chapter THIRTY-TWO
The owl flew at shoulder height, navigating me up through a stone tunnel, turning right, then up a familiar slope. The last time I’d seen this I’d been in the wheelchair, Graves fighting Sergej’s mental pressure and my entire body straining to escape. I was up the slope in a flash, and I hit the doors at the end like a bomb going off. They crashed inward, wood splintering, and the crack they made probably woke up every damn vampire in a hundred-mile radius.
It didn’t matter. The huge amphitheater opened under the owl’s belly like a flower, and its eyes were mine. Part of me felt the fierce joy of flight, wind rushing through feathers with a low sweet sound, and the other part of me snapped my right-hand malaika free and tore through three nosferat in a welter of black-spatter blood. They didn’t even have time to scream their high chill hunting-cries.
Like this, Anna’s voice echoed, her training rising under my skin. I was spinning, soles of my shoes squeaking oddly on the smooth stone, and as the malaika sliced through sucker flesh the nosferat choked and turned purple, rot exploding through them.
I was going too fast to stop so I didn’t, crashing into the table with the transfusion equipment. My shoes touched down, glass shattered, the table splintered as I stamped with incredible force and was airborne. My other foot lightly brushed the arm of Sergej’s iron chair, propelling me forward, and I almost hit Christophe’s chained body dead-on. Skidding sideways, the owl wheeling and diving, nosferatu sleeping in piles or draped over the stone seat-steps beginning to shake themselves awake.
Christophe’s head jerked up. His eyes glittered. Under the mask of bruising and blood, his expression was impossible to see. But I thought I caught a flash of it—sheer horror.
It was child’s play. Both malaika hilts in my left hand now, my right flashed out and the metal of the chains tore with a screech. The lump of heat in my stomach dropped a little, turned into a nova in my belly. I ripped him free as casually as I might rescue a kitten from a yarn-snarl, and he slid bonelessly toward the floor just as the first wave of angry, awake suckers hit the floor and streaked for me, their faces open screams of hate and their hunting-cries rising in shattering crescendo. Fury rose under my skin.
It wasn’t my anger. It was Graves’s, and in that moment I understood a lot about the wulfen.
The Other isn’t really something, well, other. It’s in everyone. Werwulfen can just bring it out. It’s why they’re all about agreement and consensus. They need to be, with the claws and the teeth and the superstrength and the 220 line right into the heart of the darkness.
I screamed, a high chill cry that tore through the sucker yells like a bullet through glass. The aspect flamed, and the touch flared out in concentric rings. They started dropping before they even got close enough for me to use the malaika on them.
Christophe, behind me. Metal slithered. I could tell without looking he was struggling free of the chains. I was hoping he had enough left in him to run. I skipped forward, giving him enough room to maneuver, but hoping I could still keep him close enough that my shell of toxicity would slow the suckers down. Then they were on me, their faces mottled and their bodies failing them no matter how fast they tried to pile on. The malaika flickered, wooden tongues, and Christophe’s voice in the practice room shouted.
Left, left, with precision! Straighten your knee! Keep the circles; remember your reach!
I couldn’t tell if it was me he was yelling at, or Anna, or my mother. He’d trained all three of us, and even though he hadn’t finished with me, I had the benefit of Anna’s long years. Hell, I probably had all of Anna that was left in the world.
That was a happy-dappy thought, but I was going too fast to do more than register a flicker of it.
I struck with both blades, my foot flashing out to catch a choking sucker’s knee, snapping it with a dry-stick breaking sound as the wooden blades whistled, cleaving air and flesh both. Black ichor spattered, hung in the air, and I drove forward some more, the rage lighting up inside me like a star.
“Dru!” Christophe, shouting. “Dru, God damn you, run!”
Oh, no. I am not finished here. I was through with running. I half-spun, and he was on his feet, shaken free of the chains. He leapt, and the nosferat jumping for my back splattered in a wash of rotting foulness. The smell was incredible, titanic, and Christophe’s claws flicked as he tore the remaining life out of the thing.
So he was able to fight.
Good.
They came for us, a wave of young-old faces shining with hatred, the females hanging back and the males moving forward. I recognized this from other fights—the females were jumpers; the males would try to distract and overwhelm and the females would drop in to hopefully finish the prey off. They drew closer, closing the ring as Christophe’s back met mine and he shoved, both of us sliding out into the middle of the wide-open space. Room to maneuver, and Sergej’s iron chair with its black spikes reaching up like frozen fingers.
Get the high ground, Dru. Now it was Dad. Battle’s won with the high ground. Leastways, lots of the time.
“Christophe?” My ribs heaved, my heartbeat coming fast and light. “We’re outside of Fargo, near as I can tell from Dibs. Pick a direction and go. Meet me at the Prima.”
He breathed something in Polish that definitely wasn’t polite; I could tell just from the tone. “What are you doing?”
“Rescuing your half-vampire ass.” What, are you blind? “Get out of here.”
“I’ll hold them. You run.” He coughed, and the vampires pressed forward. The heat in my belly dilated again. How much had I taken from Graves? Too much? How long would it last? When it ran out, what would I do? Would he and Dibs get out safe? “Do you hear me, svetocha? Run. For your life, and for mine—”
“No.” The malaika whirred gently, cleaving air. “Not this time, Chris. This time, you run.”
And I flung myself forward.
I figured if I kept moving fast enough, their ring wouldn’t be able to close on us. The flaw in that was that Christophe wouldn’t be able to take advantage of my little bubble of free air, so to speak, and he looked like hell. But I could just keep them away from him by appearing the bigger threat, right? Which meant I had to get down to some serious business.
I skidded and leapt, crashing into a knot of five males. The malaika flickered, whirring like windup toys, and the world opened up inside my head. It was a chorus of the dead, all talking at the same time.
Gran, bandaging my knee and giving me one of her peculiar, all-seeing looks: You do what you got to. You mind me, now, Dru.
Dad, holding the other side of the heavy bag while he barked encouragement: Get in there, girl! Harder, faster! It’s you or them; make those sonsabitches sorry they was born!
Mom’s voice, from the shady long-ago time of Before: My brave girl, I love you. I love you so much.
Anna, amused and vicious while she examined her crimsonlacquered fingernails: They’re going to try to mass and separate you from Christophe. He’s bleeding and weakened. You could even let them have him. It’s what he deserves.
A high painful screech of metal tearing behind me, but I had my hands full. I stamped, left-hand malaika cleaving air with a low sweet sound, carving half a male sucker’s face off. He was blond and didn’t look any older than fourteen, baby-faced, clutching at his throat as he fell like a heap of dirty laundry. Those blond curls reminded me of Dibs shaking in terror, the fang marks in his neck and his tear-chapped cheeks.
The bloodhunger woke in a sheet of flame. It was the same old feeling: I was a girl made of sparkling glass, and inside that glass was a flood of thick red rage. Only now, for the first time, I didn’t try to hold back from it.
No. I opened myself up completely, I let it take me.
Black blood flew, stinking and thin. The rage swelled, sweetly painful like scratching at a mosquito bite, not caring that you’re shredding the skin, just knowing how good it feels. They came like waves, attacking, and I danced, feet sliding through a scrim of thin black stinking oil and the malaika turned into extensions of my arms. Gran’s owl arrowed down, tearing through them, claws crunching and shredding, its wings steel-edged scythes. It looked wicked and predatory now, its golden eyes coins of flame, and I followed.
Christophe yelled something and I spun, my half-braid floating as Graves’s blood burned inside me, something rippling under my skin as if I was a wulfen and about to change. It flowed over me like a river, and the nosferat scattered. Some were screaming—not their high glassy hunting cries, but lower, still-hateful squeals and shrieks.
Cries of fear. Of pain.
The realization hit me crossways, my stomach turning over with a sick thump. They were suckers. They hated, and they killed—
—but they sounded human.
The female hit me with a boneshattering jolt. I flew, weightless for an eternal moment, and she was already dying, her claws only scratching weakly instead of digging into my belly.
Crunch. The wall stopped us both, the aspect flaring with heat, and she slumped. Her face was twisted, purple, ugly, and still hateful. But maybe once she’d been a child. Nosferatu had mothers just like djamphir did, unless they were an incomplete kill. Bitten, infected, and turned into this.
Was it the turning that made them hate everything? I’d never thought about it before.
And now was the wrong time to start. Still . . .
Gran’s owl circled the auditorium. Christophe skidded to a stop, bare battered feet splashing in the muck. He held something, and I had to blink a couple times before I realized what it was.
One of the spikes from his father’s chair, held loosely by the thin end like a baseball bat, the blunt sharp-edged tip of it dripping as sucker blood ran down its length. He glanced up over my head, blue eyes colder than winter sky, and turned.
Broken bodies littered the bowl-shaped expanse. Two suckers left alive, crouching in front of Christophe. Both male, slight and dark, and terribly young-looking even while they snarled, their top and lower canines springing free.
Christophe laughed. A low, terrible sound. “Come, then,” he said, very softly. “Come and die.”
Silence, broken only by the drip, drip of thin liquid from the tip of the barbed spike he held. The suckers glanced at each other, their jaws crackling as they distended further, sharp ivory in the low bloody light.
They broke and ran, vanishing with that nasty laughing sound. Their tiptapping footsteps receded, and Christophe slumped. He let out a long breath, and Gran’s owl hooted softly. I could still feel it circling, but when I glanced up there was nothing. Just the directionless red glow, and the smell. The female vampire’s body slumped aside; I scrabbled away from it along the wall.
I actually gagged. Nausea twisted my stomach before the aspect rose again on a wave of heat, and I smelled cinnamon through the reek. That only made it worse. Christophe backed up toward me, and a thin thread of his apple-pie scent reached me too.
That helped. But still. So many of them. Had I done that?
We. We’d done it. Christophe and me.
Christophe turned on one bare heel. His feet were healing, bruises retreating as the aspect crackled over him, heat-lightning. His hair was slicked back, dark under the matted blood, and a muscle in his cheek flicked. A sudden graceful movement and he knelt, his free hand coming down. His fingers met my shoulder, and it was like a spark snapping. I almost twitched.
“Are you hurt?” Level and furious.
I took stock. I was alive. All my appendages. The rage had vanished, like water on hot pavement. The back of my throat was dry and rasping. “N-no.” I sounded hoarse, but the thread of silk in my tone wasn’t mine.
It was Anna’s, and it horrified me. Even my voice wasn’t my own anymore. I’d changed. All the broken bodies lying strewn on the floor told me how much. It was like vanishing. Again.
Who am I now?
“Come, then. We have to get you out of here.”
My chin set. I pressed back against the wall, and my legs took care of levering me up. His hand fell away. The aspect flowed up from my feet, working in, delicious oily warmth. A tremor slid through the center of my bones, but I ignored it. “I’m not leaving. I came down here to rescue you.”
“You succeeded admirably.” One corner of his mouth lifted a millimeter, but then he reached for me again with his free hand, aiming for my right wrist. I stepped aside, sliding along the wall. Nervously.
Like I didn’t want him to touch me.
I swallowed, hard. “Get out of here. Dibs and Graves are heading out, you should take care of them. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got things to do.”
“Dru.” Calm, quiet, and very cold. “You are coming with me.”
I shook my head. Everything I wanted to say boiled up inside me. Hit the wall of what I suspected about him, everything I knew, and how much I doubted everything he’d ever told me.
I’m a plague. Everything I care about gets hurt or dies. I’m here, and I’m going to stay here. I’m not leaving until I kill the thing that killed my parents. “Just go.” I couldn’t make the words any louder than a whisper, because my throat had closed up. “I want you to go. I can’t stand to lose you too.”
He opened his mouth, probably to argue, but a strange whooshing sound filled the auditorium like water poured into a cup. A spike of diamond pain speared my temples, and Sergej laughed.
“Oh, children.” His voice filled the entire vast space as well, and I slumped against the wall. “You make it so easy.”