Betrayals

The crackling went away. He took two long strides, ending up next to me and the streak-headed werwulf. Knelt down carefully, and I could see how pale he was under his ethnic coloring. His hands shook when he reached down, getting a handful of bloody pelt.

It occurred to me then that Ash was the one who’d bitten Graves. “Help me get him upright.” I wanted to apologize, but there wasn’t time.

Because the thin blue lines of warding in the wall had begun to sparkle and run together uneasily, sensing the approach of something inimical.

“Jesus Christ,” Graves said, breathlessly, and pulled Ash’s arm up. “Okay, Dru. Okay. All right.”

Oh, thank God. Because I didn’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t backed me up.

Between the two of us, we got the wulfen heaved up. He hung like wet laundry, and he was heavy and bloody. Christophe’s hair was slick and dark as the aspect folded over him, his fangs touching his lower lip and his eyes incandescent.

“If you think I’m going to—” he began.

Graves actually snarled in return, a deep thrumming noise. “Shut the fuck up if you’re not going to help.” He took an experimental step, and Ash’s weight got easier to handle. “Come on, Dru.”

I let out a sobbing breath of relief. We moved forward, Christophe backed up, and I heard a sharp, hateful cry rise in the distance. It scraped against the inside of my head, and it meant that the vampires had found us. And were moving in.

CHAPTER 28

“What the hell—” Shanks’ jaw actually dropped, and Dibs let out a high-pitched squeak that would have been funny if I hadn’t been seriously out of breath from hefting an unconscious wulfen down the stairs.

“Move!” Christophe barked, and they both lunged into motion. They already had their sleeping bags rolled up and the rest of their stuff together. Dibs shoved everything in Shanks’ arms and dug in his bag.

“How are we going to fit that in the car?” Shanks wanted to know, but he was moving. Christophe tossed him the keys. “Shit, I’m driving?”

“Hurry up.” Christophe turned on his heel. “Get them in the car. Put her in the back, and pick me up in the front yard.” Then he was gone, a shimmer hanging in the air where he had just been. The front door opened, and the smell of early-early morning burst down the hall.

Dawn was a long way off, though.

“Come on, chickadees.” Shanks headed for the garage, his arms full of gear. “Let’s move out.”

Ash’s head lolled. I almost tipped over, getting him down the steps into the garage, but Dibs stepped forward with a small spitting sound and subtracted the weight from me. I half-fell aside, catching myself against the wall, and heard a crash upstairs that shook the whole house.

Shanks slammed the trunk. More crashes filled the upstairs. “Get in! Backseat, Dru. Get in with them!”

Between Dibs and Graves, they got Ash into the backseat. I piled in on the other side, Shanks slammed the driver’s-side door, and the engine roused as I squirmed and yanked my own door shut.

Thank God the backseat was big, if we’d been driving an import, someone would have been left behind, and that wouldn’t have been pretty.

Wait a second, how are we going to—

Shanks dropped the car into reverse, popped the parking brake, and smashed the gas.

The garage door was flimsy plywood, and it exploded out in shivers and splinters. The tires bit gravel, Shanks cut the wheel, and we skidded to a stop in the middle of the road, a hair’s breadth from plowing into a parked car. He flicked the headlights on and let out a small whooo! sound.

“Jesus!” Dibs yelled, digging in his medical kit. “Hold him down!”

Ash was thrashing. His head snapped back and forth in my lap, white teeth champing, and I reached down and grabbed it. Graves folded down over him in the middle, and the passenger-side front door opened.

“Go!” Christophe slammed the door and immediately twisted, bracing his knees against the seat.

His eyes skated over me as his shoulder moved, and cold air poured into the car. He was rolling the window down.

Shanks dropped it into gear again and hit the accelerator. The car leapt forward. I shot a glance out my window and saw the house was crawling with dark shapes moving far too quickly and eerily graceful to be human. A gleam of blue-tinged flame sparked high up on the roof and blossomed like a flower.

One of the dark shapes leapt onto the lawn and bounded for the car. Everything was going too slow. Ash’s teeth snapped, and Christophe had the shotgun braced against his shoulder, kneeling impossibly in the front seat.

The gun spoke once, a roar that sent Ash into more frantic convulsions. My bag, smushed against my side, dug into my ribs. If I could let go of the werwulf in my lap, I could roll down the window and fire at the things chasing us too.

“Calm down.” My voice was lost in the roar of the engine. I bent over Ash’s head, repeating myself, trying not to yell. “Calm down, calm down, we’re trying to help, ulp!” The car jolted over a speed bump, the engine roared, and we slewed into a tire-smoking turn.

“Faster!” The shotgun spoke again. Christophe moved, jamming it down next to the seat and producing a very capable-looking .45 semiautomatic. It was a real cannon, and he checked the clip like an expert, too. “Goddammit, Bobby, break the speed limit!”

“I am!” Shanks yelled back, but the car took a deep breath and leapt forward again, the engine saying, Yessir, I’m American heavy metal and we can move this thing, yes we can, just give me a second.

“Calm down!” I yelled, and Ash subsided. His head was heavy, and wet with blood, and he smelled awful. The taste of rotting wax oranges inside my mouth crested, and I longed to retch or spit.

Christophe moved. The window was all the way down, and he pushed his head and shoulders outside.

“What the hell are you doing?” Graves’ cry was all but lost under the roaring of the wind.

“Shit!” Shanks yelled, and I looked up. There were headlights piercing the darkness, and I was confused for a moment before the car started slewing and I realized we were on a one-way street.

In the dark.

Going the wrong way.

And Christophe calmly hooked a leg over the passenger-side headrest, sitting in the window like he’d watched one too many Dukes of Hazzard reruns, and started firing behind us.

CHAPTER 29

“The freeway! Take the freeway!” My elbow whapped Ash’s face. I leaned forward and screamed. “Right side, right side, on-ramp! ON-RAMP!”

“SHUT UP!” Shanks yanked the wheel. We hit the on-ramp doing at least seventy, and he swore with astonishing creativity. Street-lamps whizzed by. Something hit the trunk and the car fishtailed, righted itself. I choked, the taste of rotten wax oranges filling my mouth again, and wished I could spit. A spot of fierce cold bloomed on my chest, I flinched.