Lili St Crow - Reckoning

Oh, God. “Just get out of here,” I managed. “Take Dibs. Just go .”

He scooched around a bit, making himself comfortable. His arm tightened, and my nose ended up in his throat. His leg curled over both of mine, and his free hand came up and stroked my tangled hair.

“The only one,” he murmured. His chin dipped a little bit. “You know that, Dru? You’re the only person who’s ever believed in me. You know what that’ll do to a guy?”

What? “I—”

“It makes him want to live up to it.” A sarcastic, bitter little half-laugh, just like the Goth Boy I used to know. The birdlike one who was a little ugly, sure, until you got to know him and saw what had been under the ugly all along. The true beauty.

Sometimes it hides deep, that truth.

Graves made a quick little movement, nestling down. “Only I’m not like you. I was broken before he did it. I even just got half-bit. Half-turned, halfass like everything else in my stupid life before I met you. Maybe it’s better that way, like Christophe says.” He shuddered. “Maybe I’m broke anyway, but at least this way I’m useful.”

“Graves. Goddammit.” My throat was on fire. The bloodhunger, sensing a pulse very close to my fangs. They didn’t crackle or lengthen, but my teeth were sensitive again. No hot-oil feeling from the aspect either, but I was suddenly very thirsty. “I can’t bite you. It’s just . . . I can’t .”

It wasn’t my teeth crackling. It was his wrist. His free hand left my hair, and his arm tightened. His index-finger nail lengthened, sliding free, wicked sharp and tipped with translucence like a cat’s claw. “Don’t punk out on me, kid.” Sarcasm now, but under it the shaking still running through us both as if we were on one of those beds that went earthquake when you dropped a quarter in.

The claw tip scraped delicately against the softest part of his throat. For a moment the cut was white, his wrist held oddly because of the angle, and at the very end of the scratch he dug in a little.

A bright drop of crimson appeared.

The tiny crimsondrop was the only thing in the room that didn’t look washed-out. It was a rich ruby jewel, and my mouth actually watered . Which only made the thirsty worse.

Then the smell of it hit me. Copper, wildness, icy moonlight, and the strawberry-incense tang of him . It scraped across the bloodhunger and lit every vein in my body like a tangle of neon.

My fangs slid free, my jaw making little popping, shifting sounds. It hurt, like an overstressed muscle. Each individual tooth rooted in my jaw tingled, exquisitely sensitive.

“Graves,” I whispered. With a faint lisp, so I didn’t scrape my tongue on the sharp bits. It sounded ridiculous.

“Dru.” He slid his free fingers through my hair again and hugged me. My nose mashed against the underside of his jaw, a little bit of stubble roughening up, and my tight-closed lips met the beads of blood. The smell of it crawled through my nose and lit up everything inside my head, like a match flame touching gas fumes. “Just do it. Please. I . . . please, Dru. I want you to.”

Oh, God — My head twitched on my weak, aching neck. My lips skinned back from my teeth. I fought it, but my body knew better than I did. It pulled me forward . . . but oh, God.

I tried to be gentle.

My fangs knew just where to press. My tongue lapped once, gathering the trickle from the small cut, and a shiver went through him. His arm tightened under me, his leg tightened over both of mine, and he pulled me into his body like we were raindrops on a window, the moment before they slide together.

My fangs slid in. A burst of sweet, hot perfume filled my mouth, and I drew on it as gently as I could.

Graves’s head tipped back. But his arms and legs tensed, twining us together, tighter and tighter. I swallowed. It slid down my throat like silk and exploded in my stomach, and the touch came back to roaring life. My fangs drove in deeper, strength flooding my arms and legs again, and he made an odd sound, like all the air had been punched out of him.

It poured into my mouth again, heat and life and light. But with it came a flood of images, swirling through the touch and blasting straight into my brain.

. . . “Stupid little—” The words became a roar, the spilled paint bright blue against the garage floor as the fosterdaddy’s slap caught him right on the cheek. Red pain, falling, hitting the side of the car with a dead crack and the pain a red monster, swallowing him whole .

. . . crouching on the playground while the bigger kid swings his foot, kick catching right under the ribs, falling and hearing their laughter. The teachers were hurrying to bust it up, but he just hunched and sobbed, because it was too late .

. . . sobbing in the middle of the night, hearing the scream as Mom’s latest boyfriend took the belt to her, writhing in shame and pain because he was too little, too afraid . Never, he swears to himself , never be helpless again, never never never . . .

. . . the blue-eyed girl turned in a circle, and his heart was a stone in his chest. “It’s nice,” she said, looking at the posters and the books and the shabby little room he’d managed to cobble together. His hideaway, where he retreated to lick his wounds every day. “It’s cozy.” And just like that, she turned the whole place into a clubhouse, because he wasn’t in here alone .

. . . she was beautiful, even soaked and shivering, with the gun in her hand. Her eyes blazed, and the grinding in his shoulder from the thing that had bit him was a flaming brand. “Dru. Don’t leave me. Please.” Because she had that look, his mother’s look every time she vanished and the social workers came sniffing around. The look that said he was nothing but baggage, and she was better off without him, because he’d make her sink like a rock. So he pulled himself up, as tall as he could . Don’t care what I have to do. “Dru.” Trying not to sound like he was pleading. And when she nodded, the gun pointed at the floor and the tears sliding unnoticed down her cheeks, the relief in him was enough to make the hamburger mess of his shoulder suddenly inconsequential .

Because for the first time, someone didn’t shrug him off. She set her shoulders and nodded. “All right,” she said, and he suddenly understood everything had changed, that he wasn’t going to get left behind, that she was going to take him with her. He’d say anything, do whatever he had to—she asked questions, he answered. And finally she nodded again. “All right, Graves. You and me. Let’s go .”

And it was enough. More than he’d ever thought he’d get .

I swallowed again. The heat slammed through me, a good cracking-clean hit like a baseball against the sweet spot of a bat. They poured into me, the images, and seeing myself through his eyes was like vanishing. Because he hadn’t seen the frizzy-haired, scared-to-death, mousy Dru. No, to him I’d looked like a supernova, flaming and deadly beautiful, an escape from the dead-end world he’d been born into.

And Jesus, I’d known it had to have been bad for him—nobody with a well-adjusted family life lives in a forgotten office in a mall , for Chrissake—but I hadn’t known how bad. He’d never said anything about it. At least, nothing directly. And I hadn’t asked because, well, you don’t ask about shit like that. You just leave everything open in case they want to say something, and you try not to squeeze any raw parts.

When Ash’s teeth had ground in his flesh and the change agents worked in with Ash’s saliva, Graves had been born again. Dragged out of the dead end and plonked on the highway. He didn’t want to look back.