chapter THIRTY-FIVE
He somehow found both my malaika. Pressed them into my hands. The wooden hilts were warm and satiny. “Are you hurt? Anywhere?”
I shook my head, realized he probably couldn’t see. It was so dark it had actual physical weight. I had to cough twice before I could even think about talking. The bile in my throat burned, and the heat in my middle was fading. “N-no. I don’t th-think so.” Now I was stuttering, just like Dibs. If he felt anything like this, I didn’t blame him. “Tired, though.”
“Thank God.” He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers sinking in, and pulled me forward. This time he was smack-dab on the button, and I don’t know why I was surprised. If he could find my malaika, he could certainly find my mouth.
There was blood on his lips, but it tasted like spice. An apple pie just pulled from a hot oven, and a desert wind—sand and the windows down, right at dusk, when you’re out on those roads that arrow for the horizon and the city is behind you; you’re doing eighty and you’re not going to stop anytime soon. The touch, bruised and aching, shivered as a bolt of feeling went through me—something hot, and scary, and wild. It poured a different kind of strength into me, and when he broke away I actually gasped.
He didn’t even pause. “Listen to me. That’s probably the Order. We might have to fight our way out to them. Don’t worry, the nosferatu will be weakened and confused now, with their king dead.” The businesslike, mocking tone was back, just like the old Christophe. But under it was a raw edge I wasn’t sure I liked.
I’d never heard him sound scared before. And the idea that some of Sergej’s blood might have been on his lips—
I didn’t want to think about that.
“The aura-dark may hit me. I don’t know how much I took before you . . . stopped me.” His tone gentled. “Dru?”
“What?” I swayed, he held me upright.
“Thank you. You . . . this is not the time. But I want you to know something.”
Oh, God, what now? “Can’t it wait until we—”
“No. It can’t.” He eased up on my shoulders a little, and I suddenly wished I could see his face. “Dru. You make me want to be . . . better. Instead of what I . . . am.”
Better? You fought off your father. For me. Again.
And then bit him and drank his blood. But if he hadn’t, what might’ve happened? Would I have been able to . . .
I didn’t want to think about that either. There was so much I didn’t want to think about, it wasn’t even funny.
“You saved me,” I whispered. “That’s enough.”
“Is it?” Now he sounded bitter. “Is it ever going to be enough?”
I swallowed hard. I could still taste him on my lips. And the fading heat of Graves’s blood was a stone in my lower belly. “Christophe . . .”
“The loup-garou. Graves.” Back to the businesslike mockery. “He bled for you, didn’t he.”
“That’s how I could come d-down here and r-rescue—”
“I’ve bled for you too, Dru.”
My feet slid a little in vampire blood, splashing. It still smelled horrific in here, and I wanted some light. I wanted to be outside so bad I was shaking. I wanted to run until I dropped, just to get away. “Christophe, for Christ’s sake, can we just please get out of here? This is not helping!”
I tried not to sound panicked, and I failed miserably.
But he was just not going to let it go. His hands fell away from my shoulders. “How much is enough, Dru? What do I have to do? Tell me. Now, while we have time.”
What the f*ck? Here we were knee-deep in rotting vampire, gunfire getting closer all the time, God alone knew how we were going to get out of here even if that was the Order coming for us, and he wanted to have this discussion with me?
“We need to get out of here.” A wave of exhaustion crashed through me, and I swayed. “I don’t feel so good. Come on, Christophe. We’ll talk later.”
“Now is all I have, Dru. It’s all I’ll ever have.” But his fingers curled around my left forearm, gently this time. “But you’re right. This way. You can’t see, can you.”
“No.” I stumbled after him. “Christophe, look. It’s not a contest. It’s not—”
“Dru.” Kindly, now. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked. Shut up.”
Well, wasn’t that a fine how-do-you-do. But I couldn’t just be quiet. It was too dark, and if I stopped talking I had the idea that he might just vanish, leaving me down here. Alone. And blind. “How can you see?”
He pulled me aside; I sensed something in our way. It was probably a mound of corpses, and I almost lost the battle with my stomach there and then.
A jagged little laugh burst out of him. “It’s one advantage Kouroi have over svetocha. Even the darkness brings no relief.”
He was back to being maddening and cryptic. The relief that flooded me was probably pointless, but it still made me stagger.
He steadied me. “Dru?”
“I’m fine. I just . . . you sound like you. Like normal. It’s good.” And to top it all off, my eyes welled up again. Two fat tears trickled down my cheeks, sliding through a crust of crap I immediately added to the long and growing list of things I never wanted to think about again. “I like it,” I added lamely, trying not to sound like I was having a complete and total meltdown. Not to sound like I was shaking, and crying, and sick, and scared out of my mind, and feeling dirty all the way down to my bones.
Christophe actually paused, down there in the dark. “You . . .” He let out a long, shaky breath. “Once again, kochana, you save me from myself.” He laughed again, but it was a sound so sharp it could cut. It actually hurt to hear. “Come, this way.”
I tried to cry quietly while I followed him. But I don’t think I managed.
I blinked furiously when he pushed a huge heavy door open, the hinges squealing. Even the dim light beyond was scorching, and I let out a little hitching sound of relief. The gunfire was in the opposite direction, but it was moving closer.
And this was actual, honest-to-God daylight. Cloud-filtered sunshine falling through small round windows like portholes high up on the stone walls. “Oh, sweet Mary and sonny Jesus,” I blurted. It was one of Gran’s favorites wouldja-look-at-that expressions, with a heavy dose of boy-am-I-glad.
Christophe glanced at me. We both looked like hell, dipped in seventeen different flavors of gunk and nastiness. But he was almost pristine under it, with the same old air of I could just step out of all this grime and be perfect again in a heartbeat. It was hard to believe he’d had his ribs smashed in and the rest of him battered to a pulp.
“Wow. You’re okay.” I could have smacked myself for Stating The Lamely Obvious once again. The warmth in my stomach stuttered, and I swayed.
Christophe gave a slight, pained nod. “He had stolen quite a bit. I managed, it seems, to steal some of it back.”
Oh, okay. Great. Fantastic. Wonderful. “You know your way around here?”
“Logic, svetocha.” He peered down the hall, blinking as well. “This is the way I was brought in. I marked it in memory. Come.”
We set off down the hall, my shoes squishing and Christophe’s bare feet leaving black marks. He didn’t let go of my arm, and I didn’t mind. The touch of his skin on mine, even through the dirt, sent a warm current through me. We stepped out into the sunlight, and I made another relieved little noise. I couldn’t help myself.
“Sunlight, and I am not in the aura-dark.” Christophe glanced up. “Clouds are breaking. Just in time.”
I opened my mouth to ask him just in time for what, but before I could there was a howl and a scrabbling sound. The other end of the corridor had another iron-bound wooden door, and something hit it with incredible force. Gunfire thundered, loud and close, and Christophe pushed me against the wall. My shoulder hit with a bruising jolt, and he was in front of me, his shoulders up and his claws lengthening, the deadly tension in him making the touch resound like a brass bell inside my head.
“Dru.” Christophe didn’t glance back. “Don’t worry. If this is nosferat, the sunlight will hamper them.”
I nodded stupidly, realized once again that he couldn’t see me. “We’ve done the hard part.” My voice shook. My tough-girl card was so definitely going to get pulled. “This will be easy.”
And amazingly, Christophe laughed. The door shivered, splintering. Long cracks popped free of its surface.
When it flew open, I was ready for anything other than what happened.
Ash landed on all fours, and was halfway down the hall before he dug in with his claws, stone shrieking. His eyes danced, he was shirtless, muscle moving under his pale skin. Grass stuck to his hair, and he wore a wide feral grin.
“BANG!” he yelled, and the wulfen flowed in behind him, shifting through changeform and back into boyshape. And there was Nat, skidding to a stop, her sleek hair ruffled and the relief bursting over her beautiful soot-streaked face like a sunrise. Shanks, his head wrapped in a glaring-white bandage, flowed out of changeform and threw his head back, letting out a howl that rattled the thick glass in the porthole windows.
The ruins of the door were still quivering when August stepped through, his blond hair lighting up as the daylight intensified. And there, right behind him, supple quick Hiro appeared, his short black hair lifting up in vital spikes as the aspect crested over him and he lifted something to his mouth. It was a comm cell, I realized, and his dark eyes glowed as his lips shaped the words.
She’s here. We found her, repeat, we found her, she’s alive. Stand-by for retrieval protocol.
I burst out sobbing and stumbled away from the wall. Nat’s arms closed around me, and the rest of the wulfen took up Shanks’s howl. It was a joyous sound, high and glassy, uncomfortably like the suckers’ hunting-cries.
But this time I welcomed it, even as it raised the hair all over me and pulled at the raw aching places inside my head, still smoking and tender from all that hate and death.
It meant I was safe, and I gave myself up to the shaking and the crying so hard I couldn’t speak as they closed around me and started carrying me away.