Reckoning by Lili St. Crow
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.
Make it count, Dru. I searched for the words. And, wonder of wonders, they came.
“Because you’re brave,” I told him. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Because you didn’t walk off when it looked like I was in trouble. Because you stuck around even though the Real World’s scary and Ash bit you. Because you made everyone come back to that first Schola while it was burning, to get me out. Because you came back the last time we tangoed with him.” With Sergej, I meant, and Graves shuddered. Hurry up. The words tumbled out over each other, faster and faster. “Because I get you. I like your jokes and I like you and I feel like I can handle anything when you’re around. Because . . .” I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “Because you’re beautiful and I love you. Even if you drive me up the goddamn wall with the back-and-forth and not wanting to be my boyfriend or anything. Okay? That’s why. Because you’re a rock, Graves. You’re a total . . . rock.”
Oh, crap. I started out good and ended up lame. Story of my life.
Graves crouched there, looking at me. His face worked like the gears behind it had gotten snarled. His eyes flamed green, and the high-voltage humming going through him was so loud I was afraid everyone in the world would hear it. He stared for what felt like forever while I tried to think of something else to say. The chain rattled as I shifted, and that shook him out of whatever he was thinking.
“Trust me,” he repeated, and was gone in a heartbeat. The door clanged shut, the bolt shot home, and I slumped against the wall.
“I do.” My whisper barely stirred the air. I thought about this for a few minutes, and I found out I was shaking. My hands vibrated like I was holding onto a weed whacker and my legs gave out. I sat down on the shelf-bed with a thump that clicked my teeth together, hard.
I waited for him to come back. But after a little while, I started working on the chain again. I trusted him, sure.
But it would be even better if I was ready to go when the time came.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I got exactly nowhere. When Sergej came back, he had a black-eyed Graves lock my other wrist down with a short chain attached to a wheelchair. Then he edged closer to me, stretching out his hand, and did something—and the cuff on the chain attached to the wall unfolded in complex clockwork. The touch shivered uneasily, and my stomach growled. I felt light-headed but clear.
And thirsty. The bloodhunger scraped at the back of my throat. I could smell it in both of them—the candy-rotting reek of red blood cells dying inside Sergej’s veins and the sweet red fluid in Graves’s.
“Poor little dear, growing weaker.” Sergej retreated to the door. “Hungry, are we? And thirsty too, I’ll wager. But you’re ever so much more tractable this way.”
Just give me an opening, asshole, and I’ll show you “tractable.” I glanced at Graves, but his face was set and pale, and those black holes where his eyes should be were creeptastic. I lowered myself gingerly into the chair and decided not to say anything.
At least now I was chained to a wheelchair instead of a wall. The chain might be durable and the cuff made of something space age, but wheelchairs are pretty fragile when it comes down to it. Things were looking up.
At least, they were looking up until Graves clumsily buckled the leather restraints over my wrists and ankles. The vampire stood and watched, clicking his tongue occasionally when Graves slowed down. Goth Boy was sweating a little, tiny diamond drops of water standing out on his skin. He kept his head down, his hair shaken into his face.
When it was done, Sergej whooshed past and was out in the hall in an eyeblink. Graves grabbed the back of the wheelchair and began pushing. After the dim stone cube, the hall was a glare, and I blinked several times. Hot water swelled in my eyes as they adjusted. The hall sloped up, and the wheelchair squeaked as Graves set off, following Sergej’s soundless steps. But his right hand came down and touched my shoulder. For a second his fingers dug in, a brief squeeze. Then he took it away.
I was shaking again. Sitting down, though, meant I could put my game face on. My left hand squeezed against itself, knotted up into a fist, and the spike of raw blistered pain was welcome. Even though my hand wasn’t healing from the Frisbee hex, I wasn’t going to complain. Not while it gave me a tool I needed to fight off Sergej’s snakelike stare.
The hall went up, and up, and spiraled. The stone gave way to regular walls, but it still felt underground. Dead air and the sense of weight pressing down on you, all over your body, echoes not quite behaving the way they should. Graves was breathing hard, slowing down as he pushed the chair. Sergej didn’t glance back, but he made another one of those clicking sounds, like he was hurrying up a horse or a dog.
Graves sped up a little. I concentrated on breathing, and on not hearing the soughing of blood in his veins. On not feeling the bloodhunger rasp against the back of my throat, my veins drying out like red sand. The emptiness in my middle, worse than hunger.
I’ve been hungry before. I’ve been plenty scared, too. But this . . . this was . . .
The hall ended in a pair of doors. Big dark wooden doors bound with rusting iron, spattered with crusted, metallic-smelling fluids I didn’t want to look at. Sergej reached up, his slim hands shocking–pale against the rough black wood, and pushed. The golden electric light ran down his curls, and if not for the quicksilver inhuman grace of his movements he would’ve made a pretty picture. He shoved, casually, and the heavy doors swung wide.
A burst of warmer air slid down the hall. The touch filled my head with shadowy pictures, sounds coming through static.
Screaming, begging, please don’t, no. Bright eyes glazed with avid glee over the black of the hunting-aura, claws shearing through bone, blood hanging in the air before it splashed on white and black tiles. High crystalline laughter, murmurings brushing the skin like razors, sobbing victims dragged across the floor and—
My head snapped to the side as if I’d been punched. The touch was much stronger than it had ever been, and it twisted inside me, th
That damn cinnamon-roll smell rose from my skin, and now it had a new tang. Warm perfume, a familiar smell.
Be brave, baby girl. A familiar voice. I could feel her breath against my cheek, could feel her arms around my small body as she lifted me. Be very brave now.
My mouth fell open. My fangs lengthened, scraping my lower lip. Mom? But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t.
Because Graves pushed me through the door, the wheelchair squeaked, and a vast space opened up around us. Circular, floored in white and black marble like a cross between an old-timey diner’s linoleum and a high-end hotel’s tiled lobby; tiers of seats rose in coliseum arcs to a stone-ribbed dome. The light was low and bloody, drenching every surface and making every edge weirdly sharp.
The seats were crowded with vampires. Bright eyes, fangs out, their young faces twisting up as they hissed and snarled. They were in every conceivable teenage shape and size, and they were all beautiful in a weird, stomach-clenching way.
I blinked furiously, their hatred scraping hard against the thin skin keeping me separate from the world. The bloodhunger rose, flooding my veins, and it took a second before the shapes I saw snapped into a picture behind my eyes.
At the far end of the circular space, a ragged human shape was spread-eagled, chained to the wall with familiar silvery metal. His head was down, dried blood stiffening his hair, and every inch of bare skin I could see on him—feet, hands, chest through the rips in his shirt, legs through the torn jeans—was battered and covered with tiny cuts. My heart leapt up into my throat, pounding thinly in my wrists and ankles, even behind my eyes.
It was Christophe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I leaned over and retched, even though my stomach was empty. I couldn’t help myself. A swell of nasty laughter cut through the snarling.
In the exact middle of the circle, there was a table and a chair. The table had equipment stacked on it, tubes and glass canisters. The chair was a monstrosity of whipped and curlicued iron, spikes screaming up from its back.
On the other side of the table, a familiar golden head. Dibs crouched, pale and slack-jawed, bruised up one whole side of his face, his dark eyes terribly empty. He was barefoot too, but his blue polo shirt and jeans weren’t torn up. He rocked back and forth a little, his hands clapped to his ears, trying to shut out the din.
My heart squeezed itself up into a rock. Poor Dibs.
Sergej raised his hands, and the sound coming from him shocked everything into silence. It petered out, a high glassy scream that trembled in the ultrasonic and speared the tender meat inside my head. The cry drained away, leaving every surface quivering, and the assembled vampires—there were so many of them, my God—were still as statues.
Across the room, Christophe’s head lifted fractionally, dropped. A gleam of blue showed through his tangled, crusted, hanging hair. It was a shock to see him so dirty and battered. Yet another thing that made me feel like I’d stepped through a door and into an alternate universe, where nothing was right anymore.
I let out a tiny, sobbing sound. It shivered and died in that silence like a small animal crouched in a trap.
Sergej half-turned and grinned at me. Those black eyes sparkled on their surface, and it was then that I figured out what made him the closest thing to a king the vampires had. All the rest of them were made of hatred, true. But Sergej? He was hate boiled down to its bones. He didn’t need a reason. Christophe had told me something had happened on an old battlefield in Europe, and after that his father had . . . changed. Had drunk so much blood, maybe, that something in him swelled up and burst like a tick. Maybe it was the part of him that had stayed human enough to get close to someone and father a kid. Or maybe it was just the part that made every other vampire recognizably human, even if psychotic and killcrazy.
Most suckers were mad dogs. But Sergej was a foaming-at-the-mouth dog who liked it. Gloried in it, even.
“Children.” Sergej spread his fingers. The tips of his claws lengthened, elegantly. “My darlings. Look at what I bring. A svetocha who has eluded us all these years, the one we have been hunting, the scion of two great Houses. She is ours, and our plans are coming to fruition.” He paused, and a swell of murmuring delight went through them. They stared. Some of them whispered to their neighbors, their young-old faces incandescent with hurtful delight.
Dibs had raised his head. He stared at me, his jaw dropping further, and the naked horror on his face hit me right in the chest. Behind me, Graves was trembling again. The wheelchair’s handles groaned faintly as he gripped them.
Wait a minute. Two Houses? And years? What? Gran had to have suspected something was—or several somethings were—after me, the way she kept me scrubbed down and smelling like something else, all those floor washes and strings of wild onion and garlic all around the house. And Dad had kept us moving around, like in Florida before we went to the Dakotas. So something couldn’t get a lock on us, he said, and no more.
I hadn’t asked.
“I will walk in daylight,” Sergej announced. “And when I do, my children, so shall you.”
There used to be a djamphir, a long time ago when the vampires could go out in sunlight. He was called Scarabus, and he killed their king, making sure they could only come out at night. But the way he did it was by drinking a svetocha—his own sister—dry. The stuff in my blood that made me toxic and drove boy djamphir a little crazy was the same stuff that could give Sergej the power to go out in the sunshine.
That was why vampires hunted svetocha down so hard. Either they killed us before we bloomed and got toxic, or they wanted to empty us out like Capri Sun pouches and go wandering around during the day. And Jesus, that thought was enough to send anyone reasonable almost catatonic with fear.
Without the sun to help the Order hold them back, their hate could eat away at the regular world like a cancer.
Christophe’s chin came up. The mad blue gleams of his eyes shone in the dim ruddy light. His fangs were out, and the aspect moved over him in waves. But slowly, sluggish. I could smell how badly he was hurt. The chains holding him against the wall like a fly on a windshield rattled a little, a warning.
That attracted Sergej’s attention. He blurred across the intervening space, coming to a halt a bare three feet from Christophe. The nasty air-tearing sound, like little voices laughing, echoed in the cavernous space. It was the same sound as when a djamphir used more-than-human speed to vanish, and if I’d had anything to eat that would have brought it up in a tasteless rush again. As it was, I was working against the leather cuffs feverishly, my left wrist cold under the metal of the cuff and its length of chain.
“My son.” Sergej didn’t sound so happy now. “What will it take to break you?”
Christophe spat something. It sounded like Polish, and definitely didn’t sound like good morning. The words bruised his lips and turned the air darker. Or maybe it was just the helpless rage in them, beating a frantic consonant-laden tattoo before falling to the black and white marble.
Sergej leaned forward a little, on the balls of his feet. All the same, there was another tension in him, pulling back.
He’s scared, I realized. Of Christophe. The bloodhunger surged, pounding in my veins, the aspect trickling hot strength into me. But too slowly.
“I wonder.” The king of the vampires sounded chill and contemplative. “When I drain the last drop from her, my wolf, will that quench this rebellion?” He swung away, and the hurtful glee came back. He clicked his bootheels as he stalked across the floor and Christophe surged against the chains, fighting.
It hurt me to see. Blood dripped, each plink hitting the floor loud in the magnified silence. If he kept this up, he was going to hurt himself even worse, and anger crested inside me for one red-hot moment.
“Christophe!” I yelled. The light flashed, brighter, crimson instead of low red, and
Dibs let out a soft little hurt sound. The vampires were still, staring. Sergej halted as if slapped.
Christophe sagged against the chains. Sergej made a noise like trains colliding.
Sergej was suddenly there, leaning into the sphere of toxicity the aspect gave me. His face mottled purple, and he hissed, everything in him twisting. Maybe it was because Christophe had listened to me—or maybe it was just because he wanted to be the only one doing the talking.
He’s a garden-variety bully. For a moment I felt a surge of hope, of strength, of something warm and comforting. You don’t stumble through the jungle of the public education system in sixteen different states without learning about bullies.
But then the hope crashed. He wasn’t just a bully. He was the king of the vampires, and I was in deep shit. We all were.
And I couldn’t see any damn way out.
Sergej backed off a couple steps. His entire body twisted, shoulders shaking, and he drummed his heels into the stone floor with little cracking sounds. The mottling retreated as he hissed, the sound shaking everything around us. Everything rippled, even the floor. The wheelchair groaned, and I squeezed my left hand. Hard. The sunburst of pain jolted up my arm, cleared my head, and I twisted, working against the straps.
No use.
Sergej’s head tipped back down. He made another one of those little clicking noises, and the wheelchair shook as Graves’s fists tightened again.
He pushed me slowly across the acres of checkerboard squares, closer to the table. I looked at the stuff on it, and swallowed dryly.
So that’s what he’s going to do.
It made a kind of sense. The happy stuff in my blood that drives boy djamphir a little crazy pretty much only functions when it hits the air. But it also breathes out through my skin, and that’s what makes me toxic to suckers now that I’d bloomed and could reliably use the aspect. If Sergej, for some reason or another, couldn’t get through that shell, if my blood was even more toxic when it hit oxygen and he couldn’t get his fangs in me the way he had with Anna, well . . . the best solution was to make sure the blood didn’t hit the air, right? And there was a good way of doing that.