Defiance

by Lili St. Crow

  Why couldn’t this have happened earlier? But I was already moving up the hall. The walls were painted white, but there were streaks of something I didn’t want to think too much about all over them. Crusted streaks, dark red and smelling of copper. It was a complex braid of smells, like in Paranormal Biology where you had to open the ampoules, sniff the blood inside, and list characteristics. Blond, male, young, hospital. Brunette, female, middle-aged, wounded.

  Sometimes suckers like certain victim types. And also, doing the sniff test sharpens your tracking ability. With the touch burning in my head, I was never wrong.

  These were shutterclicks, images of bodies carried down this hall, prey thinking it had escaped and brought down so close to freedom, a collage of nasty images slamming through my head like iron dodgeballs smacking unprotected flesh.

  The floor plan was clear in my head. The door was ahead of me, looming, and I left the ground in a sidekick that would have made any superhero proud. The thought that maybe if the door was locked or barred I’d just hurt myself didn’t even cross my mind, because before I got there, it exploded.

  Literally exploded, a flash like heaven itself opening and the shock like a wave face-crashing a surfer. I tumbled, head over heels, the wall clipping my shoulder and sending me spinning. Landed hard, the malaika still clasped in my fists and the world ringing like a gong inside my skull. The aspect flared with heat, cushioning me from the blow, but it still rang my chimes pretty good.

  Smoke. Yellow flame crawling over the walls. What the—

  Then I was scrambling to get on my feet, because he appeared out of the flames. Honey-brown curls and a face stamped from an old coin, chiseled and hurtful. A thin black sweater, jeans, and his paleness with its tint of copper over the top. And his eyes, my God, his eyes now black from lid to lid and so deep. You could fall into those eyes and drown before the soft sucking blackness at the top closed over your face.

  You wouldn’t even struggle.

  My mother’s locket gave a flare of painful heat, so hot I was suddenly afraid it had melted on my sternum. I let out a soundless cry—soundless because it was loud, my ears still ringing and shouts, cries, the sounds of a pitched battle going on all around me.

  Sergej grinned. And right before he blurred through space and I brought the malaika up, I thought, for one terrible second, how much his smile looked like Christophe’s chilling little grimace when he wanted to scare someone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I came to in bits and pieces, lying on my back.

  Dust. I smelled dust, and something like burned coffee. Dampness, the peculiar smell of something underground, like a root cellar. And spice, like carnations. That was a familiar odor, and I tried to place it in the darkness. I realized it was dark because my eyes were closed.

  On the heels of that realization came another one. I hurt. It was like growing pains, a deep burning ache in the bones. The idea of moving, even to open my eyes, seemed to make it even worse. But I had to. I had to know where I was.

  But . . . I couldn’t see.

  I blinked a couple times. It made no difference. The same thick darkness, like a blanket against my eyeballs. I let out a short sound, the gasp chopped in half because I sensed someone looking at me. It was the sort of feeling that will make you turn your head in a crowd, certain of being stared at, and it’s right more often than not.

  What the hell? Am I blind? What happened?

  The last thing I remembered was Sergej’s hands around my throat, my scream cut short, and the bloodhunger pulling on my veins like it wanted to rip bits of me out. Little bits of blackness had crawled up under Sergej’s skin, and he had squeezed—

  Someone let out a short sigh of frustration. “You’re not blind.” Female. Young. But so, so tired. “You’re just changing.”

  Fear crawled up into my throat, grabbed me, and I flailed. There were sheets, and a blanket, and even more dust puffed up.

  Someone grabbed my shoulders. Strong broad hands; I struck out wildly. He let out a yelp as my fist connected, good solid hit.

  “Goddammit! Dru, quit it!”

  I knew his voice too. It made no sense. But I sagged in his hands. All the fight went out of me, air out of a balloon.

  “Graves?” I whispered.

  He coughed, racking. I sniffed deeply. I couldn’t see, but I could smell him. Strawberry incense, and boy. He hadn’t had a shower in a while, and that was wrong, because he’d always been so clean before. But it was him. Even his hands were familiar, now that I knew.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. And that was enough. I knew him.

  I’d know him anywhere.

  I reached forward, blindly. He climbed the rest of the way up on the bed and I hugged him, hard. His arms were around me, and his fingers were in my hair. He was here and he was real, and it was like he’d never been away.

  I let out a dry barking sob.

  “Shit.” He even sounded like himself. Same old Goth Boy. “How did they catch you? What happened?”

  The words ran up against each other, trying to spill out faster than my mouth could move. “They—I—we were coming to rescue you. Leon, he had a—he found . . . Graves, my God, oh my God—”

  “Charming.” The female voice spoke up again, dry and disdainful. “Calm her down so we can get something useful out of her. We don’t have much time.”

  I jerked like I’d been hit. “What the fu—”

  “Ease up, Dru. She’s not the enemy.” Graves paused, and I could imagine his rueful expression. “At least, not here.”

  “Bullshit!” I tensed, but Graves didn’t let go of me. So I didn’t let go of him. “She shot me!”

  “What?” But he didn’t sound surprised. “You shot her?”

  There was a long silence.

  Then she sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Anna said.

  First it was a filmy haze, diffuse light coming through. Then it was like a thick layer of cheesecloth over the world; I could make out shapes as I spilled out everything that had happened. I hopscotched around a bit as I got confused, backtracked, and tried to fill him in on everything at once. Graves just listened, his arms around me, and I was so happy to finally see him again—even if I wasn’t really seeing him, so to speak—that I almost forgot Anna was in the room.

  Almost.

  I was just telling him about Anna’s little note with the earring inside when she cleared her throat, a small but definite call for attention. “That wasn’t me.”

  I flinched a little. She sounded like she was a ways away, maybe on the other side of the room. But that was no safety—I knew how scary fast djamphir truly were, and even though I’d toasted Anna’s cheese once in a gym at the Prima, I wasn’t anywhere near fighting form now.

  “It sure as hell smelled like you.” The bitterness I was tasting wasn’t just the words. “You. You betrayed my mother. You came down to the gym to beat the shit out of me. You shot me. You—”

  She actually laughed. A sour, clear little sound, like a wrongly tuned bell. “I’m not a nice person, Dru. You can take some comfort in the fact that I am, now, suffering for my sins.”

  Graves’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Let’s just figure out who to blame later. Right now we’ve got bigger problems.”

  His bare skin was against my naked arms; my hoodie was gone, but I still had my T-shirt and jeans. I had my sneakers, too; I could feel them. I wanted to ask if Graves was at least wearing underwear, decided not to. “Where are we?”

  Anna laughed. She did really sound exhausted, not nearly as nasty as usual. “Can’t you guess? He has us, little one, and with both of us here . . . well, the odds aren’t good.”

  He. Sergej. The name twisted inside my head like a fish made of broken glass. “You’ve been feeding him information. Traitor.” I blinked a couple more times. Things were rapidly getting clearer, at least in my eyesight.

  The rest of me was confused as all get-out. I held on to Graves, my arms aching.
r />   I heard cloth moving, as if she’d shrugged. “And now that you’re cresting through the secondary bits of the change, he’ll use me as a hostage and drain you dry. Or the opposite, since I’m more danger to him than you. You won’t need to kill me, Dru. He’ll do it quite handily.” She actually sniffed. “You should worry less about what I’ve done and concentrate on what we should all do to get the hell out of here.”

  “Word.” Graves actually agreed with her. He didn’t move, thought I might’ve been hurting him by clutching so hard. “As soon as we’re out of here, we’ll sort out everything else. But I really don’t like it here. I’d prefer to fight it out somewhere else.”

  “What happened to you?” I grabbed at him again, like he might get away. “Was it Christophe? I saw something, did he—”

  “He was there.” Graves moved slightly, but not away. He moved closer to me; I could almost see the bitter little face he pulled. “That night. But all he did was . . . we just had words, him and me. That’s all. I went out for a run to calm myself down, and the instant I was off the Schola property, they snatched me.”

  “Wait. What?” Cold disbelief warred with uneasy relief inside me. I couldn’t tell which would win, but at least the light got a little brighter. Graves was a shadow now, his hair standing up wildly and making his head into a monster-shape.

  “He was there. Had a couple other djamphir with him—some I didn’t know, and that kid Leon. Said he wanted to know what my intentions were, if I thought I could do any good hanging around you all the time, stuff like that. I almost hauled off and coldcocked him. They had to hold me back. They dragged me away, and—”

  “Wait. Leon was there?” The world actually rocked out from under me, and I grabbed at Graves again. He took a sharp breath, stroked my hair. “He was . . . oh, my God.”

  “Ah.” Anna breathed out, a long exhalation of comprehension. “Now that makes sense.”

  Says you. “What? What makes sense?”

  For once, Anna didn’t sound like she was enjoying herself by spreading bad news. “Leontus had a svetocha once. He was bonded, and . . . well, an ephialtes killed her. I suppose they thought he would guard you all the more fiercely; I could have told them the very sight of you would make him far more dangerous than he usually is.”

  Bonded? Well, I could guess what that meant. The rest of it, though . . . “Why?” If I’d been able to stand up, I would’ve hopped from foot to foot impatiently. Nobody ever gave me answers fast enough. “Why would he . . . Jesus.”

  And I wasn’t sure I could trust Anna’s answers, either. The list of things I could trust was shrinking rapidly.

  Anna gave a chilling little half-snorting laugh, and I could just tell she was tossing her head. “Because the ephialtes who killed his lady Eleanor was none other than one of Sergej’s many traitors, trained by his oh-so-helpful son.” More fabric moving. “It’s close to dawn.”

  Not Leon. I’d actually liked him, too. And he’d been so helpful and all.

  I held on to Graves. Well, Jesus, Dru. Now get yourself out of this one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A couple of minutes later, nausea hit me hard. I swallowed against it, blinked. The world came slowly into focus as the seasick feeling retreated, colors sharpening and outlines no longer fuzzy. It was as if a film had been peeled away from my eyeballs, and I looked up.

  Graves was a mess. His dark hair stood up curling-wild, dirty and greasy, the undyed roots so full of crud it looked just like the dyed-black bits. Bruises, new and red-purple and older blue and even older yellow-green, spread over his face and down his bare chest. You could barely see the even caramel of his skin tone, he was so bruised all over. He was scrawny-thin, and there were weals and little cuts all over his torso. He had a pair of jeans, but they were flayed around the knees and dark with gunk. He had sneakers, oddly clean but terribly worn, the laces broken and reknotted.

  We looked at each other. I let out a hurt little sound. “Oh. You look awful.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged, green eyes burning. Same green eyes, their depths oddly shadowed now, same half-pained curl of his lips passing for a smile. It was like seeing him for the first time, the landscape of his face shifted just a few millimeters so that instead of just looking like a really handsome half-Asian boy he looked . . . well, more like a wulfen. The eerie almost-similarity of bone structure I shared with Christophe and Benjamin and all of them was shared between Graves and Shanks and Dibs and even Nat.

  “I’m sorry.” The words spilled out. “I didn’t know. They told me they were looking for you. They . . . if I’d known, if I’d—”

  He moved a little, restless but careful. “If you’d known, you would’ve run off the Schola grounds and got caught too. He’s been watching you pretty close, Dru. I’m okay; I’m just wishing you hadn’t got caught. I . . .” He swallowed, hard, and I realized I was probably grinding on his bruises bigtime. “It got me through, knowing they’d take care of you. Two days ago—I think, time gets funny—they dragged me up here and put me with her. It’s been interesting.”

  “Hardly. He’s such a loyal little boy. No fun at all.” Anna laughed, and my head whipped around.

  The room was dim, only one wrought-iron lamp with a dusty rose-satin shade propped up next to the bed, on my left. Heavy wood paneling, a cobwebbed chandelier dangling lopsided from the ceiling, and a ceiling that looked like concrete. Graves and I were on a four-poster done in heavy pink velvet that probably dated from the Civil War. Other furniture was scattered around under moth-eaten dust cloths, and the door was a monster of iron and dark heavy wood.

  It looked like a set designer for a really bad period movie had thrown up in here. Nathalie would have called the pink velvet atrocious.

  Thinking of Nat pinched me way down deep in my chest. I hoped she’d forgive me. Hell, I hoped I’d see her soon and she could kick my ass for being such a bitch. I’d even sit still and take it with a big wide goony grin.

  Hell, I’d even let her take me shopping. For clothes. Without complaining.

  Anna was near the door, crouched down. Every other time I’d seen her, she’d been perfectly polished, fashion-model finished.

  Not now.

  Her red-gold ringlets were a tangled mess, there was a dark nasty bruise on one high flawless cheek, and her pretty red silk dress was ripped up, torn petticoats showing through the rents. Wine-red ribbons trailed through the rat nest of her long hair, her boots were scuffed, and the silk stockings were full of ladderlike runs.

  She was taking the goth Lolita thing to new heights, I guess.

  But the way she crouched, hugging herself and rocking slightly, wasn’t right. And she was paper-pale, not to mention shaking like she had what Gran would call the delirium tremens. The shudders went through her in waves, and she was sweating, too. Little pearly beads of perspiration dotted her flawless skin, almost glowing in the dimness.

  She was still beautiful, even all messed up like this. I probably looked like I’d swept up a barn with my hair, and I had that odd dirty feeling you get from sleeping in your jeans. It always pinches; denim is so not pajamas.

  “Jesus.” I eased up on Graves a little, swallowed hard to clear the sudden sourness on my tongue. The bed creaked a little as we shifted, like a rowboat in a shallow river. “What happened to you?”

  “This.” She lifted her tangled ringlets, and I saw the fang marks on the white column of her throat. My vision sharpened, and my skin was suddenly two sizes too small. Hard little bumps of gooseflesh stood up all over me.

  The marks were white and worn-looking in the middle, bruised all the way around like an enthusiastic hickey. She dropped her hair over them after letting me have a good long peek. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “I thought we were toxic—” I began.

  “Oh, yes. But he could stand the poison long enough to sink his teeth in, and now I’m too weak. And he’s stronger.” She shuddered, turning even paler, if that were possible. “He’ll eventual
ly drain both of us dry so he can walk in the daylight.” Anna laughed again, and her rocking back and forth sped up a little. The floor creaked slightly as her high heels dug in. “I thought I was so clever. So very very clever. You’re Elizabeth’s vengeance on me, after all these years.”

  Yeah. My mother’s vengeance. Please. Anna had fucking shot me because my mother “stole” Christophe. Leon had maybe betrayed me to the vampires because of something Christophe did to him years ago. Just great. Just wonderful.

  Jesus Christ. Was there anyone around who didn’t hate me or think they loved me because of something that happened before I was even born?

  As soon as I thought that, though, I knew there was one person. He was hanging on to me right now, terribly battered but alive. I’d gotten him into this, and here we were.

  You’d better start thinking fast, Dru. But my thinker was kind of busted. I shook my head, curls falling in my face, as if that could jar my brain into working. “My mother’s dead, Anna. We’re here; we might as well get on with it. Where the hell are we, really?” And Sergej brought me here for snacking later. Me and Anna, in the freezer like good little rodents for a snake to choke down. Ugh.

  “I think we’re in Jersey.” Graves hissed an in-breath as he moved slightly, and I loosened up a little more. “Of course, if I owned this place and Hell . . .”

  The laugh that bolted out of me felt wrong. But it helped a little, before falling lifeless in the dead air. “Are we underground? It feels like it.”

  “Dunno. Think it’s a warehouse. I was underground for a while. In a . . . a cell.” Graves shivered. Gooseflesh roughened up his marred skin, and I got the idea he would be pale if it wasn’t for the bruises. “They would come down at random times, ask me questions about you. Things they . . . Hey.” He leaned in, his eyes burning. “Nice earring. I wondered where that went.”