Lili St Crow - Defiance

The aspect blazed free, like all it needed was the bloodhunger to wake it up. I felt it move through me like a storm front on the plains, one you can maybe outrun if you keep the accelerator mashed down and the radio turned up.

And Sergej backed up . Just a half step, but still. He cocked his head, those curls falling over his forehead and that proud nose wrinkling, and I wondered for a brief second how the hell Christophe’s mother—she had to have been human—had ever not noticed how utterly alien he looked. Especially when he snarled, his lip lifting and the fangs lengthening, upper ones touching his chin and the hiss filling his chest.

The door creaked. I pulled Graves back, my fingers slipping in blood and sweat and whatever else was coating him. He leaned forward, tense, but didn’t shake me off. The thin tendrils of blood running down his back looked black in the uncertain light, and the lampshade swung as I dragged it. I couldn’t see where the cord ended, and if I yanked it out of the wall, we’d be in here.

With Sergej.

In the dark .

The door swung inward, its hinges giving a squeal that belonged in a bad B movie. Still, it was a relief, because outside in the hall was bright electric light. It speared my eyes like a fork digging through jelly, but I saw a shadow. The touch rang like a gong inside my head, and I knew who it was.

“You agreed,” Leon said quietly. Funny, he sounded just the same. Sarcastic, politely rude, and utterly normal.

“Leon?” His name slipped out. I couldn’t help myself. “Leon, please—”

Sergej’s head half-turned, and he stared at the door. Graves was still growling, and the unhealthy fever in him scorched my fingers. I blinked furiously, swallowing hard against the bloodhunger, its rasp like a cat’s tongue at the back of my throat. The hunger squirmed inside my veins, just looking for a way out, I shoved it down and clapped a lid on it.

Or at least, tried to clap enough of a lid on it that the thin trickles down Graves’s back didn’t smell so goddamn good .

Leon stared from the door. Now that my eyes were adjusted, I could see that even if he sounded okay, he looked like hell. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his fine lank hair was mussed, and he was in the same clothes he’d been wearing however long ago, when he’d waltzed into my room and started convincing me to leap into this trap. One sleeve of his T-shirt was torn, and dark stuff was splashed on his jeans.

It looked like dried blood.

“Our agreement,” Sergej said, enunciating with precision but lisping a little around his fangs, “was provisional.”

Leon smiled. It was a rather gentle smile, and it bared his own fangs. He wasn’t looking at Sergej. He was staring directly at me, his eyes grieving holes. They darkened even through the aspect on him, and Graves’s growl dropped another octave as his shoulders hunched in front of me. More blood slid down his back, and I could tell from the shaking in him that he was working up to something big.

“I delivered, didn’t I?” Leon’s hands curled into fists.

“Any ephialtes could have done the same,” Sergej hissed.

“There’s just one problem.” Leon stared at me, like he was willing me to figure something out. My fingers sank into Graves’s skin, the prickle along my fingertips and the fierce pain in my wrists telling me the claws were sliding free. I didn’t want to make him bleed more, but I was powerless to stop it.

“Problem?” Sergej laughed. It was a horrible sound, wrongly musical, lisping distilled hatred. His tar-black eyes shone. “I see no problem, Leontus Iulius. I see everything as it should be, the disobedient children brought to heel.”

Keep him talking, for Christ’s sake keep him talking! I ran through everything I could possibly do in this situation, came up with nothing that didn’t involve my own gruesome demise. Tried again.

“Except Reynard.” Leon’s smile widened a trifle.

Sergej’s face congested. That’s the only word for it, the twisting up and the color rising from his neck, an ugly flush. I guess vampires can blush; you’d think the way the hemoglobin strips out of their blood would kind of preclude that. Maybe that’s why he looked purplish instead of red.

It was damn ugly.

The touch tingled inside my skull. A fresh wave of bloodhunger pulled on all my veins, and my heart gave a funny leap before starting to pound. Sergej’s purple deepened, if that was possible, and he began to choke.

“Oh, Eleanor,” Leon whispered. “Forgive me.”

And he leapt straight for me.

Things got confused.

I remember jerking on the lamp, metal shrieking as my fingers bit down hard enough to bend it. The plug left the wall with a pop, sparks showered, and the lightbulb shattered as the sudden motion ripped the shade free. A photographer’s flash, then leaping shadows. The lamp actually whistled as I spun it, a sound like a train in the distance, soupy through the clear plastic goop hardening over the world.

The heavy, flared base hit Leon squarely in the face with a sickening crunch . I wanted to yell I’m sorry! And maybe I did. Someone was screaming, Graves let out a roar, and Leon pitched across the room in slo-mo, curling up like a bug, his lank hair flying and flashing gold for a moment. That dart of golden light hit the wall, a single clean spot of color in all this murk, and I shoved Graves aside through the hardening air. My fingers slipped against the gunk on his skin, my nails slicing hair-fine cuts across his skin, just like hatpin scratches on Gran’s kitchen table. The lamp base flew off, describing a high perfect are, and Leon’s body hit Sergej right in the middle of his leap with a sound like a good clean break on a pool table. The sucker’s face was still plummy and distorted, a mask of grinning hate, and I was already moving.

Faster, faster, but with precision! Christophe yelled inside my head. My grasp firmed on the lamp’s post, the electric cord whipping off with a small cracking sound, also drawn out and weird since I was going so fast.

Graves folded down, tucking and rolling, and Anna was suddenly there , bouncing up off the bed like a jack-in-the-box. She alone seemed to be moving at normal speed; she was heading for Sergej—and right into my line of attack.

My left hand snapped forward, the hex building and tearing free of my fingers in a blue flash that lit the entire room like a camera, freezing time. It hit her square in the solar plexus, stopping her dead, and the woof! sound she made as she tumbled down to the floor in a heap would have been funny if I hadn’t been so goddamn busy.

The ground spun away from under me and the lamp flicked down, hitting the floor and striking up more blue sparks as the force of the hex snapped back along my fingers. The bar spun up after giving me additional lift, I could feel the metal flex as I pole-vaulted, and the instinct that had taken me over was clear and cold as the look in Christophe’s eyes sometimes.

I could also swear to God I heard Dad’s voice, not in my head but from my left, as if he was crouched there watching. You only get one shot at this, Dru-girl. Make it count.

The top of the lamp had snapped off, and now I had a slim iron spear. The lamp base hit the far wall, crunching and crinkling as the force of its impact buckled it, and I had to get the tip up in time, straining against physics and the regular time holding everything else in the room in its clear-glass net.

Another crashing impact, and my feet hit the floor. The aspect blazed hotly all over me, ruffling my hair, and the hunger yanked every vein and artery I owned like it was going to pull them all out in a tangled spaghetti mass. I had a brief, mad, Technicolor vision of Benjamin crouched over his plate of noodles and sauce, and the world spun around me as if it was oiled.