Lili St Crow - Reckoning

My knees hit the stone floor with a splashing thump. Another thump brought a hot wad of something up in my throat, because I could imagine Sergej’s head hitting the floor. It rolled away like a big granite ball, making more noise than it should, and I dropped my malaika .

I was sobbing. Little hitching gasps turned into spasms, racking convulsions, I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked back and forth. The silence was so immense, and the dark was so deep. It was like the needle in my arm and the cold again, and I curled in on myself.

“Dru.” A whisper. “Dru.”

He reached me in the darkness, and part of me wanted to scrabble back and away. My skin crawled when he touched me, but the rest of me fell into him. Something against my forehead, a soft pressure. His lips. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my bloody, tear-streaked, dirty face, everywhere he could reach. I didn’t care. The shakes had me now, like a vicious dog shaking a toy, stuffing flying everywhere. Everything inside me was shaking loose, shaking free; there was nothing to hold onto.

Nothing except Christophe, there in the dark.

He held me, murmuring my name, holding me bruising-tight. Kissed my hair, my forehead, again. He couldn’t reach the rest of me because I’d buried my face in his neck. We clung together like survivors of some huge natural disaster, and the sobs retreated like an ocean wave.

He was saying something else, over and over again, in between repeating my name.

“Thank you,” he would mutter, hoarsely, ragged, into my hair. “ Dziekuje , Dru, milna . Thank you.”

Jesus Christ, for what ? But then he stiffened, and his head came up. I felt the movement in the dark, and I swallowed the last of the sobs, folding my lips over my teeth and pushing them down.

We’d just killed the king of the vampires.

And in the distance, muffled but still distinct, I heard gunfire.

He somehow foundboth my malaika . Pressed them into my hands. The wooden hilts were warm and satiny. “Are you hurt? Anywhere?”

I shook my head, realized he probably couldn’t see. It was so dark it had actual physical weight . I had to cough twice before I could even think about talking. The bile in my throat burned, and the heat in my middle was fading. “N-no. I don’t th-think so.” Now I was stuttering, just like Dibs. If he felt anything like this, I didn’t blame him. “Tired, though.”

“Thank God.” He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers sinking in, and pulled me forward. This time he was smack-dab on the button, and I don’t know why I was surprised. If he could find my malaika , he could certainly find my mouth.

There was blood on his lips, but it tasted like spice. An apple pie just pulled from a hot oven, and a desert wind—sand and the windows down, right at dusk, when you’re out on those roads that arrow for the horizon and the city is behind you; you’re doing eighty and you’re not going to stop anytime soon. The touch , bruised and aching, shivered as a bolt of feeling went through me—something hot, and scary, and wild. It poured a different kind of strength into me, and when he broke away I actually gasped.

He didn’t even pause. “Listen to me. That’s probably the Order. We might have to fight our way out to them. Don’t worry, the nosferatu will be weakened and confused now, with their king dead.” The businesslike, mocking tone was back, just like the old Christophe. But under it was a raw edge I wasn’t sure I liked.

I’d never heard him sound scared before. And the idea that some of Sergej’s blood might have been on his lips—

I didn’t want to think about that.

“The aura-dark may hit me. I don’t know how much I took before you . . . stopped me.” His tone gentled. “Dru?”

“What?” I swayed, he held me upright.

“Thank you. You . . . this is not the time. But I want you to know something.”

Oh, God, what now? “Can’t it wait until we—”

“No. It can’t.” He eased up on my shoulders a little, and I suddenly wished I could see his face. “Dru. You make me want to be . . . better. Instead of what I . . . am.”

Better? You fought off your father. For me. Again .

And then bit him and drank his blood. But if he hadn’t, what might’ve happened? Would I have been able to . . .

I didn’t want to think about that either. There was so much I didn’t want to think about, it wasn’t even funny.

“You saved me,” I whispered. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” Now he sounded bitter. “Is it ever going to be enough?”

I swallowed hard. I could still taste him on my lips. And the fading heat of Graves’s blood was a stone in my lower belly. “Christophe . . .”

“The loup-garou . Graves.” Back to the businesslike mockery. “He bled for you, didn’t he.”

“That’s how I could come d-down here and r-rescue—”

“I’ve bled for you too, Dru.”

My feet slid a little in vampire blood, splashing. It still smelled horrific in here, and I wanted some light. I wanted to be outside so bad I was shaking. I wanted to run until I dropped, just to get away. “Christophe, for Christ’s sake, can we just please get out of here? This is not helping !”

I tried not to sound panicked, and I failed miserably.

But he was just not going to let it go. His hands fell away from my shoulders. “How much is enough, Dru? What do I have to do? Tell me. Now, while we have time.”

What the fuck ? Here we were knee-deep in rotting vampire, gunfire getting closer all the time, God alone knew how we were going to get out of here even if that was the Order coming for us, and he wanted to have this discussion with me?

“We need to get out of here.” A wave of exhaustion crashed through me, and I swayed. “I don’t feel so good. Come on, Christophe. We’ll talk later.”

“Now is all I have, Dru. It’s all I’ll ever have.” But his fingers curled around my left forearm, gently this time. “But you’re right. This way. You can’t see, can you.”

“No.” I stumbled after him. “Christophe, look. It’s not a contest. It’s not—”

“Dru.” Kindly, now. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked. Shut up.”

Well, wasn’t that a fine how-do-you-do. But I couldn’t just be quiet. It was too dark, and if I stopped talking I had the idea that he might just vanish, leaving me down here. Alone. And blind. “How can you see?”

He pulled me aside; I sensed something in our way. It was probably a mound of corpses, and I almost lost the battle with my stomach there and then.

A jagged little laugh burst out of him. “It’s one advantage Kouroi have over svetocha . Even the darkness brings no relief.”

He was back to being maddening and cryptic. The relief that flooded me was probably pointless, but it still made me stagger.

He steadied me. “Dru?”

“I’m fine. I just . . . you sound like you. Like normal. It’s good.” And to top it all off, my eyes welled up again. Two fat tears trickled down my cheeks, sliding through a crust of crap I immediately added to the long and growing list of things I never wanted to think about again. “I like it,” I added lamely, trying not to sound like I was having a complete and total meltdown. Not to sound like I was shaking, and crying, and sick, and scared out of my mind, and feeling dirty all the way down to my bones.

Christophe actually paused, down there in the dark. “You . . .” He let out a long, shaky breath. “Once again, kochana , you save me from myself.” He laughed again, but it was a sound so sharp it could cut. It actually hurt to hear. “Come, this way.”