Reckoning by Lili St. Crow
It involved needles and tubing, and something simple to push the blood.
A transfusion.
Sergej must’ve seen it on my face. “It has a certain symmetry, does it not? I was not able to drink from your mother; I had to settle for merely destroying. But you are heir to all her strength, and whatever remnants of dear sweet Anotchka you stole before she died, and a bastard strain of the djinni themselves. I will have it all. This is only the beginning. It will take me weeks to wring the last drop of strength from you.” He indicated Christophe with one short stabbing gesture. “And my son will watch every session.” Another hideously jolly chuckle, and Sergej dropped into his iron throne. He laid his hands along the chair’s arms, and clicked his tongue again.
Graves wheeled me toward the table.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I thought he’d make Graves stick the needle in my arm. But instead, Sergej tapped his fingers and stared at Dibs. I yanked against the restraints. Nothing. The wheelchair threatened to tip, but Graves steadied it. He was breathing hard, his pulse ratcheting up into redline, fighting.
It didn’t matter.
“You.” The king of the vampires sounded bored. “Ready the transfusion.”
Dibs rose, slowly. He was still staring at me, his pupils pinpricks and his hair wildly curling over his forehead. High bright flags of color stood out on his cheeks, and I saw the messy fang marks on his neck. Little bruised holes, crusted with dried blood.
Oh, God.
His ribs flared with sharp shallow breaths. He looked scared to death.
“No.”
Even I couldn’t quite believe he’d said it. Everyone was staring at him instead of me now, and despite the relief, I suddenly cast around for something to do to get them to stop looking at him.
Because Sergej’s face changed by a couple of millimeters, and everything in me went cold and loose. Still, he just sat there, staring at Dibs, and when his gelid black gaze drifted over to me I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking.
He was thinking of how easy it would be to find someone else to stick a needle in my arm and get the whole show on the road. Which meant Dibs would be superfluous.
“Dibs.” Hoarse and weary. The bloodhunger twisted inside me, and my working against the restraints wasn’t conscious by now. I was rubbing and twisting to get loose any way I could. It was useless, but that didn’t stop me. “Do what he says.”
“What’s he gonna do, kill me?” A short, choppy laugh, and Dibs folded his arms. Maybe it was to disguise how he was shaking. He was flour-pale, except for those fever spots on his cheeks. “If he does that, he doesn’t have anyone else who knows how to run this. Graves? Don’t make me laugh. He’s not medically trained.”
“He’ll find someone.” I swallowed hard, saliva rasping against the bloodhunger and leaving me dissatisfied. “And, Dibsie? Sweetheart.” The echo of Dad’s hillbilly accent teased at the edges of the words. I never thought I sounded Southern, but right now I could hear it. “He might not kill you. He might do worse.”
Dibs’s pupils flared. Sergej’s stare was a cold weight against my skin.
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Dibs whispered. The utter hopelessness crashing into him was terrible to see.
“It’s okay.” Soothing, quiet, like I was talking to a nervous horse. “It’s okay, Dibs. Really.”
The chains across the room clashed as Christophe stirred. I hoped he wasn’t about to do anything stupid. Unless it was tearing himself free and kicking everyone’s ass and getting me out of here. That would not be stupid.
But it was stupid to hope for it at this point. What I had to do now was get them out of this alive.
Good luck with that, Dru. You’re not getting out of this one.
Well, okay. But if I could get them out, or even get them some more time, it was worth it. One small way to make up for being a plague, since if I hadn’t been around, Dibs would be safe at the reform Schola, Graves would be living in his hidey-hole at the mall, and Christophe? Who knew? But he probably wouldn’t be chained to a wall in his dad’s Sooper-Sekrit Evil Hideout.
Which, by the way, had no taste. Gran would’ve called it overdone. Dad would’ve called it a horror-movie whorehouse, most likely.
A funny urge to laugh rose up inside me. I quashed it, but it made me feel . . . not better, I guess, but stronger. Like I could do what I had to.
It was like a jolt of cold water. Everything got very, well, basic.
Dibs was shaking even harder. The shudders went through him in waves. Sub, they called it. Submissive. He wasn’t built for this.
Give him something to focus on. “Dibs.” I wished I could snap my right-hand fingers. “Ash? Shanks? Do you know where they are? And Nat?”
His arms dropped, his hands curling into fists before releasing. The change rippled through him, wiry golden hair moving in fluid streams . . . and retracting. The fang marks on his throat glared. So did the huge circles under his eyes. He looked awful tired. “I . . . Alive. Last I saw.”
I almost sagged with relief. “Then they’re going to bust the doors down soon. Don’t worry. Just do what you have to, right now. Don’t worry about anything else.”
“Are you . . .” He didn’t glance at Sergej. Great pearls of sweat stood out on his pale skin. But the shaking was going down in him. Thank God.
The king of the vampires tapped his claws against the arm of his iron chair. The reptilian clicking turned my stomach into a bowling ball.
I summoned a grin. It felt tight and unnatural, like the skin on my face was cracking. “I’m sure, Dibs. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
I was lying to him, I knew. But he dropped his eyes and took a sliding sideways step toward the table. There were even little packets of alcohol wipes set out, and things in sterile packages.
Sterile. Like I might get infected. The thought called up another screaming lunatic giggle that died in my throat.
I wasn’t going to make it out of this. I was pretty damn sure of that. You’d think it would be the sort of thing that would reduce a girl to the screaming meemies.
But for Dibs’s sake, I was going to be brave. I was going to lose a little blood here.
I just hoped I had enough in me to buy the rest of them some more time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sometimes I have nightmares about what happened next. They always start out with the smile on my face, cracked and faded but plastered there, and my encouraging nods every time Dibs glanced worriedly at me. Then there’s the sting of the needle and the aspect flaming into life, every muscle in me tensing against the intrusion and my fangs tingling, crackling, aching. Then there’s a skip, like a jolted CD player, and a sound like rushing water all through me.
A horrible draining sensation. A deep bruising ache in my arm. The bloodhunger rasping against my veins, like sandpaper flooding my circulatory system. Merciful darkness covering my vision, everything in flashes—Sergej’s hiss as the needle slid in, Dibs’s quiet sobbing, Graves’s quick light breathing, the wheelchair rattling as he twitched, the rising hateful murmur through the assembled nosferat, a thin silvery rattle as Christophe’s chains moved again.
My head fell to the side, my neck turning to rubber. A thin stem to hold my pumpkin head up. I thought I heard my mother’s voice again—Be brave, sweetheart. Be very brave now.
The blood she’d given me was now sliding into her killer’s veins. No oxygen to make it liquid poison for him.
Everything spilled away on that dark rushing water. This wasn’t like Christophe’s fangs in my wrist and the terrible inward-ripping sensation as something was pulled out of me by the roots.
No. This was worse.
Because it was black, and cold, and I was trying to scream, and I was alone, and nobody would hear me. It was like sitting in an empty house and waiting for Dad to come back, or sitting by Gran’s hospital bed while her breathing got shallower and shallower. It was like my mother snuggling me into a hidey-hole in
I was always being left behind. Like a piece of luggage. Like a toy, set down while a kid runs away to play with something else. Like trash.
Now I was left behind, again, and this time there would be nobody and nothing coming to pick me up.
This was the end of the line.
I heard a sound. I was making it. A chilling, breathless moan. Air escaping past slack lips, a drowning swimmer’s final bubbles rising for the surface like silvery fish while the rest . . . sinks.
Fingers against my face. Cold, with the prickle of claws behind them. He scraped at my skin gently, like he enjoyed the feel of it. Something in me roused, knowing I was in terrible danger. It struggled for the surface . . . and couldn’t make it.
“Take her away,” Sergej said, and giggled.
No chain cuffed to my wrist. No need for it now. I was as weak as a sick kitten. Dibs held the cup of water to my lips; half of it spilled down my T-shirt. Tears slicked his cheeks. I blinked at him. There was a buzzing in my ears, and everything looked two-dimensional.
The touch was weak, too. Contracting, like a slug with salt sprinkled on it. Thin and washed out, the world with most of its color removed, all its solidity evaporated. Just a television show, light played on a flat screen.
“Dru!” Dibs, sobbing now. “Dru, please, wake up. Wake up.”
I don’t think I want to. But I was doing this for him, wasn’t I? So I tried to focus through the haze. My mouth wouldn’t quite work right.
“Dibsh?” I slurred. Tried again. “Shamuel?”
Because I’d always thought it was kind of funny when Christophe called him Samuel. A weird, floaty laugh came out of me, my lips loose and numb. I sounded drunk.
He made a low hurt noise. That snapped me back into some kind of sense.
Buck up, Dru. You’re still breathing. Things could be worse.
As “comforting things to think” went, it kind of sucked.
I forced my eyes to open all the way. It wasn’t the cell. It was a bedroom. No windows, the blank stone walls faintly sheened with something like greasy sweat. But the bed was a four-poster, done in faded pink, hanging curtains fuzzed with what looked like a century’s worth of dust. A small brass lamp on a flimsy black-painted nightstand, its shade a bell of dark pink Tiffany glass, Art Deco and probably worth something. There was also a cut-crystal water pitcher. My left-hand fingers itched a little, and a terrible lassitude filled every inch of me.
A girl I’d hung out with in seventh grade had told me about having mono once. About being so tired she didn’t even want to get up to pee. About how her whole body didn’t even seem to belong to her. Just a lump I was hanging around in until a bus came, was the way she put it.
Sarah. Her name was Sarah Holmes. She had black hair.
I hadn’t thought about her in ages. We’d moved on after Dad and I cleared out a roach-spirit infestation and did a little hexbreaking on the side. But now I wanted to see her again and tell her that I understood. And to apologize for promising to be her friend, when I knew I was going to be leaving.
Dibs’s face loomed over mine. His eyes were red and inflamed, and his cheeks were chapped under the tearstains. He looked like he’d been crying for a long time.
Christ. Locked up in this room with me almost dead on the bed? No wonder.
“Hi,” I croaked. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.” For some reason that set him off again, but I didn’t worry about it. I was thinking through mud, each separate thought very slow and stretched out. “Dibs. Kiddo. Calm down.”
“I c-c-can’t s-s-smell you!” The water glass shook in his hands. “You were s-s-so still, and I—”
“Whooooaaaa.” I drew the word out. “Chill, Dibsie. Calm down. Nice and easy.” I am comforting a submissive werwulf. Wow. For some reason it seemed funny. Horribly, bleakly funny. It would take too much energy to laugh, though. “How . . .” I struggled to find the right question to ask. “How long? Have I been . . . out?”
“Hours,” he whispered. “I was scared.” Half-defiant, his lower lip pooching a little. There was some grit in Dibs, even if he was sub. He certainly didn’t take any crap when it was time to bandage someone up.
“Me too, kid.” I tried to move, got pretty much nowhere. But I felt a little sharper now. The aspect’s warmth was gone; I never thought I’d miss it. It was freezing in here. The cold crept into my fingers and toes in a way that should have alarmed me. “Dibs. My hand. Left hand.”
“What?” As usual, once he got something to do, he calmed right down. The stutter eased up and the frantic jittering in his muscles settled into an occasional twitch. “Oh, yeah. Blisters and stuff. I b-bandaged it. Looked pretty rough, and not healing r-right. What is it?”
I don’t know. A hex so bad it burned me, but it’s turning out to be useful. I didn’t have the energy to explain. “Poke it.”
“What?” He stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Poke it. Squeeze it.” Give it a beat and dance to it, just make it hurt. I brought my attention back with a start. “Make it hurt.”
“But—” He set the water glass down. “Dru.”
“Make. It. Hurt.” I didn’t have any patience left, either. “Please.”
“Okay.” He leaned over me, grabbed my left hand, and squeezed with more than human strength.
A lightning bolt went up my arm, detonated in my shoulder. I yelped, Dibs yelped too and dropped my hand. He was all the way across the room before you could shout Dixie, pressed up against the dark, weeping stone wall. For just a moment the Other shone out through his wide fearful eyes, a flash of orange snarling, and fur rippled under his skin, not quite breaking free.
Even if he was shy and frightened, Dibs was still wulfen. He could kick some serious ass if he was motivated.
The trouble, I guess, was getting him motivated enough to forget he was scared.
The jolt of pain cleared my head. It also made the touch ring like a bell, expanding for a brief second before I dropped back into my tired aching body with a click, the exact same sound as Dad chambering a round.
Okay. I propped myself shakily on my elbows. Random curls fell in my face, and I tasted copper. My mouth was dry and aching. My teeth weren’t sensitive at all. Well, that was a relief—but there was none of the aspect, and the world looked dull. It could’ve been just the dim pinkish light.
Or maybe I was just seeing with normal eyes now.
If I was, how did people live like this? With shutters over their eyes and cotton wool in their ears? It was worse than being blind.
My arms gave out. I sank back down into the bed. It was chokingsoft, and my nose tickled from the dust. But I felt clear. Like I was made of glass, drained and wiped clean. At least I could think now.
I licked my lips, wished I hadn’t. My dry tongue rasped, and the bloodhunger at the back of my throat was a slow creeping burn. “Door. Locked?”
Dibs eased away from the wall. “Nothing to pick it with, either. I checked. I thought if I c-could g-get you o-out—”
“Calm down, Dibs.” I appreciate the thought. Really, I do. I focused on breathing. In, out, in, out. “Okay. Anything in here that can serve as a weapon? Is the bed breakable?”
“Wood. Not hawthorn. I could break it up, maybe make stakes, but they’ll just laugh at us before they take off our heads like Pez dispensers.” He swallowed hard, his chin lifting. His curls fell back, and for a moment I got a flash of what he’d look like if he ever got older, instead of being teenage all the time.
Pez dispensers? You’re gruesome. That’s good. “Good point. Can I have some more water?”
I didn’t really need it. I just wanted to give him something to do while I poked at the beehive inside my head and figured out something amazing that would get us out of this.
Unfortunately my beehive wasn’t producing much beyond a steady whispered oh my God we’re all gonna die and prolly me fir
He was halfway across the room before he stopped, his head cocking. I strained my ears, heard nothing but my own pulse. “What is it?” I whispered. “Sucker?”
“N-no.” Dibs flushed, and his eyes turned orange. He half-turned and crouched, fluidly, his splayed hands gently touching the stone floor. He didn’t quite change, but the Other rippled under his skin and bulked his shoulders, and he exhaled, a growl thrumming out of his narrow chest before he went still and completely quiet, waiting.
Well, great. Then what the hell is it? I tried pitching from side to side, but my body wouldn’t obey me. A twitch or two was all I could manage. Dust puffed up from the velvet coverlet, and the urge to sneeze tickled me all the way down to my toes.
Great. Just great. I managed to hitch one hip up. I could think and I could send the signals, but they weren’t getting through to my arms and legs. It was like swimming in glue. I couldn’t hear a damn thing, and the touch was dead. It might as well have been dumb meat inside my skull, for all the good it did me. Even squeezing my left hand into a fist, concentrating like hell to make my fingers draw up clumsily, didn’t help. The pain just slid up my arm like swamp water, losing its insistent edge.
The door scraped. A key, turning in a rusty lock. How old was this room? Did I even want to know? The heavy bed and the lamp reminded me of the Schola Prima, and I suddenly wished I’d never left. Everything I did just made a bigger mess, and now things were as bad as they could get.
I winced inwardly. You’re never supposed to even think that. Because it’s just an invitation for the world, Real or otherwise, to throw something even more incredibly fucked up at you.