Kin

by Lili St. Crow

  It probably wasn’t the best idea to stop in the driveway, but at least she backed in. She could be out of here in a hot second. Granted, she’d only thought of that after the garage-door opener hadn’t worked for some reason, but better late than never. She couldn’t be smart as Ellie, but at least she learned.

  The drizzle was icy. You couldn’t tell that a week ago it had been hot enough to roast turtles in the shade. She ran for the front door, her keys jangling, head down against the rain, but she needn’t have worried with the keys. The doorknob turned easily, and as soon as she stepped inside she coughed, rackingly, her eyes watering afresh.

  It smelled awful, and there was that terrible brassy depth to the reek she wouldn’t have been able to place if she hadn’t been in Woodsdowne Park yesterday. Was it only yesterday?

  Oh, Mithrus. No.

  She hesitated, torn between looking for the source of that smell or going up to the second floor to find something, anything, that could serve as proof.

  It didn’t matter, she realized as she raised her head and took another few nervous steps into the living room. The smell, as far as she could tell, was coming from upstairs.

  The living room was a shambles. The tapestry had been torn down, the couches and overstuffed chairs sliced and shredded, Gran’s careful arrangement of pictures and candlesticks on the mantel a shattered jumble on the stone hearth, her charming supplies scattered. Lamps knocked over—the curtains were drawn, probably to hide the state of the place.

  Again, the scope of the damage he’d been able to cause in so short a time was nothing short of fantastic. Just thinking about how she would have to somehow clean it all up was exhausting.

  For a moment, she stared at the fireplace’s dark cavern. The metal screen, worked with enameled decorations—a hummingbird, a swan—had been pulled loose and lay crumpled under the front window. Gran’s rocker was also smashed to flinders.

  I burned it. . . . I spoke in anger. . . .

  What had happened between Katrina and Gran? What had Gran burned?

  Forgive me . . . forgive me. . . . Experimenting with live flame and a Beaudry’s charm . . .

  It didn’t matter what Gran had been burning. She could think about it later.

  Ruby eased for the stairs, moving quietly even though there was nobody here. At least her nose wasn’t running, although it would be really nice if she didn’t have those images of splayed limbs and brackish, rotting blood flashing through her head, along with . . .

  She stopped, head upflung, on the stairs. Sniffed cautiously, little tiny sips through her nostrils to untangle every thread. A familiar musk, full of fierce silence and dark eyes, quick graceful movements and a coolness against her nape, a smell that filled her with unsteady, vaporous hope.

  “Thorne?” she breathed, and ran up the stairs.

  It was a faint fading thread, as if he’d been damping his scent like any kin could, and the upstairs was empty.

  Well, mostly empty.

  Her room hadn’t been torn apart too badly. Her dresser had been rifled, and her mirror was broken, but that was it. Thorne had been here, too, but only briefly. She followed the thread of his scent to the spare room, bracing herself as the smell of death and rotting thickened, and peered in.

  Thorne had spent a while in here. Had he been looking for proof too? Where had he been hiding? When kin wanted to find you, they found you, unless heavy-duty charm or fey was covering your tracks. Thorne wasn’t a charmer, so . . .

  The spare bed was made, neatly. Burnt-out candles stood in built-up wax everywhere, and the mirror over the dresser was starred with one large chunk of breakage, as if a fist had crunched into it but not shattered the glass completely. On the spare bed, with its dusky rose comforter, was Conrad’s duffel bag, opened and ruthlessly scattered. Thorne’s scent was very, very strong here, and if there was anything to find he probably would have found it.

  Still, Ruby looked. An empty leather wallet caught her eye, amid the tangle of clothes. Two books, ripped to small shreds and impossible to identify, and a thin silver chain holding a fluidly twisted medallion.

  The key to the collar. She grabbed that, stuffing it in her pocket as well, where it clicked against the lone luckcharm from her broken maryjanes.

  She turned in a full circle. The dresser drawers were empty, the closet door half-ajar and showing a few lonely hangers. Nothing else.

  Why hadn’t he unpacked? He’d been here long enough. Or was he planning to leave, once he’d . . . once he’d what?

  You’re my way out!

  She stood, hugging herself as drizzle beaded on the window. Thorne’s scent was fresh. If she’d gotten here earlier, could she have caught him? Told him she believed it wasn’t him? He was smart as Ellie, even if he was difficult; he’d have an idea or two. She wouldn’t feel so . . . alone.

  She shook herself, and checked the bathroom. Nothing in there, but the mirror was broken too. Had he broken all the glass?

  Maybe he didn’t want to look at himself.

  The master bedroom at the end of the hall had a tightly closed door. Gran usually left it open; even as a child Ruby would rarely dare to step over the threshold unless invited. Gran wasn’t mean, but she gave scrupulous privacy—and expected it in return. It was different at night, when the childhood terrors came.

  Ruby twisted the knob, bracing herself.

  There was no bracing for this.

  The body lay on Gran’s antique cherrywood bed with its high posts and red curtains. Opened up like a meat flower, white chips of bone showing through rent skin and torn muscle. Arranged as if sleeping, her dyed-red hair spread on Gran’s crisp white pillows, her head turned to the side and the internal architecture of her neck bared because the skin was hanging in a loose flap over her chest. The remains of jeans and a bright red T-shirt, cheap cotton probably bought at a discount store, because the dye had bled onto her wet skin.

  Ruby backed up, her hand clapped over her mouth. Gran’s dresser stood closed and secretive as always, but the full-length mirror across from the antique spinning wheel lay in shards on the floor. The wheel, draped in sheer fabric to keep the dust off, hunched in the corner, Gran’s old stool behind it. Sometimes, late at night when Ruby was very young, she would hear the hiss-thump of the wheel, just like a heartbeat.

  Oh Mithrus, Mithrus please . . .

  Dim alarm spilled through the roaring. It had come back, unwanted companion, filling up her head with static like the space between stations. What was that?

  Car door slamming.

  Someone was here.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  SHE MADE IT TO HER ROOM JUST AS THE FRONT DOOR creaked open. The sound of breathing filled the cottage, or maybe it was just that her ears were straining past the roaring, past even a kin’s sensitive hearing. Her window slid up, letting in a drench of chill night air laden with rain and the smell of wet leaves. Autumn filled her nose, the season of harvest.

  Summer had lingered, but it was gone now.

  “Don’t.” He was in the doorway. “Don’t run.”

  She swallowed, hard. Turned from the window, balanced on her toes in case he came for her. Stared at him.

  Conrad stood easily, feet braced, the collar dripping and twisting from his left hand. Some speckles of drizzle on his hair—it was longer than when he’d arrived at the train station, but just as black. His eyes were just as golden, and the faint shadow of stubble on his cheeks made him look just as sharply handsome and dangerous as ever.

  Now Ruby could see the abyss behind those compelling, aching eyes.

  Her throat was dry. “Why are you doing this?”

  Now there was a flash of expression crossing his face. Puzzlement, perhaps, or pain. “I . . . you’re . . .” A deep breath. “You’re my way out, Ruby. When you’re with me, really with me, I’ll have everything.” A slight twitch, the collar
swinging, chiming flatly to itself. “We’ll go away. To a different city, or into the Waste. You’ll be perfect. Once we get this . . . this little thing done.”

  “You want to collar me and take me out into the Waste? Are you insane?” Stupid question, Ruby. He’s obviously insane. “You’ve killed people! You’ve killed kin!”

  “I solved problems!” he shouted. “I’ve solved every problem! Nobody’s between us now! Nothing can stop us!”

  “Nobody’s between . . .” The roaring in her head got worse. Was that what he thought he was doing? Solving problems?

  What had happened to the boy who was a problem, just like her?

  “I was only going to stay the night. Each day I thought, well, today’s the day they’ll get news. But I couldn’t leave. Because of you. You’re beautiful, you’re perfect, and you were meant to be his.”

  “Meant to be . . .” She couldn’t get enough air in. That empty gaze swallowed everything, burrowed inside her head. “What? Whose?”

  “I had a brother.” He was moving forward, one slow step at a time. Her school uniform, still tangled on the floor, was crushed again under his boots. The rash spreading up from his clan cuff, angry red, had begun to weep a little. “He had everything first, and best.”

  “And always,” she managed, remembering. How could the two of them—the boy who had hunched next to her on the front step and this . . . this thing . . . live in the same body? Why didn’t it explode from the sheer incomprehensibility of its own existence?

  “Until I solved that.” Conrad took another step forward. He was at the end of her bed now. “And then I saw you.” The collar jangled, musically. “You’re mine now, and we’ll be together. You want it, your grandmother wanted it—”

  “How do you know?”

  He actually stopped, cocking his head. Stared at her. “She wants what’s best for you.”

  Ruby opened her mouth to reply, but there was a sound from downstairs. Her breath caught, her pulse jackrabbiting in her throat and wrists, ankles and temples, her entire body a shivering heartbeat.

  “Mithrus Christ, look at this.” Ellie’s voice, a soft breath of wonder. “What the hell?”

  “Ruby?” Cami, sounding worried. “Ruby? Are you here?”

  “The pendulum says so.” Ellie’s footsteps crunched on something broken. “Careful, Cami.”

  “Ruby!” Cami’s voice cracked halfway through the word, and Conrad’s face distorted into a thick, congested snarl. The shift rippled through him, glossy black fur sprouting and muscles bulking, his tallness turning a little stooped as his spine lengthened. Except it was somehow wrong. Ruby had seen kinboys shift all her life, especially at fullmoon, but something in Conrad’s slumping growth was off, and nausea slammed hard into her midriff.

  “Problems,” the beast growled, and he whirled with fluid grace. He bulleted out the door, taking a chunk of the wall out with one of his clawed hands as he spun.

  Heading for the stairs. The downstairs.

  And her helpless, vulnerable friends.

  Not my friends, you bastard. Not . . . my . . . friends!

  Ruby bolted after him. The shift burned inside her, silverglass spikes, and she realized she was snarling too, a low musical note of bloodlust.

  THIRTY-NINE

  HE WAS SO FAST.

  She leapt from the top of the stairs, colliding with him halfway, the cracking of the rosewood banister lost in the noise they were both making. Rolling, the side of her head blooming with wet warm pain, his claws burning as they striped fire up her arm, and both of them fetched up in a tumbled heap at the bottom.

  He shook off the daze first, his sleek head snaking back and forth as he rolled to his feet. The sound he was making scraped over Ruby’s skin, sandpaper fury and wirebrush rage, and Cami’s scream was lost under the scratching, roaring rumble.

  Ruby fish-jumped, her entire body exploding up from the floor. She sidled a few steps, the wrecked living room opening up behind her, and didn’t have any time to reassure her friends or say anything, because Conrad was already streaking forward.

  Besides, the shift was burning all the way through Ruby, a glow no longer silver but red as sunset. Bones shifted, her skin twitching madly, kingirls didn’t get furry like boys did. But the claws were just as sharp, the teeth were just as white, the eyes just as keen—and the hide just as tough.

  She backhanded the Conrad-thing, a jolt smashing all the way through her. He was heavy. If he’d been regular kin she could have tossed him all the way back into the wall.

  He wasn’t. She didn’t have time to think about why he was so much stronger, because he only slid back a few feet.

  There was a popping zing, a crackle, and a bolt of blue-white arced from behind Ruby, splashing against Conrad’s hide. Smoke and steam rose, a horrible scent of roasting, and under the flayed jeans—he was shifted so far even his clothes were bursting—and torn T-shirt Ruby could see boiling blisters erupt.

  Looked like Ellie had enough presence of mind to throw a charm or two. Which was good, it was flat-out great, but if her aim was off she could fry Ruby just as well.

  Doesn’t matter. She coiled herself, sinking down, palms slapping the hardwood floor and her claws slicing like an iron knife through pale feybutter.

  He snarled, and she snarled back, both deep grinding noises.

  His said, I will kill.

  Hers replied, I am rootkin, and you will not have my friends.

  Could he understand that? Or was his mind, just like hers, a wasteland now, the low umber and charcoal of a forest fire’s aftermath, glowing coals and sparks still plenty capable of burning but nothing even approaching a coherent thought?

  She knew only that she had to protect.

  He scrabbled forward slightly, and she responded, sidling again. Couldn’t afford to circle, they were behind her, if she could drive him out the door and—

  He sprang, claws grinding as he launched himself, and Ruby uncoiled a half-second later. Her claws went in, piercing hide and grating against ribs, and she pulled him down from the height of his leap, crashing into the couch. More smoking, roasting smell, he clawed at her, bloodscent rising. Stripes of fire along the outside of her leg, her cheek, she kept twisting so he couldn’t hook into her guts and splash them all over the floor.

  Get out get out—

  If they ran, she could keep him occupied long enough for them to escape. It was worth it.

  A terrific smashing. The wreck of a chair, brought down across the Conrad-thing’s back. A flash of Cami, blue eyes glowing and her canines lengthened into sweet, wicked little fangs, her face a mask of effort as she grabbed another sharp chunk of the coffee table, lifting it high.

  Ellie, her platinum hair rising on a breeze from nowhere and her hands alive with silver-spitting charmlight, tossed a complex, flashing charmsphere straight into Conrad’s face. It burst, and blood burst with it, spattering Ruby as she squirmed desperately, her claws slicing deep in his hide.

  He bellowed, a massive wall of sound, and Ruby was the only one who could hear the agony in that cry, the boy behind the monster.

  She rose from the remains of the couch, shaking him off like water, and kicked him. He curled around the force of the kick, sliding back along the floor, and fetched up against the fireplace’s bottom with a sickening crack.

  Run! She wanted to yell it, but her mouth was full of sharp teeth, her jaw the wrong shape for speaking. She snapped a glance at the two girls, Cami holding the heavy chunk of oak table aloft like an ink-haired barbarian princess in a rumpled St. Juno’s uniform, beautiful and wild. Ellie’s eyes were wide and silvery, and Potential sparks flashed in an odd pattern over her head, her platinum hair ruffling on her own personal breeze as her lips moved slightly, her long fingers spinning out threads of Potential.

  They were so beautiful it made her heart hurt.

&nbs
p; “Ruby look out—” Cami’s scream, choked off as something hit Ruby, hard, the wall smashing behind her. Red, pulsing unconsciousness swallowed her whole.

  All the pinches, the squeezes, the little insults masquerading as affection. Taking her car. Putting the backpack in Thorne’s room. Holding Oncle Efraim’s shoulder as if he was true kin, as if he was a help and support.

  And the bodies. Girls he didn’t even know, and how had he gotten them into the woods? Just torn up and discarded.

  Because of me.

  What happened next was a confused jumble. Snarling rage, the shift a sweet wine-red pain all through her, the world turning over and her bones full of flame. Shattering glass, the crackle of live Potential as Ellie screamed something, everything around Ruby smearing like ink on wet paper.

  She bulleted through the gaping hole that used to be the front window, into thin fine soaking drizzle. The curtains, shredded by whatever had happened, flirted unsteadily on a cold breeze full of blood, anger, and the exhalation of an autumn night on the cusp of fullmoon.

  A long trail of bloodspatter ended at a horrible, uneven shape.

  FORTY

  THE CONRAD-THING SNARLED, NOWHERE NEAR BASEFORM or shift, now. It was a black hulking thing, its paws having lost opposable thumbs and its mad golden eyes still terribly empty. It favored its left front paw, blood dripping from its thick pelt, its hide steaming and scorched.

  It was what the Tantes and Oncles warned of, why they helped with the shift when you were young. Why you didn’t do taboo things, even if you were Wild. The Moon’s gifts had teeth and claws, and if you did not use them well, She would take Her blessings back.

  With interest.

  The shift fell away from Ruby, the hurts and claw-marks healing as it retreated. Her T-shirt flapped, sticky with cooling blood. Her own, and . . . and his.

  The smoke had swallowed his smell. Red and ash, burning blood, a reek that meant taboo. He’d gone too far into the shift. He’d become what the Wolfhunters thought kin always were—mindless appetite, destruction, revenge.