Reckoning

by Lili St. Crow

  The malaika are meant for circles. This circle, here, is where you move. These circles are how the blades move to defend you. And this circle is how you attack against many opponents. Focus, now!

  So long ago, Christophe teaching a svetocha how to fight. I couldn’t tell, now, if the memory was Anna’s or mine. Lightning crawled inside my head, bloodhunger turning the wide wet lake of the meadow into shutter-click images. Whirling, my left-hand blade a propeller, smoking vampire blood flung like a gauntlet, splashing the rest of them. They circled, and I didn’t have to worry about which direction to strike out. I’d hit a nosferat wherever I swung, and they were going to tighten the ring. I was toxic, yeah, but there were so many of them, and weight of numbers would tell on me.

  “DRU!” he screamed, and lightning struck the top of the ridge. The blast of thunder hit at almost the same moment; I swear to God I felt the wall of air molecules cracking against each other press along my entire body as I leapt, spinning in midair and striking out with feet and blades. My heart hammered, because I knew who it was.

  He’d come for me. Of course he had.

  He always did.

  He tore through the vampires, blue eyes alight with terrible fire and the rags of his black sweater melded to his body, his own malaika blurring as I landed and struck out again. They choked, their faces flushing as my aspect burned. It used to be that only terror or fury would make that oil-soft heat lay itself against my skin, and I still felt the rage, wine-red and perfume-sweet, curling through me. Nobody was bleeding here, yet. Nobody except the vampires, and the thought of sinking my fangs in them wasn’t appealing.

  But if someone had been here, someone human and helpless, like Lyle—

  It hit me from the side, a thunderbolt of force. I flew, oddly weightless, holding onto the malaika as if they’d somehow break my fall. The sucker died in midair, choking on his own blood, but I hit the ground hard, all my chimes ringing and my head full of a flash of brief starry nothingness. The vampire’s body rolled to the side, convulsing as it shredded itself, toxic dust runneling through its flesh.

  My name, yelled hoarsely. Screaming, the glassy cries of furious nosferatu. Roaring, a werwulfen in full battlemode. It was a good thing there was so much thunder, I thought weakly, because otherwise we were making enough noise to be heard in the next county.

  Bloodhunger pulsed against my palate, wiping away the trace of oranges. Consciousness returned in a rush. I struggled up, vampire blood smoking on my clothes, and heard someone else screaming. There was no pain in that cry. It was a long howl of absolute rage, and when I shook the daze out of my head and made it to my feet, shoving aside a heavy weight of swiftly decaying sucker bodies, I saw him.

  Christophe bent back, his booted foot flashing up to strike the sucker on the chin. This was a female, her long hair matted with ice, hail suddenly pounding all the way across the violent shipwrecked mass of the torn-up meadow.

  Gran’s house was still burning fiercely, and a lean dark shape bulleted across the clearing, the silvery streak on its low narrow head actually smearing on the air. Ash hit the girl vampire from behind, and I realized this was the sucker who had birthed the storm. She felt old, a terrible weight of hatred and cold spreading out from her in concentric waves. Not as ancient or as powerful as Sergej, but enough.

  Ash’s hit jolted the girl vampire forward, but she half-turned with impossible quickness and one white hand flashed out. He tumbled away, hair melting and his boyshape rising for the surface, a supple white snake under curling darkness.

  Christophe! I shook my head, trying to think. The entire meadow was littered with broken bodies. They twisted and jerked as decay claimed them—suckers rot fast when they’re bled out, especially when hawthorn wood or a svetocha’s nearness has poisoned them.

  He drove her back, making a noise that was pure inhuman rage. It managed to drown out the thunder, and a draft of warm applepie scent hit me in the face. It had an undertone of copper, which meant he was bleeding, and oh God the smell of it stroked right across the bloodhunger with a cat’s-tongue rasp. It reached all the way down to the floor of me, jerking against my control and pulling on every vein in my body.

  A hand closed around my arm. I let out a cry and recoiled, but it was Graves. Bruising crawled up his face, his lip was split, and his clothes were grimed with mud and more blood. The smell of him, strawberry incense and silvermoon wildness, the blood a bright copper-satin thread holding it all together, smashed into me. My fangs ached, a sweet tingle of pain. For a hideous half second I quivered, everything in me tensing, ready to knock him down and bury my teeth in him.

  Graves was shouting something I couldn’t hear over the thunder. His mouth worked, and he tried to pull me toward the car. I dug in my heels, malaika dangling from my nerveless hands. Not just because he was bleeding, or because the bloodhunger was snarling all through me, but because I couldn’t look away from the fight in front of me.

  Christophe closed with the girl vamp again. Ash flowed upward, melding back into changeform, his eyes alight with mad orange. Thunder roiled, and the remaining vampires were massing behind Ash. Not so many of them—a dozen at most. Still, enough to do some harm.

  Ash and Christophe needed me. At least I wasn’t useless here, as long as my aspect held.

  And now that I’d bloomed, it would.

  Christophe blurred, striking at the girl vamp with inhuman speed and precision. But she was too fast, and he was flagging. I didn’t know how I knew, unless it was the touch tolling inside my head like a bell. I felt the sweat on his skin under the pouring icy water, felt the burning of his own aspect as if it was mine.

  I tore away from Graves. My sneakers almost drowned in the mud; hail stung as it peppered down. My aspect turned scorch-hot, steam rising directly from my skin as I screamed, a falcon’s cry.

  Gran’s owl appeared out of nowhere, filling itself in with swift strokes, and hit the girl vampire with a crunch I felt like my own bones breaking. A wingsnap, and it veered away, claws dripping. Her young-old face was a black-streaked mess now, her eyes black from lid to lid and spreading fine thin threads of gray out like crow’s-feet wrinkles.

  Thunder shattered the sky overhead, four separate bolts of lightning slamming down at once, and the girl vampire choked. She was so fast, backpedaling as I drove onward, my malaika whirring. Ash let out a howl, leaping for her, but it was Christophe who flew past me, the aspect slicking down his hair and filling the air around him with crystalline crackling fury. He hit her like a freight train, and the tearing ripping sound of the malaika in vampire flesh cut the thunder short.

  Black, acidic blood sprayed. Ash hunched even further, his warning growl taking the place of the storm. The hail turned to rain, a regular spring downer. The remaining vampires fell back, their unlined faces twisting with confusion as well as hatred now.

  Christophe didn’t stop. The blades kept tearing at the body, and the hiss-growl that came from him was a djamphir’s scariest warning. His chest seemed too small to make such a sound.

  Oh, God. I kept going past him, heading for the group of suckers clumping and backing away from Ash. Thunder receded, lightning striking other hills. The eerie storm-lit darkness began to seem less, well, dark. My malaika blurred in twin circles, vampire blood spattering away from the hawthorn, a preparatory move. Graves was suddenly beside me, his eyes burning green and his boots landing in the mud with sucking splashes that would have been funny if he hadn’t been making the same sound as Ash—a low thrumming that raises every hair on the body, because it reaches right into your bones and reminds you of a time when human beings huddled in dark caves and the things that ran by night had teeth and claws even fire wouldn’t scare away.

  Even worse, it sinks its fingers into the low crouching thing in every human, the thing that lurks under civilization and socialization.

  The thing that hunts.

  The vampires broke and scattered. Ash twitched, his hide rippling in vital waves. The silver str
eak on his head glowed eerily.

  “Get them!” Christophe screamed. Ash leapt forward, and so did Graves. I would have too, but something hit me from behind. I went down hard, mud splattering everywhere and pea-sized hail embedded in the meadow’s surface abrading my bare arms like the world’s biggest sandpaper belt.

  Christophe had my wrists, holding the malaika down and pressing me into cold mud. “Stay here!” he yelled, over a last retreating peal of thunder. “Stay!” Then he was up and off me, scooping up his malaika and vanishing. Little whispering sounds chattered as he moved too quickly to be seen, streaking past the other two and plunging into the woods.

  Oh, hell no. No way. But I just lay there for a moment, my ribs heaving with huge shuddering breaths. The rain poured down, but the whole house was blazing. Black smoke billowed. Why was it burning like that?

  I managed to make it mostly upright. Cold mud closed around my knees with sucking fingers. I stared at Gran’s house, now an inferno. Orange flames, full of evil little yellow chuckling faces with leering mouths. All our supplies, gone. Gran’s spinning wheel, her pots and pans, everything. My only safe place, my last best card.

  Gone.

  My heart cracked. I hunched there on my knees, my mouth ajar, stunned.

  I hadn’t been smart enough or fast enough. How had the vampires found me? How had Christophe found me?

  And where had Graves been all this time?

  I found out I was crying again. The bloodhunger curdled inside me, and thick, hot tears mixed with cold rain. I was covered in mud, and I’d just managed to lead the vampires to the only thing I had left.

  Was there anything I wouldn’t destroy just by breathing near it?

  I bent over, hugging myself, and sobbed while the storm retreated.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Christophe drove like he’d been born in the hills, blue eyes narrowed and the mud drying on him as the storm retreated. He worked the wheel, hit the brake as we bounced through a rill of runoff, the light now regular rainy-day gray filtering through the mud-spattered windshield. Graves lit a cigarette and coughed in the backseat. Ash hunched behind me, making a little whining noise every once in a while. At least he was having no trouble shifting back and forth between wulf and boy.

  Hurrah for him.

  Christophe swore passionlessly as the car skidded, twisted the wheel again. Pale skin showed beneath the rents in his jeans and sweater. I wiped at my cheeks with the flat of my muddy hand. The broken window let in a steady stream of cold wet air, and the rain was slowing. Soon it would stop altogether, the sun would come out, and steam would rise in white tendrils from every surface. The roads would look like streams of heavy fog. Juicy green pressed close against the car, no longer pale and leprous under queer yellowgreen stormlight.

  “They broke right in,” Graves said again, exhaling hard. “Right in, and the place was burning. Jesus.” Cigarette smoke mixed with the reek of decaying vampire blood, the fresh copper of other blood, the gritty dark scent of mud. And thin threads of spice, both from Christophe and me.

  I was smelling like that place in the mall with the big gooey cinnamon buns. The ones your blood sugar spikes just walking past. Christophe, as usual, smelled like pie filling. I suppose it might’ve been okay, because it calmed the bloodhunger down. How I could smell anything after so much wet and crying, I don’t even know.

  But there was also the reek of unwashed werwulf and the thin colorless odor of rage seeping into every surface. The mixture was enough to give you a headache, and my temples throbbed.

  Christophe stared through the windshield. A muscle in his cheek ticked steadily. I kept looking at him in little sips, stealing his face. Even covered in mud and blood and rotting black, he was beautiful. Not girl-pretty, or the type of boy-pretty that means a guy’s too busy checking his hair in the mirror to pay attention to anyone else. No, Christophe just . . . worked, the planes of his face coming together in a harmony that made him complex and wonderful all at once.

  Like that old saying, a sight for sore eyes. My eyes were sore, from crying. Glancing at him made it better.

  Right now he looked dangerous, too. He was pale, and his jaw was set so hard it wasn’t too big a stretch to imagine his teeth shattering.

  He’d only said two things. Are you hurt?

  And, when I’d stammered that I wasn’t, he’d looked right through me, his jaw working and his eyes cold. Get in the car.

  Just as I thought about it, Christophe spoke. “Loup-garou.”

  Graves exhaled hard, again. Another puff of cigarette smell. It made my nose and eyes water uselessly. “Yeah?”

  “If you must smoke, hand me one.”

  “Sure thing, man.” Graves’s hand came over my shoulder; Christophe took the cigarette without looking. He stuck one end in his mouth, cupped his palm around the other. A flick of something in his hand, and he inhaled smoothly. Exhaled a stream of smoke.

  He’d just lit it without a lighter. Dad’s old friend Augie used to do something pretty much like that. It was a great trick. Maybe someday they’d teach it to me.

  Ash whined deep in his throat.

  “I know,” Christophe said. “Peace, Silverhead. All is well in hand.”

  I swallowed. My dry throat clicked. “Christophe.”

  He tilted his head, slightly. Under the mud and water, blond highlights slipped through his hair. His fangs had retreated. “Milady.” Quietly. He took another drag, twisted the wheel savagely as we bumped through a shallow stream. He looked like he knew where we were going.

  I was glad someone did.

  How did you find me? What’s going on? Where’s the rest of the Order? Are you still mad at me? First things first. “I’m sorry.”

  He gave me one very blue, almost-startled glance. “For what, milna?”

  Oh, Jesus Christ. “For . . . for telling you I hated you. For accusing you. For—”

  “It is—” He swore again, breathlessly, and hit the gas. We bumped through a screen of underbrush and hit what looked like another overgrown rumrunner’s road, and immediately the car settled down. I had a deathgrip on the door, though, and didn’t loosen up. Tears still leaked down my cheeks. Wiping them did no good. My head ached, pounding dully, and my eyes burned. The aspect had settled into soothing warmth, spreading over my skin and working in layer by layer.

  He paused, continued. “It is of no consequence.” He relaxed slightly. “You don’t smell like blood. Are you hurt?”

  I told you I wasn’t. But I took stock, looked down at myself. I was covered in filth. The upholstery in here was never going to recover. Safety glass jolted free from my window, tinkling, as we hit a series of washboard ruts. “I’m okay. How did you find—”

  “You can hide from the Order, moj maly ptaszku. You can even hide from my father, God willing. But me? No. Not from me.” Amazingly, he grinned. It was a fey expression, eyes glittering and lips pulled back; it was like he was sparring again. And enjoying himself. “Just glad I reached you in time.”

  I tried loosening up on the door. No dice, my fingers didn’t want to let go. “The Order—”

  “Would you like to call in? They will be overjoyed to hear from you.” Why did he sound so goddamn amused?

  Everything I wanted to say rose up inside me, got tangled up, and settled in my throat like an acid-coated rock. Christophe gave me another glance. With the cigarette, he looked a little older, nineteen-twenty instead of a youngish eighteen. Djamphir are mostly too graceful and pretty to be believable. Even smeared with mud and guck, his clothes torn up and the rage burning in him, he looked great. He looked completely in control of the situation.

  Thank God. Relief made every tight-strung nerve in me go loose, all at once. “What, so someone there can hand one of us over to the vampires again? No thanks.”

  On the other hand, the Order was good protection. Mostly.

  He shrugged, mud crackling as it dried on him. His hair dripped on his shoulders, the blond highlights slipping bac
k through it as his aspect slowly retreated. “I shouldn’t have trusted Leontus. The fault is mine.”

  Well, I wasn’t about to start throwing stones. “I trusted him too.” My voice caught. I decided to leave it at that.

  “Where are we going?” Graves piped up.

  Christophe shrugged. “To clean up and rest. Milady needs food, and—”

  “Don’t call me that.” The words bolted out of me. I hung onto the door as if I was drowning. “Jesus, Christophe. Please.”

  “What, no taste for formality?” We jolted over more washboard ruts, but the road was much drier. Of course, here on this side of the ridge the storm hadn’t fallen so hard. “As you like, moja ksiezniczko. There’s a decent-sized town not too far. We’ll acquire transport and supplies; this car won’t last long.”

  Great. “All our supplies were in the house.” I sounded numb. The words wouldn’t go together quite right. “Gran’s house. They just . . . it’s burning. There was so much rain; why was it burning?”

  “Either they thought you were still inside, or it was fired to deny you shelter.” His expression turned grim, no amusement remaining. He kept pulling at the cigarette, too, like it personally offended him. “Your loup-garou perhaps thought to hold them off by himself. Foolish.”

  Graves took the bait. “Fuck off.” The command under the words—a loup-garou’s mental dominance—made all the space in the car shrink, hot and tight. I craned my neck, looking over my shoulder. He was sitting right behind Christophe, his cigarette held to his mouth and his other hand a fist against his tattered, mud-coated knee. “How do we know you didn’t lead them here, Reynard?”

  Christophe was silent, but his hand tightened on the wheel.

  “Quit it. Both of you.” I swallowed again. The tingling in my fangs was going down, thank God. I didn’t have to hold my tongue carefully or try to talk with my lips kept stiffly over my teeth. “Let’s just all get along, all right? And not do the vampires’ work for them.”