Betrayals

Wait a minute. What did he just do?

“Bloodfog,” one of them said. “It’ll cover us, and he’ll hunt them. Let’s go.”

At that point everything just turned weird and soupy gray. Dibs helped Graves heft me up on his back like I was a little kid getting piggybacks. I tried to say I was sorry, but the words wouldn’t come.

They started moving through the forest, everything blurring together. My head bobbled and joggled against Graves’ shoulder, and I heard him cursing steadily under his breath. The places inside me where everything had been ripped up twinged and settled, throbbing like a sore tooth. It was like a headache, only not in my head. In the invisible places where I lived that weren’t connected with any muscle or bone.

“Graves…” I whispered against his shoulder. Then the darkness swallowed me, and everything inside me still hurt. I fell down into the hole where things had been ripped free, and small chill voices laughed while I did.

CHAPTER 22

I came back to myself slowly, in fits and starts. First there was gray light, coming through two horizontal cracks. A single spot of warmth against my chest, like someone had breathed on me.

Voices. Shanks and Graves, mostly.

“She still out?” Grudging concern. The tall werwulf didn’t sound happy.

“Like a light. I can’t believe you suggested that.” Graves, tired and unhappy too. The movement under me hadn’t stopped. Wind touched my hair. For the first time I smelled something other than smoke. Leaf sludge, fresh air, the iron smell of very early or very, very late.

“We had to. Jesus Christ.” Feet hitting the ground. “All right, everyone. Let’s get moving.”

The horizontal slices of light thinned and vanished. I drowned in blackness again. Something inside me felt different, but I couldn’t figure out what.

A sound like feathers surrounded me. I waited for the owl, but it didn’t show up. Its wings beat frantically, a muffled heartbeat. The horizontal bars of light dawned again, and I realized they were my eyelids opening a little to let in morning.

Voices, arguing. I felt like I’d been ripped apart and put back together wrong. My arms were around something, and a tree trunk was braced against my back. My feet dangled. I hitched in a breath. It was a relief to find that breathing wasn’t a huge struggle anymore. My lungs and ribs had decided to work together, and the air was no longer heavy as lead.

“The wampyr have gone to earth, if Reynard left any alive. We have to move now, and get to a safe place.”

“Like where? And Shanks is half-dead. We can’t leave him.”

“You’re not in charge. We’re already carrying her. You gonna carry him too?”

“Fuck you I’m not in charge. We’re not leaving anyone behind.” It was Graves, like I’d never heard him. Angry, determined, and with that growl under the edge of the words. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, and he wasn’t about to take any shit.

I realized my mouth was open, dry, and tasted like something had died in it. I closed it and tried an experimental movement. The haze of light coming in through my eyelids sharpened.

“Please. Who do you think you’re kidding? The djamphir might think you’re gonna control us, but you’re not.”

Movement. I was shifted to the side. A small sound escaped me, like I was caught in a nightmare.

Go figure.

“Let’s get this figured out right now,” Graves said, quietly. The growl turned into a sharp crackling, as if bones under plastic wrap were snapping into dust.

Oh boy. The thought was sharp and clear, and it was another relief. A little bit of warmth stole back into me, the locket oddly heavy under my shirt. The ripped-up places inside me quivered like scabs. With thought came being again. I was.

Dru. I’m Dru. And that’s Graves.

Life, color, and sound all rushed back into me. I opened my eyes and found out I was slumped against Dibs, who had gone pale, his eyes wide. He stared at the clearing, which was ringed by wulfen in various hunching poses. Some of them even lay stretched flat on the forest floor.

Oily-white, almost-glowing fog drifted cotton-packed between the trees, and birds were calling uncertainly. It even smelled like dawn, if you’ve ever been out when the sun comes up, you know what I mean. It’s the metallic scent of sunlight hitting the atmosphere and everyone needing a good shot of caffeine.

Graves and another black-haired boy were the only ones standing up in the middle of the clearing.

Beads of water touched Graves’ messy hair. The fog was so thick it was like being caught in a bubble, swallowing the rest of the world.

The shape at my feet was Shanks, stretched out at full-length, dried blood in a shocking spill down the side of his face. His clothes were ripped to shreds, and more blood, black and still-smoking as well as red and human, crusted him. He looked like he was in bad shape, cheese-pale and with his sides heaving as he breathed in shallow gasps.

Graves leaned forward. The other boy, slim, black hair cut short, big dark eyes almost glowing with anger, rocked back on his heels as if he’d been punched. The invisible tension between them boiled like heat-haze above pavement on a tar-melting-hot day.

“Don’t fucking mess with me right now, man.” Graves said every word very slowly and very clearly, his lips moving as he enunciated. He had to, because his jaw was shifting. Still, the command-voice came out clean and clear. The other boy rocked back even further on his heels, dropping his shoulders and dipping his chin.

“We’ll all die,” the other kid whined, but all the starch had gone out of him. “You’re not ready.”

“Not ready my ass,” Graves snapped. “I was born ready, dick-wipe. You want to test me now, you go ahead, but it’ll waste valuable time. We get caught, you’ll die just like the rest of us. So stop being an asshole and shut the fuck up.”

Silence, as ticking-tense as the moment between stepping off a diving board and the instant you hit the water. I leaned against Dibs and looked down at Shanks. His eyes were half-closed, little gleams peeking out from under the eyelids. There was no sign of iris or pupil, just blind white.

Something was wrong. The world looked flat, oddly two-dimensional. I tilted my head back, trying to hear something, anything, with the touch. Trying to unloose the fist and send little questing fingers out to take in the world.

My pulse leapt up, hard and high in my throat. There was nothing there.

Stop it. You’re just tired. God knew I was exhausted. But it was like being blind. I’d never realized before how the touch lay under every thought, bubbling and boiling and showing me the depths of things.

It was gone, and I was blind. I hated the feeling.

I found I could stand on my own two feet. Dibs still clutched at me, though. His skin was hot against mine, and he smelled just like a regular boy, without the undertone of cold fur and danger.

Is this what it’s like to be normal? Shaking spilled through me. The trees looked dead. The fog was flat. And Graves and the rest—

No, wait. Graves looked normal. He stared at the other boy, green eyes piercing and a high blush of color on his cheekbones, the slight suggestion of epicanthic folds vanishing as his face shifted to more hawklike than half- Asian. Other than that, he looked just the same as usual, except a little more unwashed. His coat was singed and plastered with mud up the side, his hair was wildly mussed, and a bolt of something hot and hard went through my chest as the other black-haired boy dropped his eyes. Graves kept staring until the kid actually crouched, as if the green gaze was a heavy weight.

It looked like a grainy color film I’d seen on late-night cable in a weird little motel outside a teensy town named Zavalla in Texas. It was a nature special on satellite cable about wolf packs, and all about how wolves will give in and give up so the more dominant wolf keeps his position and the less dominant one doesn’t get killed. There was a lot of snapping and snarling, but killing everyone who wanted to maybe get a little higher on the ladder