I scrambled to my feet, thorns raking every exposed edge and pulling at my sweater like they were trying to tell me to stay down, and bolted. Leapt over the fingers of vapor crawling over the ground like I was doing football tryouts or something, skipping too fast to really keep my balance. It didn’t matter where I was heading, as long as it was away.
The woods got deeper and denser, and I tore through them. Trees whipped past, some of them clutching at me like they were on the sucker’s side, trying to slow me down. More thorny vines snaked across my path, but the fog had retreated. I floundered through, making a hell of a lot of noise, and heard a high, chilling howl behind me.
I thought wulfen howls were bad when I heard them in my own garage. Hearing the high, glassy cry in the middle of the woods at night is infinitely worse, because the howl sounds like it could be words if you just listen hard enough. The horrible thing is that it pulls on that deep hidden part in every person, the blind animal part.
The part that knows you’re the prey.
But the worst thing about it?
Is when it sounds right behind you, and something hits from behind, tumbling you into another thorn-spiked mess of vines and branches, leaf mold and dirt filling your nose, and a huge, hot, hairy hand winds in your hair.
CHAPTER 9
I tried to scream, but the other paw-hand had clamped over my mouth just before I could get enough air in. Hot breath touched the top of my head as we both lay for a second, me with the sense knocked out of me, stunned and scraped all over.
Goddammit, girl, that ain’t gonna cut it! Dad’s voice yelled in my head. Let’s see some action here!
It’s what he used to yell when I was working the heavy bag, so tired my arms were about to fall off. It meant I was going to have to do more, be more, in order to help him. He needed his helper, and that was me, and death doesn’t wait for when you’re rested and ready. It sneaks up on you when you’re exhausted and hungry and cold and so scared you can’t even see straight.
I thrashed, flung my head back and clipped a wet, cold nose with my skull. It hurt and the wulf made a little pained yowl, like a puppy running into something. My elbow sank into his midriff, and he huffed out another sound with a whine at the end. His hand loosened from my hair, but that was only so he could grab me by the waist as I struggled and he braced himself.
His arms clamped down like steel bands, and he growled. Terror short-circuited everything inside my head, and I still don’t know how I got free, rolling away along a slippery, gucky strip of rotting leaves.
He growled again and scrambled fluidly to his feet. I scooted backward, my filthy palms skidding in muck and dirt, and hitched in a breath to scream, as the wulf gathered himself, the white streak glowing at his temple like a neon sign, and leapt, straight over me, colliding with a shape in midair and both of them falling less than three feet from me with a jarring thud, squirts and puffs of fog evaporating. Hissing, tearing, bone-ripping sounds filled my head as I lunged away from this new madness. They rolled, the white streak bobbing, and an unutterably final crunching sound was followed by a hot black gush that splattered the trees in every direction. Sucker blood smoked where it landed, and some of it whizzed past my face, speckling my sweater and sending a stripe of thick warmth up the left leg of my jeans. I cried out, a small sound of disgust lost in the larger noise as the streak-headed wulfen threw back his head and growled, a shattering thunderous noise.
I was still trying to get away, scooting backward in wet jeans, the smoking vampire blood puffing into that same greasy mist once it had finished eating through denim. I was going so fast, in fact, that I ran smack into a tree for the first time that night. Which was pretty miraculous, you know, it being only the first time instead of the fourth or fifth.
A keg of dynamite went off inside my head, and my ribs screamed in pain. I was pretty much full of agony all over, and pretty goddamn sure I’d pulled something in my back again, too. God, if I lived to be an old lady I would probably have so many back problems, but it looked like I wouldn’t be around that long.
The streak-headed werwulf hitched himself up and jerked across the space between us. Furrows of dead wet leaves exploded up, and he dug his claws in and stopped, his snout in my face and his breath touching my wet skin. The fog retreated behind him, pulling back like singed fingers.
I let out another small sound, this one cut in half as my breath hitched, every aching muscle tensing in preparation. His breath chuffed in, chuffed out, and it smelled oddly like peppermint and copper.
His eyes were inches from mine, his longer, sleek nose almost touching the tip of my just-human one. A long, long inhale, and I leaned back into the trunk as far as I could. The gleam in his dark eyes was horribly human, and just as terribly hurt and insane. The white streak glowed at me, so bright I thought another random beam of moonlight had gotten caught in his fur.
He sniffed me again and made a low, painful sound. His mouth couldn’t shape a human word, so I had no idea what he was saying, whether he was threatening me or…
Or what? Why was he just crouching there, staring into my eyes? The tree behind me was an icy wall of rough steel, and my legs were still twitching, trying to push me right through it. The werwulf leaned forward again, making that queer, horrible noise, and I smelled hot copper.
Blood. Someone was bleeding. Was it me? Had I just not felt it when he clawed me open?
A rushing noise filled my head, and I heard the beat of muffle-feathered wings just before the werwulf dipped forward, his cold nose-tip pressing my cheek for a moment. Then he melted away.
He ran across the small clearing, hitching and favoring his front left paw-hand, and vanished into the trees just as I heard someone yelling my name.
“Dru! Dru! Goddamn you Dru where are you?” It was Graves, screaming-hoarse, and I was faintly surprised. I was even more surprised not to be dead. There was no fog now. The trees were silvered only by moonlight and festooning ice.
I sagged against the tree, vampire blood smoking all over my ruined, filthy clothes, and I did the single most inappropriate thing I could.
I began to laugh. High-pitched, whistling laughter as insane as the broken thing peering out through Ash’s eyes.
CHAPTER 10
“Let me get this straight.” Dylan’s hair was wildly mussed, his aspect shining through as he struggled to retain his composure. The way his fangs kept popping out and retreating was not happy or helpful. “Three dead nosferatu on your trail, you’re beat up and covered in their blood, and you can’t remember what happened?”
I couldn’t stop shivering. I just nodded. My hair dripped muddy water, and I smelled like I’d been dipped in death.
Graves had his arm around the blanket he’d wrapped me in, and he made a restless movement. “Come on. Let’s get you somewhere warm.” He gave Dylan a green-eyed glare and started up the hill, half holding me up.
“Wait a goddamn second.” Dylan didn’t think much of this. “The Schola was broken into. They went right for her classroom. She somehow escaped a trio of hunters, none of whom we can identify yet, all three of them eviscerated out here in the damn woods. She needs to tell us what happened so we can—”
“Have her die of hypothermia? Good plan. Jesus Christ, you guys are jackasses.” The hem of Graves’ coat flapped as he sped up. “Look at her, dammit. Her lips are blue and she’s covered in crap. Is she bleeding? Do you even care? No wonder there’s no girls around.”
I wondered what that had to do with anything, couldn’t figure it out, and hiccupped out another long string of half-hysterical, muffled laughter. I kept glancing around and flinching whenever I saw white moonlight.
Dylan’s eyes glittered in the dimness. “Shut up, dogboy. Just because you’re a prince among your kind doesn’t mean you can—”
That hot pocket of rage bubbled up inside me. This was getting ridiculous, but I welcomed the heat, because it was anything other than the dazed, panicked numbness. “Dylan,” I heard mys
elf say, between two choked giggles and a coughing snort, since there was mud in my nose. “You call him a nasty name again and I’m going to knock your teeth out.” I found that my wet feet could still grip the ground, and, even better, my weak shivering legs could still carry me. “Graves…” The word died in a spate of deep bronchial almost-retches.
“Just relax, kiddo,” Graves muttered. His arm was tense over my shoulder, pulling me closer to his warmth. The food around here was bulking him up big-time. Or maybe I just felt so small, the way I hardly ever do. “Christ.”
Yeah, I felt small. And vulnerable. And very, very terrified.
Dylan shook his head like I hadn’t even said anything. “Why did you leave the Schola, Dru?”
Because something was coming to kill me, duh. When Gran’s owl shows up, I follow. It’s that simple. I was too tired to even begin explaining.
A running mass of shapes clustered at the top of the hill. Some had thought to bring flashlights, and golden beams scoured the darkness. It was useless, djamphir and wulfen could both see way better than the average human after sunset. But those swords of light were a welcome sight, because they weren’t greasefog or moonlight on a crazy wulfen’s pelt, and I let out a half-sob. Graves’ arm tightened again over my shoulders. “It’s okay,” he called. “We found her!”
Dylan cursed. They started down, a mass of boyshapes. The wulfen leapt ahead, some of them blurring between fur and skin in that clay-under-water way they do, and I swallowed another harsh sound. It’s always weird to see them change and to hear the crackle of bone shifting, flesh running, and fur sprouting….
Yeah. It about makes your lunch want to escape, even if you haven’t had any. And even if you were used to Bigtime Weird.
“Goddammit.” Dylan made a short, sharp movement, and his voice dropped into a hurt-angry whisper. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Dru.”
Yeah, I don’t think you could help me even if I did talk to you. There’s just not enough words in the world. My brain hurt, and the rest of me was clumsy and cold.
I couldn’t stop coughing. Or laughing, little hitching noises that spilled out of my throat between the harsh rasping. Graves just pulled me along, and the wulfen reached us in a tide of fur and bright eyes. They flowed around me, some of them clapping Graves on the shoulder, most of them sliding between human form and furry, loping kind-of-quadruped. The sudden babble, after the silence and terror of the woods, broke over us both.
“Is she okay?”
“She all right?”
“Dru?” Dibs stepped close, was pushed aside, but not before his fingers brushed my wrist, a fleeting, warm touch. I let out another choking sound.
“Is she all right?”
Behind them, the djamphir came crowding. Irving was pale, his curls springing as his aspect slid over him and retreated. They started asking if I was okay, too, but Graves just dragged me through, the wulfen moving with him and somehow everyone getting out of his way, until we got to the doors on the east side of the Schola.
The doors were blown outward, shards of wood lying over the steps, and I blinked. I didn’t do that.
But maybe something behind me had. Once more, Gran’s owl had led me out of danger. Or into it, depending.
And oh God but another memory was rising up, the owl on my window ledge the last morning I ever saw Dad alive. I started coughing in earnest.
I didn’t want to think about that. I’d rather cough my lungs out.
The hall I’d run down was a mess, splattered with smoking black sucker blood, the carpet torn up and the waist-high paneling gouged. Paler wood in the deep furrows glared at me. “J-j-j-j—” I was trying to express my dismay, but Graves just kept going at a good clip, his arm a steel bar over my shoulders. My feet dragged uselessly most of the time. He actually shouldered a few kids out of the way, a snarl running just under the surface of the babble of voices.
I gathered there had been two teams of suckers, one that had burst in near the sparring chapel and made a lot of ruckus, and a trio of “hunters” who had quietly infiltrated the west wing of the Schola, the one I’d had my first class of the evening in. I must have just escaped them.
That was an uncomfortable thought. My feet dragged along the floor. I left dirty clumps wherever I tried to step, but Graves was doing all the work of moving us along. As long as he was doing such a handy job of it, I didn’t care.
The sparring chapel was a long way away, and it seemed awful cold. My teeth were still chattering, and everything seemed very far away, even the noise as some kind of scuffle and yelling started.
We reached the deserted chapel, every footfall echoing. Graves palmed open the door on the girls’ side, and a gasp went up behind us. He just kept going, dragging me through, and the door whooshed shut. Thick, silky steam billowed, and I coughed again.
“Goddammit,” he said quietly, and hauled me across the tiled floor. The word bounced back at us through the vapor in the air. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I d-d-d—” I was about to say I didn’t know, gave up. He looked down at me, his face sallow in the steam-filled light, and his jaw set. When he looked like that, serious and determined, you could see where he would be handsome. The girls would go for him big-time, especially in any urban place where they don’t value cookie-cutter looks as much. A bolt of shameful, nameless heat went through me at the thought.
“You want me to help with your clothes?” The blanket fell with a sodden plop, and he shucked his coat, almost tearing the sleeve because he couldn’t get out of it and hold me upright at the same time very well. “Or, um, I can just stay at the door. In case.”
“H-h-h-help. M-me.” The shivers were making it hard to think or breathe. I grabbed at the hem of my sweater with clumsy-cold swollen fingers. Graves pulled it up as he braced me; I got lost in it for a second and finally struggled out of the heavy, wet wool. It landed with a splutching sound, and I wondered how much water I’d been lying in out in the woods, and why it wasn’t more frozen when ice was everywhere.
Ribbons of steam in the air were white and heavy. I didn’t want to think about it.
The entire world went glaring white for a minute, and the next thing I knew Graves was holding me up and awkwardly peeling the sleeves of the flannel shirt off my goose bump-covered arms. I struggled out of my T-shirt, swaying as he held me up. My teeth clicked like castanets, and he went for my jeans while looking grimly up over my shoulder. My bra was wet too, but thankfully not dirty.
My fingers were like wet sausages, too clumsy to do much. The jeans were loose, and he let out a low whistle when he saw the bruises ringing my shoulder, my ribs, and the fresh ones beginning on my arms and the side of my right leg. My socks were filthy, and I’d lost a sneaker somewhere. I honestly didn’t remember where. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone.
His hands were scorching hot; he dragged me to the lip of the closest tub and paused for only half a second, looking up at the ceiling like he was gathering himself. His beat-up black nylon wallet landed on the floor three feet away, and he pitched down the steps and into the huge tub with me, fully clothed, his shoes giving one forlorn underwater squeak before I lost my footing and cried out miserably. It felt like being dipped in hot lava, but he held onto me, guiding me down.
I’d never been in the baths in my underwear. The feeling was weird, like sitting in a hot tub full of Jell-O while wearing a swimsuit that definitely wasn’t made for this sort of thing.
“Dru?” For the first time that evening, he sounded scared. “Come on. Say something.”
The chattering had stopped, but I was still shivering. Somehow my arm had ended up around his waist, and he settled onto the seat right next to me. The surface of the bath crackled against his sweater. I gasped again, my skin pain-peeled like after a sunburn, and tipped my head back.
Bubbling not-water turned gray, dirt swirling through it before it was whisked away by the current.
A leaf fell out of my hair, hit th
e turbulent surface, and was pulled under. The not-water was neck-deep on me, and only chest-deep on him.
“Dru?” Now he sounded close to panic, and I realized I was making another low, keening sound.
My throat was full of something too hot and nasty to be tears. “Say something, dammit.”
I swallowed the weird moaning sound I was making. My mouth opened. “S-s-s-something.” I paused. “D-d-dam-mmit.”
He snorted. The laugh caught him sideways, his usual bitter, sarcastic little bark, and I was too grateful to still be alive to really think about the fact of being half-naked in a tub with a boy.
Besides, it was Graves. And his arm was still around me. I put my head down on his shoulder and forgot about everything other than the stinging heat pushing its pins and needles into my flesh.
I hadn’t been this close to him since we’d both squeezed onto a helicopter lifting out of a Midwest snowstorm. I’d been crying then, too.
Now I wondered about all sorts of things. Especially about him having to fight the first night he got here. Getting Dibs alone and having him explain a few things seemed like a good idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. My head was so heavy, and Graves’ shoulder was bony but comfortable.
“Talk to me,” he pressed. “Don’t pass out on me, Dru. Hey, I got a question.”
“Huh.” An affirmative noise was about all I could come up with. So do I. Why didn’t Ash kill me? And how in God’s name do I start telling you about all this when it doesn’t make any sense even to me?
“What’s Dru short for?”
Jesus. It was my turn to half-snort a laugh. “D-don’t ask.”
“Too late. I been wondering all this time.”
The shivers started easing up. My jaw was sore when it finally unclenched. “Tell you l-later.”
“Mh. So you wanna tell me what happened?” Gently, carefully, like he was lifting up a Band-Aid and checking underneath it.