Betrayals

snap!

I was doing a lot of that lately. The air was full of rumbling and muttering, and there was a lot of shouting going on.

Oh God. This might’ve been a bad idea. I grabbed at a waiting pair of hands and hauled myself up. My head was ringing and my back hurt something awful.

“What the bloody blue hell is going on here?” The words sliced through the hubbub, except for that deep thrumming growl. I shook my head, a sliver of warm wetness threading down from my nose, and pushed between two djamphir boys. Clarence, his straight black bowl-cut damp with sweat and excitement, and Tor, his aspect on and thick streaks of buttery yellow sliding through his hair. Both of them were taller than me, but I shouldered them aside and found myself in the front row.

Graves had Irving down, his long, tanned-looking fingers closed on the djamphir’s throat. His eyes were chips of green flame, and the growl was so thick it blurred the air around him, the sound of a very pissed-off skinchanger. He probably couldn’t talk, either, his jaw was subtly modified, accommodating fiercer, longer teeth. The crackle of bone had been him. He wouldn’t get furry he was loup-garou, not wulfen, only half-imprinted with the thing that made them able to shift but he was pretty motivated to do some serious harm, and angry enough not to care about hurting someone.

It had happened three or four times by now. Twice back in the Dakotas, each time when we were in danger, or when he thought we were in danger, since Christophe had turned out to be on our side after all. And on the first evening I’d woken up at the Schola, I’d almost walked right into a shoving match between him and a djamphir in the cafeteria. From what I heard, the djamphir had asked him something about me, and Graves had turned on him. The result was shove, shove, growl, shove some more, yell, and me wading in to make them cut it out.

I didn’t think I’d gotten the whole story, but Graves wouldn’t talk about it. And now there was this.

“What the—” Dylan said again, elbowing his way through the throng.

I tuned him out and stepped forward. My right leg felt funny, and something dripped onto my upper lip. Three steps, four, my boots dragging a little against the mats. When I laid my hand on Graves’ shoulder, the buzzing going through him felt like I was resting my hand on a juiced-up power transformer.

He actually snarled, his dyed-black hair curling, all but standing up and snapping with vitality.

The sharp, strong bone structure of his face was subtly off-kilter now, nose less proud and cheekbones taking on the higher wolflike arc instead of the broadness of “human.” Rich color flooded through his skin, making his perpetual tan deeper.

“Calm down,” I managed. Only I sounded like Elmer Fudd, because I had a stuffed-up nose. My eyes were smarting and watering, too. “Jesus.” It came out like Jebus, and I could have laughed.

Except it wasn’t funny.

“Everyone shut up.” Dylan folded his arms, his leather jacket creaking. The noise went down.

Here at the Schola, when a teacher talks, you listen. “And back up. Back up!”

Graves growled again, and Irving choked. He was turning an awfully deep shade of crimson. His fingers plucked weakly at Graves’ hand, but with his arm twisted underneath him and an angry skinchanger on top of him, he couldn’t get any leverage.

I hauled back on Graves’ shoulder. A bolt of pain went down either side of my spine. “Come on, asshole. Calm down. This is getting ridiculous.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Dylan addressed the air over my head. “I’m getting a little tired of—good God, girl, you’re bleeding.”

Graves let go of Irving and flowed to his feet, shaking me off. His lips were pulled back, teeth gleaming, his eyes awash with feral phosphorescence. I realized the wulfen had settled into a bloc behind him, and the tension running through them was palpable. A few of them had gotten a little hairier, too. The tension made the wulf boys bulk up as well, shoulders straining at shirt seams. They don’t take on werwulf form unless they really have to, but you can tell them from the djamphir. It’s in the way they move, like they’re shouldering fluidly through sunlit grass, instead of with the sharp hurtful grace of the half- nosferat.

The djamphir don’t change, but the aspect ran through all of them, their hair moving and rippling with color changes, eyes glowing, and one or two of them showing little dimples of fangs touching their lower lips.

Boys. Jeez.

Dad had always taught me that wulfen and suckers didn’t get along. I was beginning to think it was genetic. As far as I could figure, djamphir and wulfen were on the same side against the suckers. That was what the Order was about. But they sure as hell didn’t seem to like each other much.

I pulled Graves back, and we only had a bit of a problem when I stepped in front of him and he tried to shove past me. I grabbed him by his used-to-be-bony shoulders and shook him. My fingers sank into muscle, and I didn’t worry about hurting him. His head bobbled, but his gaze snapped down to mine and the snarl petered out.

I held his eyes for what seemed like a very long time. He blinked, and his shoulders relaxed a little. That’s when I turned and found Dylan, arms crossed, standing over Irving with one winged black eyebrow raised and the rest of the djamphir utterly still behind them both. The djamphir’s eyes gleamed and their fangs were out.

Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.

“We were sparring. I got stupid.” I took another two steps, my heels landing harder than they should have and pain jarring up through my entire spine. “You all right?” This was directed at Irving, who was coughing, a deep rasping sound. But he didn’t look almost purple now.

He glared at me, and I felt sorry. It had just been a little friendly workout, nothing big. I should have just rolled my eyes and let his posturing pass.

But instead, I’d gone off on him. And I was supposed to be so much more mature than boys at this age.

“Sorry, Irving.” My back seized up again, and I breathed out through my mouth. The muttering growl behind me receded a little, and I put my hand down to help him up. “I should have grabbed you and helped you into that wall instead of trying to punch you in the nose. Go figure.” It was really hard to sound conciliatory with something dripping and dribbling off my top lip. I was hoping it wasn’t snot. That would be gross.

I sniffed, and the rest of the nosebleed let loose in a pattering gush.

Irving froze, staring up at me. His pupils shrank. A spatter of bright-red blood hung in the air, then splashed right on his clothes, starring the mat next to him too.

“Shit,” Dylan said, and leapt on him. “Get her out of here!”

Hands grabbed me, hot against the bare skin of my upper arms. I was dragged backward, and the world threatened to turn over without me attached to it. The ringing inside my head got worse, the sound of owl wings brushing the inside of my skull in frantic bursts. The wulfen hauled me out, and I heard Irving screaming as Dylan held him down, the bloodhunger turning his voice into a harpy’s shriek.

Yeah. Just another night at the Schola. The fight doesn’t stop until there’s blood on the floor.

But when the blood is mine, it can send the boy djamphir a little crazy. It’s something about me being svetocha. Super-happy stuff in my blood even before I “bloom,” something that reaches down and wakes up the crazy in anyone with a touch of nosferat.

After the blooming hit, I’d have my own superhuman strength and speed. And that super-happy stuff in my blood would make me toxic to suckers just like Raid is toxic to insects.

But now it just made me vulnerable. I smelled like a really nice snack.

Dylan had been drilling it into my head for the whole week now, on and on, that I couldn’t spar with the djamphir students. They couldn’t control the bloodhunger very well, I could get seriously hurt, yadda yadda.

Christophe had never told me about that.

There were a lot of things he hadn’t told me.