Defiance (21 page)

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Authors: Lili St Crow

BOOK: Defiance
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“You have to smell that.” Dibs bent over me, his thumb peeling my right eyelid up. I wanted to shove his hand away—it was my
eye
, dammit—but I couldn’t muster up the moxie to move. “Right? Tell me I’m not the only one.”
“Oh yes. She’s cresting and will bloom soon, the primary changes have started.” Leon stared down at me. A curious expression drifted over his face, part bitterness, part something I couldn’t define. “What happened?”
Oh, so
now
he wanted to know what happened. “Ash,” I whispered, and the world turned into shutterclicks of light as my eyelids fluttered.
The werwulf boy crouching at my feet made a low, unhappy sound.
“Help me get her on the bed,” Dibs said, and the shutterclicks turned into a dozy bruised darkness.
 
I was pretty out of it for most of that day, and even now I can’t tell what I really saw and what was . . . well, fever dreams. Or nightmares, as my body struggled to cope.
The visions were odd—brightly colored fragments, each with their own static buzz around them, like and unlike what Gran called “true-seein’s.” Clear, so clear. Technicolor bright and sharp-crisp. They had weight. The touch echoed inside my head, showing me maybe-was, is, and will-be, like it was suddenly in a space much too big for it, spinning like a mad carnival ride through time.
Christophe, leaning against a tree in a shadowed clearing. His eyes turned blowtorch-blue as he watched, and the expression on his face was chilling. Because under the set grim look of a guy watching something distasteful, there was faint, scary amusement. He watched as the struggle took place, and when it was over, his smile was a ghost of itself.
“Just get it out of my sight,” he said, and their narrow white hands lifted the other boy, his long dark coat flapping as he struggled uselessly.
Blackness, cutting between the scenes like a knife blade.
The naked boy crouched in the stone cell, his fingertips resting against the weeping wall. He coughed, his ribs heaving, and the faint shine on his skin told me he was sweating in the damp. That wasn’t a good sign. He turned his head, sharply, as if he heard something, and I saw the flash of paleness at his temple.
His eyes fired green, and Graves sniffed suspiciously. That set off another round of coughing; he spat something into a corner of the cell. I lunged forward, trying to reach him.
Another knife blade, this one loaded with static. Chop.
The white bedroom was full of golden afternoon light, and there was a body on the bed, a mess of curled hair. Dibs paced, nervously watching the Broken. The mirror watched it all, a blind eye. I was inside the reflection, screaming and pounding my fists on its slick clearness, as Nathalie leaned over the too-still body and glanced up at Ash.
Who crouched next to the bed, staring at me inside the mirror with orange-flecked eyes, like he could
hear
me.
Chop.
Christophe knelt motionless at the head of the stairs, staring unblinking down a filthy, dusty hall. Beside him, Benjamin also crouched, his mouth moving. Explaining something. But instead, I looked at Christophe’s hands. They hung, flexing and releasing, like he was wishing he had someone’s neck in them. And I began to feel . . . odd. Not afraid, but like I was missing something.
Chop. More maybe-was and will-be, pouring into my head like they intended to stretch out my skull. Gran’s face, wise and wrinkled; Dad spinning in a field of daisies while I shrieked with laughter, his big capable hands under my arms and the entire world rotating around us; Graves lighting a cigarette; Benjamin slumping against an alley wall and slowly going white as blood slid out of the hole in his shoulder; Augustine’s face a rictus of horror as he screamed, his arms stretched out; my mother’s face brighter than the sun, laughing as she tickled me . . .
One last image, slowing down and cramming its way into my overloaded head. It
hurt
, shoving its way past a confused jumble of memories and physical misery. My heart labored under the strain, climbing uphill in steady beats.
The long concrete hall stretched away into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was heading for that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—
—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder and dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.
BANG.
“Bang,” someone whispered, and hot breath touched my cheek.
I shot straight up, clawing at the air and screaming. Ash went over backward in a flurry of pale limbs. Nat, dozing on the chair she’d pulled up, shrieked and jumped to her feet. The bathroom door flew open and Dibs leapt out, wild-eyed, his little black medibag in one hand and his narrow chest furred with wiry golden hair. He was stark naked, and most of him was wringing–wet. Lather stood up in his hair, and I heard the shower running as I gasped, trying to make my lungs work. The room looked strange, every angle askew and the light somehow
wrong
.
I choked on glassy air. Nathalie leaned over and whomped me on the back. The blow stung, but somehow, it worked. I sucked in sweet air, blinking as the touch turned around and settled inside my skull, nestling like a feathersoft bird.
A really
big
bird.
“Jesus,” I husked. “What the . . .” The light was all weird, and after a moment I realized why. It was dusk-gold, not the glare of noon, lying over the room like honey, which meant I’d been out for a while.
Leon looked up from the window seat. “They’ll return soon. We need a plan.”
Nat rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, sure. A plan. How exactly is a
plan
going to help
this
situation? Get back in the shower, Dibs.”
I blushed scarlet. So did Dibs. He also squeaked and ducked back into the bathroom, banging the door shut. Nat let out a sigh my Granmama might’ve envied.
Wow. Now I knew a lot more than I ever wanted to about him.
I scrubbed at my forehead weakly. “Jesus.” I couldn’t come up with anything better to say. “What’s going on?”
“You need food. It’s not hot, but the calories will do you good.” Nat stretched, turning the movement into a graceful, coordinated rise from her chair.
Somehow she’d gotten Ash into a pair of slightly–too–big khakis and a sleeveless denim button-down. Muscle moved under white skin as he peeked up over the edge of the bed at me. Orange sparks drifted through his dark irises, the pupil flaring and shrinking as he examined me. “Bang,” he said sagely, and nodded. Greasy strings of dark hair fell in his face.
“Milady.” Leon slid off the window seat. “Dru. I bring tidings, if you can stay awake long enough to hear them.”
My mouth tasted like old dried-up copper and I hurt all over. The pain settled in deep, not like a bruise or a burn but instead as if the center of my bones had been stripped out and filled up with a grinding low-level ache. I rubbed at my grainy eyes. I’d lost pretty much a whole day, and wouldn’t you know, I felt like I could just lie down and sleep for another two.
“Here.” Nat came back from the door, carrying a plate one-handed. “Not a word until she eats something.”
“This is important, Skyrunner.” But Leon subsided when she shot him a look that could have broken a window. A flare of yellow went through her irises, and I actually found myself really, really glad Nat was on my side.
I reached for diplomacy. “I think I can eat and listen at the same time.” My stomach actually rumbled, and when she gave me the plate, I saw a pile of ham sandwiches on wheat toast. The lettuce and tomato looked a bit soggy, but my stomach spoke up again and I grabbed the first half-sandwich on top. “What the hell, Leon?”
“You gave me a
commission
.” His chin jutted.
“Sure I did.” I glanced at Nathalie. “Thanks.” Back at him. He was looking like a sulky third-grader. Jeez. “Spit it out.”
That was the exact moment what he was saying caught up with me. He was telling me he’d found something out.
About Graves.
Leon spread his hands a little, a curious little helpless motion.
I took a huge bite of sandwich, chewed, and my stomach started singing hosannas. It was work not to talk with my mouth full. “Oh, you mean . . . Well, whatever you’ve got, Nat can hear it. She’s my friend.”
For some reason, that made Nat stand a little straighter. She folded her arms, and her earrings—purple metal hoops with little silver rings hanging at the bottom—swung a little.
“Are you sure?” He held up both hands when
I
glared at him, too. “I’m not impugning your duenna, Milady. There are some things it’s safer for a wulfen not to hear.”
“Oh, dear me.” Nathalie sank back down in the chair and examined her Uggs. The sarcasm could’ve started dripping off her and staining the floor. “Is it conspiracy, treachery, murder, or open warfare? I’ll have to choose my lipstick accordingly.”
Ash still peeked up over the edge of the bed at me, and I grabbed another sandwich half and held it out to him. He studied it, studied me, then grabbed it so fast his hand blurred. He disappeared, hunching down next to the bed.
Leon’s face twisted itself up slightly. “I don’t know what to call it at this point.” He folded his arms, shook his lank, fine hair down. “Except
unsavory
.”
“Excuse me? I’m sitting right here.” I tore off another huge bite of sandwich. Have you ever been so hungry even cardboard would be oh-my-God
fantastic
? That’s how it was.
“I’m not quite sure how you’ll react, either.” He stared at a spot about two feet above my head. “It concerns Reynard.”
I swallowed a huge load of toast, cheddar cheese, ham, and tomato. It tasted like manna, or like Gran’s cooking. All it needed was some fresh milk. “What about him?” The food hit my stomach with a thump I was surprised wasn’t audible. Then I started to get a very bad feeling. “Wait. What does this have to do with—”
He dug under his jacket, and Nat tensed perceptibly. Leon glanced at her, making another odd little face like he was amused, then pulled out a sleek silver thing. “I decided to start at the beginning, with the moment your
loup-garou
disappeared. There must have been a security feed for that sector, I thought. So I went looking for it. Found out the raw footage had been yanked, but there are always backups. I called in a favor and had a friend of mine go digging until he found a ghost-shell image of the time in question. He brought it out and reconstructed it—but in the middle of the reconstruction he got transferred to Oklahoma. I’m not at all sure those two events aren’t related, but that’s beside the point.” Leon opened up the silver rectangle. It was a screen on top and a touch pad on the bottom, a cute little thing. He pressed a button on the side, showed me what had to be the world’s smallest DVD on a little tray sliding into the bottom half. “So I took it to another friend, this time outside the Schola, and called in another favor. He finished, and I went on my merry way. Take a look.”
He handed it over. I stopped stuffing my face long enough to press the play button, tilting the screen so the glare didn’t hit it. The bathroom door opened again. Dibs, rinsed off and dried, wearing (thank God) a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt silk-screened with an elephant, peered out.
He was still blushing fiercely, deep crimson staining his cheeks. I didn’t blame him.
“What you’re seeing is security footage outside that gym exit,” Leon continued. “Your
loup-garou
should be coming out right about . . . now.”
And there it was. A slice of wall, the camera angled to show the gym door, two paths, and the baseball diamond and bleachers in the distance. The door blasted open so hard little things popped off, a slam I could almost hear as it flew wide and hit the concrete wall. Graves stalked out.

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