Betrayals

was bad evolutionary logic.

I blinked. My eyes were full of crusty stuff. And Graves really did look like the only real 3-D human being standing there. Even with his hair in messy strings and his coat singed, he looked…

I don’t have a word for the way he looked. Solid. Comforting. Like he was the one piece of the world that was holding the whole damn thing up. I let out a small sipping breath, trying not to taste the smoke smell rising up all around me or the stink of danger in the air. And that was another thing too, everything smelled washed out. Insipid. Not as real and true as it should have.

There was that spot of warmth against my chest, though. That was comforting.

“Now,” Graves finally said, “anyone else want to piss me off? Anyone else think this is a goddamn democracy?”

I swallowed, hard. My throat clicked, but nobody paid any attention. He’d drawn himself up to his full height, and turned slowly in a circle, looking at everyone.

“We’re a pack.” He halted once he’d made a full circle, and looked down at the kid in front of him. It might’ve looked weird anywhere else, but here in the woods surrounded by fog it looked perfectly normal.

Well, not normal. But natural. It looked like he belonged here, splashed with mud and scorch, his eyes burning and his coat straining across shoulders that had grown broader. It was the loup-garou burning in him, turning him into something other than the weirdo bird-thin Goth Boy hiding in the corners of your average school.

His hands were whiteknuckle fists. “We don’t leave someone behind. We’ve all been left behind one way or another, we ain’t gonna do it to nobody else. Anyone got a problem with that?”

Seconds ticked away. The tension went out of the air, but Graves tilted his head. A few of the boys sat up, and the black-haired boy made a quick inquiring movement.

“You hear that?” Dibs whispered. Either his skin was burning hot or mine was ice cold. I wasn’t sure which. “Choppers. Again.”

“What if it’s the Order?” someone wanted to know. “I mean, coming to get us?”

“Too fucking late,” the black-haired boy muttered. Peter, my weary brain finally whispered.

That’s his name.

Graves scrubbed at his chin with long fingers. “We’ll move as far as we can under the fog. We can’t trust that it might be the right kind of people up there looking for us.”

“Are we on our own, now? No more Order?” Dibs piped up. He was dirty and disheveled as the rest of us, his round blond face creased with worry. But he didn’t look as scared as he’d always looked in the cafeteria.

“Don’t know yet.” Graves sighed. “We’ll move as long as we have cover, then hide until nightfall. By then Christophe will be around again.”

“So will the nosferatu.” This boy, long and brown-haired, lay on his back with an arm over his face. He wore a flannel shirt that had seen better days and a messy bandage tied around his head, a dark bloody patch over his left temple. “I got an idea.”

“Shoot,” Graves said immediately.

“I’ve got family around here, not kincousins, my aunts married into them. Maybe we should go to ground. It’s a short shot from the last town we passed. We’re all exhausted, the girl don’t smell like herself, and if we dive now, we’ll have a better chance of running at full strength tonight, or even better, tomorrow when the sun rises.”

Graves half-turned and looked across the clearing, straight at me. I looked back, as steadily as I could while hanging onto Dibs and sandwiched against a tree trunk.

He was looking to me for direction, I realized. Back in his snow-piled hometown, I’d been the one who knew what to do when it all went sideways. At least, I’d known what to do when the burning dog and the streak-headed werwulf tried to kill us. I’d gotten Graves to my house. I’d been the one who had the books and the guns and the knowledge, however patchy.

We looked at each other. What the fuck do we do now? he was asking.

I tried to think. “What do we have?” My throat was sore, and the words didn’t have the weight I was used to hearing behind them. They were made of paper. “In the way of supplies.”

Because I knew how to do this. It didn’t depend on the touch or the aspect or anything else. It was just doing what I’d been taught. We were in hostile territory, and we had an objective, the objective was not dying.

First you find out what you have, Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, ’cause you don’t get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.

It turned out to be a load of cash, my bag, the clothes on our backs, some switchblades, the oxygen tank, a medikit Dibs was carrying as well, and two packs of cigarettes. Shanks lay on the ground, breathing shallowly. He didn’t look good.

It was a relief to have my brain working again. Every muscle I had hurt like hell, and the weird two- dimensionality of the world was new and awful. My head ached, but I’d done this sort of thing a lot with Dad, him throwing scenarios at me, teaching me how to plan.

“We didn’t have enough time to get to the armory.” Peter very carefully slid his switchblade back in his pocket. “They hit us so fast. And a Burner. Jesus.”

At least we’ve got money. I leaned against the tree instead of Dibs. My left wrist was wrapped in a very capable pressure bandage. Shut my eyes, squeezing out the light, and took a deep breath.

Come on, Dru. You know how to do this. “So our choices are to run on the money we’ve got and try to make the city tonight with the wounded, or hide at Andy’s family’s house until tomorrow.” I paused. “Do we even know where to go once we get to the city limits?”

“Shanks knows.” Andy had sat up, and he was looking at me like I’d grown a new head. “My aunts are loyal. They’d hide us even if it was the Dark Times.”

“I’m just not sure we won’t bring them trouble.” I blinked again, tried to focus. The world still didn’t look right, and a funny quivering feeling was pushing its way up through my chest. I didn’t need a dictionary to know it was called fear. A whole new brand of being afraid, an unsteady heat like indigestion underneath the warm spot of Mom’s locket. I was beginning to realize there were shades of fear just like on a color wheel, all of them slightly different but still awful. I looked up at Graves again. “You’re not going to like this.”

“What?” He leaned on the other side of the tree I was holding onto, his messy hair shaken down over his eyes again. Goth Boy was back on display. His earring winked once, silver shining.

“My dad trained me for this type of thing. I can hit the next town and find some transportation. I can vanish, and that means they won’t have a reason to chase—”

“No.” Graves shook his head. “Hell no.”

“Let her finish.” Peter crouched next to Shanks. His face twisted up bitterly as he looked down at the other boy.

Graves stiffened. “You shut up. They’ll chase us whether you’re with us or not, Dru, and what part of this do you not understand? I’m not leaving you.”

“If vampires will attack a whole school full of people trained to fight them to kill me, what makes you think they won’t attack a wulfen’s house? And… Sergej… might be on his way too. Come on.” I braced myself against the tree. No spike of pain went through my head, but several of the wulfen shivered at the name.

“It’s a compound,” Andy piped up. “The kin, they believe in the old ways. There’s my aunts and the uncles, grandparents, my cousins—”

Great. More people to die. “It’s a better idea if I just go it alone. I can make it to the next town, get some food and some wheels, and—”

Graves made a spitting sound of annoyance. “Add carjacking or theft to your list of things to do today? No dice, Dru. Look at you, you can’t even stand up.”

He was right. I held onto the tree. “I could kick your ass.” But it was bravado. We both knew it, and he shook his hair back and gave me a fey toothy grin. In a couple years that smile would be a heart-stopper.