Reckoning

below my bra strap, the warmth from it flushed all through me and made my cheeks burn. He didn’t push, just kept his hand there, and I wondered how he was hanging onto the shotgun and negotiating the stairs at the same time with one hand off the rail, and—

The whispering slithers drew closer. Ash and Dibs both made small sounds, and I knew without being able to see that Shanks had transferred the duffels to one hand and moved up to help Dibs. A door banged open and suddenly it was just me and Nat and Christophe.

“Graves—” I didn’t have enough breath to yell.

“They’ll take care of him!” Nat tossed over her shoulder. “Move!”

Christophe was now swearing. At least that’s what it sounded like, a steady stream of filthy-sounding words in a foreign language. A chill moved along my skin, and I tasted that faint maddening ghost of citrus.

Vampires. Or just something big and dangerous.

Go figure—all I had to do was get scared enough running up a dark staircase and the touch came through loud, if not clear. Why was the danger candy failing me? Because I’d bloomed.

Great.

My sneakered feet slapped the concrete, and I gave up trying to be quiet. It didn’t matter now. Still, it was hushed, and I realized there had been no slice of light through a door when Dibs and Shanks peeled off.

Where are they taking him? Oh, God, take care of him, please. I know I’ve been sucking at the praying lately, but please, dear God, please—

“Next floor!” Christophe sounded only faintly out of breath. How fast were we going, anyway?

“Got it,” Nat barked back, and the tiptapping scraping behind us became a rumble. The handrail vibrated under my skating fingertips; Christophe pushed and I found a fresh burst of speed. We clambered around a tight turn, then Christophe shoved me across the landing, Nat hit the door like a bomb, and we burst out into dimness that seemed scorch–bright after the absolute black of the stairs. Emergency lighting glowed, and Nat skipped aside, gun up and braced, pointed behind us. Christophe shoved me again, so hard I almost lost my footing, and whirled. He tossed something small and gleaming metallic through the door behind us, just before it whomped back closed. A shower of metal from the hydraulic overhead hit the carpet in a patter—Nat had busted it off its hinges.

“Fire in the hole!” Christophe yelled, and tackled me. Nat hit the floor at the same moment, rolling with sweet natural wulfen grace. My head bounced against carpet, all the breath knocked out of me, and there was a massive, grinding explosion.

What the hell? But I knew that sound even as I curled up and clapped my hands over my ears. Grenade.

Jesus. Where had he pulled that out from?

My ears rang, I shook my head. Choking smoke billowed; the door listed on its hinges. Then Nat was pulling me up, Christophe flowing to his feet with djamphir grace, his eyes burning blue in the gloom. He said something I couldn’t hear; I shook my head. My hair had gone all crazy.

My ears cleared all at once with a pop, as if I’d just come up out of the pool. “—fine,” Nat said. “No bleeding. Dru? You okay?”

I coughed, the acrid smoke tearing at my throat. “That was a grenade!”

“Pays to be prepared.” Christophe was actually grinning, a fey smile. “Come, that won’t hold them long. End of the hall, ladies. We’re going to fly.”

I had a sinking sensation he wasn’t kidding. Nat brushed at me, quick swipes like Gran when I’d come home dusty. “You all right? Dizzy?”

I managed to shake my head. “That was a grenade!” I repeated, like an idiot, and Nat grinned. The yellow in her irises glowed too, and I wondered what my own eyes were doing.

Come on, Dru. Do you really want to know?

I found out I didn’t. Nat got me going; we set off for the end of the hall. There was a window there, its curtains moving slightly on a breeze from nowhere. I smelled a sudden mineral tang, right before the sprinklers burst into cold drenching life.

“Oh, shit!” I half-yelped, and Nat laughed.

“This is going to ruin my outfit!” she yelled, and Christophe leveled the shotgun at the window. The door behind us creaked, and I snapped a glance over my shoulder.

Little dried husks of things were shoving themselves through the broken door. Smoke roiled. The things had long scuttling insect legs, hard shiny carapaces, and little red pinprick eyes.

The touch flexed inside my head. The things were a hex all right, but one so delicately built and so massively powered it was leagues beyond anything Gran had ever managed to teach me. I saw the thin blue and red lines holding it together, complex knots cradling threads of force growing like a living thing, self-referential and hungry. Like a virus, or a geometric cancer in the messy fabric of the physical world.

It was beautiful.

Cold water sprayed from the sprinklers, hissing as it met the insects. They swelled in a steaming wave, and the door crumbled. Nat dragged me along, laughing like she was having a great time. The shotgun’s roar was tiny compared to the massive noise of the grenade’s explosion, and the window shivered into a glittering fall of safety glass. The flower arrangement on the table underneath it exploded.

Nat let go of me. She screamed, the change rippling through her, and bulleted forward. She took the window and a good chunk of the wall on either side with her, flying out into the night. I dug in my heels.

Oh, hell no. No way!

Christophe pivoted. He glanced behind me and his face changed. His free hand jerked, and he lobbed another silvery thing underhand. I was trying to slow down, skidding against wet carpeting. But Christophe grabbed me, completing a full 360, and headed for the window. His arm was around me, he grabbed the waistband of my jeans, and I got a good faceful of his apple-pie smell. The blood-hunger woke, every vein in me lighting up like a marquee, and we hit the hole in the wall at warp speed.

Falling, weightless, I expected us to fall a lot longer but the jolt came before I was ready. Christophe took most of it, the aspect snapping over both of us like a stinging rubber band— djamphir can land very lightly, but I wasn’t ready. There was just so much I wasn’t ready for.

A huge grinding noise burst above us. We rolled, Christophe taking most of the momentum, and he might have been screaming. Or I might’ve. I don’t know, because the wall around the window twenty floors above us was a blossom of greasy orange flame. We fetched up against something, hard enough to jolt the breath out of me, and I walloped in a deep lungful of clean night air. The screaming stopped, my ears popped again, and I just lay there for a second.

It was a roof. We hadn’t fallen far—I mean, not far for a djamphir. Still, I could’ve killed us both by not being ready. I stared up at the fireball as it belched up, smoke streaming, and thought, That’s a helluva lot of noise.

Christophe, yelling something. He braced himself, and I realized I was staring over his shoulder because he was flat on top of me. For once, the thought didn’t make me blush. I was too busy looking at the fireball and the plume of black oily smoke.

He levered his weight aside, yelled again. “Are you hurt?”

I couldn’t find my voice. Shook my head, my hair moving against concrete. He grabbed the straps of my malaika harness and pulled me up, I kept staring, goggle-eyed. Fine thin threads of hexing unraveled, seeking hungrily, digging into cracks along the wall like veins. “Jesus,” I finally whispered, my lips shaping the sound, my fangs tingling as they lengthened, delicate little points.

He actually shook me. My head bobbled. “Dru.”

The snap of command pulled my chin down. He looked worried for a half-second before I blinked. The world came back into focus. Nat melted out of the shadows, her sleek hair ruffled and her linen jacket torn. The aspect smoothed down over me, an oil-balm working in through my skin, easing away hurts. Erasing the bruises.

“What?”