Lili St Crow - Defiance

I grabbed the harness. Buckled it on, my fingers suddenly sausage-clumsy, got the bag on over it. Grabbed his coat while I rolled my shoulders, trying to make everything fit right. It was heavy—ammo in the pockets, but still no gun. “Yeah. It looks better on me, though.”

“You wore my coat?” Was he blushing under the bruises? Hard to tell. I made it back to them and grabbed Anna’s arm, slinging it over my shoulder. “Oh.”

“Put it on.” You might need it; it’s cold outside. I didn’t say it, though. Who knew if we would get outside? I didn’t even know where we were, and the vampires above sounded like a kicked anthill. “Careful, there’s ammo in there.”

“You think of everything, Miss Anderson.” His eyes gleamed green for a brief moment.

It wasn’t so hard to drag Anna now. I pulled her along, and her feet were actually trying help, pushing weakly at the concrete floor. Graves caught up after a couple steps, the coat now flapping around his knees. He ducked under her other arm, and we made it almost to the end of the aisle before Anna hissed at us to stop.

“Door,” she slurred, and pointed her bruised chin at the last right-hand door before the stairs. “Open . . . that . . . one.”

No fucking way. Who knows what’s behind it? But the thing that decided me was shadows falling across the top of the stairs. “Is it locked?” I whispered.

Graves pointed. He wasn’t looking too good, the bruises glaring and the rest of him yellowy and cottage-cheesy. His mouth hung open a little, and he wasn’t so handsome right now. Matter of fact, he looked half dead himself.

I followed the line of his pointing. There was a key hanging on a hook, a big iron number. “Well, shit,” I muttered, and tried to take more of Anna’s weight, dragging her over to it. If Graves’s legs gave out, I decided right then and there, I was carrying him . I wasn’t willing to leave Anna behind if the two of us were ambulatory, but if it was a choice between them, it was really no choice.

The key went in the door. The footsteps spilled closer, I glanced at the stairs. More flitting shadows. If this didn’t hold an exit we were pretty fucked. I had malaika , sure, and I could hold off a few suckers—but if Sergej managed to get that lamp out of his chest, we were looking at bad times down here in the basement.

The door swung in. It was dark inside, and for a moment I thought she’d got us to a room with some sort of exit. Then something moved, and I twitched.

It was a dirty, dark-eyed, very pretty djamphir boy in the ruins of a red shirt. More movement. Four of them, all in those red shirts, stared at us like refugees from a weird-ass convention or something.

I stared back, my right hand halfway to my malaika hilt.

Red shirts. It was Anna’s Guard. I swallowed dryly.

“Milady!” the one near the door whisper-screamed. He looked like hell . Graves was pretty beat up, but this kid looked savaged.

Well, this kind of alters the situation a bit, dontcha think?

Anna lifted her curly head. “Blaine.” She coughed. “Help . . . us. All of . . . you. Help her , too. I. Command.” Her head dropped, curly hair sliding forward, as if the words had taken all the starch out of her.

They scrambled to their feet, and I tensed. Which of them had been around when I’d cleaned Anna’s clock at the Prima? Which ones had watched me, waiting for me to be alone? I remembered two of them, holding guns on Christophe after Ash had saved me from the suckers yet again .

I used to think that if someone was in the Order, they wouldn’t sell anyone out to the suckers, because they know what suckers are like. I guess I was wrong. So my right hand kept going up to my malaika hilt, and I was already calculating how to get Graves out of here and—

“Yes, ma’am.” Blaine studied me, top to bottom. Getting even closer, the pitter-patter of little sucker feet. Once they hit the stairs . . .

I glanced over Anna’s hanging head. Graves’s steady green gaze met mine, and the Look that passed between us was worth a couple hours of conversation at least. The immediate communication felt so good I could’ve broken down and cried right there. Instead, I blinked back the stinging and watering and glanced back at the Blaine kid. The other redshirts—Christ, hadn’t any of them watched Star Trek and figured out this was a bad thing to wear?—were suddenly ranked behind him, and the naked hope on their young-old, bruised, and bloody faces was almost too much to take.

No wonder they did anything for her.

“I’ve got standard-issue ammo,” I found myself saying. “No gun. But I’ve got malaika , too. We’re trapped down here; Sergej’s got an iron post through his chest but I don’t know if it’ll keep him down.”

“Mon Dieu.” Blaine stepped forward. “Hans, Charles, take Milady. Kip, the gun rack at the end of the hall?”

The sharp-featured one with curly dark hair nodded and brushed past us out into the hall. The two who looked like twins stepped forward to take Anna, and as soon as we handed her over I grabbed Graves’s arm and stepped back.

Blaine actually looked pained. “Milady . . .” He glanced nervously at Anna, who hung bonelessly, as if she’d used up the last bit of her pep. “We’re not the enemy. You’ve rescued Milady; we owe you thanks.”

“Yeah, well.” I coughed a little, bloodhunger rasping. “Let’s just get out of here. Do you have a plan?”

“We don’t need one. Not with you and some ammo.” A fey smile brightened his battered face. “But as a matter of fact, I do have a plan.”

It was a good thing. Because the first wave of vampires hit the stairs then, a cascade of tip-tapping feet and dark-spangled hatred. Graves whirled and leapt out into the hall, I followed, and the malaika slid free of their sheaths with whispering little sounds. Anna’s Guard moved out behind me, and I was hoping Sergej wouldn’t jump on our backs when Blaine was suddenly next to me. He let out a battle cry that scorched my ears, and we were fighting for our lives.

Dead vampire bodieslittered the stairs, twitching and crackling as the curly-headed one ripped the throat out of each. I gasped, leaning against Graves, my mother’s malaika held carefully away—they were bastard sharp and dripping with thin caustic black ichor. One of the twins held Anna up, murmuring to her in what sounded like French, his lips next to her temple. The others were equidistant around us, a guard pattern. Blaine leaned against the wall, his ribs heaving and vampire blood all over him. His fingers flicked as he reloaded his 9mm, chambered a round. “We need to move,” he husked. “There will be more soon.”

“At least we made it up the stairs,” the twin who wasn’t holding Anna said, grimly but gingerly scrubbing at his face with one hand. “Thank God for the ammo. Milady.” And he nodded at me, like I’d done something unreasonably, surprisingly spectacular.

The aspect was still boiling-hot all over me, but I couldn’t get enough air in. “Thanks,” I managed, sarcastically enough to make Graves move a little, restless.

“How the hell do we get out of here?” He had vampire blood all over him too, and it smoked on his torn coat, the heavy organic material reacting to its acidic spill. He was looking even worse, dead white under the bruises. But his eyes were bright, the shadows gone, and he was hanging on.

“This way, as soon as Milady can move.” Blaine glanced at Anna. “Charles?”

“She’s fading.” The one murmuring at Anna stopped long enough to share a Significant Look with Blaine. The curly-headed one hopped up the stairs. I heard other whisperings in the warehouse, but none from behind us. That was the good news.