Defiance

I did. Three minutes later we were heading down the hall for the stairs, away from the end where Benjamin’s closed door glowered. I didn’t ask why we were slipping away like this. If Shanks thought there was a good reason, there was a good reason.

But where was Christophe?

We were on the stairs before I could ask. “Where’s Christophe?”

“Gone.” Shanks shrugged, hopping down the stairs two at a time. “He left before dawn. Most of the Council went with him. Think Leon went, too. Left me and Benjamin and the twins to stand watch over you. Then Ash started . . . well.”

“What’s going on with him?” I got no answer. “Nat?”

“You’ll have to see for yourself.” She brought up the rear, her footsteps silent. I was the only one making any noise, and not a lot of it. “He’s not dying, if that’s what you’re worrying about. At least, I don’t think he is.”

“Great.” I rubbed at my eyes, getting rid of sleep crusties. “And you don’t want Benjamin to know, because . . . ?” I could probably guess.

Shanks snorted. “Instinct. Christophe and the others left in a hurry. Something about a daylight run, gathering intel.”

I stopped dead. Nat bumped into me, got me going again. I hate being herded, but she managed to do it without irritating me. “A daylight run? Intel?”

“Yeah. A compromised site or something. Pretty hush-hush.” Shanks tossed me a look over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

I think they’re going after Anna. “Jesus.” A sick feeling began right under my breastbone. “I think I shouldn’t have said tomorrow.”

“Care to share? Just askin’.”

“Anna sent a note. And . . . something of Graves’s.” I brushed my hair back, wishing I’d thought to grab a ponytail elastic. I realized in the middle of the motion that I didn’t want to show the earring, and let the curls fall back down.

“Shit.” Shanks didn’t speed up, but he did put his head down.

I am just going to kill Christophe. I concentrated on not tripping down the stairs. He’d been so nice last night, holding me, not saying much. Just being there, until I finally fell asleep. And I’d been grateful.

I was pretty prepared to find Ash howling and battering at the walls of his room. The plain concrete-and- stone hall was silent, though.

Silent as the grave.

I wished I hadn’t thought that, swallowed hard. “Is he—”

There was a sound from inside the cell. A scraping crackle, as if he was trying the change again. My heart sped up, a high hard hummingbird beating against my ribs.

Nat handed me a thick brown elastic. “I heard it when I checked him, about ten minutes ago. Take a look.”

“You’ve been checking him?” I got my hair pulled sloppily back and stepped up to the door.

“Of course I have.” She said it like, Are you stupid? I decided not to ask.

The observation slit gave off a gleam—daylight, from a small, thickly barred window high on the opposite wall. I went up on tiptoes, grabbed the edge of the slit, and hauled myself up to take a look.

There wasn’t much to see. Ash lay on the floor, shaking like he was having a seizure. Fur roiled, his spine arched, and he clawed at the stone floor. There were deep slices crisscrossing it—he’d been scratching for a while. The patches of white skin were growing. Each time the fur crawled back up to reclaim him, it was beaten back.

I dropped back down, lunged for the key. Shanks grabbed at it, but he was too slow, for once. “Wait a second—”

“He’s changing back!” I yelled, fumbling with the key. “This is great, he’s actually changing back!”

“We don’t know that yet. He could hurt you, Dru, he ain’t rational right now!”

“He’s never been exactly rational.” I shoved the key into the hole, twisted it. The lock gave with a slight groan. I wrenched the door open, just as I realized I couldn’t hear the crackling anymore.

Oh please, no. I peered into the dimly lit cell, pushed the door a little wider, and slipped inside. It was too late to back out now, so I made it across the cell to where he lay, ready to jump back if he started looking like he was going to claw at me. Thick silence swallowed everything inside the cell, and I half- bent, my fingers out, meaning to touch him.

He lay on the floor, the fur still reaching up in ropes and twists. His body was rigid, his eyes rolling and glowing glassy orange. Like they were on fire, molten something poured into his sockets.

Ash’s mouth opened, and he screamed.

It was a long, despairing cry, and it chilled me right down to the core. It blew my hair back, and the touch sparked into life inside my head. A cascade of horrific images, dead bodies and hot blood and despair, roared through my skull.

I dropped to my knees, the sudden impact jolting up through my thighs and jarring every bone in my body. It was agony, bones twisting and every inch of flesh crawling with jellied fire. It burned and it clung, but even worse than the burning and the breaking bone was the soft evil creeping inside my head, its clawed fingers digging at the very core of what made me, me.

It only lasted a few seconds, but those seconds were a lifetime. Something in me twisted, pulling. As if I had hold of an invisible rope and all Gran’s careful training from the time I was a toddler had hardened the invisible muscles I was using to pull. I hauled, a cry to match Ash’s rising out of me, and for a moment we were screaming in unison. I was on my knees, body tilted all the way back, my hands out and knotted into fists like I was pulling on something. It wasn’t a rope now; it was chains wrapped around my wrists. Cold metal chains that burned, and the force on the other end was a riptide of deep black hate.

I’d seen that black before in a sucker’s eyes. In a cold lifeless house in a snowstorm, where Sergej had expected to trap Christophe and got me instead. Slim handsome Sergej, with his teenage face and his honey-brown curls and those black eyes, their hourglass pupils tarns for wild creatures to sink and die in.

I pulled. My knees slipped, I was yanked forward, and suddenly something grabbed me from the other side. For a moment I was horribly stretched; the thing on the other end of the chains had sunk its claws into me and was pulling me just like taffy. Someone else was yelling, and Ash’s howl broke on a high throat-cut gurgle as he ran out of breath. So did mine, and for a long horrible moment I couldn’t see anything but a deep velvet blackness starred with amazing little points of color. My lungs seized up, I couldn’t breathe, the thing pulling on Ash was going to win—every ounce of stubbornness I had crawled up inside me and I gave it one last lunging, tearing, hideously silent effort.

Something tore inside me. A veil made of wet paper, ripped right in half.

There was a wet crunching noise and a pop! The smell of wet salt showered over me, and the pressure retreated. I fell over backward onto Shanks, my elbow sinking into something soft, and he let out an actual squeal. My head rang like a gong and my arms felt like someone had tried to tear them off. I blinked, and for a second the hazy thought I shoulda stayed in bed occurred to me, like the world’s slowest genius moment.

My breath whooped back in again. I was too grateful for my lungs working to care that I was making coughing, gagging sounds.

Someone let out a small, sobbing noise. My head hurt viciously, and I smelled copper.

Blood. The hunger yawned inside me, opening its red eyes. Tugged on my veins, but faintly.

I got the retching under control. Lay there for a second. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed. “Ohshit,” I whispered, hoarse and rasping. “Nat?”

“Right here.” From the door, a shocked whisper.

“Shanks?” I had to know. I blinked the blood out of my eyes. Was that why my head hurt so bad? The torn