Defiance

CHAPTER TWENTY

Iran until the danger candy faded completely and I was just left with the copper taste of adrenaline. Then I hopped on the subway—no reason not to, now; they could start chasing me now that I was prepared—and rode toward Times Square until the crowd got thick. It was closer to the Schola Prima than I liked, but there was plenty of crowd cover and it was the last place they’d look for me.

Or so I hoped.

I surfaced, found an all-night diner, and ordered coffee and a club sandwich, keeping a watch out the window at the crowd flowing by while I bolted the food and looked over the printouts and maps.

I picked out the neighborhood on both Augie’s and Christophe’s maps, looked at likely ways in and out. I tried to consider the whole thing like Dad would. Angles of attack, the getaway—I’d have to find a car. Or something.

Worry about that when you get on-site. Can’t do nothin’ here, and if you steal a car now and take it there you’re askin for trouble. Calm and easy, Dru-girl, just like I taught you.

Had Dad ever guessed what he was training me for? Or did he just not think much about it one way or the other? Yet another pile of questions I’d never get an answer to.

I found myself reaching up to touch Graves’s earring, fingering the skull, running the edge of a crossed bone under my thumbnail. Don’t worry, I’m on my way. I’m coming.

But then I worried, too, while I downed the last of the coffee and neatened everything up, stuffing it back in my bag with the ammo. What if they’d moved him? How old was the intel? If the place was crawling with vampires . . . Well, I was fast enough to kill one of them, wasn’t I?

But more than one? And Sergej, too?

You need a better plan, Dru.

One started to take shape as I paid the bill and hit the streets. I kept moving, and it evolved inside my aching head. Here I was, two malaika strapped to my back and a long black coat wandering around, and nobody paid any attention. True, it was night in the city, and there were weirder things than me on the street.

Most of them were even human.

Some of it could have been the touch throbbing inside my head, keeping me moving. I heard soft wingbeats through the crowd noise and sometimes caught a glimpse of the owl. Perched on a blinking Girls Girls Girls sign, circling at the end of a street, floating down to land on the hood of a parked car. I even caught it filling itself out like a charcoal sketch with quick strokes, leading me in a wandering zigzag pattern that kept me away from trouble, and also away from the green quiet of Central Park, vaguely north and east for a little while.

All this time I’d thought it was Gran’s owl. But now I felt the beat of its heart and the wind through its feathers, and I knew it was a part of me. Just like I’d known in the gym facing Anna. When the owl had hit her animal aspect, the tortoiseshell cat crouched at her feet, with the sick crunch of continents colliding.

So I’m an owl, Christophe is a fox, and Anna’s a cat. And Graves is loup- garou. Funny.

Only it wasn’t.

Sometimes flashes of that night come back to me, mostly when I’m trying to fall asleep and I get that weird sense of falling. I’ll jolt awake, expecting to be on the pavement again, sliding past groups of hard-faced young men on corners or melding with a flow of tired adults flooding down subway steps, seeing my reflection—pale cheeks, hair pulled back, the twin hilts of the malaika poking up over my slim shoulders, the coat flapping around my ankles. I hung around the edges of the Pier raves for a long time, moving in aimless circles as trance and electronica throbbed through the air, then sometime after three I slid through the quiet of Battery Park like a ghost and started working my way north and east, cutting around the Schola Prima’s slice of Manhattan like it had plague. Risky to stay this close, but again, the last place they’d look for me.

I ate a couple more times, too. It was like I couldn’t get full, and I was always finding those carts that sell pretzels or chicken satay or burritos, especially near Midtown. I wasn’t worried about money; I was worried about the huge hole under my ribs that just kept getting bigger. When I turned onto deserted streets I could hear a little crackling, like static. It was coming from under my skin, and I wasn’t sure if I should be worried.

I moved with the crowds through the arteries of the city. Safety in numbers, and I liked the hustle and bustle. Even in the dead of night, something was happening somewhere. This is why the Real World hunts mostly in cities. I mean, there’s rural Real World, too, but it’s a different flavor. The nastier, sharper-edged stuff lives in the urban jungle.

The worst hours were between three and five in the morning while I was walking with vague intention, the long slow hush before dawn. I wandered around, pretending Dad was picking my plan apart, making it as good and solid as I could and hoping I’d covered everything.

Back at the Schola it would be time to tuck Ash in and retreat to my room, let Nat brush my hair, and look forward to Christophe knocking on the door. I got antsy, working my way across the river toward Queens, and stopping every once in a while as the ghost of waxed oranges slid across my tongue. That was another thing to worry about—the aura wasn’t as strong. Everything else was, but the danger candy was only a ghost of itself, and I couldn’t think it was because I was safer.

I found a working phone booth about twelve blocks from the mansion. It was harder than it sounds—now that there’s cell phones, the pay ones are going out of style in a big way.

Dad groused about that sometimes. It wasn’t any harder to get an untraceable cell phone, but there was still the problem of triangulating from the towers that receive the call. Not really any worse than a pay phone, but Dad was old-school.

My heart made a funny ripping motion inside my chest, but I was too busy to worry about the pain. Story of my life. If I ever slowed down all the crap piling up would make me cry for a week, probably.

I plugged in quarters—I had plenty of those, though I’d given the rest of my change away—and dialed. Normally I keep numbers in my Yoda notebook, not my head. But this one I’d fallen asleep reciting for a while because it was my personal drop line for the Order, the number that would light up their switchboard like a distress flare.

Which meant that the call would be traced. After all night keeping to the shadows and hoping nobody would catch me, I was about to say here I am, come get me.

I listened to it ring, cleared my throat, and tried to look everywhere at once. The street was a nice one, this particular convenience store across the street from Flushing Park’s bruised green in good shape and the lines in the parking lot freshly painted. All the trash was picked up, and it didn’t smell like old-man urine, which meant this was a Relatively Nice Part of Town.

I guess when you’re near a graveyard, nice is relative.

Two rings. Three. Four. It picked up, and there was a series of clicks. Then, silence while they started tracing my location.

“Goddammit,” I said to the listening quiet. “Say something.”

“Dru.” Augustine sounded incredibly weary. “What the hell you doing?”

What do you think? “Rescuing Graves. Christophe knows where. Have him bring backup. I’m going in at first light, which is—” I checked the sky. “Very soon. The more they distract whoever’s holding my Goth Boy, the safer I’ll be.”

“Dru-girl, sweetheart, listen to me. Something’s going on. You’re in trouble, and—”

“Damn right I’m in trouble, August. I’ve been going along trusting Christophe, and all he does is lie to me. I’m done. If the Order wants anything out of me, they’ll do what I tell them, starting right now. And what I’m telling them to do is to get Christophe to admit he knew where Graves is. And to come and help me rescue him. Otherwise they’re going to be out one more svetocha.” I wet my lips with a quick nervous flick of my tongue, watching the street. The