Reckoning

He’s scared, I realized. Of Christophe. The bloodhunger surged, pounding in my veins, the aspect trickling hot strength into me. But too slowly.

“I wonder.” The king of the vampires sounded chill and contemplative. “When I drain the last drop from her, my wolf, will that quench this rebellion?” He swung away, and the hurtful glee came back. He clicked his bootheels as he stalked across the floor and Christophe surged against the chains, fighting.

It hurt me to see. Blood dripped, each plink hitting the floor loud in the magnified silence. If he kept this up, he was going to hurt himself even worse, and anger crested inside me for one red-hot moment.

“Christophe!” I yelled. The light flashed, brighter, crimson instead of low red, and a draft of cinnamon and perfume roiled up from my skin. “Stop it!”

Dibs let out a soft little hurt sound. The vampires were still, staring. Sergej halted as if slapped.

Christophe sagged against the chains. Sergej made a noise like trains colliding.

Sergej was suddenly there, leaning into the sphere of toxicity the aspect gave me. His face mottled purple, and he hissed, everything in him twisting. Maybe it was because Christophe had listened to me—or maybe it was just because he wanted to be the only one doing the talking.

He’s a garden-variety bully. For a moment I felt a surge of hope, of strength, of something warm and comforting. You don’t stumble through the jungle of the public education system in sixteen different states without learning about bullies.

But then the hope crashed. He wasn’t just a bully. He was the king of the vampires, and I was in deep shit. We all were.

And I couldn’t see any damn way out.

Sergej backed off a couple steps. His entire body twisted, shoulders shaking, and he drummed his heels into the stone floor with little cracking sounds. The mottling retreated as he hissed, the sound shaking everything around us. Everything rippled, even the floor. The wheelchair groaned, and I squeezed my left hand. Hard. The sunburst of pain jolted up my arm, cleared my head, and I twisted, working against the straps.

No use.

Sergej’s head tipped back down. He made another one of those little clicking noises, and the wheelchair shook as Graves’s fists tightened again.

He pushed me slowly across the acres of checkerboard squares, closer to the table. I looked at the stuff on it, and swallowed dryly.

So that’s what he’s going to do.

It made a kind of sense. The happy stuff in my blood that drives boy djamphir a little crazy pretty much only functions when it hits the air. But it also breathes out through my skin, and that’s what makes me toxic to suckers now that I’d bloomed and could reliably use the aspect. If Sergej, for some reason or another, couldn’t get through that shell, if my blood was even more toxic when it hit oxygen and he couldn’t get his fangs in me the way he had with Anna, well . . . the best solution was to make sure the blood didn’t hit the air, right? And there was a good way of doing that.

It involved needles and tubing, and something simple to push the blood.

A transfusion.

Sergej must’ve seen it on my face. “It has a certain symmetry, does it not? I was not able to drink from your mother; I had to settle for merely destroying. But you are heir to all her strength, and whatever remnants of dear sweet Anotchka you stole before she died, and a bastard strain of the djinni themselves. I will have it all. This is only the beginning. It will take me weeks to wring the last drop of strength from you.” He indicated Christophe with one short stabbing gesture. “And my son will watch every session.” Another hideously jolly chuckle, and Sergej dropped into his iron throne. He laid his hands along the chair’s arms, and clicked his tongue again.

Graves wheeled me toward the table.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I thought he’d make Graves stick the needle in my arm. But instead, Sergej tapped his fingers and stared at Dibs. I yanked against the restraints. Nothing. The wheelchair threatened to tip, but Graves steadied it. He was breathing hard, his pulse ratcheting up into redline, fighting.

It didn’t matter.

“You.” The king of the vampires sounded bored. “Ready the transfusion.”

Dibs rose, slowly. He was still staring at me, his pupils pinpricks and his hair wildly curling over his forehead. High bright flags of color stood out on his cheeks, and I saw the messy fang marks on his neck. Little bruised holes, crusted with dried blood.

Oh, God.

His ribs flared with sharp shallow breaths. He looked scared to death.

“No.”

Even I couldn’t quite believe he’d said it. Everyone was staring at him instead of me now, and despite the relief, I suddenly cast around for something to do to get them to stop looking at him.

Because Sergej’s face changed by a couple of millimeters, and everything in me went cold and loose. Still, he just sat there, staring at Dibs, and when his gelid black gaze drifted over to me I was pretty sure I knew what he was thinking.

He was thinking of how easy it would be to find someone else to stick a needle in my arm and get the whole show on the road. Which meant Dibs would be superfluous.

“Dibs.” Hoarse and weary. The bloodhunger twisted inside me, and my working against the restraints wasn’t conscious by now. I was rubbing and twisting to get loose any way I could. It was useless, but that didn’t stop me. “Do what he says.”

“What’s he gonna do, kill me?” A short, choppy laugh, and Dibs folded his arms. Maybe it was to disguise how he was shaking. He was flour-pale, except for those fever spots on his cheeks. “If he does that, he doesn’t have anyone else who knows how to run this. Graves? Don’t make me laugh. He’s not medically trained.”

“He’ll find someone.” I swallowed hard, saliva rasping against the bloodhunger and leaving me dissatisfied. “And, Dibsie? Sweetheart.” The echo of Dad’s hillbilly accent teased at the edges of the words. I never thought I sounded Southern, but right now I could hear it. “He might not kill you. He might do worse.”

Dibs’s pupils flared. Sergej’s stare was a cold weight against my skin.

“I don’t wanna hurt you,” Dibs whispered. The utter hopelessness crashing into him was terrible to see.

“It’s okay.” Soothing, quiet, like I was talking to a nervous horse. “It’s okay, Dibs. Really.”

The chains across the room clashed as Christophe stirred. I hoped he wasn’t about to do anything stupid. Unless it was tearing himself free and kicking everyone’s ass and getting me out of here. That would not be stupid.

But it was stupid to hope for it at this point. What I had to do now was get them out of this alive.

Good luck with that, Dru. You’re not getting out of this one.

Well, okay. But if I could get them out, or even get them some more time, it was worth it. One small way to make up for being a plague, since if I hadn’t been around, Dibs would be safe at the reform Schola, Graves would be living in his hidey-hole at the mall, and Christophe? Who knew? But he probably wouldn’t be chained to a wall in his dad’s Sooper-Sekrit Evil Hideout.

Which, by the way, had no taste. Gran would’ve called it overdone. Dad would’ve called it a horror-movie whorehouse, most likely.

A funny urge to laugh rose up inside me. I quashed it, but it made me feel . . . not better, I guess, but stronger. Like I could do what I had to.

It was like a jolt of cold water. Everything got very, well, basic.