Jealousy sa-3

by Lili St. Crow

  Shouts. Screaming. More gunfire. Cover. Get under cover. I tried to move, succeeded only in flailing a little bit. Christophe was still crouched over me, ranting, and I realized he was protecting me. More chips of stone flew, and the gunfire reached a crescendo. Christophe’s body jerked, and he hissed.

  August suddenly jerked back into motion. He rolled to the side, and my head was tipped the right way to see the aspect boil over him. White streaks slid through his dirty hair, his fangs came out, and his eyes suddenly blazed, clear yellow instead of dark. I could see that through the haze coming down over me, though the rest of the world was slowly draining of its color, turning into a charcoal sketch.

  He curled himself up like a pill bug, then was somehow kneeling, the gun yanked free of its shoulder holster and pointed up as he took his time with the shot. He exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and the gun spoke, its voice lost inside the cacophony.

  Everything stopped. The gray curtain came down, and I heard a thudding.

  Boom. Boom.

  Feathered wings beat frantically. They brushed me all over, little feather kisses, except for the ball of agony high up in my left shoulder. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, and when I tried to get up, to scramble somewhere to find cover because, duh, someone was shooting, I couldn’t. A hot egg of agony broke in my chest again, and I whimpered.

  Boom . . . boom . . .

  A long silent moment, the gunshots fading. Was it over? I tried moving again and whimpered silently. It hurt to even try.

  The throbbing in my ears was my heartbeat, I realized. Each thud was a brush of feathered wings, and I heard an owl’s soft who? who?

  The numbness crept up my hands. What just happened? What was that?

  I was still trying to figure it out when the world went white all over. A sound like the whine of a thousand speakers set on feedback filled my head. My heartbeat stuttered, the spaces between each throb growing wider and wider until my overloaded heart . . .

  . . . stopped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “ Clear!” someone yelled, and the white glare slammed through me again. Someone was still cursing raggedly. A babble of voices. “Get him out of here!”

  “Dru? Dru, hold on. Just hold on.”

  “She’s still bleeding. Why isn’t she healing?”

  “Exhaustion, and she’s not fully bloomed. Her blood pressure’s dropping. Where’s that other sliver? They keep disappearing.”

  “Fragging ammo. Hate that.”

  “Let’s hope none of them punctured her heart. Pericardium seems intact, but she’s fading. We can’t get claret in her fast enough—”

  “Transfuse me.” Cold and calm, Christophe’s voice.

  “We can’t. It could kill her, we haven’t typed her yet—” Finally, another voice I recognized. Bruce’s English accent.

  “Then get out.” Christophe sounded furious. Funny how he just got quiet and icy, kind of like Dad. Only it hurt, when Christophe spoke like that. Dad’s mad voice never hurt me because if he used it I knew he wasn’t angry at me. He never was.

  “What are you—”

  “You can’t—”

  “I said get out. I am not losing her.”

  “She’s not even bloomed yet!” Bruce sounded deathly tired. I tried to open my eyes, failed, and heard a whimper. Someone was having a bad day.

  Gran’s voice, quiet and final, echoed through my cotton-stuffed skull. Dru, honey, that someone is you.

  A silent thundercrack, and I saw the room in the lightning flash.

  It was another stone-walled infirmary cell. A weird directionless silver light drifted like snow, lying over every surface with a powder bloom like moth wings. I stood there quietly and heard machines booping and beeping. A small shape lay on the bed, djamphir clustered around. Bruce faced Christophe, Arab Boy a little taller but Christophe looking bigger because of the vibrating rage bleeding out from him in every direction.

  Metal dropped into a pan. “Saline!” someone snapped. “Wash that clean, dammit! Let’s get this closed up; she’s still losing blood!”

  “Blood pressure still dropping. Take it outside, Kouroi, we’re trying to save her.”

  “I know what will save her.” Christophe half-turned and shoved toward the white-draped figure on the table. The thudding vibrating through me paused.

  Bruce grabbed his arm, and someone yelled, “She’s coding again! Clear!”

  A glare filled my vision, but not before I saw the head of the figure on the table, face turned to the side and with plastic tubing in its nose. Dark curly hair lay tangled wildly against the operating table, and I saw my eyes were fluttering as if I dreamed. My skin was chalk-white, and Bruce was on the floor.

  “Touch me again,” Christophe said quietly, “and it will be your last act in life.” He shoved aside two dark-haired, lanky djamphir in white coats who were fiddling with the machines, and I saw a huge flayed mess where my left shoulder should be. The blood was almost black. I wasn’t seeing color. Flecks of white bone gleamed as another duo of teenage-looking Kouroi probed in the mess with shiny surgical tools and dropped fragments of something in a metal pan. Another djamphir with curly hair stood by with paddles, and I saw the electricity trembling in them like drops of water spattering on a hot griddle.

  I’m in bad shape, I thought. It didn’t seem particularly important. I just stood and watched as Bruce wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t do it, Reynard. We can’t afford to lose—”

  “I will not lose her. Get OUT!” The yell shook the walls, but nobody moved.

  Christophe lifted his wrist to his mouth. He bit down hard, the aspect flickering over him. A flash of red down near his feet, shocking in the black-and-white movie the world had become, was the fox I’d seen before. It was puffed up, baring its teeth and hunching down, ready to spring.

  He lowered his wrist. “This is usually private. But if you insist.” Something dark dripped down his hand—he was bleeding now, too.

  He pressed the ragged wound in his wrist to the mouth of the body on the table. “You can hear me,” he whispered, bending down. “You’re in there, skowroneczko moja. You’re fighting. Fight just a little harder. Take what you need.”

  Oh, gross. A shiver went through me. My body twitched. I remembered what it was like, that night in the woods, fire and smoke and Christophe’s fangs in my wrist. The awful pulling, tearing, ripping sensation as bits of myself—something I would call my soul—were torn away. I couldn’t do that to someone else.

  But the body on the table stirred weakly. Lighter highlights slid down the tangled curls, and I saw the fangs in my own mouth grow with an imperceptible crackling. The machines were going crazy.

  “She’s going to strike,” one of the djamphir said breathlessly.

  My body twitched.

  Don’t do it. I struggled to open my mouth, to say something. Don’t. Don’t do that to someone else.

  Because when it got right down to it, sucking someone else’s blood made me one of the things Dad would have hunted. Didn’t it? Especially when I knew what it felt like. When I knew how it hurt to have something invisible inside you scraped away an inch at a time.

  The body on the bed jerked. Fangs drove into Christophe’s bleeding wrist as I struggled to scream, to move, to stop myself. But the body didn’t listen. It took a long, endless gulping swallow.

  Christophe had gone an alarming shade of gray, pale skin ash-colored and sickly. The curly-headed djamphir swore softly. Bruce levered himself up from the floor, dabbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. A thin trickle of blood traced down his chin, black in the weird directionless light, and I saw a shimmer near his right shoulder. A bird-shape hovered just on the edge of visibility, but I was more worried about the body on the bed and what it was doing to Christophe.

  Another long gulping swallow. Christophe sagged, catching himself on the operating table with his free hand. The fox twined around his ankles, its brush losing the touch of faint co
lor.

  Stop it! I wanted to yell, but I couldn’t. I was only observing. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do. I couldn’t even move.

  BOOM . . . BOOM . . . BOOM. The thuds startled me. If I hadn’t been nailed in place I would have jumped like a cat finding a snake. The feathered wingbeats came back, brushing all up and down my body—or my unbody, because my real body was lying on the bed.

  The mess of my left shoulder was knitting itself back together. Faint color tinged through the tissues, like the tinting on those antique photographs. A pink bloom spread out from the swiftly healing wound, the splinters of bone easing back together with little whispering sounds and the muscles sliding up, shards of metal oozing free on a slick of clear fluid before the skin wrapped itself up. The wound flushed an angry deep red for a moment. Then my shoulder made a convulsive movement, and there was a meaty thud. The ball of the humerus socketed itself back in, and the sound was a shockwave all through me.

  Tingles started at the top of my unhead. Christophe’s knees buckled, but he kept himself upright. “Take what you need,” he whispered to the blind face on the table, its hair writhing and waving just like a vampire’s. “Take everything if you must. Just live, little bird. Live.”

  The thudding grew closer together, beats blurring like hummingbird wings. The tingling intensified as color ran through the rest of my body. The rags of my T-shirt were dark blue and spattered with drying blood, and one of my breasts peeked out momentarily through a rent in the fabric. Faint faraway embarrassment scorched all through me. My skin began to take on a blush, hideous in the middle of that black-and-white world.

  Every part of me that wasn’t lying on the table lunged for release, battering against the huge weight pressing down, keeping me immobile. The body on the table inhaled through her nose, a slight wheezing sound because of caked crusted blood.

  And it began another long, sucking gulp.

  Christophe half-fell against the beeping machines, driving them toward the wall. He braced himself, and his face turned up to the ceiling. His mouth fell open, and his eyes rolled back until all you could see were the whites. His hips jerked forward and he almost fell again, chipping and cracking the heavy plastic case of the machine showing the high hard spikes of my heartbeat. The screen fuzzed out with static as I glanced at it, and sparks flew.

  “NO!” Bruce roared, and leapt forward. He grabbed Christophe, wrenching his arm away from the greedy, fanged mouth on the bed. A jolt rammed through me, crown to soles, and for a dizzying moment I was standing up and lying down at the same time, pulled in completely different directions like a piece of Saran Wrap someone’s trying to untangle. My teeth clicked together with a heavy billiard-ball noise, echoing inside my skull, and red agony tore through me.

  Snarling. Sound of fist hitting flesh, a scream of pain that was mine, rising from my burning throat. The place at the back of my palate where the bloodhunger lived was on fire, a hot sweet kick like the Jim Beam I used to spike my Coke with sometimes when Dad wasn’t home. My body was a riptide catching an unwary swimmer, flesh constricting around the core of what I was, the me that had just gotten used to freedom. Muscles screamed and locked and I—

  —fell, slithering off the operating table and fetching my head a stunning blow. Landed on something too soft to be the floor, writhing underneath me, and my fingers sank into a head of hair before whoever it was surged upward, rolling me away and shaking free. Plastic tubing yanked free of my nose, the loops of it over my ears tearing loose.

  Confusion. Yelling. Noise. I screamed again, thrashing as the bloodhunger ignited. It hurt. I hurt all over as if I’d been doused with gasoline and set on fire, and I wanted more of the sweet red stuff. I could taste it on my lips, smoke and spice, a smooth hot redness full of the flavor of a boy’s lips and the tang of winter-cold eyes. He tasted like danger and wildness and a hot breeze through a car window at dusk out in the desert when you’re going eighty and not going to make the next town anytime soon. Cinnamon and male and goodness, and I wanted more.

  Christophe grabbed me. He was ashen, his cheeks sunken. But his eyes blazed, and the aspect on him was like a drenching perfume. I could feel it, waves of invisible power lapping at my skin.

  Nobody else felt even remotely like him.

  My chin jerked forward, quick as a striking snake, and my teeth champed together again, a bare inch from his throat. This close I smelled the salt of sweat on him, and his body half-under mine was maddeningly far away. I was cold and hot all at once, fierce sensations fighting for control of me.

  “Dru!” he barked, and I froze.

  I knew that voice. It was like Dad’s shut up and hand me that ammo tone. It meant I needed to stop and pay attention, and I did. My eyelids fluttered, turning everything into shutter clicks.

  “How many?” Bruce demanded from across the room. Funny, but he sounded scared. “Reynard? How many?”

  The shudders had me like an animal shaking something in its teeth. But the bloodhunger retreated, and nausea rose with a fast hard cramp.

  “Three.” Christophe’s reply was a breath of sound. “You’re lucky she doesn’t need more.”

  “Goddamn you.” Bruce moved. A whisper of cloth, and Christophe tensed. I made a weird whining sound. It felt like I’d been pulled apart and bolted back together with the wrong parts, every bit of me aching.

  A bolt of heat hit my stomach and spread out, a haze of warm contentment. It soothed the aches and soaked in, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d just been bleeding all over the place I thought, maybe, that I could stand up.

  But I let my eyes shut. It was a relief to just lie there in Christophe’s arms and know he was handling it.

  A little voice inside me tried to tell me I should be worried about something, but I shut it off. I had all I could worry about already. There was no more room on my worry plate.

  “He already has. Go away.” Christophe’s voice was a dry husk. He cleared his throat. “All of you. Give her some privacy. If the aura-dark hits her—”

  “It won’t. She’s svetocha.” It was one of the other djamphir, and he sounded awestruck. “Look, she’s fine. Blood pressure normal, pulse a little elevated but fine—she’s going to make it. Look at her shoulder.”

  I didn’t want to look at my shoulder. I curled more tightly against Christophe and thought of my torn T-shirt. Heat stained my cheeks, a different heat than the goodness swirling down my skin. “Christophe,” I murmured and felt vaguely ashamed.

  “All’s well, skowroneczko moja.” A light touch—his lips against my tangled hair. “Everything is well in hand.”

  That was what I wanted to hear. I kept my eyes tightly shut.

  “You take unacceptable risks.” Bruce had to force the words out between clenched teeth. “Do you hear me, Reynard?”

  “Yap at someone else, ibn Allas. I’ve done what I set out to do.” Was Christophe actually sneering? It was hard to tell with my face buried in his chest. He took deep heaving breaths. “I’m here, and if Kouroi will stop trying to kill me I’ll be the best ally you have. As long as you keep her safe.”

  “Anna will be caught. She’ll pay for what she’s done.”

  “What are you going to do? She’s svetocha, and her Guard is fanatically loyal.” Christophe moved. He surged up from the floor, faltered, and righted himself. “You helped with that. Every one of you on the Council turned a blind eye or actively encouraged it. She’s a monster. God willing, the nosferatu will find and kill her if she doesn’t make devil’s bargains with them first.”

  “She’s spoiled and manipulative, but not a—”

  “She opened fire on a mass of Kouroi and another svetocha, Bruce!” The machines let out sparking, staticky, unhappy sounds. “She betrayed one of our own—more than one—to Sergej! When will you see?”

  “This will not bring Elizabeth back!”

  Silence. And with the silence, a gathering, rising growl. I shrank further against Christophe until I realized the sound was
coming from him. My mother’s locket was warm and quiescent against my chest.

  Footsteps, and the door closing. The sense of presence leached out of the room, and Christophe made a short violent movement, carrying me with him, gaining his feet and making a harsh sound of effort. My nose bumped his collarbone, and one of the machines gave a strangled squeal, stopped its beeping. The one keeping track of my heartbeat kept going, though. My pulse raced, high and fast and hard. It felt like I was on jet fuel, or maybe too much caffeine.

  Christophe wrapped his arms around me and put his face in my hair. We stood like that, my shaky legs gradually gaining strength. I swallowed several times, the bloodhunger prickling at that spot on the back of my palate. He still smelled like apples and cinnamon and heat. Each time I inhaled, the scent would stroke across that sensitive spot, and a shudder would go down me. The machine keeping track of my pulse would send out another cascade of beeps.

  “What happened?” I finally whispered.

  “You should have stayed with Leontus,” he whispered back. “The seats would have given you cover.”

  I didn’t know why I was surprised. “You knew she’d do something like this?”

  “No. I thought it was likely. She’s deconstructing.”

  Is that what you call it? I tried, gently at first, to push myself away from him. He didn’t let go. We struggled like that for a little while, me halfhearted, Christophe finally sounding amused.

  “You can’t stand up on your own. Stop pushing me.” But he set me down on the operating table. It moved a little, like it didn’t want to support me, but he held me there until I could balance myself. When I braced my unwilling legs against the floor it even felt kind of stable.

  I clutched the torn T-shirt together over my chest and blinked. All of me was rubbery and aching despite the heat in my core, the feeling of well-being spreading out in waves.

  I didn’t want to think about what was in my stomach, providing those waves.

  “Here.” Christophe made a sudden movement. It took me a second before I realized he was pulling his sweater off over his head. “It’s dirty, but . . .”