Reckoning sa-5

by Lili St. Crow

  Restraints, I realized through a fog. My left hand burned dully through a chemical haze, like I was drugged or something. And I’m in a box.

  My eyelids fluttered shut. Thank God I don’t have to pee, I thought hazily, before the dark swallowed me again. After a long while I was vaguely aware of a bump and a screech, and I figured out I was on a plane. That was all I knew. Then the dream came out of nowhere, and this time I was tied down and I had to watch.

  The concrete hallway stretched into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was moving toward that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—

  —and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

  BANG.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Christophe hissed, his eyes burning blue. “Are you mad, or simply an idiot?”

  Dad shook him off. “What the fuck—”

  Christophe shook his sleek dark head, the aspect laying on him in a crackle of static electricity. His fangs were out and snow clung to his knees, clumping on his boots. “Get out of here. Go.”

  “You’re him. The man on the phone.” Quick as a wink, Dad had the gun raised. “She told me—”

  “Elizabeth told you somewhat of me, yes. But I’m not what you think.” Christophe shoved him, hard. “Get out of here. He will rise soon, and you’re worse than helpless here. Go home!”

  “I don’t have a home,” Dad spat back. “They took my home when they killed her, goddammit! All I’ve got . . .” But he stopped there, eyeing Christophe suspiciously. Maybe he’d been about to say something about me? I longed to know. “What are you doing here?”

  The door at the end of the hall quivered hungrily. Run! I wanted to yell. Both of you, quit arguing and RUN!

  “Paying my debt to Elizabeth Lefevre.” Christophe’s smile wasn’t nice at all. In fact, it was chilling. “You’re all that remains of her. A stupid, silly human.”

  Dad regarded him narrowly, his blue eyes at least as cold as Christophe’s. “Then let’s go down there and kick some sucker ass.”

  “You’re worse than useless. Come on.” Christophe moved forward, as if to grab Dad and drag him out by force. I silently cheered, static buzzing through me as the vision held.

  I’d wanted to know, of course. I’d wanted to know what happened to Dad. And not-wanted at the same time. I’d already seen what happened when vampires killed. The pictures of the blasted oak tree in front of the yellow house we used to live in, something not even human-shaped anymore hanging in the branches, still whirled through my nightmares.

  Dad pulled the trigger. A burst of white noise rammed through the image, and my scream lodged in my throat like a rock. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. I was a fly trapped in amber, howling on the inside while Christophe’s body jerked, bright red blood flying.

  Dad’s bootheel scraped as he turned and took off down the hall. He was a big man, but he was light on his feet. He vanished through the door as Christophe struggled back up to his feet, face twisted with pain and eyes burning.

  “NO!” Christophe yelled, and another burst of static roiled through the image. I held on, my mental grasp slipping as the vision fought me.

  No. I want to see. Stubbornness rose inside me. I have to see!

  Christophe pushed himself up. Gunfire popped and crackled behind the door, yelling and a rising glassy roar. Christophe’s hands turned into fists. He stood there for a long ten seconds, head cocked as blond highlights slipped through his hair, the aspect flaring and retreating, indecisive. Snow fell from his knees, hitting the floor without melting, and his face was a mask.

  Then he turned and walked away, while my father’s dying screams echoed from behind the door that was even now closing like a Venus flytrap on its prey.

  I sat straight up, clawing at thin cold air. Metal clashed. My wrist was jerked back as I tried to roll off the hard surface, and I ended up halfway on the floor, my arm stretched above me like I was performing an enthusiastic wave.

  What the hell?

  A dim stone cube of a room greeted me. An iron door, a shelflike metal toilet, no windows. Light leaked in around the door, through the barred rectangle of an observation slit. Electric light, nice and golden, but not nearly enough of it.

  The clashing metal was a short chain attached to the wall and hooked up, probably to keep me from falling off the bed. If I unhooked it, I could just reach the toilet.

  Which I did. Hey, you’ve got to be practical when you’re chained to a wall. At least it flushed.

  I smelled faintly of cinnamon rolls, and my skin was still sticky from Dallas citysweat. My mouth tasted like zombie dust, but all in all I felt oddly good.

  I shuddered, stretched the chain and my arm as far as they would go, and couldn’t peer out the slit in the door.

  Dammit.

  I was in sock feet, my T-shirt, and jeans. My hair was unbraided, a wild curling mass.

  There went all my gear. Again. Dad was always going on about caches and gear, and about how replacing shit was the cost of seriously being on the run. Looked like he was right.

  Not that I’d doubted him.

  I rattled the chain, examined the plate it was attached to. Bolted to the wall, nice and solid. I even lay on the bed, got both my feet up, wrapped my hands in it, and pulled. My blistered hand shrieked with pain, but I kept at it. The chain groaned a little, but the plate stayed solid. I braced myself carefully, then, inch by inch, put more pressure on the chain. The aspect grew warmer, closing around me until thin curls of steam rose from my skin in the damp chill.

  The chain creaked; my breathing quickened. I finally had to loosen up a little. The hook the chain was hung on might have given me some leverage, but it was pretty flimsy. Looked like it could snap . . . but maybe I could tear it out and turn it into a weapon?

  Yeah. I’ll stab them to death with an itty-bitty hook. Great idea, Dru. I lay there and contemplated the chain. The cuff clung to my wrist, so small it wouldn’t slip off over my hand even if I tried to take some skin with it. Featureless, light, powdery-silver metal, but it was strong. My claws couldn’t even scratch it, and my wrist ached after trying.

  The bolt on the door clanged, a huge echoing sound. I found myself crouching on the bed, my back against the wall and the chain rattling musically. A burst of thick cinnamon boiled up as the aspect coated me, my jaw crackling a little as the fangs slipped free. My mother’s locket was a chip of ice against my breastbone.

  The door creaked theatrically as it opened, and a tall figure stepped through. His eyes were black, pupil and iris both swallowing the light coming in from behind him. I blinked twice, not quite believing it.

  “Graves?” I whispered.

  A flash of green filled his irises, was gone as soon as it appeared. Swallowed by the darkness. His hair was freshly dyed, too. Dead black, hanging over a gaunt, expressionless face. A black dress shirt with pale bone buttons, sleeves rolled up to show muscle in his forearms. New jeans, and a pair of black Converse sneakers. He stood there, head cocked like he had a good idea, those dead eyes focused about three feet above me and his mouth a straight line instead of tilted in a half-sardonic, half-pained smile.

  The touch chilled through me, crackling like ice cubes dropped into boiling water, and another shadow moved.

  He was shorter than Graves, and curly-headed. A faint hint of swarthiness to his skin, and his profile was purely classic. You could see the similarity to Christophe when he turned his head, both of them in perfect, old-fashioned proportion. Like statues buried in dark volcanic ash for a long, long time. Preserved.

  He did
n’t look any older than eighteen—until his gaze, sucking-dark from lid to lid, hit you like a wall of floodwater, battering away all resistance.

  My left hand seized up in a cramp, and the bolt of pain up my arm was a lifeline. My mother’s locket was so cold I had a vivid mental image of the metal freezing against my skin. Of ripping it free, a centimeter at a time, and the blood running down . . .

  “Little bird,” Sergej said. His accent was far more pronounced than Christophe’s, and he sounded absolutely, chillingly jolly. Like he was having a hell of a good time. “Securely caged. You see, I’ve learned not to underestimate you.”

  Bullshit you have. My mouth was dry. I heard the click as I swallowed, convulsively. “I don’t think you have.” After all, I’m still breathing.

  It was pure bravado. But shit, man, I didn’t have a lot of anything else left.

  Thank God I’d emptied my bladder. Looking at that handsome, cheerful, predatory face under its mop of honeybrown curls might just have made me embarrass myself.

  His grin widened, fangs sliding free. He wore, of all things, a thin navy-blue T-shirt and new, very dark jeans. And cowboy boots.

  The king of the vampires, and he was wearing shitkickers. Shiny new ones; they looked like Tony Lamas.

  I got the feeling he’d dressed up for this.

  My left hand cramped. Sergej stepped forward, brushing past Graves. Goth Boy flinched slightly, swaying aside. His Connies squeaked a little, a forlorn sound. I tensed, the chain clinking.

  Another step. Bootheels clicked on stone. There was a drain set in the middle of the floor, and a shudder worked through me when I thought about why. Sergej was still staring at me, but as long as I kept squeezing my raw-blistered left hand the spiked pain kept me from falling into those horrible black eyes.

  The aspect heated up. Like standing in front of an oven on a hot day, only the heat was a balm, smoothing away pain. I hoped it wouldn’t heal my hand completely, I needed the spike of acid hurt to keep me from drowning. His eyes were so black, and the sheen on them was just like an oil slick. Almost rainbow-y, but without the nice colors. This rainbow was all the different gray shades of hate and suffering and the weird joy some people seem to get from nastiness.

  Sergej halted. He leaned forward as if into a heavy wind, and inhaled sharply. The aspect flared, and he choked and stepped back, almost mincing in his clicking little boots.

  I was still toxic. Thank God.

  I actually let out a little sobbing sound of relief, and the snarl that crossed Sergej’s face shoved me further into the wall. He surged forward, but the aspect flared with heat again, and he actually turned purple, the snarl stuttering as he throttled up again. He had to back up and gasp in a couple breaths, his hands tensing, sharp scythelike amber claws sliding free of his fingertips. A tremor rippled through him, and the black of the hunting-aura raveled out from the corners of his eyes in thin gray vein-strands. It looked like crow’s-feet on his weirdly young face, and for a moment I saw the ancient, hungry thing that lived inside his skin.

  I choked too, as if he was just as toxic to me. Wingbeats filled the space inside my skull, and the touch flexed. I realized I was trying to backpedal through the wall, forced myself to go still again.

  He’d been able to get close enough to my mother for long enough to kill her. And close enough to Anna to get his fangs in her throat. Why wasn’t he able to get close to me?

  Not that I wanted him to.

  Graves just stood there and stared, vacant. Every once in a while a flash of green would go through his eyes, lighting them up. It was eerie, but right now I was more worried about Sergej, who straightened and shook his hands out, the claws crackling as they slid back in. He tilted his head way back, his coppery throat working, and when he brought his chin down again, his curls falling in a perfect choreographed mess over his face, he was pretty again. A faint shadow lingered around his neck, as if the mottled purple flush had bruised him somehow.

  I hope that hurt. Trembling roared through me in waves.

  “I won’t kill you yet,” he informed me. “The other svetocha was of little use, and now she is of no use at all.”

  For one lunatic second I had no idea who he meant, then it hit me. “Anna . . .” The word fell flat in the stone cube, lay there gasping.

  “Dead.” Just like someone else would say moved to Wyoming or something. Like it didn’t matter at all. “No matter, though. I have you. And you will help me walk in sunlight, darling maly ptaszku.”

  I shook my head. Anna’d been alive when her Guard—the boys in the red shirts, as if nobody ever told them about Star Trek—took her out of the burning warehouse. And before that, she’d all but forced me to drink her blood.

  Was that why I heard her in my head sometimes? Or was it just because I was getting a little crazy with the Cheez Whiz? How could you stay sane with everything you ever depended on whacked away from underneath you, again and again?

  Sergej laughed. It was a genuinely delighted little giggle. “Oh, yes. You’ll help. I have plans for you. Do you like my new Broken?” A tilt of his curly head, and Graves flinched again. “He’s really quite resourceful. Fought me the entire way. But I think, when I wring the last drop of blood from you and I feel sunlight on my face for the first time, he’ll stop fighting. And he’ll prove to be valuable. So much more decorative than his beastly little cousins.”

  Bile crawled up into my throat. I actually retched, and it echoed in the stone cube.

  That just seemed to make Sergej’s day. At least, he chuckled again and turned on his heel. He glided out of the room, silent as death, and Graves followed just as quietly. The door swung shut, the room’s darkness closing around me like a mouth, and the chain jangled as I slumped down on the metal shelf and wrapped my arms around my knees. My left hand still hurt, a hot prickling pain.

  I put my face down, my hair closing the entire world out, and I just shook for a while.

  Graves.

  He hadn’t known me.

  He’d just stood there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I don’t know how much later it was. Time loses a lot of meaning when you’re locked in a box. Cold shadows sometimes moved over the little golden rectangle, little tiptapping footsteps too slow or way too fast to be human, drafts of bright-spangled hatred making the door groan each time. I kept bracing myself in different ways, working on the chain and the cuff.

  It was my only option. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one that had even a hope of turning out okay. Even probing at the cuff with the touch told me nothing.

  There was a long silent time, and I started singing to myself while I yanked this way and that on the chain. My wrist felt bruised and itchy underneath it. I even sweated a little in the damp stony chill. At least I didn’t smell bad. I still reeked like the cinnamon-bun place at the mall, which was a blessing because I hadn’t had a shower in a while.

  When the bolt on the door clanged again, I scrambled up to crouch on the shelf-bed, my cheeks guiltily hot. My back hit the wall and I didn’t make a girly little fear-sound.

  But it was close.

  He eased in, leaving the door open behind him, and did a strange thing.

  Graves crouched, right inside the door. He laid his hands flat on the floor and looked at me, and his eyes were back to green. My heart hammered. He even smelled right—a stray breath from the hall brought me a tang of moonsilver wildness and strawberry incense over the dry-fur nastiness of vampires. The bone buttons on his shirt glowed a little, and he looked . . . feral.

  Dangerous.

  Heat prickled in my eyes. I watched him, braced against the wall, heart thundering.

  “He’s asleep,” Graves finally whispered. “Thinks he has me down. Like a good little dog.”

  The rock in my throat moved. I made a sound.

  “Dru.” He stared at me. A muscle in his cheek flicked. It hit me again, how different he was from the gawky, bird-thin, almost-ugly Goth Boy who’d bought me a cheeseburg
er and saved my life in a hundred ways ever since. Maybe they weren’t overt, like Christophe’s, but they were just as real. “Say something.”

  Yeah, sure. Like I had a whole list of things just lying around to say. My mouth opened. “Ash? Shanks? Dibs?”

  He flinched as if I’d hit him. “Dibs is here. The others . . . I don’t know.”

  I let out a shaky breath and settled for the obvious. “How do we get out of here?” I even sounded halfway normal, instead of scared out of my mind.

  He twitched a little, and the green glow in his irises dimmed for a moment. His whole body tensed, shoulders hunching and the clarity of the change blooming around him. The Other shone out for a brief moment, and sweat sprang up on his caramel skin. Under his coloring, he was pale. A shudder wracked him, and he dug his fingers into the stone like he was going to start kneading bread.

  “Dru.” As if reminding himself who I was. “You gotta trust me.”

  I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options. I nodded. Curls fell in my face. “Okay.”

  That brought up a ghost of a smile. It wasn’t anything close to my Goth Boy, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better. Relieved, even. My arms and legs actually went weak for a second, and I sagged against the wall.

  He stared at me for another long moment. “They’ve got him. Reynard. Christophe.”

  I actually gulped. “Is he—”

  “Alive. Thought I’d warn you. It’s pretty bad. But you gotta trust me, Dru. I’m Broken, but . . . please.”

  “I already said okay.” The urge to roll my eyes was incredibly strong. “Graves—”

  “Never figured out why you did.” He hunched even further. “Tell me. Now, while I can hear you. Why did you even . . . why me?”

  For a second I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then it hit me.

  If I had a chance to tell him something, this was it. And it couldn’t be like all the other times, when everything I ever wanted to say to him jammed up in my chest like a ball of snarled yarn and I ended up spitting out something so stupid it made me cringe for days afterward to even think about it.