Lili St Crow - Reckoning

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.

The door squealed as it was pushed open. Dibs settled, bracing himself like a cat who sees the mouse but isn’t quite ready to spring.

Graves slipped through. I let out a blurt of sound, his eyes a green flash in the dimness, but it was too late.

Dibs leapt.

They tumbled outinto the hall. Normally wulfen growl when they fight, but Dibs was dead silent—and deadly serious. If you’ve never seen a for-real wulfen brawl, rather than just them playing around or shoving for dominance . . . well, it’s something. It’s a blur of motion, the Other surfacing in both of them, fur and muscle rippling. They move like they’re shouldering through tall grass most of the time, compared to a djamphir ’s quick graceful slink, but the rolling fluid hurtfulness of a serious fight among them is another grace entirely.

A grace that burns .

Thuds. A whimper. A scraping, claws against stone.

“I’m trying to help .” Graves, harshly, a loup-garou ’s mental dominance pressing down behind the words. “God damn you, Dibs, I’m trying to help!”

It didn’t sound like Dibs believed him. More scraping, and a low sullen growl that rattled everything in the room.

“If you don’t shut up they’ll come!” Half-frantic, now. “It’s day, it’s day and they’re mostly asleep; shut the fuck up! ”

The growl turned off like a faucet. Two more thuds, shaking the door so that it swung, while I tried to roll the rest of the way over. My left hand was a fist, but the pain wasn’t helping. It had turned into a dull ache like sunburn, and that was bad.

That was very bad.

“How can I . . .” Dibs, sharper than I’d ever heard him. “Traitor. Traitor .”

“Don’t make me hurt you.” I’d never heard Graves sound so cold. “Fighting him off is hard enough without you jumping on me.”

A long static-laden silence. Then a short choked sound, another massive thump, and a long dragging noise.

Graves shouldered in through the door. He had my duffel straps in one hand, my malaika harness tangling and the wooden swords dragging along with the duffel. One-handed, because he was hauling an unconscious Dibs along in his other fist. He put his head down, his shoulders hulked a little as the change filled him out. His eyes flamed green, and he hauled everything inside, swung the door mostly-to, and turned on one booted heel.

Wearing boots now. Not Converse.

That was good, right? Green eyes was better. My brain tried to process this and vapor-locked.

We stared at each other. I tried to look like I could get up and kick some ass. Probably failed miserably. Because his face changed a little. He turned almost gray under his ethnic coloring, and his eyes slitted as a wave of trembling passed through him. His hands tensed, fingers coming up into claws, and when the fit passed, he was sweating again.

He shook his hair down into his face, a quick nervous movement. “Hi. He’ll wake up in a bit.”

I managed a nod. “I . . . I can’t . . .” Tried once again to get my balky body to do something, anything .

“Don’t worry.” He crossed the room in long swinging strides. “I’ve got it figured out, Dru.” He halted at my bedside, staring down from under the mess of his freshly-dyed hair. “You need blood.”

It took a second for the meaning behind the words to hit home. “Graves—”

“Don’t.” He put one knee on the bed. Dust rose. “Just listen, okay?”

The urge to sneeze tickled my nose again; I held off with an eye-watering effort. He took my silence for agreement, I guess, because he lowered himself gingerly down. The bed creaked a little, and he worked one arm underneath me. He was scorch–hot, feverish through his clothes. His boots against my sock feet; it wasn’t really apparent how much taller he was when he was lying down. His arm curled up and I settled against him like a sack of potatoes.

My cheeks were on fire. “Graves,” I whispered. Don’t. This isn’t safe .

“Shhh.” Like someone would overhear us. “Listen to me.”

His trembling came back, and this time it infected me too. I was numb all over, my teeth chattering despite the heat coming off him.

“It’s high noon,” he finally whispered. “Sun’s at its highest. For a little while, I’m free, because he’s resting. We don’t have long. You have to bite me, then we’ll get out of here. Then I’m gonna run as fast and as far as I can until I’m sure he can’t get inside my head again. When I’m sure, when I’m strong enough, I’ll find you. You’ll go back to the Order. They’ll protect you. Don’t argue with me, Dru. Just do it.”

“I can’t—”

“You can.” He sounded so sure. I couldn’t see his face, because my nose was against his shoulder. He didn’t smell like loup-garou now. Instead it was just a healthy boy-smell, cigarette smoke and whatever harsh soap they gave him here. He kept himself clean no matter what, and now I wondered about that. “You have to, Dru. You’ve taken this asshole on and toasted his cookies before. This ain’t no different.”

“You don’t understand.” It was easier to say it with my face in his shoulder. “I can’t bite you. I know what it’s like. It’s horrible. And I—”

“You have to. Dibs can’t give you what you need to get out of here. He’s too sub. Just do it, Dru.”

How could I explain? I knew what it was like to have a djamphir bite you, to have something invisible, the core of what you were, something like your soul, pulled out by the roots, bit by bit. It hurt .

There was no way I could do that to Graves. I just couldn’t.

Because it made me like the suckers. Like the things Dad would’ve hunted.

Like the thing that killed him. And my mother. The thing that was sleeping somewhere else in this huge stone pile, with my blood running around in its veins.