Defiance

by Lili St. Crow

  Christophe’s blood wasn’t like this, I thought, and another iron cramp of nausea hit me. There wasn’t time, though, because Kip was already out in the hall, firing and screaming like he intended to make this his last stand.

  It just might be, Anna’s blood whispered in my veins. There’s too many of them, and he’s wounded. Training rose up, lattices of information and reaction snapping together inside my head. There was so much—I’d barely scratched the surface with Christophe.

  Thinking about him was like lighting a match in the room full of explosive gas my skull had become. I rocketed to my feet, tearing the malaika free of their sheaths. Another explosion, this one so close it rocked the entire hall, and I sucked in an endless breath.

  “Get out of here!” I yelled, and piled out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Even if Anna hadn’t been keeping up with her training, she’d still had it. And somehow, it was that training burning in my head, jerking my body around like a puppet, faster and sharper than I ever thought I could move. I shoved past Kip, who flew sideways and hit the wall; there was no time to feel bad about it because the vampires were coming. Smoke filled the hall, and for a moment I was back in the reform Schola as it burned all around me, hearing someone scream my name and watching the paint bubble up on the benches in the tiny little dead-winter garden.

  The past touched the present, doubled over like the Möbius strip everyone makes in fourth grade, and Anna’s high tinkling little laugh burst out of my mouth as I hit the first sucker with a crunch. He started choking as my right-hand malaika flickered, a gush of thin black acid spraying as I finished the slash and threw myself forward again, a whirling dervish behind the malaika blades. The swords were singing , a low sweet sound as they cut the silken, smoke-laden air, and that laughter coming from me took on an edge as the vampires fell.

  Foot forward, knee precisely placed, swing of hip up as the wooden blades became living things. They danced with me, attack and defense shared in concentric rings of reaction. I blurred as if I was doing my t’ai chi on fast-forward, laughing like crazy because it felt so good.

  Instead of being terrified, I was fighting back. It felt goddamn wonderful.

  More gunfire, but I didn’t worry about it. What I worried about was the knot of five nosferat in front of me, all male, Anna’s training ringing inside my head recognizing a standard attack pattern in confined spaces. Two blond, two dark-haired, all black-eyed with the hunting aura and brimful of raging hate; the first two crouched and sprang as a second pair gained altitude, leaping and hanging in the air as the muscle inside my head flexed.

  It was so easy now.

  I skipped back two paces, wanting the extra room to build up speed. Behind me, screams slowed down to distorted mumbles; particles of smoke hung in the air, tiny crystalline flakes. Sneakers digging in, vaguely aware of my breath coming tearing-hard, the lump of heat in my stomach glowing red, I realized what I was about to do and almost, almost paused.

  But you can’t stop in the middle of a fight. You move, and you’re either standing at the end of it, or on the dirt. If you’re on the dirt you might as well be under it. That’s why fights don’t have rules.

  My feet slapped, I lunged and left the ground. Gran’s owl called softly through the slowed-down mishmash of confusion around me. For a few brief seconds I knew what it was to have hollow bones and feathers, to fly on silent wings, wind slipping past your ears with a low sweet sound like riding a bike down a long hill. Twisting, one foot flashing out to crack against the skull of the first sucker. Another half twist, malaika sweeping up as my wrist flexed, and it went through the second sucker’s neck with a tchuk like Gran thopping her ax through a bit of dry-seasoned cordwood. An arterial spray of rotting acid described a perfect curve, but I was already up and over, my left foot kissing the wall to push me sideways again, shoulder dipping and my other malaika whistling until it carved through the third sucker’s face at full extension. The third sucker went slack, body tumbling, and my right foot touched his back, neat as could be, as I pivoted and brought both blades across en parallel. They both bit deep on the fourth nosferat as he was in midair, one almost severing his hand and the other tearing out his throat with a flick of the wrist.

  I wasn’t done yet. Landing, the body under me absorbing rib-snapping shock, knees loose, my left-hand malaika stabbing down through his back. Another meaty thud, had to pull back at the last second so as not to splinter the blade or break the point. A blurted sound behind me, but I was already whirling, and the first sucker—the one I’d just kicked in the head—ran onto my blade at full tilt. He started choking, too, his face congesting and runneling with dark ash as hair-fine cracks ate through his skin.

  Hawthorn poisons them fast. So does a svetocha once she’s bloomed. Or maybe it was Anna’s ability added to mine, a calculus of toxicity?

  But maybe she wasn’t very toxic to suckers, just to other svetocha.

  My mouth filled with bitterness. The malaika jerked free, my hand twisting it precisely to break the suction of muscle against the blade. It gave with a wet splorching sound under the all the noise around us, and I winced.

  I looked up, and there was Graves, his irises gone black for a moment before sparks of green struggled in their depths.

  Behind him, the twins held Anna, who didn’t even look alive. She just . . . hung there. I could still hear her pulse, thudding sluggishly and pausing like a train heaving uphill. Blaine’s jaw had dropped. Kip leaned against the wall, clutching at his bloody shoulder, his jaw set and his dark eyes alight as he stared at me.

  I hate being stared at. I realized what I’d just done.

  That wasn’t the worst, though. The worst was seeing Graves’s mouth pulled down like he was disgusted. He was looking at me like I was a new sort of bug that had skittered out from under a rock.

  One he wasn’t sure was poisonous or not. Except I was. To suckers, at least. I was a murderous thing. A killer with fangs.

  Like something Dad would have hunted.

  I’m still me, I wanted to yell. Smoke poured down the hall from the direction we’d come, and I could hear shouts and screams—the glassy cries of nosferat, drilling against the brain; wulfen howls high and chill and silver; and djamphir battle cries. There was one hell of a pitched action going on down there, but they were working this way.

  Graves opened his mouth to say something, but I saw everything right there in his pain-darkened gaze. He was disgusted. He’d seen me suck Anna’s blood, and seen me do . . .

  . . . this. The sucker bodies were rotting fast, and the smell was massive. Nausea hit me like a dodgeball in the stomach; I clamped my lips together and felt my fangs scraping lightly.

  A svetocha’s fangs are relatively dainty, yeah. But they’re meant for the same thing a sucker’s are, and I’d just used them.

  Graves inhaled. He’d gone completely white, and his mouth dropped open. Blaine’s eyebrows went up, his entire face a comic illustration of surprise. Kip raised his 9mm slowly, like a boy in a nightmare.

  My body was wiser than I was. It dropped into a crouch, but too late. Graves’s warning was wasted.

  CRUNCH.

  He hit me from behind, flinging me forward, and I felt bones break. My bones.

  Sergej had gotten the lampstand out somehow, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tucking. Rolling. Great gouging pain in my side. The aspect burned, and I stopped short, lying against the wall. The malaika clattered, both my fists clutching reflexively. I hadn’t lost them.

  Which was good, because Sergej, a huge hole in his flapping T-shirt, drenched in black blood and with his face a purple-red, hateful leer, was already on me. I jerked, my right-hand blade blurring up and missing him by a fraction as he bent back. He looked like he was about to do an overenthusiastic back walkover, spine creaking and crackling, the tip of the blade whispering past his chin.

  I was somehow on my feet now, the wall at my back and red
agony jolting up and down my left-hand side as broken bits of rib grated together. The aspect turned to liquid fire, peeling back my skin and grinding in as each break in my bones sang a hallelujah chorus of pain.

  Sergej spun the length of iron lamppost, its end making a low hard sound as it tore through air. His mouth opened, but a roaring covered any sound he might’ve made—it was the sound of fire as a cool draft slid past us.

  There was an open door somewhere, and the fire down the hall was sucking at it like a calf at a mama cow’s teat.

  Sergej snarled, his face turning even more alarmingly purple. I didn’t dare glance past him, but I’d guess the boys had gotten Anna out of here. Graves was probably gone, too, thank God. At least I’d done what I’d set out to do.

  Now I just had to face down the king of vampires, the one who had killed my mother. Kill him, if I could.

  Yeah. Right. I’d settle for just escaping.

  Screaming and gunfire through the roaring noise. Sergej choked, but he scuttled in quick, swinging the length of iron still dripping with thin black fluid. My right arm still worked; the malaika flicked out like a snake’s tongue, deflecting the are of his attack and slicing inward. If I’d been just a little faster it would’ve opened up his belly, but my left side seized up with a mother of all cramps, bones grinding together, and I screamed.

  The sound cut through all the other chaos. The draft of cooler air coming from behind Sergej—he was between me and escape, just great—swirled and flirted uneasily. Heat touched my back.

  Nosferatu crispy-critter really quickly; open flame or direct sunlight are really bad for them. But I wouldn’t put it past him to wait for the fire to be too much for me—I couldn’t move my left arm, my breath came in coughing gasps, and if he could get over getting stabbed in the heart and still have this much juice left a little thing like an entire fucking burning warehouse wasn’t going to put much of a dent in his day, you know?

  Sergej darted forward again, the aspect bit down in my left side like there were metal jaws meeting in my flesh, and I battered his attack aside with my right-hand malaika again, with a thunder crack of pain and effort.

  Over the roaring and the gunfire, another sound penetrated.

  “DRU! DRU!”

  My name, screamed over and over again. I knew that voice.

  Christophe. Oh, God.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Sergej. He shifted his weight, and I did too, Anna’s long-ago training echoing in my head. Her blood burned in me, whispered, tried to show me more of her. The touch pushed it back, making a fist inside my head so I could concentrate. He was going to come at me again, and I didn’t know if I could hold him off. The smoke thickened, tearing at my eyes just like the fluorescents. Who knew when the lights would give out, too? Something about the sound of the fire told me it was Serious Business.

  Sergej dropped back a step. Two.

  I stared. The aspect gave one last crunching flare of pain, then, amazingly, I took a deep breath. Smoke rasped against the blood-hunger; hot tears slicked my cheeks as I blinked furiously. The agony retreated, turned into a deep bruising ache, and I raised my left-hand blade. Held the malaika in second-guard, naturally as breathing, and straightened. My face settled, eyes narrowing, and I had the sudden lunatic idea that I looked like Dad.

  Fury boiled up inside me, pushing aside the pain. The hunger fed on rage, feasted on it, and this time I was a clear glass girl full of red wrath, but it didn’t own me. I stood in the middle of all that anger, a ribbon of cold steel inside me, and felt something inside me shift like a key clicking over in a lock.

  Sergej stepped back again. Under the dirty honey-gold curls, he looked almost . . . my God.

  My God.

  He looked frightened, his eyes completely black now, widening—but the force in them wasn’t reaching through to crush all independent thought. Fine thin threads of gray crawled out of his eyes, fanning like crow’s-feet toward his temples. A great gout of black stinking blood pattered down from his chest, slicking his jeans and boots, and for a split second I saw something else far back in his gaze.

  Recognition.

  Serves you right, you bastard. Do you see them? Do you see both my parents in my face? You’re not the only one. Come and get me. Come on.

  The malaika twitched, my weight shifting forward just a crucial millimeter, playing through the very first initiation of the attack.

  This is where the first mistakes are committed, Christophe’s voice said, dry and pedantic, inside my head. Why hadn’t I absorbed his training when he forced me to drink his blood?

  But I couldn’t think about that. Because something blurred behind Sergej. A flash of black cloth, pain-darkened green eyes—

  —and Graves skidded to a stop, lifted the gun, and started firing.

  The first shot went wide. For the rest of my life I will swear, on a stack of Bibles if I have to, that I saw it as it whistled past my head and blew a chunk out of the wall behind me. A little more to the left and Graves would’ve shot me.

  The second took Sergej high up on the shoulder from the back, just as the king vampire was whirling to face this new threat. The bullet blew out through the front of his shoulder, fragging and sending splinters, not to mention spatters of black acid blood, everywhere.

  And I leapt. The hot hard lump of Anna’s blood in my middle was shrinking, and either the aspect was cooling off or the radiant heat from the fire down the hall was getting much more intense. Either way it was bad news, and we had to finish this, now.

  My heart swelled up like a balloon. Graves braced himself, his coat flapping around his knees in the backdraft, and made his triangle, aiming carefully. He didn’t look particularly hurried, and I could see each bruise on him, smell the blood streaking him under the coat, and almost taste the colorless rage fuming off him as well. His lips skinned back from his teeth, and for a moment his eyes flashed bright emerald again. The wulfen Other filled his face with unholy light, and my heart made a funny jumping movement like it was going to break out of my ribs and fly straight toward him.

  Sergej twisted back around, bringing up the iron spear. It was too late; I was already inside the critical zone, malaika both slashing in the crux au courant pattern. Christophe had only shown it to me once, but he’d taught it to Anna over and over, drilling her like he someday knew this would happen.

  The blades bit. I was a little off, but not by much. One slashed across his face, grating against bone, and the other scored down his chest and bit into his midriff. The iron spear cracked against my shoulder in a flash of crimson pain; I went flying. Hit the wall on the other side, I was a regular old pinball, landed on my feet but my left-hand malaika went tumbling free. The fluorescents flickered, and there was a living glare from behind me.

  The fire had found us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Graves turned on his heel, firing smoothly as Sergej barreled past him. I couldn’t hear the shots over the roaring. I meant to bend down and scoop up my malaika, only made it halfway before my knees gave out and hit the floor with a jarring thud. My fingers closed around the hilt just as my teeth snapped together, fangs piercing my lower lip, and I tasted blood again. Thankfully, it was the sweet crimson of my own blood, not someone else’s. The bloodhunger retreated to a tired glow, and I leaned back. The wall suddenly seemed incredibly comfortable.

  Graves was suddenly there, looming over me. His face contorted; he was shouting. I stared up at him wonderingly. Even under the filth and blood and the ashen-gray tone to his skin, he was beautiful. I’d only seen bits of it before, but now that all the flesh was pared away from his bones he was . . .

  He reached down and grabbed my arm. “MOVE!” he roared, a loup-garou’s command voice breaking through the crackling rush of the flames. “DAMMIT, DRU, MOVE YOUR ASS!”

  I found enough starch in my knees to stand up again. His fingers bit into my biceps, and I suspected I’d be feeling this all over tomorrow.

  Assuming we lived to see to
morrow.

  He dragged me down the hall, gun held low in his right hand. My malaika tips dragged; I couldn’t lift them but I didn’t want to leave them behind. We stumbled together, and the fire licked closer. Glass shattered behind us, and the draft got stronger. Air swirled around us, lifting my hair and teasing at his coat. The hall stretched like infinity; he slipped and I pitched aside, my dumb body weight keeping him upright; he returned the favor by yanking on my abused arm and almost getting the malaika’s edge against his leg.

  I didn’t realize we were running until we rounded a corner and saw the door. It had been busted off its hinges, and the wind around us became a scream. We plunged through the door and into sudden relatively-cool darkness full of little tiny kisses of spring rain.

  I dropped the malaika, dug in my heels, grabbed Graves’s arm, and pushed with all the weary strength I had left. We went flying, rolling, his arms around me somehow and wet dirt squelching, as an amazing belch of red-yellow flame shot out of the open door. I lay on my side, cold water seeping into my jeans, and considered passing out.

  No way. Still too much work to do.

  But I just lay there for a few seconds, Graves in my arms, his head tipped back and his throat working as he swallowed several times. He was definitely hugging me tighter than he had to, and every time he gasped in a breath, he would exhale and his arms would tighten more.

  Like he was afraid someone would take me away.

  My arm was twisted underneath me, and I was exhausted. Even my toenails hurt. Even my hair hurt. The pain was a river, and I just lay in it.

  “Dru. Dru.” He was saying my name. He had his face in my dirty hair. I hugged him back as hard as I could. The fire roared like the sea, and I could see the side of a warehouse. We were on the verge of a greenbelt, wet bushes dripping under the fine misting rain, and the night was painted by leaping flames.