Lili St Crow - Reckoning

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.

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 the bottom of a closet, closing me away in the safest place she could, and leaving me in the dark .

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 .