Reckoning

by Lili St. Crow

  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.