Betrayals

When I moved a little bit, pulling the top of the flannel shirt closed, he finally examined my face instead. My cheeks were hot as stove burners.

“Just a little older than you, Dru.” He flicked a quick glance at the rest of the room again, like he expected there to be someone hiding in the shadows. “This reminds me of your mother’s room. She was the last svetocha we managed to save.” There, his tone said. Does that answer the question you were really asking? He shook the towel and glanced around the room again. A breath of pie scent touched my cheek. “She had books, lots of them. They’re probably in a holding room. Waiting for you.”

My hand made a tiny movement, wanting to touch Mom’s locket. I forced it down. “They won’t train me.” It burst out in a cascade I tried not to make into a whine. “You said they would. No combat training or anything, they treat me like I’m—”

“Glass?” He tilted his head. His rain-wet skin was perfect, like damp silk. “Like you’re fragile?

Precious? There are worse things, moj ptaszku.”

Not from where I’m sitting. “Look, I’m not going to get any better if they keep treating me like—”

I didn’t even see him move. One moment he was all the way across the room, with the towel in his hands and his head cocked. The next, he was nose to nose with me, a warm draft smelling of apples and spice pushing at my hair, kissing my cheeks.

I half-fell back, slashing up with the knife. Warm steel bands closed around my wrist and twisted.

My arm shrieked with pain, the knife plucked from my suddenly nerveless fingers, and my knees buckled. His other hand clamped at the back of my neck, under my hair. My shoulder wrenched, screaming as it twisted in a way it wasn’t built for.

Move it, Dru! Dad’s voice, filling my head. There was only one way out, and I took it, bending forward, kicking up to roll, my shoulder giving a high, hard pop of pain as Christophe’s fingers loosened. My bare foot hit his knee, heel grinding in. It was a good kick, and he let out a short, sharp sound like a laugh.

I hit the floor and rolled, came up in a crouch. The knife was nowhere to be seen, and Christophe bent his leg a little, shaking it out. He should have looked ridiculous on one leg, but instead he looked like a cat flicking one paw, the rest of him perfectly poised.

Stay down. If he comes at you, you’ve got a better chance of shaking him off. I flicked a glance at the door. No help there, it would cost me too many precious seconds to unlock, unbar, unchain it.

“Good,” he said. “Looking for escape, since I’m too fast. Very good. But I’m already here and you have no weapons, moj ptaszku. What do you do?”

No weapons my ass. There’s always a weapon. I cast around, found nothing but knickknacks for throwing, and heard the muffled beat of feathered wings again. They brushed the air of the room. My hair lifted on a faint breeze that seemed to come from nowhere, and I went very still.

I half-expected to see Gran’s owl. But nothing happened. I watched Christophe carefully.

“There it is.” He nodded. His hair had gone slick and dark as his aspect rose to the surface. You could either have a weak aspect or a strong one, and the ones that came out “externalized” in another form, usually an animal nobody normal could see, were the strongest of all.

It was also the part the bloodhunger came from. A deep, dark place that drove you crazy when you smelled the red stuff.

Christophe sank down, slowly, until he was crouching. One hand was tented on the carpet for balance, and his gaze never left mine. “You’re very close to blooming, Dru. You have a certain natural facility, especially when you’re in a high emotional state. But you can’t count on that. It could be that you haven’t been allowed into sparring sessions because they’re designing a program for you, or importing teachers. Or there could be other reasons.”

Something told me he was more in the “other reasons” camp. Still not telling me what he knew, or what he guessed. “Dylan said it was because you weren’t back yet.” I didn’t relax. Neither did he.

The tension was a rope between us, a nameless heat through my bones.

“Ah, Dylan. How is he?” The smile that spread over Christophe’s face wasn’t nice at all. It was the grin of a cat in front of a mouse hole. “Did he tell you he was in love with her?”

Huh? “What?”

“We all were. She was a moment of light, your mother. Sergej stole her away, though not before she left us of her own will. We were all…” He straightened slowly. The stiletto spun around his fingers, silver-loaded blade blurring in a complex series of half-arcs as his hand flicked. “That’s enough for today, Dru. You can stand up.”

I stayed where I was. This was more than I’d gotten out of anyone, and besides, I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t jump me again just to prove a point.

I should have been more scared. But I wasn’t, despite the fact that my heart was pounding hard enough to force its way out through my throat-pulse. My breath came in short, sharp little puffs, and all of me tingled with adrenaline.

It was the first time since I’d gotten here that I felt actually awake and reasonably alive, instead of numb and terrified.

“Stubborn as usual.” He sighed, tossed the knife back on the nightstand. It clattered against the lamp’s base. “I have about a half hour until I can leave. I won’t waste it tossing you around the room.”

“Gee, thanks.” I couldn’t sound more sarcastic, but I was willing to give it a try. My breathing evened out. “What are you here for, then? Tea and cookies?” My mouth wanted to water. He smelled like cookies. Cinnamon ones, with dabs of apple-pie filling.

But my stomach had shrunk to the size of a dime. Climbing in through the window plus “a half hour until I can leave” didn’t equal anything good. I had that much figured out, at least.

Every speck of amusement was gone. He looked a lot older, suddenly, even though his face hadn’t changed. “To find you and make sure you’re safe.”

Well, isn’t that nice of you. My heart gave another pounding leap. I made my knees work, pushing the rest of me slowly up. My shoulder ached fiercely. “They won’t even let me go outside alone.”

“It’s not outside that worries me. Much.” Christophe let out a sigh. The sweater clung to him, and his jeans were soaked through, especially the knees. Which brought up another question.

“How the hell did you get in the window, anyway? And what are you worried about in here?”

“A traitor.” He looked at the bed, visibly decided he’d better not sit on it, and stretched his hands in a curiously helpless motion. “Someone who gave away the location of an Order-approved safe house, one even I wasn’t supposed to know about, to Sergej. Which, incidentally, made it possible for him to lie in wait for both of us.”

I tried not to shiver at the thought. Christophe flying through the wreckage of the wall on the truck’s hood, just like Superman. Graves behind the wheel, terrified and hanging on. And me, almost drowning in Sergej’s dark, oily eyes. “But we kicked his ass, right? Even though someone gave that away. And—”

Christophe shook his head, and for a moment he looked sad. He moved and I flinched, but it was just to walk over to the computer chair and drop down as it squawked slightly. “It was a draw, Dru.

Barely that. If it hadn’t been daytime, if Juan and the others hadn’t believed me rather than a control directive, if your friend hadn’t trusted me, if you hadn’t already fought Sergej with more skill and power than anyone expected, if, if, if. You would have died.” The snarl that crossed his face was there and gone in an instant, so fast I might have imagined it. “I would have lost you.”

He said it like it had just occurred to him.

Another uncomfortable silence filled the room up, pushed against the curtains and made the rain-filtered light seem dimmer. I stared at him.

“And you’re not supposed to be here.” He took a deep breath. “I assumed you’d be sent to the main Schola. I don’t know how you ended up in this satellite, among…well, this type.”

Well, we’d already answered that question, this wasn’t the only Schola. But what was he going on about? “What type? Wulfen? There are djamphir here, too, you know.”