Defiance

by Lili St. Crow

  I could also swear to God I heard Dad’s voice, not in my head but from my left, as if he was crouched there watching. You only get one shot at this, Dru-girl. Make it count.

  The top of the lamp had snapped off, and now I had a slim iron spear. The lamp base hit the far wall, crunching and crinkling as the force of its impact buckled it, and I had to get the tip up in time, straining against physics and the regular time holding everything else in the room in its clear-glass net.

  Another crashing impact, and my feet hit the floor. The aspect blazed hotly all over me, ruffling my hair, and the hunger yanked every vein and artery I owned like it was going to pull them all out in a tangled spaghetti mass. I had a brief, mad, Technicolor vision of Benjamin crouched over his plate of noodles and sauce, and the world spun around me as if it was oiled.

  Sergej’s nose almost touched mine. A gush of hot black pattered softly to the floor. I had him pinned, the spear driven through his chest and into the wall behind him. He twitched, hot breath touching my cheek, and my stomach cramped hard.

  I’ve heard that if you get it going fast enough, even a straw can punch through steel plate. If you get going fast enough, even a plain old iron lampstand can go through a vampire’s chest. Up on the left side, too, a heart-shot.

  Did I do that? My hands gave an amazing flare of rubbed-raw pain. I stumbled back, tripping and saving myself with an instinctive sideways leap. It was a good thing, too, because the spear tore free of the wall with a screech and Sergej fell, his claws slicing empty air. He would have landed right on me if I hadn’t moved. The lamp pole hit the ground and he toppled sideways, landing with a heavier thump than I would’ve thought possible.

  The world caught up with a subliminal snap. My sneakers slipped, I was falling, couldn’t stop myself, and training shrieked inside my head to stay on your feet, goddammit, he might get up again, it’s never sure with a sucker, stay UP—

  Graves’s hand closed around my upper arm. I let out a half-shriek and he ducked, the punch whooshing past his filthy hair and my claws scything free. Claws, that’s why my wrist was hurting, it’s the claw structures building in there. Go figure. Hooray for me.

  “Easy!” he yelled. “Easy! Friend! Friend!”

  My heart triphammered, even my throat and wrists pulsing hotly. The shriek died halfway; I swallowed and blinked. “Jesus,” I whispered finally. My fingers tingled as the claws slid back out of sight. The urge to throw up or pass out rolled over me in a big black wave; I held it off with grim determination.

  “Nope.” Graves set me on my feet. His eyes blazed now, and how could I ever have thought they’d darkened? They were emerald lasers now. “Dude. You killed him with a lamp.”

  Sergej twitched. Both of us jumped nervously. Leon had slid down the wall, spilled off the bed, and landed sitting up. His eyes were closed, mouth ajar, and a trickle of red slid down from his nose. Another trickle traced down his chin. The side of his chest looked funny. Bashed in, like a stove stroked a good one by a massive sledgehammer.

  He’d hit Sergej pretty hard. Something that hard, going that fast . . . dear God.

  He’s not getting up anytime soon, Dad’s voice whispered inside my head, soft and flat, telling me what was what. Get movin’, Dru-girl.

  Anna coughed. She scrabbled weakly against the floor, her shoes scraping a little. Sergej twitched again, and I flinched. My throat was on fire with the bloodhunger, my ears alive with little scraping whispers and the thudding of Graves’s pulse, galloping along and somehow shouting loup-garou, loup-garou. Anna’s pulse was high and fast, slightly further away, murmuring her name over and over as it echoed through her flesh. An-na. An-na. An-na.

  The scraping sounds were vampires, and they were all over the house. There were a lot of them.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered. The electric glow from the corridor still stung my eyes.

  “No shit. You think?” He dropped his hand and coughed, rackingly. Under the mask of bruising, his face was alight. “Jesus, Dru. With a lamp.”

  It was all I had. I cleared my throat. Looked again at Leon. He didn’t look like he was going to move, either, but I didn’t want to take any chances. My legs felt like rubber noodles. The rest of me felt like it could light a match just by standing too close. Even my hair tingled.

  I tested my knees, found out they would hold me up, and stepped cautiously toward Anna. She was making a hurt little sound in the back of her throat now, like a kitten knowing it’s about to be drowned.

  Leave her, Dad might’ve said. She’ll slow you down. You look out for you first, Dru-girl.

  Yeah. Looking out for number one had made Anna into what she was, hadn’t it.

  “What the—” Graves grabbed for me, but I shook him off. “Dru!”

  “We can’t leave her here. She jumped him, she’s svetocha.” And I am not like her. I took another step, my foot slipping in a lake of thin greasy black crud. Sergej was producing an amazing amount of fluid. No heartbeat from him, too. If I’d hit him in the heart, it might immobilize him until one of his buddies pulled it out.

  Or maybe not. He twitched. The iron spear made a little skreek sound as its tip dragged along the floor.

  “Dru.” Graves sounded like he’d been punched. “What about him?” His finger jabbed out, pointing at Leon.

  I can’t carry more than one, dammit. “I don’t know. Can you carry him?” I felt bad even asking it. He was bleeding all over, and I’d made it worse.

  Graves snorted, green eyes now so bright they almost cast shadows of their own. The Other looked out through those eyes, and if I’d been less worried about a ton of other stuff, I might’ve been a little, well, concerned.

  Because the Other didn’t look like he really cared what happened as long as he got to hurt someone.

  Graves shrugged. Halfway through the motion he stopped, as if it hurt. “Don’t know if he needs it. He smells dead.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew what dead smelled like. “Then leave him.” The words stung my throat. “Worry about the living first.” It was the same tone Dad used when he didn’t want me to argue. Had it burned when he said it, too?

  Graves looked at me like I’d just made some sort of embarrassing bodily noise, but he helped me heft Anna up from the floor. She didn’t even fight, just hung between us like wet washing. I swayed, so did Graves, and the chances of us getting out of here were so not good.

  Especially since Sergej picked that moment to move again, the iron spear scraping harder. Still no pulse from him, though. Maybe it was his nerves dying?

  Oh, God, way to get the gruesome going, Dru.

  I aimed us for the door, and Graves and I started dragging Anna. The pointy toes of her boots slid along the hardwood, and we had to lift her over the threshold and into the brightly lit hall. I blinked, my eyes stinging and watering.

  The scream came out of everywhere, a wall of noise so massive it was almost soundless. It shook the hall, dust pattered from the low ceiling, and I almost dropped Anna because I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. It wouldn’t do any good—the sound burrowed inside, scraping and twisting.

  It came from the room behind us. I knew, without knowing quite how, that it was Sergej.

  The king of the vampires was probably pretty pissed.

  The noise stopped all at once, as if someone had hit the pause button on a CD. The house quivered above us, dust settling. It was a short hall, and at the end were stairs going up. Blank doors on either side, marching away; we were down at the very end. No other exits.

  Shit.

  But then I saw a long dark shape on a brass hook, and I breathed out in wonderment just as the entire house above us exploded with the soft scrapings, brushings, weird tapping footsteps of vampire activity.

  Graves’s coat. My bag. The malaika harness and the malaika I’d been wearing. All hanging right there next to another iron-bound door.

  I slipped out from under Anna’s arm, made it there in three long strides.
“Amen. Amen, hallelujah, and pass the friggin’ butter!”

  “What?” Graves, left with Anna, almost went down in a heap. I grabbed my bag, flipped it open, and checked it. Extra ammo, no gun. But there were the rolls of cash and everything else. I ducked through the strap. “Hey. Is that my coat?”

  I grabbed the harness. Buckled it on, my fingers suddenly sausage-clumsy, got the bag on over it. Grabbed his coat while I rolled my shoulders, trying to make everything fit right. It was heavy—ammo in the pockets, but still no gun. “Yeah. It looks better on me, though.”

  “You wore my coat?” Was he blushing under the bruises? Hard to tell. I made it back to them and grabbed Anna’s arm, slinging it over my shoulder. “Oh.”

  “Put it on.” You might need it; it’s cold outside. I didn’t say it, though. Who knew if we would get outside? I didn’t even know where we were, and the vampires above sounded like a kicked anthill. “Careful, there’s ammo in there.”

  “You think of everything, Miss Anderson.” His eyes gleamed green for a brief moment.

  It wasn’t so hard to drag Anna now. I pulled her along, and her feet were actually trying help, pushing weakly at the concrete floor. Graves caught up after a couple steps, the coat now flapping around his knees. He ducked under her other arm, and we made it almost to the end of the aisle before Anna hissed at us to stop.

  “Door,” she slurred, and pointed her bruised chin at the last right-hand door before the stairs. “Open . . . that . . . one.”

  No fucking way. Who knows what’s behind it? But the thing that decided me was shadows falling across the top of the stairs. “Is it locked?” I whispered.

  Graves pointed. He wasn’t looking too good, the bruises glaring and the rest of him yellowy and cottage-cheesy. His mouth hung open a little, and he wasn’t so handsome right now. Matter of fact, he looked half dead himself.

  I followed the line of his pointing. There was a key hanging on a hook, a big iron number. “Well, shit,” I muttered, and tried to take more of Anna’s weight, dragging her over to it. If Graves’s legs gave out, I decided right then and there, I was carrying him. I wasn’t willing to leave Anna behind if the two of us were ambulatory, but if it was a choice between them, it was really no choice.

  The key went in the door. The footsteps spilled closer, I glanced at the stairs. More flitting shadows. If this didn’t hold an exit we were pretty fucked. I had malaika, sure, and I could hold off a few suckers—but if Sergej managed to get that lamp out of his chest, we were looking at bad times down here in the basement.

  The door swung in. It was dark inside, and for a moment I thought she’d got us to a room with some sort of exit. Then something moved, and I twitched.

  It was a dirty, dark-eyed, very pretty djamphir boy in the ruins of a red shirt. More movement. Four of them, all in those red shirts, stared at us like refugees from a weird-ass convention or something.

  I stared back, my right hand halfway to my malaika hilt.

  Red shirts. It was Anna’s Guard. I swallowed dryly.

  “Milady!” the one near the door whisper-screamed. He looked like hell. Graves was pretty beat up, but this kid looked savaged.

  Well, this kind of alters the situation a bit, dontcha think?

  Anna lifted her curly head. “Blaine.” She coughed. “Help . . . us. All of . . . you. Help her, too. I. Command.” Her head dropped, curly hair sliding forward, as if the words had taken all the starch out of her.

  They scrambled to their feet, and I tensed. Which of them had been around when I’d cleaned Anna’s clock at the Prima? Which ones had watched me, waiting for me to be alone? I remembered two of them, holding guns on Christophe after Ash had saved me from the suckers yet again.

  I used to think that if someone was in the Order, they wouldn’t sell anyone out to the suckers, because they know what suckers are like. I guess I was wrong. So my right hand kept going up to my malaika hilt, and I was already calculating how to get Graves out of here and—

  “Yes, ma’am.” Blaine studied me, top to bottom. Getting even closer, the pitter-patter of little sucker feet. Once they hit the stairs . . .

  I glanced over Anna’s hanging head. Graves’s steady green gaze met mine, and the Look that passed between us was worth a couple hours of conversation at least. The immediate communication felt so good I could’ve broken down and cried right there. Instead, I blinked back the stinging and watering and glanced back at the Blaine kid. The other redshirts—Christ, hadn’t any of them watched Star Trek and figured out this was a bad thing to wear?—were suddenly ranked behind him, and the naked hope on their young-old, bruised, and bloody faces was almost too much to take.

  No wonder they did anything for her.

  “I’ve got standard-issue ammo,” I found myself saying. “No gun. But I’ve got malaika, too. We’re trapped down here; Sergej’s got an iron post through his chest but I don’t know if it’ll keep him down.”

  “Mon Dieu.” Blaine stepped forward. “Hans, Charles, take Milady. Kip, the gun rack at the end of the hall?”

  The sharp-featured one with curly dark hair nodded and brushed past us out into the hall. The two who looked like twins stepped forward to take Anna, and as soon as we handed her over I grabbed Graves’s arm and stepped back.

  Blaine actually looked pained. “Milady . . .” He glanced nervously at Anna, who hung bonelessly, as if she’d used up the last bit of her pep. “We’re not the enemy. You’ve rescued Milady; we owe you thanks.”

  “Yeah, well.” I coughed a little, bloodhunger rasping. “Let’s just get out of here. Do you have a plan?”

  “We don’t need one. Not with you and some ammo.” A fey smile brightened his battered face. “But as a matter of fact, I do have a plan.”

  It was a good thing. Because the first wave of vampires hit the stairs then, a cascade of tip-tapping feet and dark-spangled hatred. Graves whirled and leapt out into the hall, I followed, and the malaika slid free of their sheaths with whispering little sounds. Anna’s Guard moved out behind me, and I was hoping Sergej wouldn’t jump on our backs when Blaine was suddenly next to me. He let out a battle cry that scorched my ears, and we were fighting for our lives.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dead vampire bodies littered the stairs, twitching and crackling as the curly-headed one ripped the throat out of each. I gasped, leaning against Graves, my mother’s malaika held carefully away—they were bastard sharp and dripping with thin caustic black ichor. One of the twins held Anna up, murmuring to her in what sounded like French, his lips next to her temple. The others were equidistant around us, a guard pattern. Blaine leaned against the wall, his ribs heaving and vampire blood all over him. His fingers flicked as he reloaded his 9mm, chambered a round. “We need to move,” he husked. “There will be more soon.”

  “At least we made it up the stairs,” the twin who wasn’t holding Anna said, grimly but gingerly scrubbing at his face with one hand. “Thank God for the ammo. Milady.” And he nodded at me, like I’d done something unreasonably, surprisingly spectacular.

  The aspect was still boiling-hot all over me, but I couldn’t get enough air in. “Thanks,” I managed, sarcastically enough to make Graves move a little, restless.

  “How the hell do we get out of here?” He had vampire blood all over him too, and it smoked on his torn coat, the heavy organic material reacting to its acidic spill. He was looking even worse, dead white under the bruises. But his eyes were bright, the shadows gone, and he was hanging on.

  “This way, as soon as Milady can move.” Blaine glanced at Anna. “Charles?”

  “She’s fading.” The one murmuring at Anna stopped long enough to share a Significant Look with Blaine. The curly-headed one hopped up the stairs. I heard other whisperings in the warehouse, but none from behind us. That was the good news.

  The bad news was every one of us was deadbone-tired and I still didn’t know where an exit was. Or if Anna’s Guard would leave me and Graves in here to rot.

&nbs
p; Or if they would maybe help the vampires out a bit.

  On the other hand, the vampires were back to choking and falling down when I got close to them, so I was actually not doing too badly. And with Graves behind me, I didn’t worry so much about getting shot in the back.

  I wish I was kidding.

  Anyway, there wasn’t much for me to do in the middle of a whirling dervish of fighting djamphir except keep my eyes open and step up with malaika and my toxic little self whenever any of them got into trouble.

  But the ammo I’d brought was vanishing fast.

  Blaine let out what could have been a sigh, if it hadn’t been so sharply frustrated. “We’ll strike for the place they brought us in. Kip?”

  The curly-headed redshirt pointed down the hall, away from the skittering little sounds drawing closer all the time. “They’re getting close.”

  “Let’s move. Milady?” Blaine actually looked at me, eyebrows raised. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth and low on his right side.

  “Just get us out of here.” And once we’re outside, you guys are on your own. You can take care of Anna and everything will be swell. I tilted my head, listening. The silence behind us was stupendous, massive. The skritching scratching pitter-patters in the rest of the house ran together like raindrops on a windowpane, and I had a sudden Technicolor vision of vampires slipping through halls, smears of hatred moving with eerie blurring speed. They were shocked by Sergej’s scream, maybe, and just now shaking it off? Like an anthill seething with activity while a swollen thing in its depths lay twitching and unable to direct it. The image made my gorge rise. Bloodhunger trembled its filaments all through me.

  “Let’s move.” I couldn’t talk right; my fangs were achingly sensitive and I tried to keep them behind my top lip without scratching myself on them. Graves was shaking, a high unhealthy heat bleeding off his skin. Once I got him outside, there was getting off the grounds of wherever we were held and getting transportation, then holing up for long enough to recoup, and . . .