Betrayals

Have you ever run so hard you thought your heart would burst? There’s just you and your legs and the sound of wind in your ears mixing with the pounding of your pulse. The endorphins kick in if you can do it long enough, and all of a sudden you’re not thinking. Your body’s doing all the thinking for you. It leaps like a gazelle, it dances like a star, and the only thought on your mind is God, keep going, don’t let this slow down, don’t let it ever stop.

Running. With werwulfen. Their shapes blurred around me, the high unearthly howls distorted because of the speed, splashes of sunlight on fur and bright eyes as we moved in a mass. They spread out around me like a cat’s cradle, and if I’d had time I might’ve wondered who was picking the direction. But it was enough to just run. If I just ran, nothing else mattered, and I didn’t have to think about Mom or Dad or Gran or Christophe or any other hundred things crawling through my cluttered head. I could just be. It was like that place in the middle of tai chi where the world faded and there was just the movement, force and reaction spilling through arms and legs, hands like birds and feet like horse’s hooves.

We crested another hill. The world was spinning underneath me, I didn’t even have to move forward, just put my feet down every now and again to touch it. I heard the muffled wingbeats of Gran’s owl, and a fierce joy flushed through me, a cleaner feeling than the rage of the bloodhunger. I was clear. I was see-through, I was a girl made of crystal, and this was the best thing in the world.

I don’t know how long it lasted, but the force bled away. It got harder and harder to keep up with the world, but I was doing my best when someone grabbed my arm and everything came to a tumbling, spinning halt.

I landed hard on my knees, jarring, and retched. Someone dropped down beside me and patted my back. A couple other kids were coughing too.

“Jesus Christ,” someone gasped, a high boyish voice. Someone else laughed, a high, unsteady sound, and the hilarity spilled through the rest of them. It bubbled up in my own mouth between the retches, my stomach informing me that oh holy God, you should not have done that.

My legs were on fire. All of me was burning and my back was a solid bar of pain. But it didn’t matter.

What mattered was Graves next to me, also rubbing my back and laughing like he’d just found Christmas in his pants. Dibs was on my other side, on his knees and leaning against me, coughing.

His eyes were bright with the tears that trickled down his cheeks, but he didn’t look sad in the least.

Then Shanks squatted easily in front of me, flushed and wind-swept, leaves caught in his thick dark hair. “Well. You kept up.” For once, he didn’t sound supercilious. “Never had that happen before.”

“Told you.” Graves was breathless. A hiccupping laugh interrupted the words. “It’s in the books. Svetocha can keep up.”

“Huh.” The taller boy eyed me. I tried not to puke on him. No wonder Graves had told me not to eat anything beforehand.

But God. I managed to get some breath back. “When… can we… do that… again?”

At that, everyone burst into laughter. Some of us were still retching, but the merriment kind of canceled that out. It didn’t matter how much I hurt or how my heart felt like it was trying to climb out my windpipe. It didn’t matter that everything was fucked up beyond repair and I was stumbling blindly around in the middle of a game that was way too big for me.

All that mattered was the sun on my shoulders, the wulfen gathered around me, and the way every one of them suddenly looked like… yes. Like a friend. And Graves right beside me, his hand making little circles on my back, his face all alight. It was like standing on the Schola’s roof and seeing the world spread out underneath me, but not nearly so lonely.

It was the best I’d felt since my world fell apart and a zombie smashed through my kitchen door.

Hey, you take what you can get.

CHAPTER 17

The disused classroom was in the bowels of the Schola, and it had an empty chalkboard on the curved wall. When filled with wulfen, the entire room had a nervous, fidgeting feel to it.

“So they’re not teaching you anything.” Shanks nodded. “Yeah, we wondered about that.”

What else had they wondered about me? “I, uh, just don’t go. It’s all remedial shit I could get in normal high school.”

Graves shook his head. “Skipping isn’t allowed for anyone else. It’s a trip to detention, and who wants that? So why let you do it? I mean, you’re special and all,” he ignored Shanks’ snicker, “but it don’t make sense, and putting you in remedial classes doesn’t make sense either. Especially with the chance of you-know-who finding out you’re here, they should want you trained and trained hard, so you have a better chance of surviving.”

“And then there’s Christophe.” Shanks was settled on a dusty brown couch, taking up most of it with his long legs. A ripple ran through the rest of the wulfen at the name. “He hasn’t been around for years, but they’re scared of him.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Dibs piped up. “He’s dangerous. Just look at his kill record. He’s never wanted to make himself liked, either.”

“Well, people have been calling him a traitor for a long time, but never to his face.” Shanks shrugged. He’d picked most of the leaves out of his hair. “And he did bring her in. I know Juan’s cousin, I talked to him last week during phonetime. When Christophe was tryin’ to save your asses, someone was tryin’ to kill him. The battle-group got a directive to kill a nosferat, and he didn’t realize it wasn’t a wampyr but Christophe until the guy had held off every one of them and had plenty of chances to kill “im but didn’t, and he was djamphir to boot. And he fucked up you-know-who but good, to rescue her.”

A hot flush went through me. Did they know about Christophe and Sergej? And now that I’d gotten some sleep and run until I was close to a cardiac arrest, I felt like I was thinking clearly. If Dylan thought Anna was right, why would he be telling me Christophe was going to train me? If he didn’t, why did he stay quiet when she accused him?

Why did he say he was on my side? And what was Anna’s whole game with the file and the pictures of the house my mother had died in front of?

I didn’t remember enough about the night Mom died. I didn’t want to remember about that night. I was five years old, for chrissake.

I tried working it out again inside my head. Christophe said Dylan was loyal. I’d carried that note between them like a message, and Dylan was supposed to find me if there was another vampire attack. But I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, even Dylan, that I’d seen Christophe.

That didn’t make sense either. But I’d been so confused from the heat of Christophe’s body against mine….

Don’t think about that, Dru. Jesus. But what else was there to think of? The single blond hair caught on my nightstand? Other secrets, other lies, all pressing down on me?

“Something’s off,” another wulfen said. “They just watch her. And then there was the other night.”

“Yeah.” Graves leaned forward next to me. He still hadn’t taken his coat off, and I understood why. It was chilly in the classroom, especially with sweat drying on my skin. “Nobody came to pick her up from the classroom and get her to her room. Isn’t that a little suspicious, given how they’re watching her?”

I stared at the cracked chalkboard. How long had it been since I’d seen an actual chalkboard?

Most schools had whiteboards nowadays. “Dylan said he didn’t know who was supposed to be watching me. The duty roster disappeared, and—” I stopped short. I could have gone on, but I was taking Dylan’s word for an awful lot, and I couldn’t say any more without explaining the whole Anna thing.

I was pretty sure talking about another svetocha wasn’t a good idea, if she was