoothing out the sleeping bag. “Nothing. Not doing nothing.”

  A high dull flag of red stood up on each sculpted cheek under a screen of dark stubble. The stubble was pretty new; he’d been a smooth-cheeked boy when I’d met him. He still needed a few meals to replace muscle mass; wulfen metabolism burns pretty hot to fuel the change. It would burn in him to give him their strength and speed, even though he wouldn’t get hairy.

  Not much, anyway. No more than any regular boy.

  The tingling through my fangs receded. I finally peeled my hand away as he started rolling the bag up. My hair was probably sticking up all over, but I felt loads better. Not even stiff, but as if I’d taken a deep, refreshing nap. And there was the quilt—he must’ve brought it downstairs and covered me up. I searched for something to say. “You didn’t, um, want to sleep upstairs?”

  Way to go, Dru. State the obvious.

  “No.” The rage flushed through him again, retreated. “I didn’t.”

  The touch was stronger now, and if it wasn’t for Gran’s training I probably would’ve been seriously disturbed by how strongly his anger rang in my skull. “Graves—”

  Now why did I sound breathless?

  “Look.” He finished rolling up the sleeping bag, snapped the elastic loops over it, and glared up at me. “I know I’m just a loup-garou, all right? I know. I’m just the deadweight holding you down. You dragged me along and I’m glad about that. I’m even glad I got bit by that thing up there. I handled everything they threw at me, and told him to go fuck himself more than once. Sergej.” He all but spat the name, and his face twisted up, bitterly. “So quit treating me like a little kid, Dru. I ain’t been a little kid for years. I’m not as Billy Badass as some of those stuck-up djamphir, but I’m learning and I’ll be hell on wheels when I’m done. You won’t ever have to worry again.”

  Where did that come from? My jaw had dropped. I stared at him. What the hell?

  “You don’t think I can hack it.” He leapt to his feet, carrying the sleeping bag with him. He’d slept in his coat, too, and it flapped as he moved. I’d stitched it up, clumsily, and now I was wishing I’d done a better job. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I already have. Whatever it takes to make you see, I’m gonna do it. You get me?”

  Silence stretched between us. “Um.” I searched for something to say. I settled for the absolute truth. “What? No. I don’t get you. What the hell are you on about?”

  I got one long, very green look, his eyebrows—eyebrow, actually, since nobody had held him down and plucked him up yet—drawn together and his mouth a bitter scowl. I was struck once again by how cute he’d gotten. Those cheekbones, and those eyes.

  How had I ever thought, even back in the Dakotas, that he was dull? Or gawky?

  I had the weird sinking feeling I was missing something important. What a thing to wake up to. And the dream was still filling my skull like cobwebs, something important glimmering in its depths.

  He filled his lungs, his chest swelling as if he was growling again. When he opened his mouth, though, the only thing that came out was a yell. “I love you!” he shouted, his eyes glowing laser green. “I love you, okay? I’m not some hopeless retard you pull along behind you because you feel sorry for him! I love you and I’m going to prove it!”

  I had the exquisitely weird sensation of being transported to a parallel universe. Or of waking up in a movie where everyone knew the script but me.

  A different kind of silence, now. It was the kind where something you can’t take back is still vibrating in the air, all around you. We looked at each other for what felt like the first time, Graves and me, and in that moment the last bits of the kid he’d been completely fled inside my head.

  This was a new animal. And he was looking at me like he expected me to say something.

  “I never thought you were a hopeless retard.” I sounded very small, and very young. I found out I was hugging myself, too, scooted back on the loveseat like it was a raft and the water around it was full of sharks. “You just . . . I . . .” Every word I’d never been able to say to him backed up, crowding around me and squeezing all the air out of my chest. “I thought I disgusted you,” I said finally. It was hopelessly inadequate. As usual. But Jesus. Waking up from a dream about one guy and having another one yell something like that, it’s confusing.

  To say the least.

  He actually cocked his head and stared at me like I was speaking in Swahili. “What?” As if all the air had been punched out of him.

  “The, um. Sucking blood thing. And . . . I can’t . . . sometimes I just can’t explain things to you. I can’t tell you. It all gets balled up and you get mad and stomp away and—” I was actually working up a good head of steam here.

  “I’m sorry.” The words jumped out. He hugged the sleeping bag, hard, tendons standing out on the backs of his hands. The flush on his cheeks had died away, so that under his caramel coloring he was ashen. “I was angry. Didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Well, thank you sonny Jesus, we’re getting somewhere. Finally. “If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be in this.”

  Bitterness, then. His shoulders hunched and his face turned old. A shadow passed through his eyes, turning them mossy instead of emerald. “Yeah. I’d still be cowering. Hiding in the fucking mall. I’m glad I got bit, Dru. If I coulda done it earlier, I would’ve.”

  Jesus Christ. He’d seen the Real World by now. It wasn’t anything anyone sane wanted to be involved in. There’s a reason people run away from it. There’s a r
eason cops and governments sweep weird shit under the table. It’s because nobody wants to know. They don’t even have to work that hard; nobody goes looking for this sort of thing—the kind of weird where you can seriously die. They all go looking for the Saturday-trip, New Age, crystalgazing weird you can come back from.

  Except Graves and me, we’d been stranded out in the black. Out in the place you can’t get back from and you just have to deal with. “You can’t mean that,” I whispered. My arms were around my knees. I was curling up into myself like a fern, or like he was shouting at me. My heart was triphammering. Wait. Let’s go back a couple seconds here. Did he really say what I thought he just said? “Graves—”

  He flung out one hand, like he was blocking a dodgeball. “Bullshit. I do mean it. Best thing that ever happened to me, Dru. What was I gonna do—try to go to college with no money? Work my way through and hope someone would throw me a bone or two?” A swift snarl passed over his features, and his hair stood up in vital springing curls. “No way. This is my chance to be good enough. I’m taking it. You’ll see. You’ll just see.”

  He dropped the sleeping bag. It hit the floor and keeled over, and he turned on his heel. Bare feet smacked the worn floorboards, and it took him less than a half second to undo the lock on the door. He plunged out into the morning, and the door slammed shut behind him. Shivers rolled through me, first hot, then cold.

  What. The hell. Just happened?

  A soft sound alerted me. I looked up, and there was Ash, crouched easily on the pulldown steps that led to the loft. He cocked his head, and greasy hair fell in his face. He was barefoot too, and he’d somehow lost his shirt. His narrow chest was dead pale, and muscle flickered under his skin.

  Wait a second. Just hold on one goddamn second. Graves said he . . . did he actually say that? Did he say what I think he just said?

  We looked at each other for a long time, the Broken and me. It occurred to me that he was waiting for something. For me to make the world settle down.