Defiance

sky was turning gray in the east; I could feel dawn approaching as if a thousand little tiny threads were pulling against my flesh. The crackling under my skin was intense, almost to the point of pain.

“Please, Dru. Please just listen—” Now Augie was pleading with me, the way he never had when I lived with him. Of course, I’d been young then. He hadn’t had to plead; he’d just told me what to do and I did it.

Screw that. I was about to start misbehaving in a big way.

“I ain’t listening to jackshit,” I informed him, every inch of me alert. For the first time, I heard the ghost of Dad’s slow sleepy accent in my voice. “I listened for a long time and got nothing but lied to, Augustine. You go tell them. Or maybe they’re listening and they already know.” I recited the address, reeling it off like I was right in front of it. “I’m going on in, and I’m getting Graves. If you guys want to come play, fine. If not, then kiss your svetocha goodbye.”

I hung up. Hung on to the phone, shaking. My legs were rubbery. I lifted my hand and heard the crackle again. Little things moved in my wrist, popping and sliding. The bones were shifting. Kind of like a wulfen’s when they go into changeform, but with a queerly musical tinkle to it. Like bells.

Holy shit. I swallowed hard. I had a plan, and I had to stick to it.

I stepped out of the booth’s three-quarter enclosure and sniffed. Smelled nothing but car exhaust, wet green from the trees and lawns, and the dirty smell of a city. People jammed together like rats, except out in this piece of town the holes were nicer. Still, out here the mansion would have smaller homes pressing against its walled grounds, trying to get in. Property values out here were probably enough to give people heart attacks.

I sniffed again. There was a faint breath of rotting.

Nosferat. There were suckers in the neighborhood.

There was a thin thread of cinnamon, too, weaving under all the other smells and tying them together. Not tinted with apples, like Christophe, or carnation-flowery, like Anna. This was like big gooey cinnamon buns, and it reminded me of my mother’s warm perfume.

That was the wrong thing to think. Because it made the night much bigger and darker, pressing between the streetlights and against the store’s fluorescent glare. Even though dawn was coming, it was still awful dark.

A snap-ruffle of muffled wingbeats, and the owl coasted in. It landed on the gas station’s sign, mantled once, and looked at me. Blinked one yellow eye, then the other. Its talons skritched a little, a small sound under the drone of faraway traffic, the murmur of the city, and the thrumming at the very edge of my consciousness.

The touch slid free of my head. Uneasy static, a thunderstorm approaching. I tasted wax oranges, but only faintly. A brief glass-needle spike of pain through my head, and I was back in myself, staring up at the owl like it was going to tell me something.

Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. But still.

I reached up to touch the skull-and-crossbones earring. My mother’s locket was a chip of ice against my breastbone, safe and snug under my T-shirt and hoodie. Graves’s coat flapped around my ankles in the uneasy breeze. Goose bumps spread over me. The air itself was electric.

Come on, Dru. Time to do the throwin’ down, not just the starin’ down.

I headed for the edge of the parking lot. The owl called softly, but when I glanced up it had taken off, a soft explosion of feathers.

I stepped out of the light and into the darkness before dawn. Twelve blocks to the mansion they were holding Graves in, if they hadn’t moved him.

Then it was showtime.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Things went okay enough for the first few minutes. I dropped down on the other side of the high brick wall and didn’t immediately glance up to see what Dad was doing. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be out at night, sneaking around somewhere the Real World was rubbing through the fabric of the everyday.

No. I hadn’t forgotten. I’d just forgotten what it felt like to do this with Dad, him taking point and me doing backup and sweep–behind. The comfort of knowing that I just had to wait for orders and let training do the rest.

A thin film of rotten, waxed oranges slid over my tongue. I swallowed hard, the aspect smoothing down over me in deep waves of sensation. Christophe had marked this entrance in red pencil on the satellite photos, along with a couple other routes.

Always planning ahead. Had he thought I’d never find out?

The thing was, I still flushed hotly, thinking of him. Thinking of his hands in my hair and the lightning that went through me whenever—

My grandmother’s owl hooted softly, sharply. Consciousness of danger prickled under the surface of my skin. The shifting in my bones retreated, silence filling my flesh.

I faded back into the shrubbery lining the wall. My breathing came soft through a wide-open mouth, my right hand reaching up and curling around a malaika’s warm wooden hilt. I felt a pair of nosferat pass, a drift of bad drain-smell and hatred sending glass pins through my temples.

That’s the thing about suckers. They hate so much. I don’t understand it. It’s not like they have a monopoly on hate—human beings have a big chunk of the market, and other Real World stuff has its slices of the pie too—but a sucker’s hate is so intense, and it clouds around them like dust around that kid in the old Peanuts cartoons. The one who was always filthy.

I didn’t blink, I didn’t move. The aspect made it easier, and I suddenly understood how the older djamphir fell into that spooky immobility. It was so easy, a stillness enfolding the entire body like a cradling bath, the world moving past on a slow river. My concentration turned fierce and one-pointed, and all Gran’s training seemed like kid games.

Two more suckers, patrolling. They smelled male, and peppery with excitement. The touch whispered in my head, averting their notice. Gran’s owl called again, but neither of them noticed. One made a low aside in some consonant-filled foreign language, their shapes blurred like ink on wet paper, and the other one laughed before they vanished with a tiny, nasty chattering little sound.

Man, I hate that. I hate it when djamphir do it, too.

I studied the house a little more. It was a big sprawling brick monstrosity, looking for all the world like a square red-brown fungus had suddenly got drunk, smoked crack, and decided to stack itself up to impersonate a mansion. It was dark, a dark the coming morning probably wouldn’t penetrate very far. I didn’t have to think about where I’d seen this sort of miasma before.

It had been back in the Dakotas, under a snowy sky with Graves in the truck right next to me. Going to meet Sergej.

Christophe had saved us then. Or, more precisely, saved me. Like he was always doing.

Like I was counting on him to do now.

A complex, tangled wash of feeling slid over me like the aspect. I was counting on him an awful lot here.

Just as I thought it, I heard the thwap-thrum of a helicopter. It got louder and louder, and the fungal mansion took a breath. Like a lion smiling right before it gets up.

Let’s hope this goes well, Dru.

I slid out of the bushes, thin danger candy waxing and waning on my tongue. Creeping along, each foot placed silently, my right hand still awkwardly up, clasping the malaika’s oddly warm, satin-smooth hilt. The path marked with red pencil took advantage of every bit of cover, and about halfway to the house I paused, something nagging inside my head.

You’re in terrible danger, Dru.

Well, duh. But Graves was also, and he was in this house. Who knew what they were doing to him? I had a