He stepped into the wash of gold from the chandelier, and I understood why it was so cold. The cold was coming from him, breathing out from his poreless skin with its faint tint of swarthiness. And here was another shock.
He looked about eighteen—a little older than Graves, a little older than me. Broad-shouldered as if he worked out, and with a face chipped from an old coin—a long narrow nose, a chiseled mouth, a mess of artfully disheveled honey-brown curls. But his dark eyes were wrong. They were dusty, and far more adult than they should be. The closest I’d ever seen to eyes like that was on some city streets, where kids melted out of the shadows as cars cruised slowly past, their bodies young but something ancient shining from their faces. Kids who had seen a lot of things no kid should have to see, kids I shivered when I thought about always making me scoot closer to Dad on the truck’s seat.
Only they were still human, those kids. And this thing wasn’t. It looked young, and I suppose if you weren’t in the habit of looking closely at things you’d just think he was lucky to have such great skin and killer lips.
If you looked any closer, the thing looking out of those dark sparkling eyes would leer at you. Right before it ate you alive.
He wore a thin black sweater and jeans, like Christophe. A pair of high-end black Nikes and a gold wristwatch too huge and ostentatious to be anything but real. Probably a Rolex. He looked like the Rolex type.
I stood there staring at him, my mouth fallen open a little. I heard something through the ringing in my head. A steady thumping, like a clock ticking against the head of a giant drum, echoing. Faster and faster, a sound that made me think of a small dark space, stuffed animals, and my own stale breathing as I listened before falling asleep. I’d been so tired.
I love you, baby. I love you so much. . . . We’re going to play a game.
The knowledge rammed through me like a baseball bat swung by a player coming all the way up from his heels. That ticking beat was the sound of his heart. I was here in a huge pile of fake adobe with a snowstorm and Graves outside, and I was facing down a sucker all by my lonesome. A sucker who had turned my father into a zombie—and murdered my mother, back Before.
My left hand was still a fist around the locket. The pumping, thumping sound was very close, and the boy smiled at me. A very sweet smile, if you didn’t mind looking at the needle-sharp fangs, much sharper and more grotesque than Christophe’s. But white, so blinding white. And those eyes, like pools of mud just waiting to drag you down and fill your mouth and nose with cold, cold dirt Jell-O.
I heard something else, too. The muffled beating of wings.
He took a step forward. “Ripe,” he said, the word contorted because of the way his teeth were now shaped. A trickle of something black slid down his chin, right below where the tip of one of his fangs scraped the perfect matte skin. “And coming so willingly to the slaughter. I’ve drunk from the veins of a thousand djamphir, but the sweetest are always the little birds, just before they flower.” A low chuckle, like gas burping and bubbling up from oozing slime.
I raised the gun and his dark winged eyebrows flew up in mock astonishment. He looked just like a psychotic clown, and a red spark lit in the back of his weirdly shaped pupils. They were hourglass-shaped, darker slits against the black velvet of his irises, thin threads of black in the whites turning them gray. He looked almost blind.
The owl hooted nearby, the sound slicing sharp through a sudden howling outside, the door rattling behind me, and the sucker’s eyes widened just a fraction before I squeezed the trigger and a neat half-dollar sized hole opened up in his forehead.
It was a perfect shot.
Good girl, Dru! I heard Dad cry, and a gout of thin blackness gushed down the sucker’s face, his head snapping back like he’d just been kicked in the teeth. I heard someone screaming, thinly, and knew it was me.
Because his head jerked back down again, sharply, and he grinned at me through the mask of rotting black ichor, his teeth saw-edged except for the fangs. His entire body coiled, compressing itself. I knew he was going to jump me and knew I had no hope of getting out of the way. The blackness ate his eyes, turning them into singularity holes under the scrim of foulness, and he leaped, hanging in the air for a long moment as everything slowed down around me and the ringing in my ears turned to an agonized shriek.
The world stopped again, but only for a bare second. I dropped, one knee giving way and the gun fighting its way up through air gone clear and hard as a diamond. Pale feathers puffed as the owl swooped, razor claws raking the sucker’s back, and it banked away, black goo dripping from its feet—and I knew it had missed, it hadn’t hit where it wanted to, and as soon as the world snapped back up to speed the sucker was going to fall on me and bury its fangs in my neck, and I wouldn’t feel a thing until it was too late.
Time popped hard, like a rubber band pulled back and let loose, careening across a classroom. A burst of warm air traveled across my skin, and there was a hideous wrenching sound.
The front door exploded inward. A streak of black and denim-blue leaped off the truck’s hood, flung with sharp lances of broken, splintered wood. He flew like Superman and they collided like planets flung into each other.
Get out of the way! Dad’s voice yelled in my ear, and I rolled, one fist full of the locket, the other weighted down with a loaded gun. Snow flew into the hole in the side of the house, the shattered door falling in bits and pieces. The headlights were on, and through the cracked windshield I could see Graves, his nose bleeding and his eyes running with green flame, clutching at the wheel like a life preserver. He must have bonked himself a good one when they hit.
Around the truck, flowing like a creek in spring, the lean long forms of werwulfen leaped. My gaze snapped back toward the roaring bloodlust, and I saw Christophe go down, red blood flying in a perfect arc before splashing onto a blank white wall.
That’s what’s wrong in here, I thought hazily. No pictures. No furniture. Nothing living. It’s an empty house.
The sound was hideous. The wulfen were making that chilling glass-at-midnight noise again, and they flung themselves at the sucker like water running over rocks. The sucker was making a low inhuman growling, and Christophe . . .
He twisted to the side, avoiding Sergej’s hand, suddenly freighted with claws that looked sharp enough to rip air. Two quick steps, Christophe’s feet blurring, and he leaped, one boot cracking across the sucker’s terrible-beautiful face. The kick was used to propel him up and over; it looked like he was on wires, landing lightly as a butterfly. His entire face was covered with blood, his sweater was sopping, but his eyes blazed winter-freeze blue and his lip lifted, snarling back at Sergej even as the wulfen descended.
It was the funniest thing. He did look like an angel, back from the dead. I choked on a sob, stared in wonderment.
The truck whined, chain-clad tires clattering, and heaved back. Thin light fell through the hole in the door, the walls on either side busted too. The engine died and Graves was scrabbling out of the truck. I was only barely aware of this, because the fight was still going on, and I was beginning to get the idea that it was more than a little one-sided.
And our side wasn’t the winning one.
Sergej knocked down the wulfen like they were bowling pins and Christophe moved in again. He was shouting, but my ears were ringing too badly to hear it. He feinted, reversing to claw at the sucker’s face as they closed, and I suddenly knew how the next few moments were going to play out. Christophe was slow and wounded, even though he was moving faster than anything human had a right to, and Sergej . . . He jerked a hand in a careless sweep and a wulf went flying, hitting the wall with a crunch of bones snapping and sliding down.
Cold air swarmed across my face, full of the smell of snow and coppery blood. Sergej spread his arms, inhaling as I did, a cloud of darkness crawling down from his eyes to bleed into his mouth, sliding down his throat in thin rivulets. The air popped and prickled with ice; the world slowed down again as Graves’s hand c
losed around my arm and what he was shouting roared into my ears.
“Come on, Dru, let’s go!”
My chest expanded, ribs popping as I took in the deepest breath of my life. Christophe crouched, fingers tented on the blood-slick floor, and his sides heaved. He looked very tired, and the blood coating him dripped, droplets hanging in the air as he gathered himself.
The wulfen didn’t pause. They were still circling the sucker, clawing at him, but something invisible parried their strikes. The one who had hit the wall was just lying there, the fur running off him and the face—a young boy’s face—rising out from under its sliding textures.
The ringing came again as I shook free of Graves’s clutching fingers. My hands snapped out, hard, as if I was throwing a dodgeball, and something flinty and hot hit me in the stomach, boiling like water just after you throw macaroni in. The locket burned against my palm, silver scorching.
Gran’s owl, glittering snowy white, arrowed over my head like a bullet, a streak of feathers and a cruel curved beak. Black claws extended, and this time it didn’t miss. It caught Sergej right in the face, raking hard and sharp as the second hex I’d ever thrown in my life smashed into him with a sound like a huge Chinese gong I’d seen on a game show once. Glass broke, tinkling, the chandelier overhead veering drunkenly, lightbulbs popping. Christophe hit him at the same time, a leaping roundhouse kick that came all the way up from the floor and cracked against the sucker’s jaw as the owl sheared away, its wings snapping once as it turned on a dime and shot away like a pinball.
“Come on!” Graves yelled, hauling me as the sucker flew backward. The wulfen followed, and the one knocked into the wall shook himself and leaped to his feet, the fur flowing back down over him, bones crackling as he changed once again.
I stared, my mouth hanging open like I was some sort of idiot.
“Get her out of here!” Christophe roared, and Graves pulled me along as a massive sound—like a pipe organ being smacked with the world’s biggest feedback squeal and pumped through every amplifier, from every crappy garage band ever put together—tore the air into shivering bits.
I didn’t resist as Graves dragged me. The gun was still in my hand, dangling, and I had locked my fingers outside the trigger guard the way Dad always told me to. Crashing sounds deeper in the house and high yapping howls from outside told me we weren’t alone. Shadows filled the door, and Graves had to put up his arm, elbow out, like the prow of a ship. I crowded behind him, clinging to his waist with my free arm as the wulfen poured past. Their eyes flamed with yellow and their fur touched me, sandpaper-rasping, thin iron-gray winter light falling around us as the wulfen somehow twisted and ran like ink on wet paper. They poured past us, unlikely saviors, and I began to think we might have a chance.
It ended, my arm fell away from him, and Graves dragged me down the steps, his fingers digging into my arm right where I had a bruise. The pain jolted up through my neck, exploding in my head, and I found out my cheeks were wet. I was making little hitching sounds and my throat burned. Snow whirled down, blanketing the world. The wide expanse of driveway was starred with paw prints fast blurring under the onslaught. There would be no proof of them in a few minutes.
They didn’t even touch us. And Christophe . . .
He was right. Dad and I were amateurs. There was no way we could have fought something like that.
And my mother . . .
Graves was swearing steadily, in a high breathy voice. He opened the driver’s door and shoved me in, hopped up after me. It was still warm, and I collapsed against the passenger window, glass cold against my fevered forehead. I stuffed Mom’s locket in my pocket, shoving it deep like a secret. My fingers were numb, and my palm burned.
“Jesus Christ,” Graves said. “Are you okay?”
No. No way was I okay. I licked my lips with a dry tongue. “Christophe?” I whispered.
“Scared the hell out of me,” he whispered back. “Showed up with those wulfen things; guess they’re on his side after all. Told me to drive right through the wall, that you’d die if I didn’t. Got up on the fucking hood and flew. Far out.” His arm snaked over my shoulder. “Far fucking out. Dru?”
I peeled myself away from the nice cold glass and collapsed against him, burying my nose in the soft warm spot between his shoulder and his throat. He hugged me, resting his chin on my wet hair, and this time it was okay that we were both crying. We clung together like shipwreck survivors, and snow covered the cracked windshield with soft, deadly kisses.
CHAPTER 28
I had my face in Graves’s narrow chest, and I was okay with that. He smelled good, and he was warm. The tears had trickled away, and his chin still rested on the top of my head. The windows were screened with breath-fog and with snow clinging to every surface it could find.
I could hear Graves’s heart, too, ticking away. Just like a clock, but without the eerie meanness of the sucker’s pulse. It was a clean sound, and it meant I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been this close to anyone in a while.
Except him.
The door opened and a blast of chilly air scoured the inside of the truck cab. Someone climbed into the driver’s side. It was a bit of a crowd, but the truck was big and the bench seat was long.
There was a long silence, a jingling sound as someone touched the keys in the ignition. Graves said nothing, so I figured it was okay.
And really, I didn’t care. The whole world could have gone up in flames at that point and I wouldn’t have given a rat’s patootie.
A breath of apples touched the cold stillness. “Please tell me she’s all right,” Christophe finally said.
“She’s okay.” Graves didn’t move. His chin settled more firmly atop my head and his arms tightened a fraction, that was all. “A bit beat up, but still breathing. She seems okay.”
“Thank God.” The djamphir let out a long, shaky breath. There was a scraping sound, and the engine turned over. The truck settled into running again, and the heater came on. Cool air poured through the vents. “Thank God again.”
“What happens now?” Graves wanted to know. I did too, but I didn’t feel like picking my head up and looking at either of them.
A slight sound of wet material as Christophe shrugged. “I take you out in the field and you get extracted. She’ll go to the Schola. I’m going to vanish.”
“Because there’s a traitor,” Graves supplied, and I was glad he was talking so I didn’t have to.
“Yes.” Christophe laughed, another bitter little sound. “This was my safe zone. There was no way Sergej could have known about this place, or that she would be coming here, unless someone in the Order told him. And someone in the Order sent the directive to set the wulfen on me back at her house. They didn’t realize I wasn’t him.” He sighed. “If I had been him, you two would have been dead by the time they got there. Juan—the yellow-eyed wulf you met—is fit to be tied. He was just following orders, but the directive’s disappeared. Someone’s covering their tracks.” He shifted a little on the seat. I wondered if he was still bleeding. “We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“So you’re sending us somewhere you know there’s a traitor.” Graves’s chin dipped even further, resting harder on the top of my head.
I thought about all this, felt nothing but a faint weary surprise.
“I’ve got friends at the Schola; they’ll watch over her just as I would. She’ll be perfectly safe. And while she’s there, she can help me find whoever’s feeding information to Sergej. She’s been drafted.”
Graves tensed. “What if she doesn’t want to?”
“Then you won’t last a week out there on your own. If Ash doesn’t find you, someone else will. The secret’s out. If Sergej knows, other suckers know there’s another svetocha. They’ll hunt her down and rip her heart out.” The windshield wipers flicked on. “Dru? Do you hear me? I’m sending you somewhere safe, and I’ll be in touch.”
“I think she hears you.” Graves sighed. “What about her
truck? And all her stuff?”
“I’ll make sure they get to the Schola too. The important thing is to get her out of here before the sun goes down and Sergej can rise renewed. He’s not dead, just driven into a dark hole and very angry.”
“How are we going to—”
“Shut up.” He didn’t say it harshly or unkindly, but Graves did shut up. “Dru? You’re listening.”
Oh, God, leave me alone. But I raised my head, looked at the dash. There really was no option. Hair fell in my face, the curls slicked down with damp, behaving for once. “Yeah.” It sounded like I had something caught in my throat. The word was just a husk of itself. “I heard.”
“You were lucky. You ever put yourself in danger like that again and I’ll make you regret it. Clear?”
He sounded just like Dad. The familiarity was a ragged spike in my chest. “Clear,” I managed around it. My entire body ached, even my hair. I was wet and cold and the memory of the sucker’s dead eyes and oddly wrong, melodious voice burrowed into my brain. It wouldn’t let go.
That thing killed my father. Turned him into a zombie. And Mom . . . “My mother.” The same flat, husky tone. Shock. Maybe I was in shock. I’d heard a lot about shock from Dad.
Silence crackled, but then Christophe took pity on me. Maybe. Or maybe he figured I had a right to know, and that I’d listen to him now.
When he spoke, his voice was husky too, whether with pain or with the cold I couldn’t guess. “She was svetocha. Decided to give it all up, stop hunting, married a nice jarhead from the sticks and had a kid. But the nosferatu don’t forget, and they don’t stop playing the game because we pick up our marbles and go home. She got rusty and she got caught away from sanctuary, drawing a nosferat away from her home and her baby.” He put the truck in gear. The windshield was clearing rapidly. “I’m . . . sorry.”
“What else do you know?” I pulled away from Graves, his arm falling back down to his side. He slumped, looking acutely uncomfortable, a raccoon-mask of bruising beginning to puff up around his eyes. His nose was definitely broken.