Reckoning (29 page)

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
.”

Christophe spun, but
Sergej was already moving. I leapt, the world dragging at me with weird clear-plastic fingers, as if superspeed wouldn’t even be enough. My right-hand
malaika
flicked, and black blood flew.

I was too slow. He was already past me, my soles slipping in the foul-smelling guck, and Christophe screamed. It was a high despairing cry, with a
djamphir
’s hiss-growl behind it. The crash of the two of them colliding shivered the air into fragments. The entire auditorium rocked, and a sheet of black blood splashed up. They hit the stone wall, and cracks radiated through the sheer, bloodred rock.

Christophe!

Slipping, scrabbling, wishing I had boots or real sneakers instead of these crap flimsy things, needed traction, I wrenched myself the opposite direction and Gran’s owl rocketed past me in living color, claws outstretched and wings glinting with sharp-edged metal. In the bloody glow it was a spot of clean white, banking sharply. I threw
myself after it just as Sergej turned, blinking through space with the eerie stuttering speed of a badass sucker.

Fast, he’s fast, got to slow him down
—Something in me stretched, instinctively, and I twisted again, my foot touching down lightly and sending up another spray of that black, thin, sickening fluid. They were just never going to get it clean in here. But I guess cleaning isn’t high on a vampire to-do list, really.

Gran’s owl arrowed down, and it hit Sergej’s head with a crunch much larger than a bird could produce. He went forward, tucking and rolling with jerky, weird precision, as if he was a clockwork instead of flesh and blood.

“
Coward!
” I yelled, pelting for him. “You
fucking coward!
”

The words stung the air. He rose from the wash of rotting blood on the floor, chunks of decayed flesh clinging to him, his curls tumbled and that black, oily gaze striking like a snake.

I screamed, a hawk-cry of rising effort. There was finally enough air in my lungs—and Gran’s owl shot past me, claws out and its golden eyes a streak of brilliance. Hit him square, and it wasn’t just me hitting him.

It was the photograph I’d seen just once, the yellow house I found sometimes in my nightmares—the oak tree shading the front porch blasted by some terrible evil, a rag of flesh and bone hanging in its branches; my mother’s body hung there like a Christmas ornament. It was the long corridor my father had walked down, toward a slowly opening door that exhaled cold evil—and my father’s body standing at the back door of the house in the Dakotas, its blue eyes clouded with the film of death and its fleshless fingers tapping at the glass. It was Gran’s house burning and the dark pain in Graves’s eyes, the scars I’d seen on Christophe’s back and the cold nightmare of the blood drawn out of my veins while Sergej laughed.