Lili St Crow - Defiance

Responsibility settled into me like a weight of cold iron. “Now we sleep. Then, in the morning, we find a car we can use for long distance.”

He absorbed this. “We’re not going back to . . . to them? The Order?”

“Why, you want to get handed over to you-know-who again? While they lie and keep me from coming after you?” I sighed when Ash looked at me, his dark eyes round like I’d just shouted.

I hadn’t. I just sounded angry. Bitter. Old.

Older than I was, at least. I wished for some water to wash the taste out of my mouth. It was like ashes and old blood, that taste, and it wasn’t nice. All the cheeseburger and milk shake in the world couldn’t cover it up.

Graves nodded. His face pulled against itself, lines appearing like he was aging right in front of me. I’ve seen that look before, when Dad drove through the bad parts of town and I made sure the doors were locked. It was on the faces of kids who huddled in the cold, staring at passing cars and hoping they wouldn’t stop—or hoping they would, because the kids were hungry.

So, so hungry.

“So, um. You . . .” Graves looked down at the pile of fries in front of him. “You came there. Alone. For me.”

Yeah, and you’re disgusted by the fact that I’m half sucker. So am I. “Let’s not talk about it.” I stuffed another wad of cheeseburger into my mouth. Chewed sloppily.

Ash looked at Graves, back at me, like he was following a tennis match. Half a fry hung out of his mouth, and he looked so sad and afraid it was almost enough to make me start yelling.

I dropped the remains of my burger and stood up, my chair scraping back from the cheap table. “I’m gonna get cleaned up.”

There was only one bed in here, but it was queen-size. The bathroom was nothing to write home about; I could’ve cleaned it better with two rags and a bottle of spit. But it was cheap, it was safe for tonight, and we needed rest. I needed sleep. I needed just a few hours to figure out what the hell we were going to do.

I hadn’t thought much beyond rescuing Graves. If Sergej survived he’d have an even bigger hard-on for me, the Order was going to be looking for me, and every sucker who caught wind of us would try to tear us to itty-bitty pieces.

At least the shower was on the hot side of lukewarm. I peeled my filthy clothes off and decided not to worry about not having clean ones for a few minutes. Stepped under the water, trying not to ew w w too loudly when my feet slipped a little on greasy, not-cleaned-so-well plastic.

Dried blood and dirt sluiced off. My hips felt funny, and I was soaping myself up when I realized something had changed. I arched my back a little under the spray, and I wasn’t just imagining things.

The chesticles were bigger.

I lifted my hand. The claws slid neatly from my fingertips, amber-colored and pretty dainty. Svetocha got claws when they . . .

I scrambled out of the still-running shower. Swiped condensation off the mirror. Looked at myself, hanging on to the edge of the counter while I dripped all over the yellowing linoleum. My jaw actually dropped, and I actually saw my canines lengthen a little, sharpening.

Holy . . . I couldn’t feel anything but weary amazement.

My face was slightly different, heart-shaped now, and with my hair wet and slicked back it was easier to see how I looked like Mom. My cheekbones stood out like a supermodel’s, my collarbones looked fragile, and the whole architecture of my face had changed by just a few millimeters.

It was official. I’d bloomed.

And now we were on the run.

I stood there, holding on to the slightly greasy counter while the shower ran, and watched the tears roll down my new, sculpted cheeks.