Reckoning

“She’s fine,” Nat snapped. “Let’s move.”

But Christophe paused. He still had his shotgun, for crying out loud, but his free right hand smoothed my hair back, tucking curls behind my ears. “All’s well, skowroneczko moja. I won’t let them catch you.”

That’s awful nice. I couldn’t make any words come. I just stared like an idiot. But he seemed okay with that. He touched my forehead, brushing lightly with the pads of his fingertips. Then a trailing down my cheek, very soft, infinitely . . . tender.

Yeah. Like he hadn’t just thrown us both out a window.

“Come now,” he said quietly, under the noise. I heard sirens, the whooping of a fire klaxon, and the rushing suck of flame devouring oxygen through every hole it could find, like a kid sucking on a straw. “We must move quickly.”

I found myself nodding. “No kidding.” I sounded calm and businesslike. It was a surprise, but I was imitating Dad. Had he ever felt this unsteady, this lost?

You’re not lost. Christophe’s right here.

It was more comforting than maybe it should’ve been. I grabbed Christophe’s hand, squeezed hard. His eyebrows came up, but he immediately looked away, scanning the rooftop. “Let’s go.”

And not a moment too soon, because a high chill hateful cry rose in the distance, slicing through all the other noise. It dug into my brain with sharp glass spikes, and I flinched. Nat inhaled sharply, her head upflung, and she actually sniffed.

Testing the air.

“Nosferatu,” she breathed.

Yeah.

Christophe pulled me across the rooftop, my fingers linked in his. His skin was warm, and the touch drank in the fierce calm surrounding him. There was a fire escape and a breath of roasted garlic—the restaurant was around here somewhere. Nat was right behind me, crowding close.

Thank God Graves is out of this, I thought, and then I was too busy to think anymore. There was a fire escape going down into an alley, and as soon as we hit the alley we began to run.

Because another high, nasty whistling screech-cry echoed from far closer—the hotel’s roof, I was guessing. Christophe swore softly, and I put my head down and concentrated on keeping up.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The rest of that run is a patchwork of confusion in my memory. Bolting across streets, into alleys, up fire escapes, rooftops blurring underfoot, Christophe more often than not hauling me along because I wasn’t moving fast enough to suit him. I wasn’t about to complain.

It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either. We stuck to pools of shadow, flitting from cover to cover, streetlights and city glow suddenly enemies instead of friends. The suckers wouldn’t use guns—not likely, Christophe said, but the Maharaj were another proposition. Once someone opened up on us with an assault rifle, and the sound of the bullets chewing into the street behind me still sometimes shows up in my dreams.

Christophe hanging and twisting to kick in a window, Nat blurring between changeform and girlshape as she ran, random reflections of light picking out iron grillwork on a balcony or the pattern of bricks on a restaurant’s facade. The moon, behind low scudding clouds and smiling like a diseased coin. The glow of Christophe’s eyes as he scanned a rooftop, Nat crouching and panting a little while she rested for ten seconds before we were off again, her hair ruffling in the breeze. A car’s headlights throwing our shadows against a graffiti-tangled concrete wall.

“Got any more grenades?” Nat yelled merrily, and Christophe swore in reply, with breathtaking inventiveness. I levered myself up over the roof’s edge like I was muscling out of a swimming pool. My hair fell in my face and the bloodhunger burned all through me. The fangs dug into my lower lip; I had to be careful or I’d bite out a chunk of myself and they’d have a blood trail.

I was so glad, for once, that svetocha only have teensy top fangs; boy djamphir’s are larger and only on the top too. Sucker fangs are top and bottom, and they are serious business. I’d seen pictures of what those teeth could do. The jaw distends like a snake fixing to take down a huge egg, and sometimes they tear flesh to get at the liquid inside.

“Door,” Christophe said, as close to short of breath as I’d ever heard him. Nat’s boot had already thudded onto the metal door’s surface; it crumpled like paper. “Could you be any louder, Skyrunner?”

“I could,” she shot back cheerfully. “Would you like me to? Up. We’re almost there.”

I was glad. My ribs heaved; sweat stood out on my skin. We were just a jump ahead of the nosferat. There were so many of them, no time to take a breath, just the running and Christophe and Nat bantering back and forth like they were at a party or something. I’d heard Dad use that sort of humor before, with other human hunters.

I was too occupied running and not doing anything stupid to contribute. Plus, I couldn’t find anything witty to say.

I mean, oh God oh God we’re all gonna die doesn’t really fit the definition of banter, now does it.

The suckers kept screaming, hunting-cries echoing all over the city. I wondered what normal people were thinking of this, if they’d even hear, if they’d blame it on a neighbor’s television or something. There were sirens everywhere too, and fires. I wasn’t sure how much of it was just big-city warfare that happens on any normal night, and how much was suckers torching places where maybe djamphir or wulfen were fleeing—or trying to buy us some time to escape.

I didn’t know how many of the Order were in the city. Things sounded bad, and the terse questions Christophe threw at Nat when we weren’t scrambling were thought-provoking and terrifying all at once.

Inside, there were more stairs. I actually groaned before I could help myself, and Nat laughed. “Good for your ass!” she barked, and took them two at a time. Christophe’s hand closed around my arm. I didn’t need it—the aspect was still reliably doing its job. I’d been weaker and slower for so long, though, that I was kind of afraid of going all out. I couldn’t pace myself.

“Just a little further.” He’d gained his breath back, even though I could see the sweat drying in his hair. The soot and grime striping him looked like it was placed for maximum effect. “Extraction point’s on the roof. We’ll be safe in ten.”

I found enough breath for a single word. “Okay.” Then I concentrated on not being a hindrance. Our footsteps were in such close tandem they sounded like a single pair.

“Clear of the zone we’ll get a plane; we’ll land in Houston. There’s a Schola there—hot food and a good bed. Protection for you. They’ll have the loup-garou there, under restraint.” Christophe pushed me in front of him. “Keep going.”

I did. Nat sometimes leaned forward, her palms slapping the stairs as she flowed through changeform and back, stretching and leaping so gracefully it was enough to make the heart hurt. She was down to her last clip of ammo; I knew because she’d merrily informed Christophe of the fact three and a half minutes ago.

Up, and up, and up, breath tearing in my lungs and the aspect blurring everything around me. When Nat gathered herself in the middle of the last flight, I barely slowed. She extended in a fluid leap; another metal door crumpled and she rode it down. Leapt free, twisting in midair to land on her boots and skid to a perfectly-controlled stop.

“Ta-da!” she cried, and the helicopter crouching on the rooftop, in absolute defiance of any codes or regulations, whined as its motor started. It looked vaguely military, dull black and huge, and there, in the opening on the side, was a familiar face.

Hiro crouched, his lean caramel-colored face set as it usually was. He half-rose, fluid djamphir grace evident in every line of him, his black hair writhing in spikes as the aspect poured over him like a river. He was on the Council, and he was scary—but he