Reckoning

I slumped in the chair, pins and needles ramming through my limbs. Then Christophe was on his knees, both my nerveless hands in his, his skin so warm it burned. I made an unhappy little sound, a kittenish mewling, had to stop halfway through because I didn’t have the air.

But I could breathe again. The back of my throat tasted like metal, and roses. The numb rigidity in my arms and legs started to drain.

Christophe’s lips moved, soundlessly. The world went away on a rush of gray tinted with rosy pink, and the touch tolled inside my head like a bell.

Maharaj. This is bad news. Seriously bad.

The world came back like a pancake flipped over on a griddle. Christophe, saying my name.

“Dru? Dru. Open your eyes. You can breathe; it’s all right.” He still had my hands, so hard my bones creaked. I coughed, weakly. Everything was too bright. I swayed a little in the chair.

“Whaaa—” My tongue wouldn’t quite obey me. I sounded drunk. Great. We were in a restaurant, I’d just been poisoned or something, and now I sounded three sheets to the wind. Dad would have a total cow.

The hard pinching sensation in my chest reminded me that I didn’t have to worry about that. Not right now. Not ever again.

And oh God but that was the wrong thing to think.

Something cool and damp touched my cheeks. I blinked. The penguin waiter was dabbing at me with a wet linen napkin, babbling something at Christophe, who gave short choppy answers. He watched me closely, and when I started pulling weakly at his hands, he finally relaxed a bit.

“There, kochana. All’s well.”

Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think this is at all well. “I think I want to leave now.” It was a high breathy sentence, like a little girl savagely embarrassed at a party or something. “Before something else happens.”

“No dessert?” But one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. How he could make an almost smile look so grim was beyond me. “Very well. Come. You can stand. And if you can’t, I’ll help.”

“Will la signorina be—” The waiter was having some trouble with this. I didn’t blame him.

Christophe said something else, with a rueful expression.

Amazingly, the round brown man chuckled. “Amore!” He kissed his fingers and fluttered them in the air and rolled away, still laughing.

Christophe’s face fell. “Idiot.” He threw some money on the table and practically dragged me out of there.

I didn’t have a chance to protest—the ground was heaving underfoot, like a dog’s back trying to shake a flea. The wet sticky darkness outside enfolded us, and the jasmine bushes planted outside the restaurant threw their cloying all over me. My stomach revolved, settled unhappily. “Jesus,” I whispered. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d proposed to you and you fainted.” Christophe sighed. “Moj boze. The Maharaj.”

“You what?” I almost fell over, but Christophe yanked me back onto my feet. Whatever the boy had sprayed in my face had taken care of the poison, I guess—but I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t like not being sure about something like that.

“It was all I could think of. Come, moj maly ptaszku, the open street is no place for you. I must think.”

“Who the—what the hell—” I couldn’t even frame a reasonable question.

“That was Levant. He wanted to be sure I wouldn’t attack him until he could give his tidings.” Christophe paused. “He is . . . a friend, in his way. As much as a Maharaj can befriend those not of their kind.”

“Some friend.” My arms and legs began to really work again. My brain kicked over into high gear. Every inch of me tingled unpleasantly, the aspect smoothing down over me and burning a little, like I was having a reaction to shellfish or something. “The Maharaj—the dreamstealer, back in—”

“Yes. Their ruling council has thrown in their lot with my father.” Christophe’s jaw was set. “I must think, Dru. Please.”

“I’m not stopping you.” I was soaked with sweat, I realized, and shivering uncontrollably despite the heat. Everything was too bright, the streetlamps miniature suns and the half-moon behind scudding clouds like a searchlight. My eyes watered; I kept blinking. “Wait, what? They . . . your father? King of the vampires? Don’t they—”

“The Maharaj hate us. As far as they are concerned, every scion of the nosferat, no matter how distant or how noble, is fit only for extermination. Bruce had convinced them we were the lesser evil, and the more likely to win the war.” He set me on my feet again as I stumbled. Breathed something in what I now guessed was Polish, something I was sure was a curse just from the way he said it. Then he put his arm over my shoulders and pulled me close. “God and Hell both damn it. This changes things.”

I began to get a bad feeling. Or, I guess, the bad feeling I already had got about ten times worse. “What? What does it change?”

He shook his head, sharply, as if dislodging something nasty. “I need to think, kochana, moja ksiezniczko. The Order must be warned. And . . .” Maddeningly, he stopped.

“And what? Christophe, come on! I just got poisoned!” By the fucking Maharaj! My first one I’ve ever seen, and he . . . oh, man. Man alive, that was something.

“Hush.” He stopped dead on the street corner. Cars crept by, gleaming, and the hotel rose like a huge white ship a block down. My teeth chattered, and he looked down at me. His face, half-shadowed, was drawn. “I may have to do things you will not like. Do you trust me?”

What a completely ridiculous question. But I guess it wasn’t so ridiculous. Less than a week ago I’d yelled that I hated him, and I’d been all ready to believe he’d handed Graves over to . . . to Sergej.

The name sent a glass spike of pain through my temples. Why hadn’t the touch warned me not to drink? I could usually pretty reliably tell if food was safe; there was that one time in Pensacola when Dad had been about to take some tea from a very nice old lady who ran a pretty good occult store. I’d knocked it out of his hand right before she’d started snarling and gibbering in a dead language that made the hair all over me stand up now just remembering it.

She’d thought we were from the Gator Dude—the guy she had a running feud with. We weren’t; we’d just been passing through. Now I sort of wondered if I’d made her think we meant bad business instead of just chalking it up to paranoia and the fact that Dad made a lot of people awful nervous.

The metal taste and the reek of roses faded; I turned my head and spat without thinking, to clear it. A shiver broke over me, and I felt the drug burn off. Sweat stood out on my skin, acrid as I metabolized whatever he’d dosed me with. Everything on me tingled even more fiercely.

Jesus.

Christophe’s arm tightened on my shoulders. “Never mind,” he said brusquely, and stepped out into the crosswalk just as the white walk sign flashed. My mother’s locket chilled against my chest. “It doesn’t matter. Come.”

I was exhausted, covered in sweat, and just happy to be breathing. My feet were like concrete blocks, and all I wanted to do was lie down.

Maybe I should’ve said something, I don’t know. But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN