Defiance

let out a short sound, the gasp chopped in half because I sensed someone looking at me. It was the sort of feeling that will make you turn your head in a crowd, certain of being stared at, and it’s right more often than not.

What the hell? Am I blind? What happened?

The last thing I remembered was Sergej’s hands around my throat, my scream cut short, and the bloodhunger pulling on my veins like it wanted to rip bits of me out. Little bits of blackness had crawled up under Sergej’s skin, and he had squeezed—

Someone let out a short sigh of frustration. “You’re not blind.” Female. Young. But so, so tired. “You’re just changing.”

Fear crawled up into my throat, grabbed me, and I flailed. There were sheets, and a blanket, and even more dust puffed up.

Someone grabbed my shoulders. Strong broad hands; I struck out wildly. He let out a yelp as my fist connected, good solid hit.

“Goddammit! Dru, quit it!”

I knew his voice too. It made no sense. But I sagged in his hands. All the fight went out of me, air out of a balloon.

“Graves?” I whispered.

He coughed, racking. I sniffed deeply. I couldn’t see, but I could smell him. Strawberry incense, and boy. He hadn’t had a shower in a while, and that was wrong, because he’d always been so clean before. But it was him. Even his hands were familiar, now that I knew.

“Jesus,” he whispered. And that was enough. I knew him.

I’d know him anywhere.

I reached forward, blindly. He climbed the rest of the way up on the bed and I hugged him, hard. His arms were around me, and his fingers were in my hair. He was here and he was real, and it was like he’d never been away.

I let out a dry barking sob.

“Shit.” He even sounded like himself. Same old Goth Boy. “How did they catch you? What happened?”

The words ran up against each other, trying to spill out faster than my mouth could move. “They—I—we were coming to rescue you. Leon, he had a—he found . . . Graves, my God, oh my God—”

“Charming.” The female voice spoke up again, dry and disdainful. “Calm her down so we can get something useful out of her. We don’t have much time.”

I jerked like I’d been hit. “What the fu—”

“Ease up, Dru. She’s not the enemy.” Graves paused, and I could imagine his rueful expression. “At least, not here.”

“Bullshit!” I tensed, but Graves didn’t let go of me. So I didn’t let go of him. “She shot me!”

“What?” But he didn’t sound surprised. “You shot her?”

There was a long silence.

Then she sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Anna said.

* * *

First it was a filmy haze, diffuse light coming through. Then it was like a thick layer of cheesecloth over the world; I could make out shapes as I spilled out everything that had happened. I hopscotched around a bit as I got confused, backtracked, and tried to fill him in on everything at once. Graves just listened, his arms around me, and I was so happy to finally see him again—even if I wasn’t really seeing him, so to speak—that I almost forgot Anna was in the room.

Almost.

I was just telling him about Anna’s little note with the earring inside when she cleared her throat, a small but definite call for attention. “That wasn’t me.”

I flinched a little. She sounded like she was a ways away, maybe on the other side of the room. But that was no safety—I knew how scary fast djamphir truly were, and even though I’d toasted Anna’s cheese once in a gym at the Prima, I wasn’t anywhere near fighting form now.

“It sure as hell smelled like you.” The bitterness I was tasting wasn’t just the words. “You. You betrayed my mother. You came down to the gym to beat the shit out of me. You shot me. You—”

She actually laughed. A sour, clear little sound, like a wrongly tuned bell. “I’m not a nice person, Dru. You can take some comfort in the fact that I am, now, suffering for my sins.”

Graves’s voice rumbled in his chest. “Let’s just figure out who to blame later. Right now we’ve got bigger problems.”

His bare skin was against my naked arms; my hoodie was gone, but I still had my T-shirt and jeans. I had my sneakers, too; I could feel them. I wanted to ask if Graves was at least wearing underwear, decided not to. “Where are we?”

Anna laughed. She did really sound exhausted, not nearly as nasty as usual. “Can’t you guess? He has us, little one, and with both of us here . . . well, the odds aren’t good.”

He. Sergej. The name twisted inside my head like a fish made of broken glass. “You’ve been feeding him information. Traitor.” I blinked a couple more times. Things were rapidly getting clearer, at least in my eyesight.

The rest of me was confused as all get-out. I held on to Graves, my arms aching.

I heard cloth moving, as if she’d shrugged. “And now that you’re cresting through the secondary bits of the change, he’ll use me as a hostage and drain you dry. Or the opposite, since I’m more danger to him than you. You won’t need to kill me, Dru. He’ll do it quite handily.” She actually sniffed. “You should worry less about what I’ve done and concentrate on what we should all do to get the hell out of here.”

“Word.” Graves actually agreed with her. He didn’t move, thought I might’ve been hurting him by clutching so hard. “As soon as we’re out of here, we’ll sort out everything else. But I really don’t like it here. I’d prefer to fight it out somewhere else.”

“What happened to you?” I grabbed at him again, like he might get away. “Was it Christophe? I saw something, did he—”

“He was there.” Graves moved slightly, but not away. He moved closer to me; I could almost see the bitter little face he pulled. “That night. But all he did was . . . we just had words, him and me. That’s all. I went out for a run to calm myself down, and the instant I was off the Schola property, they snatched me.”

“Wait. What?” Cold disbelief warred with uneasy relief inside me. I couldn’t tell which would win, but at least the light got a little brighter. Graves was a shadow now, his hair standing up wildly and making his head into a monster-shape.

“He was there. Had a couple other djamphir with him—some I didn’t know, and that kid Leon. Said he wanted to know what my intentions were, if I thought I could do any good hanging around you all the time, stuff like that. I almost hauled off and coldcocked him. They had to hold me back. They dragged me away, and—”

“Wait. Leon was there?” The world actually rocked out from under me, and I grabbed at Graves again. He took a sharp breath, stroked my hair. “He was . . . oh, my God.”

“Ah.” Anna breathed out, a long exhalation of comprehension. “Now that makes sense.”

Says you. “What? What makes sense?”

For once, Anna didn’t sound like she was enjoying herself by spreading bad news. “Leontus had a svetocha once. He was bonded, and . . . well, an ephialtes killed her. I suppose they thought he would guard you all the more fiercely; I could have told them the very sight of you would make him far more dangerous than he usually is.”

Bonded? Well, I could guess what that meant. The rest of it, though . . . “Why?” If I’d been able to stand up, I would’ve hopped from foot to foot impatiently. Nobody ever gave me answers fast enough. “Why would he . . . Jesus.”

And I wasn’t sure I could trust Anna’s answers, either. The list of things I could trust was shrinking