Defiance

by Lili St. Crow

  We weren’t just sparring now. No, it had ended up like usual—with me honestly trying to hurt him. The anger was back, boiling through my bloodstream, spurred by the smell of copper.

  The bloodhunger reliably pushed me into the aspect. It also frightened me. I could really hurt someone when I did this. I’d almost killed Shanks back at the reform Schola, because I’d totally lost it.

  But under the glow of the aspect, Christophe just looked intent and thoughtful.

  And pleased.

  “Hit me!” he yelled. “Hit me, Dru!”

  I damn well did my best. Drove him back almost onto the bleachers; they rattled as he leapt, his back foot kissing the wooden surface and propelling him outward. He flew over me, but I was tracking. I knew where he was going to land; I whirled and lunged. Hit him twice on his way down, his body twisting to try and avoid the blows. Good solid hits, enough to crack a rib.

  He landed and spun, foot flicking out. I met it squarely with my left-hand stick, the right curving down to smack him on the thigh. I could’ve gone for the nut shot, but it would have left me no recovery path. I might not have needed it with him curled up on the ground, but that was one of Christophe’s sayings—always leave yourself a recovery.

  Dad would have approved. But I was too busy to feel the way my heart wrung itself down at the thought. That was another reason why I didn’t try to get out of sparring with Christophe, even if I was already tired from running over half the city during the afternoon when I should’ve been sleeping.

  Because when I got going this fast, and I tried to hurt him, it made me forget—for just a few minutes a night—everything nasty and painful. Everything bad.

  The aspect turned to a cloak of warm prickles instead of oil, my teeth aching and sensitive, and he spun in midair. It was one of the things human bodies aren’t supposed to do, but he’s djamphir. Physics and gravity don’t mean the same things to him that they do to—

  I didn’t see how he hit me. One second I was kicking his ass while he was in midair, the next dynamite went off inside my head. I came to with my ears ringing and Christophe’s arms around me as he knelt on the mats.

  “You’re getting better. No, don’t try to get up.” He pushed a curl out of my face. “Just lie still for a moment.”

  I don’t know why he said that; I wasn’t trying to go anywhere. I blinked, and the world rolled back up to speed. I tasted hot copper, and hoped I wasn’t bleeding anywhere.

  But wouldn’t you know, I guess it just wasn’t my night. A thin trickle of something warm slid down from my nose. Christophe swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and the aspect slipped through his hair like dark fingers.

  I stared at him, my heart beating thinly. Rapid fluttering beats, like a hummingbird’s wings. His fever-hot fingers brushed my upper lip, wiping at the blood.

  My blood. Full of happy stuff that drove boy djamphir crazy.

  My arms and legs wouldn’t obey me. We were alone in here, and if he went nuts over the happy stuff in my blood there was no way I could—

  I shouldn’t have worried.

  He lifted his fingers to his mouth. Closed his eyes and licked them clean. I struggled to move, and his other hand—he had one arm underneath me, holding me up—bit down, fingers like slim iron bands.

  I should have been terrified. But instead I only felt a sleepy sort of alarm. As if I was in a dream that wasn’t too terribly important.

  Christophe leaned down. His eyes were still tightly shut, and his lips met my cheek. They grazed the surface of my skin, lightly, and I felt the sharp points of his fangs, scraping just a little.

  Then he kissed me.

  Each time our mouths met, it was the same. Lightning crackled through me, and I forgot everything else. The only thing I remembered was him, his arms around me and the taste of him like night in the desert, spice and sand and fading heat. One of his fangs brushed mine and a jolt of pleasure slammed down my throat. The bloodhunger bloomed, and my fingers were in his hair, twisting and tangling. My arms tensed, and for a moment I quivered on the edge of action—wrenching his head back, kissing down the line of his jaw, and burying those dainty little fangs in his throat. My entire body curved, strength welling back up, and I struggled against the part of me that wanted to rip out a chunk of his flesh and drink.

  Christophe’s mouth slid free of mine, regretfully. He pulled away, despite my hands trying to keep him. I realized I was making a small sound in the back of my throat, a little mewling. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Shhh, it’s all right. It’s just the hunger. It’s not you. You have control, kochana.”

  It was nice of him to say it. Because really, I didn’t think I did. My lips burned, my teeth tingled, and I shook like I was cold. But at least I didn’t try to jerk forward and bite him.

  I wanted to. I was stronger than the urge, though. By only a few millimeters, but it was something.

  My fingers cramped. We were both bleeding, and the smell of it stroked that rough spot on my palate, right next to the little place that warned me of danger. I swallowed, but that just made it worse. Spit wasn’t what that place wanted. It wanted what was beating through his veins. It was even worse because I knew how good it tasted.

  I knew what it was like to drink his blood, desert spice and wind through car windows, thunderstorm looming and the accelerator pressed to the floor.

  He tasted like freedom.

  Christophe stroked my hair, not caring that I was pulling on his. I tried to make my fingers let go, but they wouldn’t. It had to be uncomfortable, but he looked strangely peaceful. His mouth had relaxed, and his eyes were still closed. “It’s all right,” he repeated quietly. “Shhh, skowroneczko moja, moja ksiezniczko, little bird. All’s well. Hush.”

  I rushed back into myself fully with a thud, shoving the blood-hunger back in its box. Dusk light was fading in the high windows; I felt it retreating like a huge staticky sound draining out of the sky. My breath came in ragged gasps, and I was sweating. My tank top was all twisted around under my hoodie; I had no idea how that had happened. Plus the chain that held the locket was all twisted up too, digging into my skin.

  “Very good.” He sounded pleased. Kept stroking my hair. “Very good. You’ve acquired more control. Now, how do you suppose I defeated you?”

  My mouth opened. Nothing but a dry husk of a cough came out. I coughed again, trying to get the taste out of my throat. It didn’t work. Only time and getting calmed down would do it.

  He waited while I cleared my throat several times. My fingers relaxed. It was work to make them slip out of his hair, especially when they kept wanting to grab and pull his pulse closer to my fangs.

  Running with wulfen was one thing. Getting fangs was another. I struggled with myself. Steady, Dru. Steady.

  “I had you,” I finally managed to get out. “Then you cheated.”

  I felt like a hoser even saying it. Cheating is the name of the game when it comes to winning fights, right? You don’t fight fair. You fight to win.

  It shouldn’t have been possible for him to look more pleased, but he managed it. “Well, I had to. You forced me into it.”

  That was high praise, from him. “Great.” I didn’t feel like celebrating. I felt like every bit of me had been pulled apart and put back together wrong. I was exhausted. Jesus, I couldn’t wait to finally bloom if it would stop this sort of thing from happening. My mouth kept merrily going, though, independently of my brain. “Are you going to do that every time the hunger hits?”

  Then I could have slapped my own forehead. It sounded like a cheap come-on line.

  “Would you like me to?” Another one of those happy smiles, and his eyes snapped open. The blue took me by surprise, as always, and my fingers slid completely free of his hair. We were both probably a mess, but the aspect was already shrinking his bruises and turning off his bleeding. My nose had stopped bleeding, too, thank God. But I’d still need some time in the baths to get rid of the worst of it.

 
; Yep. Couldn’t wait to bloom. “Nah, that’s okay.” I felt like I could move now. Various muscles ached and twinged, and Christophe had to steady me. “Ouch. I need some aspirin.”

  He nodded. “And some food, probably. You were in the aspect for a bit, there. It was hard to keep ahead of you. Svetocha are generally very fast.”

  I’m fast enough to play rabbit, too. Still, his praise almost made me blush. “How many have you trained?” I tried not to look too interested. Sometimes he wouldn’t talk about his personal past.

  He had a funny idea of what “personal past” meant, too. Of course, he was older. Like, way way older.

  It was kind of weird. Check that, it was really weird. Sometimes, when I remembered just how old he was, it was downright unsettling. I mean, he’d known my mother. And my hormones were jumping up and down all the time. And he was just so . . . so . . .

  I couldn’t come up with a word for what he was.

  “Three. Including you, my dear.” He set me on my feet and let go of me. I tried not to feel bereft. At least when he was that close, I felt like nothing nasty could get to me.

  Things like that will do something funny to a girl’s head, I guess. “My mother. Me. And . . . Anna?” It wasn’t so much of a shot in the dark. They had to have spent some time together, right?

  Them being an item for a while, however long ago.

  “Training didn’t interest her much.” He shrugged. Even with dried blood and bruising all over his face, he looked perfectly finished. It was as if the blood was just decorating him. “But I tried as best I could. Nothing else a Kuoroi can do, when faced with a svetocha.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? I spotted my sticks, flung halfway across the gym. One of them was a splinter-chewed mess. “Jeez. I’ll need new ones, again. Good thing we weren’t practicing with real malaika.”

  “Real malaika are just for forms practice for now. In six months or so, you’ll be ready to spar with them.” He was already striding away in search of his own weapons.

  “Six months?” My voice bounced off the bleachers, and the fluorescents hanging overhead flickered unevenly. But it’s been weeks already, and I have to . . . I stopped dead, looking up at the lights, brushing a curl out of my face. Even one of Nathalie’s braids would lose a few strands when faced with a fight with Christophe.

  He didn’t even look back. “Until you’re ready? Yes. Perhaps longer.”

  “You said I was coming along! You said I was fast! I killed that thing last night—”

  “You are fast. But before I trust you in a sparring match with edged weapons, you need to be fast and precise. Not to mention completely in control of where your blades are at all times. One lucky shot against a young nosferat—with malaika your wulfen friend stole, by the way—is not enough to convince me.” He scooped up one stick, half-turned on one booted heel, and set off for the other. “Anna never wanted to walk when she could be carried, your mother wanted to walk when she could fly, and you want to run before you can walk. It is”—another quick movement, and he had the other stick—“maddening, sometimes. First guard, Dru.”

  I thought we were done. But I grabbed both sticks and straightened, whirling, just in time to catch his strike.

  Dirty fighting, again. He came at me like he wanted to hurt me, and I returned the favor. Maybe he had to make up for kissing me or something.

  That was the thing about Christophe. I never knew which side of him I was facing in the practice room.

  I managed to keep him off me for a full two minutes before I ended up sprawled on the mats. One of his sticks was right under my chin, touching delicately. If it was a malaika, it would cut.

  “Half a year,” Christophe said softly. “At least. More if you insist on playing slip-the-leash during the day; you need your rest if you expect to function well during accelerated training.” His voice rose, but only slightly. “It takes years to learn this thoroughly, Dru, and I will not cut corners with you, even if I allow you a certain limited part in seek-destroy missions to soothe your Lefevre pride. Don’t argue with me. Not about this.”

  So he knew. Of course he knew; he’d walked right into the pizza parlor. He just hadn’t caught us outright. Still, with the smell of wulfen—and me—all over the building, he hadn’t had to.

  And Lefevre. My mother’s name. As if my father hadn’t existed at all. Of course, he’d just been human, right?

  Jesus.

  You’re an asshole sometimes, Christophe. I knocked the stick away and bounced up to my feet. It wouldn’t do any good to yell at him; he’d just wipe the floor with me some more. Instead, I stalked for the exit, dropping both of my weapons with hollow sounds.

  He said nothing else. He didn’t need to. My teeth tingled, my mouth burned, my eyes were full of tears. None of them escaped, they just made my vision waver.

  And I still couldn’t get the taste of him off my lips.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The baths in Schola locker rooms are weird, to say the least. The sunken tubs are full of a bubbling whitish fluid that clings to your skin and hardens like paraffin wax when the air hits it. It speeds up the healing processes like crazy, and when you wash it out in the shower, it just slides right down the drain like jelly, taking a lot of the hurt and inflammation with it. It even helps with the sandy-headed feeling you get after not enough sleep, running around with wulfen, and getting your ass handed to you by a supercilious djamphir.

  When it gets in your hair, though, it takes a while to rinse out even in the showers, where the water pressure can strip your skin off.

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I outright love the Schola showers. I’ve cleaned up in too many cheap-ass hotel rooms where you barely get a dribble of tepid rust-stained fluid that might’ve been water once.

  Another good thing here: the hot water never runs out. I was in there long enough to turn into a prune before I got the waxy stuff out of my curls. When I shut the water off, the whole locker room echoed. On the boys’ side of any Schola gym, there’s always plenty of tubs and showers, and I’d guess it’s probably always full of noise after classes.

  What, you thought I’d go in there to check it out? No thanks.

  On the girls’ side, there’s never more than three tubs and four showers. Everything is scrubbed and bleached, and the steam in the air, rising from the roiling surfaces of the tubs, moves in shifting veils. It’s as lonely as a tumbleweed town.

  I grabbed a fresh white towel and wrapped it around my hair, scrubbed at the rest of me with another one. The bruises were green-yellow now, and the road rash from last night looked weeks old instead of poppin’ fresh. At least I hadn’t hurt myself on the daylight run.

  I was standing there, looking at the scrape on my leg and trying to determine how much it had really shrunk, when I heard a soft sliding sound.

  Gooseflesh roughened my skin. I wrapped the second towel around me tightly and glanced at the tubs.

  There was nobody in here with me. Just the three tubs, boiling away with their peculiar burbling chuckles. The showerhead, dripping. All the mirrors were steam-fogged, and I couldn’t even see the wall in front of the door. Benjamin would be on guard out in the hall, and nobody would get past him. Christophe would be along any second, cleaned up and imperturbable, to collect me for Aspect Mastery tutoring.

  Of all my classes, I like that one least. I’d rather be sparring. And that says something.

  I shivered. My breath turned into a white cloud, and electric nervousness ran along my skin, thrumming in my bones.

  I know that feeling like an old friend. It’s the kind of cold that hits right before seriously-weird happens along to say howdy.

  The steam-fog began to flush pink along its cloud-edges. My mother’s locket, lying against my breastbone, cooled rapidly as well. Had it done this when Dad wore it? He wasn’t around to ask, and boy, was that the wrong thing to think.

  Because if I did, I thought of the tapping sound a zombie’s fingers made against cold glass, and my ent
ire body wanted to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere dark and safe.

  Or at least dark. I was getting to think nowhere was really, truly safe.

  The pink edges to the fog did not look friendly. They looked like raw meat. I tasted a ghost of danger candy, just faint enough to make me wonder if I was imagining things.

  But I know better. It don’t matter if you’re imagining or if something is really going on. Move first, worry about looking like an idiot later.

  Dad never said that. But I knew he would approve.

  I edged for my clean clothes, neatly folded on the counter next to the nearest sink. Bare feet gripping the rough-tiled floor, the towel on my hair sliding free and hitting with a small sodden sound, I took three steps, trying to look everywhere at once. My switchblade lay right on top of the black T-shirt I was going to wear next, and the honest silver loading the flat of the blade was far from the worst ally you could have at a time like this.

  What the hell is going on? I took another couple steps, and more pink threaded through the steam. I lunged for my clothes, grabbed a fistful, and stumbled back as the fog turned an angry crimson and bulleted forward as if it had been thrown. It hit the mirror, which gave a high hard crack and shivered into pieces. I let out a blurting scream, my feet slipping, and dodged back into the shower stall. My jeans hit the tiled floor on the way, so did the shirt, but the switchblade snicked open as my shoulders hit the wall. I dropped my last towel, too—that thing was fast, whatever it was, and if I was clinging to modesty, I might end up seriously hurt.

  Great. Now I was trapped in the shower stall in my birthday suit, and all the steam rising from the tubs was beginning to look like red ink in water, only it was bubbling and taking on a solidity I didn’t like. The tub closest the door was really roiling red, the other two just faintly pink. Still, my skin roughened up into sandpaper gooseflesh.

  I was just sitting in that! Bile rose in my throat. But that wouldn’t do me any good. What was this thing? Bodiless for sure, at least at the moment, which meant it could be a bad spirit or a hex. But maybe it was going to coalesce, which would make it something else. I ran through the catalog of the weird I held stored in my head—everything Dad and I had ever seen, everything Gran had told me about, everything I’d dug up in moldering leather-bound books, everything I’d heard stories about while we went on our sixteen-state odyssey of the strange and dangerous.