Betrayals

supposed to be a big secret.

But it didn’t look like I was such a big secret, maybe. Had Ash killed every sucker there? If they were from Sergej and none of them came back, he wouldn’t know for sure I was here, unless the traitor, whoever it was, could manage to tell him. Or a sucker could survive the next attack and go tell him.

The pieces fit together inside my head. Christophe must have realized this, it was why he was coming back to get me out.

It was anyone’s guess whether he’d get back in time. My mouth was dry and my heart was still thumping along.

“Shit.” Shanks rubbed at his chin. “I didn’t know that.” His dark eyes rested on me for a long moment. “That true?”

I nodded. “Someone was supposed to come and get me, or the teacher’s supposed to take me to my room. That’s what happened every other time. But that time Blondie vanished as soon as class was out. And nobody else came.”

“Blondie?” Someone chuckled. “Oh wow.”

“Kruger.” Shanks didn’t look amused. “And his helpful lectures. So how did you get out of there?”

“I saw…” The usual habit of keeping the woo-woo a secret made me pause. I plunged ahead.

This, at least, was one secret I could get off my chest. “I saw an owl. My grandmother’s owl. Whenever there’s trouble, it shows up and tells me to get out.” I took a deep breath. “And so I ran. But when I was outside… I saw a wulfen.”

“Who?” Shanks could really bore a hole in someone with those eyes. He leaned forward, tense and expectant, like I was going to produce something he could chase down and bite.

“His name’s Ash. He’s got a streak on his head—”

“He’s a Broken,” someone supplied. “The last Silverhead. You-know-who’s wulf.”

Shanks waved a hand. “Yeah, I know about the Silverhead. You saw him?”

“I didn’t just see him. He killed the suckers chasing me. He was pretty beat up afterward. He sniffed me, but he didn’t hurt me.” It wasn’t coming out right. “I mean—”

“He sniffed you?” They were peppering me with questions now, one after another.

“How did he sniff you?”

“How close was he?”

“Was he bleeding?”

Shanks held up a hand. “Slow down, everyone. Jesus. First things first, okay?” He looked at me speculatively for a long, tense-ticking twenty seconds. “Dru.” It was the first time he’d said my name without sneering. “Do you have any idea why you’re here and not at the main Schola? Or even a big Schola?”

“The main…” I sounded as blank as I must’ve looked. “Isn’t this, like, a main Schola? A big one?”

“Shit, no.” He laughed, and some of the other older boys did too. It wasn’t nice laughter, but it wasn’t pointed at me, either. “This is like reform school. We’re the troublemakers, the retards. The actual Schola for this district, the first Schola ever made, is in the Big Apple. Down over the state line. I wondered why you were way the hell out here.”

Oh. “Nobody…” It made sense now. And of course Anna would have been coming from a bigger city, right? It was all over her.

“Nobody said to your face that you were on the short bus?” He shrugged. “That’s interesting. But you shouldn’t trust what they tell you even if they open up their mouths. Nosferatu lie, and half-vamps are right behind them sometimes. We’re just dumb muscle and they’re supplying the tactics, they say. So they get to order us around.”

“But we’re surviving now,” Dibs piped up. “Not like it was. My grandfather told me about the Dark Times. They aren’t so far away.” A murmur of assent greeted the words.

“Dark Times, man.” Another dark wulfen shuddered. “At least we’re not slaves now.”

“Yeah, well.” Shanks shrugged. “They still treat us like shit even if they don’t murder and enslave us. It’s not a huge step up, but I’ll take it. Most of the time.”

“That always bothered me,” I had to tell Graves. “The way Christophe treated you.” The other, more tremendous secret swelled behind my ribs. I pushed it down. Tell nobody, he’d said. And they didn’t need to know I was leaving soon anyway, did they?

Graves shook his head, black hair falling in his glowing eyes. The restlessness in him was evident. “This really isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Patience,” a lean lanky wulf with broad shoulders and a blond buzz-cut said. His hair wasn’t long enough for me to stare at him. “This is how consensus works.”

“What exactly are we discussing here?” I wanted to know. I was tired of stumbling around and having people drop information on me. I wanted to do something.

Shanks held up a finger. “You’re at a small satellite full of delinquents instead of the main Schola. Could be to throw people off the scent, but—” another finger “Ash knows you’re here. Which means you-know-who could know. He killed the nosferatu who attacked last time, but we don’t know if he killed all of them.” One more finger, the nail chewed all the way down. “They’re lying to you about a whole hell of a lot, and refusing to train you.”

“Christophe said there was a traitor in the Order,” I said, slowly.

Shanks nodded. “Whoever signed the directive to send Juan and his pack after him, right? Okay. Huh.”

Everyone thought this over. At least, I was thinking furiously, and everyone around me had a creased forehead. Graves fidgeted a little, then a little more. He opened his mouth, closed it, and stared at me.

“What?” I sounded more irritated than I really was. “What are you sitting on?”

“You’re bait.” The words came out flat and sharp. “Christophe wants to know who the traitor is, so he’s dangling you out in front of someone. You were his bait for Sergej, too. Maybe he did specifically send you here.”

The room went cold when he said Sergej, and several of the wulfen shivered. It wasn’t like Christophe saying it, with the tinge of hatred instead of outright fear. It still sent a glass spike of pain through my head.

Graves didn’t seem to notice. “He was all over getting you out of town once he realized the bad guy knew where you were, but before that? He was just hanging around, waiting for something before he’d make his move. Your dad had his phone number. They talked at least once. And the teachers here, some of them might be wanting to train you, but they’ve gotten orders not to, probably from…” He trailed off. “I don’t have that part of it yet. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be training you even if you are supposed to be just dangled out in front of the suckers. But I’d bet my last smoke you’re bait, Dru.”

Stay here, Dru. Trust me. Everything fell into place. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find a flaw in that logic. “It would explain a lot. But what about Ash?”

“What about him? Just be grateful he didn’t open your guts up.” Shanks laughed, a cold sound.

“What if he needs help?” I persisted. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I—”

“You want to help a Broken? You want to help Ash? He was probably confused, or he didn’t want to kill you just yet because you-know-who wants the pleasure.”

“But when he was after me before he damn well wanted to kill me!” I was shouting before I realized it. My chest ached with the enormity of the confusion. “He saved my life the other night, there’s got to be a reason!”

Graves grabbed my shoulder. “Calm down.”

Calm down? He wanted me to calm down? Oh, hell no.

I was about ready to explode. “All this talking doesn’t get anything done! What if we could find Ash? We could try to help him, and then we’d have a chance of finding something, anything else out.”

“Why are you so set on this?” Shanks wanted to know. “You were poking pretty hard about saving a Broken in class the other day, too.”

Right before we got into it and I kicked your ass. I went cold all over, goose bumps