Betrayals

of the boys with one ear cocked. Wulfen never look particularly canine unless they’ve changed, but seeing them all holding their heads that way made me think of the RCA dog on some of Gran’s old records. A rancid laugh bubbled up inside me. I listened just like they did, blood pounding in my ears, and the sound of another helicopter split the eerie silence.

A nasty little thought came padding into my head on little cat feet.

A sucker of any stripe, huh? I didn’t know djamphir drank blood. I suppose that’s what the hunger was about. If I drank someone’s blood, would I be able to do…something? Whatever it is Christophe did? Or what we’re guessing he did, since this fog is nowhere near normal?

Sergej had made the weather change too. He’d made it as dark as night during the day, called up a huge snowstorm. And Christophe was his son.

The whole line of thought made me feel queasy. It was one thing to have something inside yourself ripped out by the roots. It was another thing entirely to think of doing that to someone else. I mean, that made me one of the things from the Real World, all right.

It made me one of those things that my dad would have loaded up his guns and gone hunting after.

Oh God. I shivered. Graves squeezed my cold, limp, sweating fingers. The weighted whir of the helicopter sounded different than all the other ones that had passed since morning. Just how I couldn’t say, but—

I smelled dirt, a thread of warm perfume, and the colorless fume of violence approaching. A tingling touched my chest, as if the locket was vibrating again. “They’re looking for us,” I whispered, not knowing I was going to say it until the words slipped free of my lips. “And they’re not friendly.”

Graves glanced down at me, his mouth opening as if he wanted to ask how I knew. Dibs slid down into a crouch, and before I knew it the rest of them had crouched too, except Graves and me.

We stood, and if my knees hadn’t been desperately locked trying to keep me upright, I would have fallen down in a heap. Something slid through my head, broken glass and cigarette ash scraping through tender places I hadn’t even known were sore, and I flinched, driving my shoulder into his.

He didn’t move, solid as a rock, and his head tipped up. The fog was thinning in curlicues of steam, and I suddenly smelled a thread of apples and spice mixed with rotting dirt. The scent came in waves, flaring and fading, trying to draw a covering over us.

“Will the bloodfog hold?” Dibs whispered. He looked up at me like I should know, and my throat closed up. I didn’t know what to tell him, and the touch quivered inside my head.

The thopping sound got closer. It was hard to tell because of the fog, but it was circling. I could feel it like a sore tooth, nagging inside me.

It was a relief to feel the touch throbbing inside me again. I never thought I’d be happy to have that place on my palate open up again. I never thought I’d be so happy to have the thing that made me unable to fit in anywhere coming back.

My teeth turned aching-sensitive inside my salt-dry mouth. My hair tingled, and warmth spilled down my skin.

The fog thinned further. Sunlight intensified, glaring through like a bulb shining through wax paper. Oh shit.

“Dru—” Graves’ voice cracked. He was staring at me like I’d grown another head.

The aspect flooded me. I took a deep breath, the locket heating up as if held near a candle flame.

Had it done this for Dad too? Or just for me? What did it mean?

There was no time to ask, even if there was anyone around who could tell me. The copter’s sound grew nearer. A shadow loomed through the membrane of water vapor keeping us safe.

Come on, Dru. Do something, anything!

The raw places inside me twitched and twisted. I pulled on them, something that should have been easy as breathing suddenly like lifting a Buick with my bare hands. Blue sky peeped through the shredding fog, and the shape of the copter loomed darker, its down-draft swishing the fog around in vapor trails.

It built up around my hands, my canines sliding free and touching my lower lip. The wad of jerky in my mouth turned into an irritation of salt, but I couldn’t worry about that. My belly buzzed, and the smell of spiced apples bloomed around me. Only it was deeper, with an edge of familiar, warm perfume.

The woods around me smelled suddenly like my mother, and memory crashed inside my head.

Memory and new certainty.

We’re going to play a game, Dru.

“What the fuck—” Peter rose halfway from his crouch.

I jabbed my free hand up, letting out a short cry lost in the sound of the helicopter. The hex, just like the one I’d thrown at a teacher in the Dakotas, a bolt of intent, flew free, sparking and fizzing, and arrowed toward the mechanical shadow. Graves caught me as my legs buckled, and my heart labored in my ears. My ribs flickered, fast shallow breaths, and for a moment the sharp divots of canine teeth touching my lower lip dug in. Warm trickles slid down my chin, and Graves went to his knees trying to hold me up.

There was a weird pinging sound, and the copter veered off, its shark-shadow slicing through the naked tree limbs and thinning vapor. A screech of metal twisting and shearing, and Graves came up in a rush, hauling me with him.

Helicopters are very complex machines. And if you throw one little bit of that complexity off, bad things can happen. It was a tiny hex, barely even worth the name, but Dad would’ve been proud.

Easy to bring a copter down, he told me a couple times. You just remember that, Dru. One little thing goes haywire and alla sudden, whammo!

Had he known somehow?

My heart hurt at the thought. I would’ve given just about anything to have him back and dealing with this. He would have sorted this right out.

“Whammo,” I whispered, and sagged against Graves. It was only the second hex I’d actually thrown in my life. The first one had been a few weeks ago, and I’d almost killed Bletchley, my American history teacher. She’d deserved it, but still.

What was I turning into?

“Jesus.” Peter’s soft, awestruck whisper. A deep rumble sounded in the distance, thunder, swallowing the screeching sound the copter was making.

That can’t be good for anyone in it. The smell of rain suddenly rose from the ground, thick and wet, and a huge grinding noise screeched through the clearing. A deep, coughing explosion.

“Ouch,” I said, and pressed every muscle down against a retch. The beef jerky was having a hell of a time staying in my mouth. My bones felt floppy. The world receded on a tide of gray shot through with little spangles of blue sky and Graves’ voice saying something.

A rending, crashing noise snapped the grayness. Everything got confused, my hands and arms flopping like a rag doll’s. My stomach hurt, someone’s shoulder was in it, and the world was jouncing up and down.

“Whammo,” I whispered again, and the grayness swallowed me whole.

I think I shouldn’t have done that, I thought hazily, and then I thought no more.

CHAPTER 24

I came to in bits and pieces. And I felt like shit. My entire body hurt, my head worst of all. I groaned a little, and sheets shifted. The sound of hard rain on a roof filled up my head, and a crack of thunder made me wince. For a weird vertiginous second I thought I was back in the blue bedroom during the day while rain splashed the windows and the Schola slept.

Then a cool hard hand touched my forehead. “Shhh, milna. All’s well.”

My left wrist gave a little pinging flare of heat and I opened my eyes. For a moment I couldn’t see anything and I thought I was blind, but then something clicked. A nightlight near a door-shape went on. It seared through my