Lili St Crow - Defiance

But if Sergej had been able to endure my mother’s toxicity for long enough to hang her in the oak tree outside that yellow house—

Dad’s yell snapped me to attention. Focus on what you got in front of you, Dru! The malaika whistled, I was moving so fast. Suckers fell, gasping and choking, I hit the small wooden door on the side of the house like a bomb and was through, splinters flying so fast they embedded themselves in the wall opposite. Spinning on a dime, my left-hand malaika flicking out like a snake’s tongue.

This sucker was more durable. He was choking as the blade sheared through his right leg, and it was a good thing I’d ducked because his claws were out and whistling through where my head would’ve been if I hadn’t been down. The touch burning inside my head like napalm in a barrel, a gush of black stinking acidic blood from the sudden shortness of his leg, I drove up with long muscles in my legs, left-hand malaika flicking again. His eyes were like pools of rancid oil, and the worst thing was he looked a little bit like Dibs. Golden-haired, with a soft babyface contorted in agony before my aspect flexed again and he fell, choking up a thin green-black scum.

Why couldn’t this have happened earlier? But I was already moving up the hall. The walls were painted white, but there were streaks of something I didn’t want to think too much about all over them. Crusted streaks, dark red and smelling of copper. It was a complex braid of smells, like in Paranormal Biology where you had to open the ampoules, sniff the blood inside, and list characteristics. Blond, male, young, hospital. Brunette, female, middle-aged, wounded.

Sometimes suckers like certain victim types. And also, doing the sniff test sharpens your tracking ability. With the touch burning in my head, I was never wrong.

These were shutterclicks, images of bodies carried down this hall, prey thinking it had escaped and brought down so close to freedom, a collage of nasty images slamming through my head like iron dodgeballs smacking unprotected flesh.

The floor plan was clear in my head. The door was ahead of me, looming, and I left the ground in a sidekick that would have made any superhero proud. The thought that maybe if the door was locked or barred I’d just hurt myself didn’t even cross my mind, because before I got there, it exploded.

Literally exploded , a flash like heaven itself opening and the shock like a wave face-crashing a surfer. I tumbled, head over heels, the wall clipping my shoulder and sending me spinning. Landed hard, the malaika still clasped in my fists and the world ringing like a gong inside my skull. The aspect flared with heat, cushioning me from the blow, but it still rang my chimes pretty good.

Smoke. Yellow flame crawling over the walls. What the—

Then I was scrambling to get on my feet, because he appeared out of the flames. Honey-brown curls and a face stamped from an old coin, chiseled and hurtful. A thin black sweater, jeans, and his paleness with its tint of copper over the top. And his eyes, my God, his eyes now black from lid to lid and so deep. You could fall into those eyes and drown before the soft sucking blackness at the top closed over your face.

You wouldn’t even struggle.

My mother’s locket gave a flare of painful heat, so hot I was suddenly afraid it had melted on my sternum. I let out a soundless cry—soundless because it was loud , my ears still ringing and shouts, cries, the sounds of a pitched battle going on all around me.

Sergej grinned. And right before he blurred through space and I brought the malaika up, I thought, for one terrible second, how much his smile looked like Christophe’s chilling little grimace when he wanted to scare someone.

I came to inbits and pieces, lying on my back.

Dust. I smelled dust, and something like burned coffee. Dampness, the peculiar smell of something underground, like a root cellar. And spice, like carnations. That was a familiar odor, and I tried to place it in the darkness. I realized it was dark because my eyes were closed.

On the heels of that realization came another one. I hurt . It was like growing pains, a deep burning ache in the bones. The idea of moving, even to open my eyes, seemed to make it even worse. But I had to. I had to know where I was.

But . . . I couldn’t see.

I blinked a couple times. It made no difference. The same thick darkness, like a blanket against my eyeballs. I let out a short sound, the gasp chopped in half because I sensed someone looking at me. It was the sort of feeling that will make you turn your head in a crowd, certain of being stared at, and it’s right more often than not.

What the hell? Am I blind? What happened?

The last thing I remembered was Sergej’s hands around my throat, my scream cut short, and the bloodhunger pulling on my veins like it wanted to rip bits of me out. Little bits of blackness had crawled up under Sergej’s skin, and he had squeezed —

Someone let out a short sigh of frustration. “You’re not blind.” Female. Young. But so, so tired. “You’re just changing.”

Fear crawled up into my throat, grabbed me, and I flailed. There were sheets, and a blanket, and even more dust puffed up.

Someone grabbed my shoulders. Strong broad hands; I struck out wildly. He let out a yelp as my fist connected, good solid hit.

“Goddammit! Dru, quit it!”

I knew his voice too. It made no sense. But I sagged in his hands. All the fight went out of me, air out of a balloon.

“Graves?” I whispered.

He coughed, racking. I sniffed deeply. I couldn’t see, but I could smell him. Strawberry incense, and boy. He hadn’t had a shower in a while, and that was wrong, because he’d always been so clean before. But it was him . Even his hands were familiar, now that I knew.

“Jesus,” he whispered. And that was enough. I knew him.

I’d know him anywhere .

I reached forward, blindly. He climbed the rest of the way up on the bed and I hugged him, hard. His arms were around me, and his fingers were in my hair. He was here and he was real , and it was like he’d never been away.

I let out a dry barking sob.

“Shit.” He even sounded like himself. Same old Goth Boy. “How did they catch you? What happened?”

The words ran up against each other, trying to spill out faster than my mouth could move. “They—I—we were coming to rescue you. Leon, he had a—he found . . . Graves, my God, oh my God—”

“Charming.” The female voice spoke up again, dry and disdainful. “Calm her down so we can get something useful out of her. We don’t have much time.”

I jerked like I’d been hit. “What the fu—”

“Ease up, Dru. She’s not the enemy.” Graves paused, and I could imagine his rueful expression. “At least, not here.”

“Bullshit!” I tensed, but Graves didn’t let go of me. So I didn’t let go of him. “She shot me!”

“What?” But he didn’t sound surprised. “You shot her?”

There was a long silence.

Then she sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Anna said.

First it was a filmy haze, diffuse light coming through. Then it was like a thick layer of cheesecloth over the world; I could make out shapes as I spilled out everything that had happened. I hopscotched around a bit as I got confused, backtracked, and tried to fill him in on everything at once. Graves just listened, his arms around me, and I was so happy to finally see him again—even if I wasn’t really seeing him, so to speak—that I almost forgot Anna was in the room.