Ash made a short chuffing sound, turning in a circle so fast his fur made a whispering noise. He all but pee-danced in place, and I stepped nervously out into the hall.
He lunged toward me, and I flinched back down the hall. He stopped short, considered me, lunged again. I stepped back, and he stopped.
Oh.
I got the idea, but it took all the courage I could scrape together to half-turn and set off, one hand touching the wall because I wasn’t too steady on my feet. He padded behind me, occasionally almost dancing in place when I slowed down, impatience in every fluidly moving line of him. Blood roared in my ears, almost drowning out the horrible little tip-tapping footsteps, and the most horrible thought in the world floated through my head.
Is he trying to get me someplace safe or is he driving me toward them?
Hell of a thing to think. I’d just been sleeping in the same room with him, and I’d been trusting him all this time. But oh, God, the nasty little mistrustful idea just wouldn’t go away.
The hall ran into a T-junction at this end. I glanced back nervously, my hair getting in my eyes, and I gulped in an unsteady breath. “Ash?” I whispered. “I, I don’t know—”
He bumped into me. I jumped and almost ran into the wall. He slid past, his shoulder then his chest and his flank touching my hip in one long stripe. His narrow graceful head looked left and right, and I heard the footsteps again. Like Q-tips tapping a drumhead, each one distinct but fuzzy.
They were even closer. Don’t ask me how I knew.
Ash kept his head cocked. Then he looked back at me, and the awful human madness in his glowing eyes dimmed a little. He flowed back and pushed me toward the right.
I didn’t know where this hall went. If I went down here, I’d be trusting him completely.
You were just sleepin’n there with him at’n the door, Dru. Too late now. Gran’s voice, practical and stinging. My cheeks were wet and hot.
I won’t lie. I did spit. I couldn’t stand the taste in my mouth, but it didn’t go away. My head hurt, a vise squeezing my temples. My bladder was incredibly full, and I was cold. My mother’s locket, touching my chest, was a chip of ice. My fingers were wooden.
Closer. They were closer. My breath actually fogged, I was so cold.
I slid around the corner to the right. There was a door at the end, a big massive oak-bound thing. The type that, here at the Schola, led outside.
I let out a soft sob of relief. But the cold crested, poured over me in a wave of ice like I was back in the snow in the Dakotas. And there was a hiss behind me.
“—Sssssssvetosssssha—”
I almost fell against the wall. Ash’s growl rose from the subsonic, rattling everything around us.
And if you’ve never heard a pissed-off werwulf howling as he takes on four vampires in an echoing stone hall, wow, you’ve really missed out.
Not really.
Get moving! They catch you in here, you die! Dad’s bark, the way it always sounded in my head when something bad was happening. I pushed away from the wall, my knees full of water, and almost fell. It was like being in a really bad dream, one where you can’t run because your entire body is too heavy to move, and the things behind you are breathing on your neck. Hot meaty breath, or cold, cold, knife-sharp breath.
I had to look back. I couldn’t not look back. The noise was incredible.
A thrashing mass of squealing, growling, bones snapping, and crunching writhed in the hall. Eyes like lamps, and there were only three of them now because black vampire blood exploded, painting the walls with its acid stink. I half-screamed again, a throaty whisper because I’d lost all my air.
Ash hunkered down, snarling. The vampire he’d killed flopped bonelessly on the floor, bleeding a wide puddle of brackish black. The bright copper taste of adrenaline cut through wax oranges on my tongue as I backpedaled, stone floor rasping skin off my palm and yanking the bandage around my wrist loose, my sock feet scrabbling. Trying to get away because their hate poured through my unprotected head and set all of me on fire. A cold gemlike fire, pure frozen evil burning as it scraped every inch of my shivering skin.
I screamed, Ash making that low freight-train noise, the vampires hissing as they cringed back. And to top it all off, a klaxon split the air with its own wild howl. The Schola Prima took a deep breath and woke, but it was too late. Because the slim pale vampires, all in black gear with leather loops and professional-looking buckles, surged forward, and I knew Ash couldn’t hold them off forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
My back hit the door. I scrabbled for the knob with clumsy fingers, caught in a nightmare. Ash backed up two swift steps, hunched further, and kept growling. Tension ran through him, but the three remaining vampires—one a slight pale female with long dark hair, the other two a matched set of blonds, all with black, black eyes—stared at me. Their narrow white hands hung at their sides like strangled birds, and for a hellish moment I was back in that empty palatial fake adobe in the Dakotas with a ton of snow outside and fiercer cold inside.
The house where Sergej had tried to kill me. His eyes had been like this, too, sucking holes of black tar starred with speckled dust. None of these three had the sheer weight in their gaze to crush all independent thought, but it was bad enough when they opened their mouths and hissed at me. The female dropped back, moving with oily grace.
The worst thing about them was that they looked about fifteen. Sergej himself had looked no older than Christophe, except for his eyes. And oh, God, but the fangs slid free of their upper lips, curving down to touch their chins. Not like a djamphir’s smaller canines that only touch the lower lip—no, a full-blown vampire’s teeth mean business. Their jaws distend when they hiss, too. Just like a snake trying to get down a big egg.
The female crouched slowly. Her joints moved in weird, inhuman ways. They just moved wrong, worse than seeing a crowd of djamphir or werwulfen at once. Ash’s warning growl deepened a notch or two. My sweat-slick fingers found the doorknob, twisted—and slipped.
Shit. Of course. The door was locked. It led outside, of course it was locked. The two male vampires moved forward. The klaxon was still going on, the sound of shouts and running feet almost drowned in it.
Think, goddamn you! Think!
But my thinker was busted. My head gave an amazing flare of pain, and the scene unreeled in front of me. The males were going to swarm Ash, and if they could hold him down the female was crouched, ready to spring right over the top of them and collide with me. I’d seen the pictures, what vampire claws do to flesh. I didn’t even have my switchblade—I’d just slid the key in my pocket. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I should have left, with or without Graves. But I promised not to leave him behind.
More cries. A howl of despair—maybe there were more suckers up causing chaos all over the Schola. And here I’d thought it was so safe.
Be honest, Dru. You knew it wasn’t safe here. But you’re tired, aren’t you. Sick of all this.
I swallowed hard. Freed my fingers from the slippery doorknob and shook them out, drew myself up.
If I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting.
I don’t know if Ash figured out their plan, but his hindquarters bunched, fur rippling, and he flung himself forward, colliding with the two males. I raised my hands, both of them fists, and almost choked on the taste of rotten, candled citrus.
And everything . . . stopped.
Roaring filled my ears. My mother’s locket flared with molten heat; the fang marks on my left wrist twitched like fishhooks in flesh. I had time to see every stone in the walls, every hairline crack as my pupils dilated and the dim hallway turned scorch-bright. The female vampire hung in the air; she’d cleared the tangled frozen mass of the boys duking it out and was stretched out like Superman, her fingernails turned to ten amber-burnished claws, each about four inches long and pointed at me. Her skin was perfect, matte, and poreless, her hair a floating banner writhing with horrible
life.
Everything sparkled, encased in hard clear plastic. There was nowhere to go—if I could have ducked aside, I would have. The snap like a rubber band that would bring the world up to its regular speed hovered on the edge of my consciousness, held back by mental muscles hardened by the practice Gran had hammered into me in her own way when I was still a toddler.
Did she have any idea what she was training me for?
Something in me I’d never noticed before dilated. Warmth bloomed at the crown of my head, flowed down my skin to my numb-tingling sock feet. My teeth stung a little, the fangs sliding free, and the comfort of the aspect fought with uneasy disgust.
Because they had fangs, too. Bigger ones, sure—but the same kind.
My knees hit the stone floor with a jolt and I pitched forward, rolling.
Snap!
A bone-jarring crunch, a howl and a fresh splatter of acidic black blood. Wetness splashed me. I let out a short miserable cry of panic and disgust, kept rolling. The smell was every foul rotting thing in the world wrapped up together and powdered with rotten eggs, choking-thick in the confined space. The female hit the door with another massive hollow gonging sound, and Ash was down, scrabbling on the floor with the last surviving male. He wasn’t growling anymore. Neither of them made a sound.
The female vampire slid down, landed on her feet, and reversed with unnatural, fluid speed. I hit the wall hard, fetching up half-dazed and shaking the noise out of my head, the comforting warmth of the aspect still encasing me. My pulse thundered in my ears like feathered wings.
She saw me again, and the hate dancing in those black eyes was enough to make me sick. I threw out my hands, as if I was tossing a dodgeball, a great painless gout of force leaving me. It was like hexing the American history teacher back in the same classroom where I’d met Graves, the sense of steam bleeding through a valve, a relief like lancing a wound.
Only this time I wouldn’t feel guilty and pull the hex back like snapping a towel. No, this time it was for real, and I wanted to kill the thing in a female body that was looking to kill me.
The hex flew true and hit her squarely just as she was getting ready to leap. It flung her back against the door again with another crunch, and a high crazed laugh burst out of me. Because the force was building again—
—and Gran’s owl streaked down the hall, talons outstretched. There was no missing this time either. The bird claws bit deep, black blood exploded, and the female let out a scream so terrible it shook the hall and blew my hair back on a hot stinking draft. I slid farther along the wall as Ash struggled free of the broken body of the last male. He collapsed, hauled himself up again on slippery paws.
My hands slid in hot, greasy vampire blood. I choked again, crab-pedaling back along the wall, my legs pistoning wildly.
The female sucker lurched forward as Gran’s owl flapped its wings, each beat muffled and almost touching her hair. The claws were still tangled in her face, and the force streaming through me crested again as the talons bit deeper.
Light burst down the hall. A red streak arrowed past Ash, who sagged aside onto my feet. I barely saw the small doglike creature with a high-held rufous brush of a black-tipped tail as it leapt on the female, biting and clawing. She screamed again, but it was the miserable sound of an animal in a trap.
I grabbed at Ash’s pelt. He was bleeding badly, red fluid staining the lake of rotting black we both sat simmering in. The bandage Dibs had wrapped so carefully around my wrist flopped loose, squelching and steaming.
The light was too bright. Someone had flicked a switch and the incandescents overhead were blazing. I wondered, in one of those split-second thoughts that happen when things go crazy, what they paid each year for lightbulbs in this place.
He hurtled down the hall, deadly silent, and I pulled harder, trying to get Ash closer to me. Christophe, his hair slick and dark and the aspect shining on him like a halo, tore the female vampire’s throat out. Black blood gushed. Her body slumped aside and he jabbed down, the polished wooden stake in his bleeding hands whistling as it clove the air to bury itself with a sick meaty thump in her chest.
He turned on one booted heel. His thin black V-neck sweater was torn, a stripe of red blood painted one perfect, high-arched cheek-bone, and his eyes blazed unholy blue. His fangs were out, his entire face a mask of effort and ferocity. His jeans were ripped all over, and he was splashed up to the thighs with black blood.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy and so terrified at the same time. “Ch-Ch-Chr—” I stuttered over his name. Gran’s owl had vanished, and the little red animal—it was no bigger than a cat—rubbed against Christophe’s shin, its narrow black nose raised inquisitively. I flinched and realized what it was.
A fox. Christophe’s aspect in animal form.
Ash sagged against my legs. My teeth tingled, the aspect enfolding me. Christophe dropped the stake. It clattered on the floor, and he stalked forward. I would have backpedaled, but the wall was behind me and there was nowhere to go, especially with pound upon pound of deadweight wulfen on my lap.
He went to his knees, splashing in the vampire blood. Steam rose as the black ichor ate at fabric. I wanted to haul Ash out of it. I didn’t have the strength or the leverage.
Christophe reached over the Broken wulf and grabbed my bruised shoulders, his fingers sinking in. His face contorted, and he yelled something at me. I just stared. Besides, he was speaking in some weird foreign tongue, the same one that tinted his English when he was sleepy or upset.
And they say I have an accent just because I grew up with Gran and below the Mason-Dixon. Let me tell you something: People up North bite off every syllable like they want to chew it to death instead of tasting it proper.
Christophe inhaled sharply, throat working as he swallowed. Tried again, and this time the words were recognizable English. “Are you hurt?”
I took stock. I ached all over. My teeth felt like lightning was running through them. The warm-oil feeling of the aspect bathed the hurt and the bruises, but it couldn’t erase them completely.
He shook me. My head bobbled. He kept yelling. “Goddamn you, Dru, are you hurt?”
I finally shook my head. Found my voice. “Ash. Ash.” My hands were full of the Broken’s pelt, and I didn’t like the way he was just lying there against me. You can tell when someone’s hurt bad by the way they slump, not even unconsciously holding themselves together.
“Thank God,” Christophe whispered and pulled me away from the wall. He got his arms around me, and I smelled spiced-apple pies. The smell filled my nose. He pressed his lips against my aching temple and was saying something in a ragged, broken tone, but I didn’t care. Ash was caught between us, bleeding and unconscious.
I wanted to cry. But my eyes were full of hot graininess, and all I could see, my head tilted at a weird awkward angle, was a high curving arc of vampire blood, splashed smoking against the gray stone wall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It took three glowing-eyed djamphir, all of them torn-up and bloody, to pick up Ash and start carrying him away. I pulled against Christophe’s hands. “No, please—no, I’ve got to go with him, no—”
“Stay still.” Christophe dabbed at a scratch on my forehead, one I couldn’t remember getting. “No broken bones, no bleeding. Dziękuję Bogu, moj maly ptaszku . . .” Blue eyes sharp, he glanced at my face. The blond highlights had slid back through his hair as his aspect retreated. The fox had vanished, but I wasn’t worried about that. “Be still.”
“I want to go with him.” I glared at Christophe, my throat full of dry rocks. “Where were you?”
“Keeping watch on your window. I told you I wouldn’t leave you unprotected. I also told the wulfen to take care of you. When I get my hands—”
Which brought up another question. I tried to slide away again. “Shanks. Did you see him? Is he—”
Christophe grabbed my shoulder. “Robert? He’s wounded but otherwise hale. Where is the loup-garou? I
would have thought he’d be with you. Now please, Dru. Be still, calm down, let me work.”
“Work? Jesus Christ, those were vampires! Ash—is he—”
“He may live. I would never have believed a werwulf could do this. But he’s Broken, and . . . well. In any case, you’re safe. Everything else is immaterial.”
“Reynard!” A familiar voice. Benjamin rocketed around the corner, his sneakered feet slipping in greasy crud and rotting vampire blood. He took in the scene, dark eyes passing over everything in a brief, contained arc. “What the hell are you doing here?” He looked like hell. He was beat up and battered, bruises puffing up along one side of his face, his hair wildly disarranged. His clothes were torn, too, and I saw with no real surprise that he was holding a single malaika in a white-knuckle grip. He saw me, too, and almost choked. His eyes blazed.
“There you are!” He took a single step forward. “Where were you? What were you doing? How did you escape? We were about to—”
“Leave her be,” Christophe said mildly, and Benjamin turned white and almost swallowed his tongue. “Your cadre?”
“Still efficient. Some slight wounding.” But the djamphir’s shoulders straightened, and he actually looked proud.
“My faith in you is restored.” But Christophe didn’t look away from my face. His eyebrows drew together. I swallowed hard and slumped against the wall. “Assess the damage to Milady’s chambers, if you please, and send me Leontus. Thank you.”
I think it was the first time I ever heard a djamphir actually dismissed, though not in so many words. Benjamin made a curious little salute with his free hand, glanced at me. “Milady.” And he vanished back down the hall, running flat out.
“Have you been sparring hard?” Christophe’s hand came up. I flinched, but he rested his fingertips against my cheek. I’d almost forgotten the shadows of bruising on my face, thought that maybe the confusion would cover it up. I should have known better; he didn’t miss much.