Lili St Crow - Reckoning

Graves stripped his hair back from his forehead. It lay lank and dead against his fingers, the dye swallowing light. He was sweating, the ashen tone to his skin more pronounced. He looked absolutely hideous. “I made her. Shut up, Dibs. Look, Dru, he’ll wake up. Leave Christophe, goddammit. He wouldn’t—”

“I wouldn’t leave you behind.” I rose, my body obeying me smoothly now.

How long did I have before the strength in Graves’s blood ran out? I wasn’t sure. So I had to do this quick.

I ghosted to the door, the touch rippling out in concentric rings. Nobody around, but the air was full of the breathlessness right before a thunderstorm. It was beginning to feel almost normal, that sense of crisis approaching. “I won’t leave him behind either,” I finished, still in that queer flat tone.

“What is it with you and him?” Graves’s lip lifted, white teeth showing. Even his gums were pale.

Bloodless.

Don’t think about that, Dru. Think about what you got to do next .

I reached up with my right hand. Snapped the malaika free. Probably my best bet in a house full of suckers. If the Maharaj showed up, we’d see how good I was with hexing, and a silver-grain round or two might discourage them in a hell of a hurry too.

And if I ran out of ammo, I’d figure something else out.

I glanced down. My left hand was whole now, no trace of the burning. I couldn’t see if the blisters were still hanging around, but it felt like they were. Half-healed and tender. It still tingled when I flexed my fingers, but it felt all right.

“Dru. Goddammit.” Graves surged to his feet. “What is it with Christophe? Is it that he’s djamphir ?”

I couldn’t believe he was even asking . “No. It’s because he’s my friend.”

“What am I, then?”

Oh, for the love of . . . “Well, you don’t want to be my boyfriend, so I don’t know. You tell me. But tell me after we meet up. You and Dibs get the hell out of here. There’s cash and blank IDs in the duffel; you can get on a train and get back to the Prima. Go there, tell everyone what’s going down, and wait for me.”

“Wait.” Dibs was on his feet now. The bruising up and down his face glared at me; he reeked of worry and ammonia fear, sharp-stinging my freshly-tuned nose. His T-shirt fluttered a little bit, ripped from whatever tango he and Graves had gotten into in the hall. “Dru, you can’t—”

My lips skinned back from my teeth now. My jaw crackled as my fangs slipped loose, tender and aching; I could still smell the blood on the air and the dry-fur reek of nosferat .

Dibs almost swallowed his tongue. He shrank back against the wall, trembling. Graves stared at me, his face twisting for a second.

Before, I would’ve called the expression disgust. But the touch was still resonating inside my head, the complex stew of his emotions my own for a moment. It wasn’t disgust, I realized.

It was pain. Because even when the fangs that made me something dirty, something like Sergej, came out, he still thought I was beautiful. And the pain came from that broken place inside him.

The place where he thought he wasn’t worth a damn.

I was across the room before I knew it. I grabbed his shoulder with my left hand, bent down, and pressed my lips on his. He stiffened, but his mouth opened, and I think it was the first time in my life I’d ever kissed like I was a boy. If you know what I mean, great, if you don’t, well, I can’t explain it any clearer.

Or maybe I can. It was the first time I took a kiss instead of accepting one, the first time I didn’t think that the person I was kissing might refuse. No, I wanted it. I wanted to feel his mouth, and I did. I took it.

And I liked it.

He was breathing heavily by the time I straightened my arm, pushing myself away. I stared down at him, his green eyes opening slowly, heavy-lidded. No shadow of black in them now.

Good.

Make it good, Dru. If it’s the last thing he ever hears from you, make it good. Don’t get lame at the end . “I love you.” The bloodhunger twisted under the words, but I pushed it back. “I’ve always loved you. Get the hell out of here with Dibs so I don’t have to worry about you both. I’ll see you at the Prima.”

Gran’s owl hooted softly. I could sense it circling the room, trembling just on the edge of the visible. I gathered myself, staring into Graves’s eyes, and I moved .

The air tore and sparkled behind me. It was the first time I ever used the djamphir vanish-trick too, going so fast the air collapses behind you with the ripping sound of nasty whispering laughter.

It wasn’t that I could do it now that I’d bloomed. It wasn’t even that I knew it was a pretty goddamn dramatic exit.

It was that it was so easy , with the taste of his blood smoking in my mouth. And it was so easy to think of pushing him back on the bed and greedily getting my fangs in. And drinking until there was nothing left.

There really wasn’t anything separating me from the vampires now, was there?

I sure as hell hoped not. Because I was going to need everything I had to get out of here. I wanted to get Christophe free, sure.

But there was a bigger project I had, so to speak.

I wanted to kill the thing that killed my parents. And with a loup-garou’s dominance burning in me, his blood whispering in my veins, and the rage beating under my heartbeat, there would never be a better time.

The owl flewat shoulder height, navigating me up through a stone tunnel, turning right, then up a familiar slope. The last time I’d seen this I’d been in the wheelchair, Graves fighting Sergej’s mental pressure and my entire body straining to escape. I was up the slope in a flash, and I hit the doors at the end like a bomb going off. They crashed inward, wood splintering, and the crack they made probably woke up every damn vampire in a hundred-mile radius.

It didn’t matter. The huge amphitheater opened under the owl’s belly like a flower, and its eyes were mine. Part of me felt the fierce joy of flight, wind rushing through feathers with a low sweet sound, and the other part of me snapped my right-hand malaika free and tore through three nosferat in a welter of black-spatter blood. They didn’t even have time to scream their high chill hunting-cries.

Like this , Anna’s voice echoed, her training rising under my skin. I was spinning, soles of my shoes squeaking oddly on the smooth stone, and as the malaika sliced through sucker flesh the nosferat choked and turned purple, rot exploding through them.

I was going too fast to stop so I didn’t, crashing into the table with the transfusion equipment. My shoes touched down, glass shattered, the table splintered as I stamped with incredible force and was airborne. My other foot lightly brushed the arm of Sergej’s iron chair, propelling me forward, and I almost hit Christophe’s chained body dead-on. Skidding sideways, the owl wheeling and diving, nosferatu sleeping in piles or draped over the stone seat-steps beginning to shake themselves awake.

Christophe’s head jerked up. His eyes glittered. Under the mask of bruising and blood, his expression was impossible to see. But I thought I caught a flash of it—sheer horror.

It was child’s play. Both malaika hilts in my left hand now, my right flashed out and the metal of the chains tore with a screech. The lump of heat in my stomach dropped a little, turned into a nova in my belly. I ripped him free as casually as I might rescue a kitten from a yarn-snarl, and he slid bonelessly toward the floor just as the first wave of angry, awake suckers hit the floor and streaked for me, their faces open screams of hate and their hunting-cries rising in shattering crescendo. Fury rose under my skin.