Lili St Crow - Betrayals

I watched, hypnotized, as blonde streaks slid through my curls. They stretched out, longer and looser, into sleek waves instead of frizz. The golden streaks retreated, darkness eating them up, and my hair was my hair again.

Holy shit. Was that—

“Get back!” Graves yelled, dragging me back further as the wulfen closed over Shanks’ still figure, lying on the floor against the bottom of a couch, the blood red and startling. Several of them had turned my direction and were advancing, fur crawling over their skin, shoulders and legs hulking up. “I’m fucking warning you!” It was an actual roar, his entire body vibrating. It shook through me, his voice, and I’d never heard him sound that way before.

That voice had a snap to it. A bite. I could almost see it shoving the clustered wulfen back.

Dominant, I realized. That’s a loup-garou “s command voice.

They halted, all snarling. Even pale, gentle Dibs, who rarely spoke above a scared whisper. Their faces wrinkled up, teeth growing, fur sliding and rippling over their boy-forms.

Graves pulled me back another few steps. “Stay where you are! ” he snapped, still in that shake-the-world voice. Everything actually rattled, including the inside of my head.

Then I realized I was making a weird sound too, a high keening noise with strange stops when my windpipe closed up and I had to breathe. The smell hit me, copper, hot, and good. It smashed into a place in the very back of my throat I never knew existed before, right next to the spot normal people don’t have. The one that tells me when something weird is going to happen. That red coppery smell reached all the way down and ripped the world apart. I pitched forward again, fighting against Graves’ hands on me, but he’d somehow gotten his arm around my waist and was hauling me away.

I lunged again, almost dragging him with me, and I realized what I wanted to do.

I wanted to knock all of them out of my way and put my face in the wounded werwulf’s throat.

I wanted to drink.

A roaring thirst crawled out from the middle of my throat, spread through my entire body. I was dry, cracking and burning, and the only thing that could quench the fire was the sweet red fluid I could smell all over. It tapped inside my head, whispered and cajoled, and my teeth turned achingly sensitive. I could almost feel them lengthening, sharp tickling crawling over the enamel. My hair tingled, and every inch of me was awake again. The persistent exhaustion of the last few sleepless days vanished, replaced with high, crackling energy.

Graves’ other arm came around my throat and he choked up as I writhed, pitching back and forth.

My teeth snapped together, making little clicking sounds. The wulfen snarled back, but Graves made that weird, world-shaking sound again and they stayed away.

I wish I could say I was relieved when Shanks rose up out of the middle of a knot of werwulfen, his face a mask of blood and his eyes blazing. But I wasn’t. I wanted to lick the stuff off his face and put my teeth in his throat, and I wanted to drink.

He snarled, Graves rumbled back. And I don’t know what would have happened if a flood of djamphir hadn’t burst through the door and surrounded me. They held me down as I started screaming, shouldering Graves aside. But he stayed, holding onto my hand even when my fingers bit down and bones in both our hands crackled.

It was the first time the bloodhunger had struck me. And now, oh God, I understood so much more.

Graves didn’t leave me, even though everyone was shouting. He stayed right there, making a noise over and over again, and I finally realized he was saying my name. The hunger crested, and when it finally retreated, I started crying. Graves was the one who pulled me close and hugged me. I was sobbing and shaking like a little kid, and some of them started telling him to leave, but he just shook them off and kept holding me.

I clung to him too. They couldn’t pull me away.

Graves set the stack of books down on the wooden table with a thump. My teeth still ached. So did my entire body. But all in all, it was apparently no big deal at the Schola. Shanks was in the baths, and Graves was skipping whatever he was supposed to be doing, and I’d been told to “just go somewhere else and calm down.”

Yeah. Calm down. Two of the most useless words in the English language. But Dylan told me the danger was past, and I wasn’t going to go and bite someone. He said it was normal, because I was so close to blooming. And that I’d get used to it.

I wasn’t so sure.

He also said they hadn’t had a death “from student interactions” at this Schola for about sixty-two years, which wasn’t as comforting as it could have been either.

The library was full of the smell of dust and old paper. Barred windows let in sharp swords of golden evening light between heavy antique wooden bookshelves, the sun had finally come out, too late in the day to do any good. Nobody was behind the circulation desk.

It was a good thing. I could still smell the blood. My teeth were still sensitive, as if I’d just gone to the dentist’s. Every nerve in me was raw, and I sat with my arms cupping my elbows, hugging myself.

“It’s fucking crazy. You’re crazy,” Graves said flatly. “What are you going to do, tie him up in your room? They’ll kill him.”

At least he was talking about something other than me growing fangs and wanting to go all nosferat on someone. He just plain refused to discuss that, and I was grateful.

Well, as grateful as I could be with my brain refusing to work right and my hair changing color and Jesus God, what the hell was happening to me?

Who was I anymore? When I looked in the mirror, would I still see myself?

It was like vanishing into a funhouse to ask yourself that question, I mean, seriously ask yourself, in a funhouse where the horror is real and anything but fun, and see what happens. Asking yourself that sort of question makes everything inside you that’s not nailed down do a funny jigging dance.

I had precious little that was nailed down anymore.

If I focused on something else, I could probably get through this. “Something just doesn’t add up.”

At least I wasn’t lisping around fangs. My teeth were normal, but I kept running my tongue over them, testing. They felt normal. Except for the aching in them, and the thirsty place at the back of my throat. “He was this close to me, Graves. And he didn’t do anything but sniff me. I—”

“Shut up.” He dropped down into a chair and glared at me. “What the hell is going on with you, Dru?”

You mean, other than having my dad murdered, finding out I’m part sucker, getting chased and beaten up, and turning into a blood-craving fiend prepared to really, really hurt someone? Jeez, I’m pink. I’m perfect. I’m the picture of health. I opened my mouth to say something smart or at least less stupid than usual, but closed it again because, well, what could I say?

It was hopeless. I looked down at the mellow glow of the wood’s surface. Heat rose behind my eyes, the unsteady ball of rage caged in my ribs kicked up another notch, and I swallowed hard. Kept my temper down through sheer force of will.

Now that I knew what the bloodhunger did, would I ever be able to look at myself in the mirror?

Or at any of the djamphir without flinching?

“Come on.” He was still glaring at me, I could feel it. “Say something, Dru. Don’t just sit there and look like I’ve stabbed you. Christ.”

The sunshine faded as dusk took hold. I slumped back in the chair, hugging myself. The whirling inside me wouldn’t stop. I breathed in, breathed out, trying to make it slow down a little. If I freaked out now, what the hell else might happen?