Defiance

But at bottom he was just as terrified as I was.

Danger candy filled my mouth with thin, rotting, waxen citrus. The taste was oddly attenuated, fading. Feathers brushed my skin, and I heard wingbeats. “Vampires,” I whispered.

Graves shook his head. He pulled back, his fingers sinking into my arm, and dragged me off the bed. My legs buckled, but he held me up. “Maybe,” he whispered back. “Maybe worse.”

It was probably a mark of how screwed up my life was that I didn’t ask what could be worse than vampires. I didn’t want to know, so I let him pull me around. My legs trembled. The rest of me wasn’t too steady, either.

He shoved me back into the corner next to the lamp. Then he turned around, and the cuts across his back made me feel sick all over again. The light was scorching, making my eyes water, which didn’t make sense. It was just a night-light-dim bulb shielded by a thick dusty shade; it shouldn’t have stung me so bad.

I heard movement now. Stealthy little footsteps, taps, too fast or slow to be human, and something about them told me there was a hallway outside our door. A long one.

“Shit,” Graves muttered. “Lot of them this time.” He propped me against the wall. “You okay?”

My legs firmed up. I nodded, brushed hair out of my eyes. Blonde slid through the curls, and they clung to my fingers. What the hell?

Anna rose slowly, as if her joints were resisting. If she felt anything like I did after Christophe had bit me, I could understand why. And Christophe hadn’t taken more than he absolutely needed, I guess.

I only borrowed, little bird, I did not take. Remember that.

I owed him an apology bigtime, but I didn’t want to think about that while I was propped against the wall behind Graves.

Anna’s eyes glowed blue, her fangs peeping delicately out as she glanced at us. I leaned against the wall, the cold of it scorching through my T-shirt. The wood was slick and freezing, hard like it was glued over concrete and slightly sticky the way paneling in a long-empty room will get. I cast around for anything that might serve as a weapon, but there was nothing except the wrought-iron lamp base. Hitting a vampire with our only source of light didn’t seem like a good idea.

But there was nothing else. All the other furniture was too heavy to lift, and if there’d been anything else in here, Graves probably would have already picked it up. I reached out, touched the lamp’s long slim length. Yup, it felt like iron.

Anna’s lip curled. “You’re going to defend her, loup-garou? It’s a lost battle.”

“You just do your part,” he returned, just as sarcastically. “I’d rather go down fighting.”

“Wait, we have a plan?” This struck me as need-to-know information. “What’s the plan?”

“There is no plan. There’s only improvisation.” Anna straightened, and I supposed now was not the time to tell her she sounded a little bit like Christophe. She put her shoulders back, lifted her chin, and turned on her heel to face to door. Swayed a little bit, but settled into a ramrod-stiff posture. She’d looked about ready to fall over before. What was this? “I am svetocha. I do not submit. Not if I can help it.”

“Oh.” I sounded just as mystified as I felt. But I seconded that part about not submitting.

“You with me, Dru?” Graves squared his shoulders. I tried not to look at his messed-up back.

Always. My fingers closed around the lamp stalk. “You better believe it.”

The footsteps drew closer still, tapping and sliding. That oddly thin wash of danger candy filled my mouth, I considered spitting. It could be a comment on the décor instead of a completely useless gesture, I supposed. I tried breathing deep and swearing internally at my legs to get them to starch up a bit. My bones ached, but all in all I felt better than Anna probably did.

Nobody had been sucking my blood lately. And yeah, she was a total bitch and had shot me.

But nobody deserves . . . that. I remembered the dragging weakness and the pain as something was torn out of me by invisible roots, something I wouldn’t hesitate to call my soul, the very core of what made me me. I got the idea Christophe had been as gentle as possible about it.

Something told me Sergej wouldn’t be. If he could get close enough to me. And he’d already gotten close enough to strangle me into unconsciousness.

The sounds rushed by outside the door in a tide. Little whispers, tittering laughter, tapping feet, a scraping like diamond claws on a sheet of glass. Pain speared through my head, twisting, and I pulled the touch back in a hurry. I hadn’t even known I was using it, or that it would spread so far. But contracting it like a fist inside my head took effort, and I was sweating and breathing fast, the world wavering in front of my still-smarting eyes.

“Dru?” Graves, his head half-turned. His eyes were dark now. “You okay?”

“I . . . I just . . .” The ache was back, spearing into my bones. “I hurt all over.”

“You’re cresting.” The contempt in Anna’s tone could have dripped out and splashed smoking on the floor. “You have picked the very worst time to bloom. Right now you’re at your most vulnerable, and of the most use to him. Not only can he drain me dry or keep me as a hostage, but he can drain you and possibly become the King in truth. He will walk in sunlight, and there’s not much we can do about it.”

Great. Blame me for it, sure. “Cresting? Like, the last step before I—”

“Before you become what everyone around you is waiting so breathlessly for. Fully bloomed and oh-so-ready to please.” She tilted her head, her tangle hair falling in a cascade of red-gold curls. “A nice tractable little svetocha so blinded by Reynard she’ll leave her own friends in the clutches of—”

“You want to shut your mouth.” Graves, but it was a new tone for him. Flat, terribly adult, and thrumming with a loup-garou’s command-voice. I’d heard him hold a whole room of wulfen back with that voice, but he’d never sounded like this before.

Like he was two steps away from kicking the shit out of someone, and not caring how bad he hurt them.

I didn’t blame him, but it was a bad idea right now. I gathered myself. “Let’s not do Sergej’s work for him, okay?”

As soon as I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake. There’s a reason every hunter I’d ever known wouldn’t ever use a sucker’s name out loud. I’d said it before, usually when he was a safe distance away. But here?

Bad idea.

Anna whirled, her blue eyes wide, and a low evil laugh slid through the darkened room. My fingers cramped on the lamp, and he just resolved out of thin air in the darkness.

He wasn’t so tall, even if he was broad-shouldered. A little shorter than Christophe, but you wouldn’t dare call him small. The ice around him made him seem way bigger. Loose, artistically mussed honey-brown curls fell over his face.

He looked just the same as he had in the Dakotas, no older than me. Seventeen tops, old enough for a scruffy little beard but still smooth-cheeked. It was the eyes that gave him away, black spreading out from the hourglass- shaped pupils, threading in little vein-lines from lid to lid. It made the whites look filmed with gray, so you could maybe mistake them for cataracts if you didn’t know any better.

But those pupils could suck you down, leave you gasping for air on the floor while his fangs met in your throat. There was something hiding under the gelid darkness.

Something old. Something terrible.

Something hungry.

Sergej folded his arms. His watch, a huge chunky gold thing, was too horribly tasteless to be anything other than a genuine Rolex. He wore, of all things, a navy-blue Drunken Pixies T-shirt and jeans. And it was horrible, but now that I was looking for it, I saw how his face worked together, how beautiful he was. That face could have been taken from an old coin displayed in a museum or chipped from a statue found in a grotto somewhere, turned toward the wall because it was too . . . much. Too unreal-gorgeous.

Like Christophe’s, and unlike.

It was horrible. Perfect poreless skin with a hint of coppery color, those curls, and those eyes full of cold tar-oil that could make you slit your own wrists if you had to stare into them long enough. The tar would close over your head, and it would be a relief to feel the sting of a blade.

He just stood there, next to the wall, between two shrouded shapes that could have been couches but