Reckoning (14 page)

“Dru?” Now he sounded concerned. “You’re pale.”

I slumped in the chair, my hands turned to gripping fists on the arms, and the metallic taste crawled down my throat.

Something moved behind me, in the trellis. Christophe said something very softly, but not in Italian. Sounded like Polish, but he pronounced things differently than Augustine. Augie always sounded like he was swearing, and Christophe sounded precise, even with his mouth handling the funny sounds.

I was too occupied trying to stay upright. Someone came around the trellis, stepped up to the table on my side. Someone tall, and slim. I caught a flash of red and my heart leapt into my throat.

It was a caramel-skinned boy with dark glossy hair and liquid dark eyes. He was sharply handsome, but not in the way that yells
djamphir
—the shape of his cheekbones was different, and he had a pointed chin and a proud beak of a nose. A thin gold hoop gleamed in one ear, nestling against the softness of his hair. He wore a loose red T-shirt and chinos, and he spoke in English.

“Slow and sloppy, old man.” His accent was different than Christophe’s, too.
Indian, maybe. Subcontinent, not American
, I realized through the fuzz my brain had become. “We have three or four minutes. Don’t worry. She’s just immobile for the moment. Be reasonable, and she’ll be none the worse for wear.”

“She” means me. Immobile
? I tried to move, couldn’t. Every muscle had seized up. I could barely breathe.

Christophe’s eyes flamed with blue. The
aspect
slicked his hair back, and his fangs dimpled his lower lip. He stared at the boy next to me, and his left hand had suddenly tensed, cupped against the trembling table.

It wasn’t the table. My legs were shaking, and I had my foot braced against one of the table supports. The shaking communicated itself through the wood, the liquid in Christophe’s wineglass sloshing now.

“I came to warn you,” the boy continued. “Will you be reasonable?”

Christophe’s tone was low, even, and deadly. “If you’ve harmed her—”

“So it’s true, the monk has taken a fall.” The boy laughed. “As long as
djrirosha
is administered in the next ten minutes, she’ll be fine. Listen, Gogol, for I bear news. Take your
svetocha
and hide as deeply as you can. The Elders have made treaty with your father, and count it well worth the cost.”

Gogol
? But I knew. That was Sergej’s last name. And Christophe’s. My heartbeat stuttered. Darkness crept into my peripheral vision.

“The Maharaj and . . .” Christophe actually looked stunned. Blond slipped back through his hair as the
aspect
retreated. “You’re mad. Or lying.”

Maharaj
? A faint, dozy alarm spilled through me. Along with sorcery and breeding nasty things, the
djinni
-children go in for poison. In a big way. And I’d swallowed a bunch of the Coke.

“No, just a traitor to my own kind by telling you this. The Elders have decreed, so the rest of us are helpless. But I bethought myself to come warn you. There are those among us who believe the smaller viper is one we can live with.”

“The
Maharaj’rai
are breaking with the Order?” Christophe had gone a weird gray shade under his perfectly polished skin. He looked actually
stunned
. “You’re
certain
?”

The boy nodded. His earring winked at me. I strained against the cocoon of fuzz holding my arms and legs down. Sick heat began in my toes, rising up my calves an inch at a time. My fingers felt like sausages in a pan, swelling.

Now I knew what being paralyzed was like. My arms and legs were rigid, concrete instead of flesh. The table had stopped shaking. My breath came in short sipping bursts, my heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings, and sudden fear that whatever was keeping me from moving would stop me from being able to get any air in at all made me strain to move even harder.

The guy next to me leaned forward a little, and a draft washed over me. Sand, heavy clove spice, and burning. He smelled like he was going to burst into flame at any moment. The
touch
throbbed inside my head.
A heavy, bright blue perfumed flame that would send up ribbons of heavy smoke. That smoke would creep into my lungs and shut them down, and it would turn into a green-glass snake with bright cruel eyes and feathery wings
—

“One moment.” The boy made a quick gesture. There was a snap of glass breaking, and Christophe half-rose, the table jolting as he hit it. A cold wind blew over my face, brushing my hair, full of the smell of roses. The iron bands around my chest eased, snapping one by one, and the tingling in my fingers and toes washed away all at once. “Huh. Look at that, her lips are blue. And yet she’s still pretty. Pleasant travels, Gogol.”

Christophe swore, but the boy vanished on a draft of spice-laden wind. So it wasn’t just
djamphir
who could do that. I’d have bet money nobody in the restaurant had even noticed him.

I slumped in the chair, pins and needles ramming through my
limbs. Then Christophe was on his knees, both my nerveless hands in his, his skin so warm it burned. I made an unhappy little sound, a kittenish mewling, had to stop halfway through because I didn’t have the air.

But I could breathe again. The back of my throat tasted like metal, and roses. The numb rigidity in my arms and legs started to drain.

Christophe’s lips moved, soundlessly. The world went away on a rush of gray tinted with rosy pink, and the
touch
tolled inside my head like a bell.

Maharaj
.
This is bad news. Seriously bad
.

The world came back like a pancake flipped over on a griddle. Christophe, saying my name.

“Dru? Dru. Open your eyes. You can breathe; it’s all right.” He still had my hands, so hard my bones creaked. I coughed, weakly. Everything was too bright. I swayed a little in the chair.

“Whaaa—” My tongue wouldn’t quite obey me. I sounded drunk. Great. We were in a restaurant, I’d just been poisoned or something, and now I sounded three sheets to the wind.
Dad would have a total cow
.

The hard pinching sensation in my chest reminded me that I didn’t have to worry about that. Not right now. Not ever again.

And oh God but that was the wrong thing to think.

Something cool and damp touched my cheeks. I blinked. The penguin waiter was dabbing at me with a wet linen napkin, babbling something at Christophe, who gave short choppy answers. He watched me closely, and when I started pulling weakly at his hands, he finally relaxed a bit.

“There,
kochana
. All’s well.”

Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think this is at all well
. “I think I want
to leave now.” It was a high breathy sentence, like a little girl savagely embarrassed at a party or something. “Before something else happens.”

“No dessert?” But one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. How he could make an almost smile look so grim was beyond me. “Very well. Come. You can stand. And if you can’t, I’ll help.”

“Will
la signorina
be—” The waiter was having some trouble with this. I didn’t blame him.

Christophe said something else, with a rueful expression.

Amazingly, the round brown man chuckled. “
Amore!
” He kissed his fingers and fluttered them in the air and rolled away, still laughing.

Christophe’s face fell. “Idiot.” He threw some money on the table and practically dragged me out of there.

I didn’t have a chance to protest—the ground was heaving underfoot, like a dog’s back trying to shake a flea. The wet sticky darkness outside enfolded us, and the jasmine bushes planted outside the restaurant threw their cloying all over me. My stomach revolved, settled unhappily. “Jesus,” I whispered. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d proposed to you and you fainted.” Christophe sighed. “
Moj boze
. The Maharaj.”

“You
what
?” I almost fell over, but Christophe yanked me back onto my feet. Whatever the boy had sprayed in my face had taken care of the poison, I guess—but I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t like not being sure about something like that.

“It was all I could think of. Come,
moj maly ptaszku
, the open street is no place for you. I must think.”

“Who the—what the
hell
—” I couldn’t even frame a reasonable question.

“That was Levant. He wanted to be sure I wouldn’t attack him until he could give his tidings.” Christophe paused. “He is . . . a
friend, in his way. As much as a Maharaj can befriend those not of their kind.”

“Some friend.” My arms and legs began to really work again. My brain kicked over into high gear. Every inch of me tingled unpleasantly, the
aspect
smoothing down over me and burning a little, like I was having a reaction to shellfish or something. “The Maharaj—the dreamstealer, back in—”

“Yes. Their ruling council has thrown in their lot with my father.” Christophe’s jaw was set. “I must think, Dru. Please.”

“I’m not stopping you.” I was soaked with sweat, I realized, and shivering uncontrollably despite the heat. Everything was too bright, the streetlamps miniature suns and the half-moon behind scudding clouds like a searchlight. My eyes watered; I kept blinking. “Wait, what? They . . . your
father
? King of the vampires? Don’t they—”

“The Maharaj hate us. As far as they are concerned, every scion of the
nosferat
, no matter how distant or how noble, is fit only for extermination. Bruce had convinced them we were the lesser evil, and the more likely to win the war.” He set me on my feet again as I stumbled. Breathed something in what I now guessed was Polish, something I was
sure
was a curse just from the way he said it. Then he put his arm over my shoulders and pulled me close. “God and Hell both damn it. This changes things.”

I began to get a bad feeling. Or, I guess, the bad feeling I already had got about ten times worse. “What? What does it change?”

He shook his head, sharply, as if dislodging something nasty. “I need to
think
,
kochana, moja ksiezniczko
. The Order must be warned. And . . .” Maddeningly, he stopped.

“And what? Christophe, come
on
! I just got
poisoned
!”
By the fucking Maharaj! My first one I’ve ever seen, and he . . . oh, man. Man alive, that was something
.

“Hush.” He stopped dead on the street corner. Cars crept by, gleaming, and the hotel rose like a huge white ship a block down. My teeth chattered, and he looked down at me. His face, half-shadowed, was drawn. “I may have to do things you will not like. Do you trust me?”

What a completely ridiculous question
. But I guess it wasn’t so ridiculous. Less than a week ago I’d yelled that I hated him, and I’d been all ready to believe he’d handed Graves over to . . . to
Sergej
.

The name sent a glass spike of pain through my temples. Why hadn’t the
touch
warned me not to drink? I could usually pretty reliably tell if food was safe; there was that one time in Pensacola when Dad had been about to take some tea from a very nice old lady who ran a pretty good occult store. I’d knocked it out of his hand right before she’d started snarling and gibbering in a dead language that made the hair all over me stand up now just remembering it.

She’d thought we were from the Gator Dude—the guy she had a running feud with. We weren’t; we’d just been passing through. Now I sort of wondered if I’d made her think we meant bad business instead of just chalking it up to paranoia and the fact that Dad made a lot of people awful nervous.

The metal taste and the reek of roses faded; I turned my head and spat without thinking, to clear it. A shiver broke over me, and I
felt
the drug burn off. Sweat stood out on my skin, acrid as I metabolized whatever he’d dosed me with. Everything on me tingled even more fiercely.

Jesus.

Christophe’s arm tightened on my shoulders. “Never mind,” he said brusquely, and stepped out into the crosswalk just as the white walk sign flashed. My mother’s locket chilled against my chest. “It doesn’t matter. Come.”

I was exhausted, covered in sweat, and just happy to be breathing. My feet were like concrete blocks, and all I wanted to do was lie down.

Maybe I should’ve said something, I don’t know. But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

The air conditioning
was silent, and the room was an ice cube. I didn’t mind. Clean and dry, I snuggled under the comforter, crisp white sheets like a cloud, the pillow just right and my knees pulled up.

It felt
great
.

Graves sprawled in a chair near the window, his legs loose and easy, his head tipped back so far it looked like it might fall off. A glimmer of green showed between his eyelids every once in a while. Ash was curled up on the floor, under a comforter pulled from the other bed, the whole messy package wedged into the furthest corner from the door.

Christophe sat cross-legged and straight-backed on the floor at the foot of the bed closest the door, his head bowed as if he was meditating. The shotgun lay in front of him, its blued barrel gleaming slightly in the dark. His
malaika
were arranged, one on either side of him. It should’ve looked ridiculous.

It didn’t.

My tongue stole out, touched my lips. My right hand was curled around my mother’s locket. Every once in a while I would rub my thumb over the sharp etching on its back, the weird runic symbols I couldn’t decipher. It was usually soothing.

Right now, not so much.

A flash of green from beneath Graves’s eyelids. Like he was checking the room.

“Graves?” I whispered.

He didn’t move.

“I can tell you’re awake.” I moved a little bit. The pillow scrunched itself up even more perfectly. “Why don’t you lay down?”

He sighed. But quietly. Ash was breathing in deep soft swells, sometimes making a little murmuring sound like a kid in a dream.