Lili St Crow - Defiance

Everything tangled up inside me, and I let out a long sigh. My breath touched his neck, and he shivered. Like it was pleasant. My teeth tingled more fiercely, my jaw shifting, and the fangs were sharp aching points.

I inhaled sharply, and that was a mistake. Because I could smell the fluid in his veins, copper and spice, heat lightning and the smell of the desert when you drive with the windows down after dark and you’re not stopping anytime soon.

The hunger woke up the rest of the way. I turned stiff as a board against the wall, fighting off the urge to push my chin forward, mouth opening, and go for the pulse I could suddenly hear.

“Go ahead.” Christophe’s head tilted back slightly. The shaking had invaded him, too. Like there was an earthquake, and the only people noticing it were us. “I trust you. You’re all I have, Dru.”

What? “Chr-chr—” I was trying to say his name, but my tongue was clumsy around the fangs. They pricked, sharply, and I tasted my own blood. It stroked the hunger, red crawling up over the darkness behind my eyelids, and my hands untangled enough to shove violently at him. He stumbled back a step, and I clapped my right hand over my mouth like I was trying to stop myself from puking.

He grabbed my shoulders. “It’s all right. Shhh, it’s all right.” He said something else, too, but too low and confused for me to hear it.

I tried to back up through the wall. He held me still, and my stomach cramped in on itself. I shook my head, holding my mouth closed, trying not to smell him. Not because it was offensive, but because he smelled so goddamn good.

Or the blood did. I couldn’t tell them apart now. What if that apple-pie smell was him smelling like a snack , for God’s sake? Like a Hostess apple pie, just waiting for me to tear the wrapping off and take a bite?

My knees gave way. I slid down the wall, and he came with me. Graves’s coat tangled up my feet, and if Christophe hadn’t been holding on to me, I would have ended up sprawled instead of sitting on the floor.

“Now.” He sounded completely calm. “Where are you going? Let me guess. Anywhere you can, to get away.”

Not really. I kept my hand clapped tight over my mouth. He crouched on his heels like it was as comfortable as breathing, leaned forward a little. His fingers tweezed at the heavy material of the coat, on the right where it was shredded by something’s claws and I’d carefully stitched it together.

“Or,” he said, quietly, “you’re looking for someone.”

The bloodhunger retreated, snarling, step by step. After a little while, I could peel my hand away from my mouth. My teeth tingled, but they were only bluntly human. “Christophe—” I sounded like all the air had been punched out of me.

“He’ll be alive.” Christophe’s hands dangled, loose and expressive. Even that looked graceful and planned. “But he won’t be unchanged. Sergej will use him as bait to catch you. You’re the real prize.”

The name sent a twinge of pain through my head. I wasn’t sure if it was the word itself, or the load of hate and contempt Christophe’s voice carried every time he said it.

And there was something bothering me lately. My mouth started working again, thank God. “Why won’t he just go after Anna? She’s easier to get to, isn’t she? What with sending him information all the time and stuff.”

“You’re the bigger threat, Dru.” As if talking to an idiot. “He’s already corrupted Anna. You? You’ve not only fought him off, but you’re incorruptible. He lives to twist things, kochana . You wouldn’t understand.”

Great. What? “Okay, sure. Look, Christophe—”

He reached up. I almost flinched, but he only tucked a fallen curl behind my ear. His fingertips brushed my cheek. Warm skin, soft and forgiving. But my shoulder hurt, the bruise throbbing. His fingertips slid down, touched under my chin, and I found out I was staring at his chest before he pushed gently and I was forced to look up at his shadowed face.

“Will you at least consider me an option?” A bitter little half-smile, and his shoulders hunched slightly. “I don’t know how much more open I can be. About how I . . .”

Oh, my God. The tangle of feelings inside me snarled even further. “I like you.” There, it was out. It was said. Had I been lying to Graves, or to myself? “I really do. You’re . . . different.”

I could have kicked myself. “Different”? That was all I could come up with?

Now there was a ghost of amusement in his expression. One half of his mouth curled up, a quiet, companionable almost-grin. “Is that the word you’d choose?”

I grabbed my courage with both hands, so to speak. “Yeah. One of them, anyway.”

A single nod. Then he went still, in that way older djamphir have. “What happened between you and the loup-garou ?”

Oh, for God’s sake. But then I realized he probably wasn’t asking about the state of the union, so to speak. He was asking about something else. Or at least, I was only going to answer him as if he was asking about something else. “You mean, that day? He, uh, he found me. After Anna and I had a . . . a fight. She had the gym cleared and came to do something, I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall, because Christophe’s attention was so focused. It was like having a laser drilling right through me. All this time, and he was the only person who really looked at me.

Even Nat sometimes didn’t see me. She saw a svetocha , that was all. Something I had to live up to. Something I had no idea of how to live up to, when I was just regular me.

Just Dru.

I swallowed hard, continued. “I got busted up a bit. Graves . . . he wanted to know who’d done it. I didn’t want to say.” I couldn’t get the words out. I was stupid. “He got mad. Stamped off.”

Another single nod, breaking his eerie stillness. “Leaving you unprotected.”

Defending Graves was like defending Dad. The urge was immediate, overwhelming, and instinctive. “I didn’t—”

He made a sharp slashing movement with one hand. “I know you’ll hear no word against him. But no matter how angry he was, leaving you alone should not have been an option.”

Meaning, probably, I wouldn’t do that . But Christophe had left me alone before, hadn’t he? Or let me think he wasn’t hanging around.

I slumped against the wall. “Can we get off this subject?”

He shrugged. I waited for him to say something else, but he just rose, fluidly, and held out a hand. I took it—there was no reason not to—and he hauled me up as if I weighed less than a feather. The leashed strength was frightening. Especially since I’d seen him use it.

When I had my balance, I tried to pull my hand back. His fingers tightened, briefly, before he let go. Just to make sure I knew he was choosing to turn me loose, I guess.

Or just because he didn’t want to let go.

“Dru.” He was looking away now, up the deserted, shadowed hall.

The busts gleamed as they watched with blank eyes, each one a djamphir famous in the Real World for something or another, but not to be found in any ordinary history books. I suddenly wondered if they minded. Brought myself back to reality with a twitch. “What?”

He kept staring away. “I don’t mistake you for your mother. She was the closest I had to . . . a friend. A real friend. She taught me much.” He stopped, inhaled sharply as if the words pained him, and dropped his chin a little. “But I didn’t have trouble sleeping or eating when I thought of her in danger. I didn’t feel my heart tear itself out of my chest when she looked sad. I did not ever fear for her the way I fear for you.” The aspect settled over him in a wave, and I could see it rising from him like heat shimmers from pavement on a scorcher of a day. “I don’t blame you if it’s not . . . enough. I’m tainted, I know as much. Just . . . let me stay near you. Please.”