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Authors: Lili St Crow

BOOK: Defiance
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Noise-canceling earphones are a blessing. I just wished he’d given me two of them. Or earplugs. Earplugs would’ve been just jim-dandy.
“We read you, Dru.” Christophe’s voice, as crisp as if he was standing right next to me, overriding the attack of the music. Now it was some retro whitewashing of an eighties song, about a girl named Eileen and how she needed to come on, over thunking, thudding bass. “We have a visual. Primary team, move in.”
This was, he’d told me, the most dangerous part. Before the other
djamphir
infiltrated the building, while I was still dancing. I was just about to break free of the crowd and head for the exit when another bright shard of hate lanced through my head.
I drew back instinctively, and the exit I’d been planning to take suddenly had a flicker of movement around it. “Shit.” I wasn’t even aware I’d said it.
“What?” Christophe didn’t sound worried, but I could almost see him sitting at a sleek black desk in Mission Central at the Schola Prima on the Upper West Side, tense, his head cocked and the aspect slicking his hair down and back, the fangs peeping out from under his upper lip. His fingers would be poised over a slim black keyboard, and his blue eyes would be cold and far away, completely closed off. He would be coldly handsome, and I would almost feel . . .
No, I was never afraid of him. Not really. But it was easy to see how I could be, when he looked like that.
I had other problems right now. “Primary exit’s blocked. I’m using secondary.”
“Dru—”
But I was already moving. It wasn’t a mistake, because the flickers at the door resolved into three teenage-looking males. One blond and two dark, all of them cute enough to get a second glance from any reasonable girl. If she was smart, the girl would see the hard edges of their smiles, or the nasty glitter in their dark eyes, or even just the way they moved. And she would run like hell.
But normal people don’t look too closely. They glance, slot you into whatever hole they think you fit in, and bebop along right into the jaws of whichever slice of nasty is looking to feed. Dad and August used to argue over whether or not people
wanted
to know about the Real World, about the things that went bump in the night. Neither of them ever won the argument.
Me? I’d had nothing to say. I’d just been a kid.
I was still following the plan. I headed for the secondary exit, Christophe muttering in my ear as he sent the secondary and tertiary teams to their backup positions and gave the primary new orders. There was an odd echo to his voice, as if the signal was getting bounced around or he was outside.
I wished he was a little closer than the Schola, to tell the truth. But he was my control for this run, and Mission Central was where he belonged, coordinating. I drew in a nice deep breath, trying to force my galloping pulse to slow down. We were about to serve the vampires hunting the rave scene a really bad plate of kickass, Christophe had finally judged me competent enough to work inside a very limited seek-destroy operation, and the thought was comforting. Like I was doing something
real
, for once, instead of just training. Even if this was the closest thing to safe you could get when dealing with vampires.
That was when everything went bad. Because another quick movement near the secondary exit caught my eye, and the bass hit a smashing, rollicking rhythm. Everyone raised their arms, the crowd’s mood turning on a dime into a breathless anxiety under all the roller-coaster fun, and I realized the secondary was a no-go too. My scarf fluttered a bit, seed pearls rasping against my suddenly damp neck.
Unfortunately, I’d just stepped out of the mass of normal kids and into a clear space, a sort of walkway for anyone who needed to escape the dance floor. I should have kept moving as if I was heading for the bathroom. When you freeze and stare at a rave, you stick out.
The lead vampire at the secondary exit lifted his head. His eyes shone flatly, the black of the hunting aura eating the irises and spreading into the whites, oddly like oily rainbows on wet pavement. The older ones have those black oily eyes pretty much all the time, but it takes a while for the younger ones to develop it.
He sniffed, aristocratic nostrils flaring, dark curls falling over his forehead.
Oh shit.
“Secondary exit blocked,” I muttered. “Switching to Plan C.”
“Wait.” It wasn’t often I heard Christophe sound baffled. “What’s plan—”
The curly-headed vampire stopped sniffing. His head moved a little, and he looked right at me. His lips moved, and I knew what he was saying.
I swear to God I heard him, too, a whisper bypassing my ears and sliding right into the center of my brain.
“
Svetocha
.”
The name for what I was—part vampire, part human girl, poisonous to suckers and all kick ass once I bloom and finish getting trained.
If I survived tonight, that is.
I swallowed hard, wished I hadn’t. “Plan C is where I improvise,” I said through the sudden thickness of danger candy, and bolted.
CHAPTER TWO
 
You’d think I’d
feel good about being able to turn a Chelsea warehouse rave into complete and utter chaos in under fifteen seconds.
I didn’t.
I went over the bar in a flying leap, my boots barely kissing its glass surface. There was no liquor here, just overpriced bottles of tap water and energy drinks in shiny cans. The bartender, a beefy guy who was probably pretty upset at being stuck here instead of at a real bar, held a baseball bat the size of a small tree. He was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear him over the fire alarm and I was already past him anyway. The crush toward the doors set off by my yanking the jury-rigged alarm—I hadn’t actually been sure it would work—might keep the suckers off me for a few more moments.
Instead of hunting helpless humans tonight, they were going to be hunting me. I was hoping I wasn’t as helpless as I felt right at the moment.
Dad’s voice, showing up like it always did when I needed to figure out what to do next, and fast.
Don’t think about that, Dru-girl. Thinkin’ slows you down. Move.
They had to have somewhere to bring things in behind the bar. I saw the door and dove for it, a splintering crash behind me audible through the wall of noise masquerading as music plus the whoop of the alarm.
The suckers had hit the bar. For a moment I wondered and worried about the bartender, but I couldn’t for long. I was too busy.
“What are you doing?” Christophe sounded calm. But I needed all my breath for running. “Never mind,
kochana
. I can hear you breathing. All right.”
Hearing him, cool and collected in my ear, was comforting. I always work better with someone telling me what to do, I guess. At least when there were vampires behind me. It was like that when I was with Dad, too—with him doing the directing, I could just calm down and focus.
The door behind the bar flew open and I piled down groaning wooden stairs. The noise decreased, partly because the migraine attack they called “music” was cut short on a squeal of feedback. I found myself in a kind-of basement. Concrete walls, crates of bottled water, other shapes I couldn’t identify.
They have to bring the supplies in somewhere, or else I just trapped myself.
But I saw another set of rickety wide stairs and a ramp going up to a wide metal double-door thing, the kind you walk over on the sidewalk, on your way to somewhere else.
At least, people walk over them without thinking twice. I try not to. You never can tell.
It took me half a second to see it was padlocked.
Shit.
But I was going too fast to care. And behind me, I heard a high glassy scream of rage that went straight through my head.
A
nosferat
’s hunting cry. It speared through my temples and twisted, hard.
I yelled, too, put my head down, and drove for the doors. Terror is good for fueling the aspect. I felt it, like warm oil sliding down my skin, the world suddenly closed under a layer of clear plastic goop. I thought it was the world that slowed down until Christophe explained that no, it was just me going too fast. After I “bloomed” I’d be able to switch it on at will.
I couldn’t wait. But for right now—
The padlock snapped. I hit the doors like a bomb, each step splintering as my Doc Martens slammed down. A flash of red pain, my yell cut off in midstride, and Christophe saying something in my ear but I couldn’t hear it, the words were stretched out like taffy.
Not only that, but the shock of busting the doors open jolted the earpiece off. It went skittering away, and I leapt, boots hitting the pavement as the metal doors clanged down on either side. I’d just jumped up out from under the sidewalk like a human-sized jack-in-the-box, and the screaming started.
Now move that ass, Dru-girl!
Dad’s
don’t worry about the ammo, worry about running
tone, like that time we were outside Baton Rouge and the zombies had shown up.
Oh, but it hurt to think about Dad. And zombies. And everything.
The crowd would provide some cover, but not enough. Neon ran against glass, streaking oddly because I was moving so fast, scarf fluttering and snapping in my back draft, pulled tight against my throat. This part of the city was alive and thumping, other nightclubs spilling out onto the street and people everywhere. There’s a skill to running through a crowd, but you don’t have to use it when you’re streaking along like
djamphir
do. Instead, you just have to avoid hitting anyone.
You could really hurt someone or throw them out into traffic. But there’s another reason you try to avoid hitting someone—because it’ll slow you down. And you can’t have that when a bunch of vampires are chasing you. The gum in my mouth had turned into a hard piece of flavorless glue. My teeth tingled as the aspect rose, slicking over me and spurring me on. My mother’s locket bounced, cool metal kissing my breastbone.
At least in a skirt I could really move it. Jeans sometimes get a little tight. But I was booking so hard I was glad of every inch of movement the dress could give me. I jagged around the corner, hit the crosswalk, and leapt. A silver BMW hit the brakes, they had the green light, my boots thudded into the hood, and I used it like a springboard, crumpling the sheet metal. I heard the high screeching cry behind me. It drove glass spikes through my brain and tried to dig in, twisting and tearing, but I didn’t slow down.
Training’s good for that. When a situation occurs, Dad always said, you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.
I
did
snap my head aside and spit the gum free, wished I hadn’t because my saliva immediately dried up and the taste of wax citrus was worse than ever.
Head for the Park, you can lose them in the Park. And that’ll get you closer to the Schola, plus the other
djamphir
can night-hunt around you. That’s a great plan, really wunderbar, now let’s see if it’ll work.
The world stuttered and slid around me, like I was on a greased glass plate. Another hunting cry lifted, whistulating at the end like a kettle with a busted flap. The two groups inside the club had to be hunters, and there were others on the prowl tonight. They were calling in reinforcements. Two
djamphir
combat units and a logistical team weren’t going to be able to handle this, and now that the
nosferat
knew they were after a
svetocha
, they wouldn’t stop.
Which made getting the hell out of Dodge the best idea around. But it also meant heading for Chelsea Park was a
bad
idea, not enough cover, I had to think fast but there wasn’t anywhere else to go except vaguely north and hope for the best.
Running. The air was made of diesel scorch, a stitch hovering just outside my ribs, ready to grab me as soon as the clear goop over the world snapped aside and I was left with just human speed.
That’s not good, not good not good—
But I kept going. I had no choice.
The world rang like a wet wineglass stroked just right, and I heard an owl’s soft passionless
who? Who?
A streak of white coalesced overhead, feathers shading themselves in like a fast-forward of a charcoal artist at work. The owl’s yellow eyes took fire, and it wheeled in a tight circle overhead. Then it shot away like a rocket, and I held off the inevitable
snap
of the world taking back its usual slow speed with a tearing mental effort.
It was like being with werwulfen on one of their daylight runs that starts in the green blur of Central Park. Flashes smearing by, an openmouthed old lady, a group of college kids on the corner, a Chinese restaurant with a pirate ship on its sign, each just a compressed bullet of smeared information. The owl—Gran’s owl, though it was my aspect taking animal form—nipped smartly to the right and disappeared into the open maw of a subway entrance.
Bad idea, Dru.
But I’d never doubted Gran’s owl before. I flashed over the pavement, each step making a weird smacking sound, and saw why the owl was leading me there.

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