Betrayals

by Lili St. Crow

  “What?” He cocked his head.

  “Get your shoes on. And give me mine.” I squirmed away from him and found my boots right where I’d put them, right against the mattress. A quick double yank had my feet inside them, and I grabbed for my bag, slid the strap over my head. The gun was still inside. The clicks were very loud as I checked the clip, racked it back in, and slid the safety off.

  Graves shrugged into his coat. I let out a soft breath and knee-walked over to the window. My back ached, but not as bad as it could have. Maybe I was healing.

  The warm-oil feeling of the aspect smoothed down over me, and the locket pulsed reassuringly.

  The room got brighter. I almost glanced up to see if the light had turned on. I knew it hadn’t, though.

  I was just seeing better.

  I made it to the wall next to the blinds, cautiously inched myself up, and decided I could peer out there. The room was dark, and nobody would see me looking out, or I hoped they wouldn’t.

  I peered out and realized what was wrong. There was no taste of wax oranges and danger on my tongue. Whatever was out there wasn’t suckers.

  So it could be something else. Or it could be, you know, all of us in a strange house and nervous.

  Be quiet, Dru. The silent imperative nailed me in place, my eyes focused on the narrow slice of roof and tree branches I could see, then, something moved, pouring up over the edge of the roof with scary silent grace.

  I let out a soft, wondering breath. The shape was long and lean, fluid with hair. A streak of white moved smoothly on its narrow head.

  It was Ash.

  He paused on the roof, three paws down and one up in an eerie imitation of the way a cat will stop in mid-stride when something catches its attention. The orange gleams of his eyes shuttered themselves for a moment, and his whole body slumped on three legs.

  “What is it?” Graves whispered. I didn’t look at him, but I could tell he knew I’d seen something.

  Maybe it was my face. It certainly felt funny, bones under twitching skin as I froze, peeking out between the slats of the blinds.

  The hall outside the bedroom door was deathly quiet. If Christophe was moving, I couldn’t hear him.

  “Dru?” Graves stepped forward. A floorboard groaned under his feet.

  Ash’s narrow canine head jerked up and swung around. He stared right at me for what seemed like an endless moment, and the sure voice of instinct spoke inside my head. I took two steps to the side and grabbed the cord, yanking the blinds up with a sound that ripped through the sleeping quiet.

  “Dru!” This time it was Christophe sweeping the door open, but I already had the window unlatched. I tugged on it, and wonder of wonders, it wasn’t painted shut. It hove up with a screech just as Graves yelled and Christophe swore.

  Ash tumbled through the window. He left dark prints on the roof and the sash. Blood looks black at night, and he was covered in it. The liquid length of him hit the floor with a wet thud. The same nameless certainty made me kneel down beside him. Chill night air poured through the window.

  Ash made a soft canine sound when I touched his furry head. A half-growling yip that went down at the end, like he was too tired to finish it.

  “Dru.” Christophe, with the careful tone of an adult telling a kid not to pet the nice foaming-rabid pooch. “Dru, malutka, little one, move away.” There was a click, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he had a gun out. Maybe it was even the shotgun he’d driven Ash off with once before.

  What the hell am I doing? But Ash had saved my life twice. It didn’t feel right to let Christophe shoot him. Just like it hadn’t felt right to leave Graves behind once he’d been bitten. “He’s hurt.”

  The wulfen made another tired sound, and turned his head slightly toward me. He sighed. And the uncomfortable thought rose up in me, what if I had left Graves behind?

  How many times had he saved me, too?

  Christophe swallowed, audibly. “Dru, moja ksi aniczko, please. Move away from him.”

  The hair was amazingly silky where it wasn’t matted with water and blood and filth. I touched the white streak and Ash made a sharp, quivering noise. “He’s hurt. He saved my life the other—”

  “He’s dangerous, just like any Broken. And he’s probably led them straight to you. Move away, and I will end his suffering.”

  I leaned forward over Ash’s head. “Goddammit, Christophe, listen to me. We’ve got to help him. He saved my life, and—”

  “He could have done that for any number of reasons—”

  “So could you.” I looked up. His eyes were all but glowing, winter sky. Graves had his hands up and stood to one side, staring fixedly at Christophe’s profile and the shotgun. It was the shotgun, the same one he’d had before.

  And it was pointed right at me. A thin river of prickling fear ran down my spine. The end of a gun looks very big and very black when it’s staring you in the face.

  “Christophe,” Graves said, very quietly. A growl rattled under the words. “Put that fucking shotgun down.”

  “What are you going to do? Jump me?” Christophe snorted. “Shut up, dogboy, and let the adults talk. Dru, kochana, please. I beg you, move away from the animal and let me dispatch him.” The spaces between his words got odder, and I wondered again, inconsequentially, how goddamn old he was.

  “I’m not going to. We’re going to help him.” I stared at the shotgun’s oiled barrel, its deadly snout. My teeth tingled, turning sharply sensitive. “And I think we’d better do it fast.”

  The thrumming growl in the room wasn’t coming from Ash. A crackle of bones shifting their shape and density brushed the air like the soft sound of a bird’s wings.

  And the taste of wax oranges bloomed on the back of my tongue. Christophe looked up, a quick birdlike movement, and dropped the shotgun’s muzzle toward the floor. “Time to go. He’s led them here. God and Hell both damn it.” He turned sharply on one heel. “Robert! Samuel! Wake up!”

  It was amazing to hear him bellow. Even more amazing was Graves hunching his shoulders, his eyes glittering green. “Dru?” My name came out half-mangled, because his jaw was changing.

  “Come over here.” I tried not to sound scared half to death, crouching over a broken, bleeding werwulf. “Help me. He’s pretty beat up.”

  Ash made a convulsive movement. Blood spattered on the floor, and a low hurt sound escaped his muzzle. His teeth looked very sharp, and very white. He sighed, and slumped bonelessly into the floor.

  “Graves?” Oh please don’t lose your temper now. Please.

  “Time to go,” Christophe snarled at the door. “Get downstairs, Dru. Now.”

  “We’re taking him with us.” I stared at Graves, willing him to help me out.

  The crackling went away. He took two long strides, ending up next to me and the streak-headed werwulf. Knelt down carefully, and I could see how pale he was under his ethnic coloring. His hands shook when he reached down, getting a handful of bloody pelt.

  It occurred to me then that Ash was the one who’d bitten Graves. “Help me get him upright.” I wanted to apologize, but there wasn’t time.

  Because the thin blue lines of warding in the wall had begun to sparkle and run together uneasily, sensing the approach of something inimical.

  “Jesus Christ,” Graves said, breathlessly, and pulled Ash’s arm up. “Okay, Dru. Okay. All right.”

  Oh, thank God. Because I didn’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t backed me up.

  Between the two of us, we got the wulfen heaved up. He hung like wet laundry, and he was heavy and bloody. Christophe’s hair was slick and dark as the aspect folded over him, his fangs touching his lower lip and his eyes incandescent.

  “If you think I’m going to—” he began.

  Graves actually snarled in return, a deep thrumming noise. “Shut the fuck up if you’re not going to help.” He took an experimental step, and Ash’s weight got easier to handle. “Come on, Dru.”

  I l
et out a sobbing breath of relief. We moved forward, Christophe backed up, and I heard a sharp, hateful cry rise in the distance. It scraped against the inside of my head, and it meant that the vampires had found us. And were moving in.

  CHAPTER 28

  “What the hell—” Shanks’ jaw actually dropped, and Dibs let out a high-pitched squeak that would have been funny if I hadn’t been seriously out of breath from hefting an unconscious wulfen down the stairs.

  “Move!” Christophe barked, and they both lunged into motion. They already had their sleeping bags rolled up and the rest of their stuff together. Dibs shoved everything in Shanks’ arms and dug in his bag.

  “How are we going to fit that in the car?” Shanks wanted to know, but he was moving. Christophe tossed him the keys. “Shit, I’m driving?”

  “Hurry up.” Christophe turned on his heel. “Get them in the car. Put her in the back, and pick me up in the front yard.” Then he was gone, a shimmer hanging in the air where he had just been. The front door opened, and the smell of early-early morning burst down the hall.

  Dawn was a long way off, though.

  “Come on, chickadees.” Shanks headed for the garage, his arms full of gear. “Let’s move out.”

  Ash’s head lolled. I almost tipped over, getting him down the steps into the garage, but Dibs stepped forward with a small spitting sound and subtracted the weight from me. I half-fell aside, catching myself against the wall, and heard a crash upstairs that shook the whole house.

  Shanks slammed the trunk. More crashes filled the upstairs. “Get in! Backseat, Dru. Get in with them!”

  Between Dibs and Graves, they got Ash into the backseat. I piled in on the other side, Shanks slammed the driver’s-side door, and the engine roused as I squirmed and yanked my own door shut.

  Thank God the backseat was big, if we’d been driving an import, someone would have been left behind, and that wouldn’t have been pretty.

  Wait a second, how are we going to—

  Shanks dropped the car into reverse, popped the parking brake, and smashed the gas.

  The garage door was flimsy plywood, and it exploded out in shivers and splinters. The tires bit gravel, Shanks cut the wheel, and we skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, a hair’s breadth from plowing into a parked car. He flicked the headlights on and let out a small whooo! sound.

  “Jesus!” Dibs yelled, digging in his medical kit. “Hold him down!”

  Ash was thrashing. His head snapped back and forth in my lap, white teeth champing, and I reached down and grabbed it. Graves folded down over him in the middle, and the passenger-side front door opened.

  “Go!” Christophe slammed the door and immediately twisted, bracing his knees against the seat.

  His eyes skated over me as his shoulder moved, and cold air poured into the car. He was rolling the window down.

  Shanks dropped it into gear again and hit the accelerator. The car leapt forward. I shot a glance out my window and saw the house was crawling with dark shapes moving far too quickly and eerily graceful to be human. A gleam of blue-tinged flame sparked high up on the roof and blossomed like a flower.

  One of the dark shapes leapt onto the lawn and bounded for the car. Everything was going too slow. Ash’s teeth snapped, and Christophe had the shotgun braced against his shoulder, kneeling impossibly in the front seat.

  The gun spoke once, a roar that sent Ash into more frantic convulsions. My bag, smushed against my side, dug into my ribs. If I could let go of the werwulf in my lap, I could roll down the window and fire at the things chasing us too.

  “Calm down.” My voice was lost in the roar of the engine. I bent over Ash’s head, repeating myself, trying not to yell. “Calm down, calm down, we’re trying to help, ulp!” The car jolted over a speed bump, the engine roared, and we slewed into a tire-smoking turn.

  “Faster!” The shotgun spoke again. Christophe moved, jamming it down next to the seat and producing a very capable-looking .45 semiautomatic. It was a real cannon, and he checked the clip like an expert, too. “Goddammit, Bobby, break the speed limit!”

  “I am!” Shanks yelled back, but the car took a deep breath and leapt forward again, the engine saying, Yessir, I’m American heavy metal and we can move this thing, yes we can, just give me a second.

  “Calm down!” I yelled, and Ash subsided. His head was heavy, and wet with blood, and he smelled awful. The taste of rotting wax oranges inside my mouth crested, and I longed to retch or spit.

  Christophe moved. The window was all the way down, and he pushed his head and shoulders outside.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Graves’ cry was all but lost under the roaring of the wind.

  “Shit!” Shanks yelled, and I looked up. There were headlights piercing the darkness, and I was confused for a moment before the car started slewing and I realized we were on a one-way street.

  In the dark.

  Going the wrong way.

  And Christophe calmly hooked a leg over the passenger-side headrest, sitting in the window like he’d watched one too many Dukes of Hazzard reruns, and started firing behind us.

  CHAPTER 29

  “The freeway! Take the freeway!” My elbow whapped Ash’s face. I leaned forward and screamed. “Right side, right side, on-ramp! ON-RAMP!”

  “SHUT UP!” Shanks yanked the wheel. We hit the on-ramp doing at least seventy, and he swore with astonishing creativity. Street-lamps whizzed by. Something hit the trunk and the car fishtailed, righted itself. I choked, the taste of rotten wax oranges filling my mouth again, and wished I could spit. A spot of fierce cold bloomed on my chest, I flinched.

  A tremendous weight crashed down on the back of the car. Graves, Dibs, and I all screamed, a three-part chorus of surprised terror. The glass didn’t break completely, and Christophe’s gun spoke again as his leg loosened almost free of the headrest. His booted foot narrowly missed my face. I threw my head back and got a confused impression of shadows, red eyes glaring down, a flicker of brazen hair and a spot of orange light with a blue center.

  It was the Burner. Her hand was full of flame, and she stared down through the crazy-cracked glass, her eyes full of unholy crimson fire. She screamed, a rising crescendo of hate, and Christophe fired again.

  The car zigged and the vampire’s weight was thrown away. The entire back window was starred with breakage. The blue-threading flame whispered between the cracks and snuffed itself out as I let out a short puffing breath, my skin tingling with the warmth of the aspect.

  Christophe’s leg moved again. He slithered back down into the car, and the first thing he did was drop his gun, lean over the seat, and grab my shoulders. “Are you all right? Dru? Are you hurt?”

  What the — “I’m fine!” I had to pitch my squeaking voice over the roaring wind from the window.

  Shanks wove in and out of thin traffic. Thankfully, we were going the right way, the only thing in front of us was taillights. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. The aspect receded, blond streaks sliding back through his hair as the wind kissed it.

  He didn’t let go of my shoulders. “Slow down, Robert. That was the Burner, and she will burn no more. Not with half her head gone.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The wildness filling the car slackened a bit. “Jesus. Are you sure we’re clear?”

  “Sure enough. But don’t stop for a while.” Christophe gave me a thorough once-over, and his eyes dropped to the wulfen’s head in my lap. Splashes of streetlight and reflected headlamp-shine bounced across his face. “You should have left him behind.” His lips shaped the words; they were lost in the slipstream.

  My fingers were still tangled in Ash’s hair. My chin lifted a little, and my face settled against itself. I stared at Christophe, my gaze moving over his perfectly proportioned features. I could draw him, if I ever had the time and the paper. But how could I capture the way he was looking steadily at me, thoughts moving behind the cold blue of his eyes?

  My heart hadn’t stopped pounding
yet. But, thank God, I didn’t blush. I was too terrified. One thin pane of automotive glass between me and a flame-slinging sucker. Jesus.

  “He’s sedated,” Dibs said. “I can’t give him more, but that should keep him calm. Why isn’t he changing back?”

  “He can’t change back, that’s what Broken means.” Shanks’ dark eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror. It had gotten knocked askew sometime in the last scrambled fifteen minutes, and he adjusted it as the car slowed down a little more, achieving a freeway-respectable sixty instead of a wild looping seventy-plus.

  “Shit, really?” Dibs actually flinched, as if he expected Ash to wake up and start making trouble.

  “Why, I mean, um, this is the one? The one you were talking about? The last Silverhead?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, but my eyes never left Christophe’s face. “This is Ash. We’re going to help him. As much as we can. How far are we from the Schola?”

  The djamphir let go of me. He studied me for another few moments, then slid down in his seat and rolled his window up. The sudden almost-silence was deafening. “Not long now. Keep heading south. We should hit the expressway in an hour or so.”

  “I don’t suppose we’ll be stopping for coffee.” Shanks yawned, but he was still glancing in the rearview every now and again. Looking at me? Or at Ash, slumped across everyone’s lap in the backseat? At Graves, who had straightened and now stared ahead, a muscle in his jaw ticking? Or at Dibs, who was startlingly pale as he dug in his medical bag?

  Or maybe just staring at the back window, where the print of a vampire’s fist still reverberated in the cracked glass right over my head, bits of it melting together as if a blowtorch had kissed it. What would have happened if that hand had broken through?

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  “I don’t know if we can, with him in the car.” Christophe let out a chill little laugh. “Just keep moving until the sun’s up. One problem at a time.”