Reckoning (10 page)

But there was also the reek of unwashed werwulf and the thin colorless odor of rage seeping into every surface. The mixture was enough to give you a headache, and my temples throbbed.

Christophe stared through the windshield. A muscle in his cheek ticked steadily. I kept looking at him in little sips, stealing his face. Even covered in mud and blood and rotting black, he was beautiful. Not girl-pretty, or the type of boy-pretty that means a guy’s too busy checking his hair in the mirror to pay attention to anyone else. No, Christophe just . . . worked, the planes of his face coming together in a harmony that made him complex and wonderful all at once.

Like that old saying, a sight for sore eyes. My eyes
were
sore, from crying. Glancing at him made it better.

Right now he looked
dangerous
, too. He was pale, and his jaw was set so hard it wasn’t too big a stretch to imagine his teeth shattering.

He’d only said two things.
Are you hurt?

And, when I’d stammered that I wasn’t, he’d looked right through me, his jaw working and his eyes cold.
Get in the car
.

Just as I thought about it, Christophe spoke. “
Loup-garou
.”

Graves exhaled hard, again. Another puff of cigarette smell. It made my nose and eyes water uselessly. “Yeah?”

“If you
must
smoke, hand me one.”

“Sure thing, man.” Graves’s hand came over my shoulder; Christophe took the cigarette without looking. He stuck one end in his mouth, cupped his palm around the other. A flick of something in his hand, and he inhaled smoothly. Exhaled a stream of smoke.

He’d just lit it without a lighter. Dad’s old friend Augie used to do something pretty much like that. It was a great trick. Maybe someday they’d teach it to me.

Ash whined deep in his throat.

“I know,” Christophe said. “Peace, Silverhead. All is well in hand.”

I swallowed. My dry throat clicked. “Christophe.”

He tilted his head, slightly. Under the mud and water, blond highlights slipped through his hair. His fangs had retreated. “Milady.” Quietly. He took another drag, twisted the wheel savagely as we bumped through a shallow stream. He looked like he knew where we were going.

I was glad someone did.

How did you find me? What’s going on? Where’s the rest of the Order? Are you still mad at me?
First things first. “I’m sorry.”

He gave me one very blue, almost-startled glance. “For what,
milna
?”

Oh, Jesus Christ
. “For . . . for telling you I hated you. For accusing you. For—”

“It is—” He swore again, breathlessly, and hit the gas. We bumped through a screen of underbrush and hit what looked like another overgrown rumrunner’s road, and immediately the car settled down. I had a deathgrip on the door, though, and didn’t loosen up. Tears still leaked down my cheeks. Wiping them did no good. My head ached, pounding dully, and my eyes burned. The
aspect
had settled
into soothing warmth, spreading over my skin and working in layer by layer.

He paused, continued. “It is of no consequence.” He relaxed slightly. “You don’t smell like blood. Are you hurt?”

I told you I wasn’t
. But I took stock, looked down at myself. I was covered in filth. The upholstery in here was never going to recover. Safety glass jolted free from my window, tinkling, as we hit a series of washboard ruts. “I’m okay. How did you find—”

“You can hide from the Order,
moj maly ptaszku
. You can even hide from my father, God willing. But me? No. Not from me.” Amazingly, he grinned. It was a fey expression, eyes glittering and lips pulled back; it was like he was sparring again. And enjoying himself. “Just glad I reached you in time.”

I tried loosening up on the door. No dice, my fingers didn’t want to let go. “The Order—”

“Would you like to call in? They will be overjoyed to hear from you.” Why did he sound so goddamn amused?

Everything I wanted to say rose up inside me, got tangled up, and settled in my throat like an acid-coated rock. Christophe gave me another glance. With the cigarette, he looked a little older, nineteen-twenty instead of a youngish eighteen.
Djamphir
are mostly too graceful and pretty to be believable. Even smeared with mud and guck, his clothes torn up and the rage burning in him, he looked great. He looked completely in control of the situation.

Thank God
. Relief made every tight-strung nerve in me go loose, all at once. “What, so someone there can hand one of us over to the vampires again? No thanks.”

On the other hand, the Order was good protection. Mostly.

He shrugged, mud crackling as it dried on him. His hair dripped on his shoulders, the blond highlights slipping back through it as his
aspect
slowly retreated. “I shouldn’t have trusted Leontus. The fault is mine.”

Well, I wasn’t about to start throwing stones. “I trusted him too.” My voice caught. I decided to leave it at that.

“Where are we going?” Graves piped up.

Christophe shrugged. “To clean up and rest. Milady needs food, and—”

“Don’t call me that.” The words bolted out of me. I hung onto the door as if I was drowning. “Jesus, Christophe. Please.”

“What, no taste for formality?” We jolted over more washboard ruts, but the road was much drier. Of course, here on this side of the ridge the storm hadn’t fallen so hard. “As you like,
moja ksiezniczko
. There’s a decent-sized town not too far. We’ll acquire transport and supplies; this car won’t last long.”

Great
. “All our supplies were in the house.” I sounded numb. The words wouldn’t go together quite right. “Gran’s house. They just . . . it’s burning. There was so much rain; why was it burning?”

“Either they thought you were still inside, or it was fired to deny you shelter.” His expression turned grim, no amusement remaining. He kept pulling at the cigarette, too, like it personally offended him. “Your
loup-garou
perhaps thought to hold them off by himself. Foolish.”

Graves took the bait. “Fuck off.” The command under the words—a
loup-garou
’s mental dominance—made all the space in the car shrink, hot and tight. I craned my neck, looking over my shoulder. He was sitting right behind Christophe, his cigarette held to his mouth and his other hand a fist against his tattered, mud-coated knee. “How do we know you didn’t lead them here,
Reynard
?”

Christophe was silent, but his hand tightened on the wheel.

“Quit it. Both of you.” I swallowed again. The tingling in my fangs was going down, thank God. I didn’t have to hold my tongue
carefully or try to talk with my lips kept stiffly over my teeth. “Let’s just all get along, all right? And
not
do the vampires’ work for them.”

“Anything for you, Dru,” Christophe said, level and cold. “And I mean that. Now be quiet and let me concentrate.”

Graves stared at me, his eyes gone dark. He and Christophe were running neck and neck in the mad sweepstakes, it looked like. I’d never seen Goth Boy look so blackly furious.

“Hey.” I worked my left hand free, reached into the backseat. “Graves.
Graves
.”

He was shaking, I realized. His long black coat was gone—had it been inside the house? He looked odd without it, kind of. But the skull-and-crossbones earring glittered in his ear. It gave me a funny feeling, seeing that gleam.

Like I’d lost something.

His T-shirt was a mess of rips and tears, and the bruising on his face was going down. Werwulfen, even
loup-garou
who don’t get hairy, don’t wear the damage long. Not if they can rest and eat. The physical injuries healed right up.

Now I wondered about the hurts inside, where that healing wouldn’t reach.

Ash whined again, softly, in the back of his throat.

Before I knew it, I was up on my knees in the passenger seat, twisting around. “Graves. Look at me.
Look
.” He
was
looking at me, but I wanted him to see me. He looked . . .

Jesus. He looked angry, and scared, and like he was a short breath away from hurting someone. His irises were almost black, so dark I had trouble seeing what his pupils were doing.

“Dru.” He rolled his window down, chucked the still-fuming cigarette. “Don’t worry about me. Put your seat belt on.”

Say what?
“You look—”

A shrug, his shoulders moving under the wet, filthy T-shirt. A faint gleam of green came back into his irises. He shook his head, hard, like he was dislodging a nasty thought. Water flew from the ends of his hair. “Sucker-boy up there pisses me off. Mellow down easy, everything’s copacetic.”

“Graves—”

“Sit down.” The rage faded. Now he just looked tired and irritated, and his eyes flushed with green glow again. His stubble had gotten thicker since this morning—I’d always thought half-Asians didn’t get much in the way of facial hair, but it looked like he was changing all that. “Put your seat belt on. Don’t make me worry about you while that asshole’s driving, okay?”

I was too tired to fight. I did it. Then I curled up against the door and shook while Christophe drove, Graves seethed, and Ash eventually stopped making that noise. When we broke out of the woods and bumped up onto the highway, the sun burst out from behind the clouds, and I closed my eyes.

The Holiday Inn
shower was a little piece of heaven. And afterward, dry clothes were a luxury. Just a black T-shirt and jeans, no underthings, but I wasn’t complaining. You can always buy panties later, you just can’t buy them if you’re dead.

And Christophe had gotten the right sizes, too. That was food for thought, but I didn’t want to eat it. I had enough to chew.

As soon as I was out of the bathroom, Graves nipped in. Christophe was still rubbing at his hair with a hotel towel, standing by the room’s window and peering out through the small crack in the cheap curtains. A thin bar of sunlight striped his face, and he glanced at me. A faint smile touched his lips.

“You’ve bloomed.” He didn’t sound surprised. Just pleased, and congratulatory.

Well, hallelujah. At least
someone
noticed when my face changed and the rest of me did too.

Ash crouched in a corner. He was still covered in mud, and I had to figure out how to get him cleaned off just as soon as Graves
was out. There was a stack of towels on one twin bed, I grabbed one and started working at my own hair. I had a comb in my bag, thank God.

“Yeah.” To be warm and dry was pretty much all I could ask for right now. “I know, I look different. It’s pretty weird.”

“Weird?” He let the towel drop, dangling from his hand. He’d taken care of everything, getting a room, cleaning up a little and vanishing for twenty minutes while Graves prowled the room and Ash crouched in the corner and I stared longingly at the bathroom, reappearing with a few crackling Walmart bags and a brand-new messenger bag slung across his new black V-neck T-shirt. One of the shopping bags he’d pushed into my hands and told me to wash up.
We can wait. Go
.

It hadn’t occurred to me to argue.

“You know, my face is all different. I look strange.” I dropped down on the bed closest the wall; I was betting Christophe had put my bag there so I would stay where he wanted me.

Away from the door and the windows.

It was a sobering thought. To add to all my other happy-dappy thinking.

“You’re beautiful.” He said it so flatly I almost missed the meaning of the words. “As always,
kochana
. Room service should be up soon.”

All the breath left me in a rush. “Christophe . . .”

He turned his back completely to the window. And even though he’d been working at his hair with a towel, he still looked impossibly
finished
, the blond highlights in his layered cut behaving perfectly. The faint traces of mud and damp still on him looked planned, too. “I’ll ask for an explanation once you’ve eaten. Just so I know what’s going on. But let’s get something straight, first.”

Mud still clung to his boots, and he paced across the room toward me, tossing the towel onto the other bed. Ash rocked back on his heels, watching carefully, his eyes flaring orange and his expression flickering between somber and . . . was it frightened?

I couldn’t tell.

Christophe bent down, his booted toes precisely placed in front of my bare feet. A warm draft of apple-pie scent drifted across me. It was so familiar I could’ve started crying again. I’d gotten so used to that smell over the past few months.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed him. Most of all, I missed the sense of someone watching, the sense that I could just relax and someone else would handle things. It’s not that I’m weak.

Okay, well, maybe I am. But I don’t think so. I just think, you know, I was Dad’s helper. He told me what to do, where to stand, how to act. I missed knowing my place in the world. With Christophe there, I had a little of that back.

Just enough to start feeling like I could relax, maybe. A little. “I, um . . .”

“I don’t like your
loup-garou
.” Even now he wouldn’t refer to Graves by name. Christophe’s nose was inches from mine, and his eyes were cold. Winter eyes, like Dad’s but without the faint lavender lines in the irises. His skin was flawless, very faint shadows of grass stain looking like decorations instead of dirt. You can’t really wash grass juice off without scrubbing. “He’s deadweight you’re better off without, and suspect besides. I envy him your loyalty. But I do not betray
anyone
to my father. When I want to kill someone, I kill directly. Do you understand?”

There wasn’t enough air in the room, what with him leaning in like that. “Christophe . . .” I tried for another word, but my brain just up and failed me. “Chris . . .”

He touched a wet curl that had fallen in my face, brushed it back. His skin was warm; I could tell just by the heat of it reaching my own. He very carefully did not touch my cheek.

Instead, I felt his fingers on my wrist. He lifted my right hand, dropped something very small into my palm, and closed my fingers around it. Two something smalls, with sharp edges.