Defiance

find me was overwhelming.

Then I squared my shoulders, stood still so Graves could snap my malaika back in, and found out I could walk.

EPILOGUE

I scanned the hotel parking lot one more time and shut the door. Stood for a moment with my head hanging. The thought of warding the walls just about threatened to keel me over.

I’d paid cash and used an old fake ID, a leftover from traveling with Dad. The clerk barely glanced at it, his eyes lighting up when I shoved the greenbacks over the counter. He went back to watching the flickering television playing some show about tattoo artists, and I’d taken the key gladly and shuffled off.

“Come on, this won’t stay hot. Or even warmish.” Graves touched my shoulder.

Both the boys had carried up armloads of fast-food bags. That’s one thing about the big city—they don’t even blink when you go through a New Jersey drive-through at 3 a.m. in a stolen car with two hungry werwulfen and get sixty bucks’ worth of burgers and fries, not to mention six large chocolate milk shakes.

Ash was already snout-deep in a double-bacon cheeseburger, trying to eat it and suck on the straw to his second milk shake at the same time. Graves had a handful of french fries and was already looking way more peppy. If he could get enough food in him, the bruises would heal down and he’d be all right in twelve hours or so.

My brain was tired. It felt like I was thinking through mud. Sergej. Anna. Christophe. Did I really do all that? I blinked, picked up a gigantic burger in its crackling paper wrapping, and swallowed hard.

The rock in my throat didn’t want to go away. I just swallowed past it. I ate mechanically, and for about fifteen minutes the only sounds were slurping, munching, and Ash’s happy little humming sounds as he chewed. Graves ate steadily, his eyelids at half-mast over his pain-darkened irises and his shoulders hunched.

After a while, Graves stopped. Looked at me. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I braced myself as much as I could. Kept chewing. Washed down the flavorless cud with a bullet of toot-haching cold-sweet milkshake.

“So what are doing now?” Graves’s eyes were lighting back up, the shadows retreating the more he ate. He looked at me like I should know.

Well, I did, sort of. Out of all of us, I was the one most used to planning things like this. Escapes. Scenarios. Dad had drilled it into me, I’d spent a whole childhood preparing.

Responsibility settled into me like a weight of cold iron. “Now we sleep. Then, in the morning, we find a car we can use for long distance.”

He absorbed this. “We’re not going back to . . . to them? The Order?”

“Why, you want to get handed over to you-know-who again? While they lie and keep me from coming after you?” I sighed when Ash looked at me, his dark eyes round like I’d just shouted.

I hadn’t. I just sounded angry. Bitter. Old.

Older than I was, at least. I wished for some water to wash the taste out of my mouth. It was like ashes and old blood, that taste, and it wasn’t nice. All the cheeseburger and milk shake in the world couldn’t cover it up.

Graves nodded. His face pulled against itself, lines appearing like he was aging right in front of me. I’ve seen that look before, when Dad drove through the bad parts of town and I made sure the doors were locked. It was on the faces of kids who huddled in the cold, staring at passing cars and hoping they wouldn’t stop—or hoping they would, because the kids were hungry.

So, so hungry.

“So, um. You . . .” Graves looked down at the pile of fries in front of him. “You came there. Alone. For me.”

Yeah, and you’re disgusted by the fact that I’m half sucker. So am I. “Let’s not talk about it.” I stuffed another wad of cheeseburger into my mouth. Chewed sloppily.

Ash looked at Graves, back at me, like he was following a tennis match. Half a fry hung out of his mouth, and he looked so sad and afraid it was almost enough to make me start yelling.

I dropped the remains of my burger and stood up, my chair scraping back from the cheap table. “I’m gonna get cleaned up.”

There was only one bed in here, but it was queen-size. The bathroom was nothing to write home about; I could’ve cleaned it better with two rags and a bottle of spit. But it was cheap, it was safe for tonight, and we needed rest. I needed sleep. I needed just a few hours to figure out what the hell we were going to do.

I hadn’t thought much beyond rescuing Graves. If Sergej survived he’d have an even bigger hard-on for me, the Order was going to be looking for me, and every sucker who caught wind of us would try to tear us to itty-bitty pieces.

At least the shower was on the hot side of lukewarm. I peeled my filthy clothes off and decided not to worry about not having clean ones for a few minutes. Stepped under the water, trying not to ew w w too loudly when my feet slipped a little on greasy, not-cleaned-so-well plastic.

Dried blood and dirt sluiced off. My hips felt funny, and I was soaping myself up when I realized something had changed. I arched my back a little under the spray, and I wasn’t just imagining things.

The chesticles were bigger.

I lifted my hand. The claws slid neatly from my fingertips, amber-colored and pretty dainty. Svetocha got claws when they . . .

I scrambled out of the still-running shower. Swiped condensation off the mirror. Looked at myself, hanging on to the edge of the counter while I dripped all over the yellowing linoleum. My jaw actually dropped, and I actually saw my canines lengthen a little, sharpening.

Holy . . . I couldn’t feel anything but weary amazement.

My face was slightly different, heart-shaped now, and with my hair wet and slicked back it was easier to see how I looked like Mom. My cheekbones stood out like a supermodel’s, my collarbones looked fragile, and the whole architecture of my face had changed by just a few millimeters.

It was official. I’d bloomed.

And now we were on the run.

I stood there, holding on to the slightly greasy counter while the shower ran, and watched the tears roll down my new, sculpted cheeks.

finis