Lili St Crow - Betrayals

I couldn’t stop coughing. Or laughing, little hitching noises that spilled out of my throat between the harsh rasping. Graves just pulled me along, and the wulfen reached us in a tide of fur and bright eyes. They flowed around me, some of them clapping Graves on the shoulder, most of them sliding between human form and furry, loping kind-of-quadruped. The sudden babble, after the silence and terror of the woods, broke over us both.

“Is she okay?”

“She all right?”

“Dru?” Dibs stepped close, was pushed aside, but not before his fingers brushed my wrist, a fleeting, warm touch. I let out another choking sound.

“Is she all right?”

Behind them, the djamphir came crowding. Irving was pale, his curls springing as his aspect slid over him and retreated. They started asking if I was okay, too, but Graves just dragged me through, the wulfen moving with him and somehow everyone getting out of his way, until we got to the doors on the east side of the Schola.

The doors were blown outward, shards of wood lying over the steps, and I blinked. I didn’t do that.

But maybe something behind me had. Once more, Gran’s owl had led me out of danger. Or into it, depending.

And oh God but another memory was rising up, the owl on my window ledge the last morning I ever saw Dad alive. I started coughing in earnest.

I didn’t want to think about that. I’d rather cough my lungs out.

The hall I’d run down was a mess, splattered with smoking black sucker blood, the carpet torn up and the waist-high paneling gouged. Paler wood in the deep furrows glared at me. “J-j-j-j—” I was trying to express my dismay, but Graves just kept going at a good clip, his arm a steel bar over my shoulders. My feet dragged uselessly most of the time. He actually shouldered a few kids out of the way, a snarl running just under the surface of the babble of voices.

I gathered there had been two teams of suckers, one that had burst in near the sparring chapel and made a lot of ruckus, and a trio of “hunters” who had quietly infiltrated the west wing of the Schola, the one I’d had my first class of the evening in. I must have just escaped them.

That was an uncomfortable thought. My feet dragged along the floor. I left dirty clumps wherever I tried to step, but Graves was doing all the work of moving us along. As long as he was doing such a handy job of it, I didn’t care.

The sparring chapel was a long way away, and it seemed awful cold. My teeth were still chattering, and everything seemed very far away, even the noise as some kind of scuffle and yelling started.

We reached the deserted chapel, every footfall echoing. Graves palmed open the door on the girls’ side, and a gasp went up behind us. He just kept going, dragging me through, and the door whooshed shut. Thick, silky steam billowed, and I coughed again.

“Goddammit,” he said quietly, and hauled me across the tiled floor. The word bounced back at us through the vapor in the air. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I d-d-d—” I was about to say I didn’t know, gave up. He looked down at me, his face sallow in the steam-filled light, and his jaw set. When he looked like that, serious and determined, you could see where he would be handsome. The girls would go for him big-time, especially in any urban place where they don’t value cookie-cutter looks as much. A bolt of shameful, nameless heat went through me at the thought.

“You want me to help with your clothes?” The blanket fell with a sodden plop, and he shucked his coat, almost tearing the sleeve because he couldn’t get out of it and hold me upright at the same time very well. “Or, um, I can just stay at the door. In case.”

“H-h-h-help. M-me.” The shivers were making it hard to think or breathe. I grabbed at the hem of my sweater with clumsy-cold swollen fingers. Graves pulled it up as he braced me; I got lost in it for a second and finally struggled out of the heavy, wet wool. It landed with a splutching sound, and I wondered how much water I’d been lying in out in the woods, and why it wasn’t more frozen when ice was everywhere.

Ribbons of steam in the air were white and heavy. I didn’t want to think about it.

The entire world went glaring white for a minute, and the next thing I knew Graves was holding me up and awkwardly peeling the sleeves of the flannel shirt off my goose bump-covered arms. I struggled out of my T-shirt, swaying as he held me up. My teeth clicked like castanets, and he went for my jeans while looking grimly up over my shoulder. My bra was wet too, but thankfully not dirty.

My fingers were like wet sausages, too clumsy to do much. The jeans were loose, and he let out a low whistle when he saw the bruises ringing my shoulder, my ribs, and the fresh ones beginning on my arms and the side of my right leg. My socks were filthy, and I’d lost a sneaker somewhere. I honestly didn’t remember where. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone.

His hands were scorching hot; he dragged me to the lip of the closest tub and paused for only half a second, looking up at the ceiling like he was gathering himself. His beat-up black nylon wallet landed on the floor three feet away, and he pitched down the steps and into the huge tub with me, fully clothed, his shoes giving one forlorn underwater squeak before I lost my footing and cried out miserably. It felt like being dipped in hot lava, but he held onto me, guiding me down.

I’d never been in the baths in my underwear. The feeling was weird, like sitting in a hot tub full of Jell-O while wearing a swimsuit that definitely wasn’t made for this sort of thing.

“Dru?” For the first time that evening, he sounded scared. “Come on. Say something.”

The chattering had stopped, but I was still shivering. Somehow my arm had ended up around his waist, and he settled onto the seat right next to me. The surface of the bath crackled against his sweater. I gasped again, my skin pain-peeled like after a sunburn, and tipped my head back.

Bubbling not-water turned gray, dirt swirling through it before it was whisked away by the current.

A leaf fell out of my hair, hit the turbulent surface, and was pulled under. The not-water was neck-deep on me, and only chest-deep on him.

“Dru?” Now he sounded close to panic, and I realized I was making another low, keening sound.

My throat was full of something too hot and nasty to be tears. “Say something, dammit.”

I swallowed the weird moaning sound I was making. My mouth opened. “S-s-s-something.” I paused. “D-d-dam-mmit.”

He snorted. The laugh caught him sideways, his usual bitter, sarcastic little bark, and I was too grateful to still be alive to really think about the fact of being half-naked in a tub with a boy.

Besides, it was Graves. And his arm was still around me. I put my head down on his shoulder and forgot about everything other than the stinging heat pushing its pins and needles into my flesh.

I hadn’t been this close to him since we’d both squeezed onto a helicopter lifting out of a Midwest snowstorm. I’d been crying then, too.

Now I wondered about all sorts of things. Especially about him having to fight the first night he got here. Getting Dibs alone and having him explain a few things seemed like a good idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. My head was so heavy, and Graves’ shoulder was bony but comfortable.

“Talk to me,” he pressed. “Don’t pass out on me, Dru. Hey, I got a question.”

“Huh.” An affirmative noise was about all I could come up with. So do I. Why didn’t Ash kill me? And how in God’s name do I start telling you about all this when it doesn’t make any sense even to me?

“What’s Dru short for?”