Reckoning (24 page)

It was my only option. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one that had even a hope of turning out okay. Even probing at the cuff with the
touch
told me nothing.

There was a long silent time, and I started singing to myself while I yanked this way and that on the chain. My wrist felt bruised and itchy underneath it. I even sweated a little in the damp stony chill. At least I didn’t smell bad. I still reeked like the cinnamon-bun place at the mall, which was a blessing because I hadn’t had a shower in a while.

When the bolt on the door clanged again, I scrambled up to crouch on the shelf-bed, my cheeks guiltily hot. My back hit the wall and I didn’t make a girly little fear-sound.

But it was close.

He eased in, leaving the door open behind him, and did a strange thing.

Graves crouched, right inside the door. He laid his hands flat on the floor and looked at me, and his eyes were back to green. My heart hammered. He even
smelled
right—a stray breath from the hall brought me a tang of moonsilver wildness and strawberry incense over the dry-fur nastiness of vampires. The bone buttons on his shirt glowed a little, and he looked . . . feral.

Dangerous.

Heat prickled in my eyes. I watched him, braced against the wall, heart thundering.

“
He’s
asleep,” Graves finally whispered. “Thinks he has me down. Like a good little dog.”

The rock in my throat moved. I made a sound.

“Dru.” He stared at me. A muscle in his cheek flicked. It hit me again, how different he was from the gawky, bird-thin, almost-ugly Goth Boy who’d bought me a cheeseburger and saved my life in a hundred ways ever since. Maybe they weren’t overt, like Christophe’s, but they were just as real. “Say something.”

Yeah, sure. Like I had a whole list of things just lying around to say. My mouth opened. “Ash? Shanks? Dibs?”

He flinched as if I’d hit him. “Dibs is here. The others . . . I don’t know.”

I let out a shaky breath and settled for the obvious. “How do we get out of here?” I even sounded halfway normal, instead of scared out of my mind.

He twitched a little, and the green glow in his irises dimmed for a moment. His whole body tensed, shoulders hunching and the clarity of the change blooming around him. The Other shone out
for a brief moment, and sweat sprang up on his caramel skin. Under his coloring, he was pale. A shudder wracked him, and he dug his fingers into the stone like he was going to start kneading bread.

“Dru.” As if reminding himself who I was. “You gotta trust me.”

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options
. I nodded. Curls fell in my face. “Okay.”

That brought up a ghost of a smile. It wasn’t anything close to my Goth Boy, but it made me feel a hell of a lot better. Relieved, even. My arms and legs actually went weak for a second, and I sagged against the wall.

He stared at me for another long moment. “They’ve got him. Reynard. Christophe.”

I actually gulped. “Is he—”

“Alive. Thought I’d warn you. It’s pretty bad. But you
gotta
trust me, Dru. I’m Broken, but . . . please.”

“I already said okay.” The urge to roll my eyes was incredibly strong. “Graves—”

“Never figured out why you did.” He hunched even further. “Tell me. Now, while I can hear you. Why did you even . . . why
me
?”

For a second I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Then it hit me.

If I had a chance to tell him something, this was it. And it couldn’t be like all the other times, when everything I ever wanted to say to him jammed up in my chest like a ball of snarled yarn and I ended up spitting out something so stupid it made me cringe for days afterward to even
think
about it.

Make it count, Dru
. I searched for the words. And, wonder of wonders, they came.

“Because you’re brave,” I told him. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. Because you didn’t walk off when it looked like I was
in trouble. Because you stuck around even though the Real World’s scary and Ash bit you. Because you made everyone come back to that first Schola while it was burning, to get me out. Because you came back the last time we tangoed with
him
.”
With Sergej
, I meant, and Graves shuddered.
Hurry up
. The words tumbled out over each other, faster and faster. “Because I
get
you. I like your jokes and I like you and I feel like I can handle anything when you’re around. Because . . .” I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “Because you’re beautiful and I love you. Even if you drive me up the goddamn wall with the back-and-forth and not wanting to be my boyfriend or anything. Okay? That’s why. Because you’re a rock, Graves. You’re a total . . . rock.”

Oh, crap
. I started out good and ended up lame. Story of my life.

Graves crouched there, looking at me. His face worked like the gears behind it had gotten snarled. His eyes flamed green, and the high-voltage humming going through him was so loud I was afraid everyone in the world would hear it. He stared for what felt like forever while I tried to think of something else to say. The chain rattled as I shifted, and that shook him out of whatever he was thinking.

“Trust me,” he repeated, and was gone in a heartbeat. The door clanged shut, the bolt shot home, and I slumped against the wall.

“I do.” My whisper barely stirred the air. I thought about this for a few minutes, and I found out I was shaking. My hands vibrated like I was holding onto a weed whacker and my legs gave out. I sat down on the shelf-bed with a thump that clicked my teeth together, hard.

I waited for him to come back. But after a little while, I started working on the chain again. I trusted him, sure.

But it would be even better if I was ready to go when the time came.

I got exactly nowhere.
When Sergej came back, he had a black-eyed Graves lock my other wrist down with a short chain attached to a wheelchair. Then he edged closer to me, stretching out his hand, and did something—and the cuff on the chain attached to the wall unfolded in complex clockwork. The
touch
shivered uneasily, and my stomach growled. I felt light-headed but clear.

And thirsty. The bloodhunger scraped at the back of my throat. I could
smell
it in both of them—the candy-rotting reek of red blood cells dying inside Sergej’s veins and the sweet red fluid in Graves’s.

“Poor little dear, growing weaker.” Sergej retreated to the door. “Hungry, are we? And thirsty too, I’ll wager. But you’re ever so much more tractable this way.”

Just give me an opening, asshole, and I’ll show you “tractable
.” I glanced at Graves, but his face was set and pale, and those black holes where his eyes should be were creeptastic. I lowered myself gingerly into the chair and decided not to say anything.

At least now I was chained to a wheelchair instead of a wall. The
chain might be durable and the cuff made of something space age, but wheelchairs are pretty fragile when it comes down to it. Things were looking up.

At least, they were looking up until Graves clumsily buckled the leather restraints over my wrists and ankles. The vampire stood and watched, clicking his tongue occasionally when Graves slowed down. Goth Boy was sweating a little, tiny diamond drops of water standing out on his skin. He kept his head down, his hair shaken into his face.

When it was done, Sergej whooshed past and was out in the hall in an eyeblink. Graves grabbed the back of the wheelchair and began pushing. After the dim stone cube, the hall was a glare, and I blinked several times. Hot water swelled in my eyes as they adjusted. The hall sloped up, and the wheelchair squeaked as Graves set off, following Sergej’s soundless steps. But his right hand came down and touched my shoulder. For a second his fingers dug in, a brief squeeze. Then he took it away.

I was shaking again. Sitting down, though, meant I could put my game face on. My left hand squeezed against itself, knotted up into a fist, and the spike of raw blistered pain was welcome. Even though my hand wasn’t healing from the Frisbee hex, I wasn’t going to complain. Not while it gave me a tool I needed to fight off Sergej’s snakelike stare.

The hall went up, and up, and spiraled. The stone gave way to regular walls, but it still felt underground. Dead air and the sense of weight pressing down on you, all over your body, echoes not quite behaving the way they should. Graves was breathing hard, slowing down as he pushed the chair. Sergej didn’t glance back, but he made another one of those clicking sounds, like he was hurrying up a horse or a dog.

Graves sped up a little. I concentrated on breathing, and on not
hearing the soughing of blood in his veins. On not feeling the bloodhunger rasp against the back of my throat, my veins drying out like red sand. The emptiness in my middle, worse than hunger.

I’ve been hungry before. I’ve been plenty scared, too. But this . . . this was . . .

The hall ended in a pair of doors. Big dark wooden doors bound with rusting iron, spattered with crusted, metallic-smelling fluids I didn’t want to look at. Sergej reached up, his slim hands shocking–pale against the rough black wood, and pushed. The golden electric light ran down his curls, and if not for the quicksilver inhuman grace of his movements he would’ve made a pretty picture. He shoved, casually, and the heavy doors swung wide.

A burst of warmer air slid down the hall. The
touch
filled my head with shadowy pictures, sounds coming through static.

Screaming, begging, please don’t, no. Bright eyes glazed with avid glee over the black of the hunting-aura, claws shearing through bone, blood hanging in the air before it splashed on white and black tiles. High crystalline laughter, murmurings brushing the skin like razors, sobbing victims dragged across the floor and
—

My head snapped to the side as if I’d been punched. The
touch
was much stronger than it had ever been, and it twisted inside me, the cathedral-space suddenly bursting with images. They roared through me in a torrent, and my left hand tingled with fresh hot pain.

That damn cinnamon-roll smell rose from my skin, and now it had a new tang. Warm perfume, a familiar smell.

Be brave, baby girl
. A familiar voice. I could feel her breath against my cheek, could feel her arms around my small body as she lifted me.
Be very brave now
.

My mouth fell open. My fangs lengthened, scraping my lower lip.
Mom?
But I didn’t say it. I
couldn’t
.

Because Graves pushed me through the door, the wheelchair squeaked, and a vast space opened up around us. Circular, floored in white and black marble like a cross between an old-timey diner’s linoleum and a high-end hotel’s tiled lobby; tiers of seats rose in coliseum arcs to a stone-ribbed dome. The light was low and bloody, drenching every surface and making every edge weirdly sharp.

The seats were crowded with vampires. Bright eyes, fangs out, their young faces twisting up as they hissed and snarled. They were in every conceivable teenage shape and size, and they were all beautiful in a weird, stomach-clenching way.

I blinked furiously, their hatred scraping hard against the thin skin keeping me separate from the world. The bloodhunger rose, flooding my veins, and it took a second before the shapes I saw snapped into a picture behind my eyes.

At the far end of the circular space, a ragged human shape was spread-eagled, chained to the wall with familiar silvery metal. His head was down, dried blood stiffening his hair, and every inch of bare skin I could see on him—feet, hands, chest through the rips in his shirt, legs through the torn jeans—was battered and covered with tiny cuts. My heart leapt up into my throat, pounding thinly in my wrists and ankles, even behind my eyes.

It was Christophe.

I leaned over and
retched, even though my stomach was empty. I couldn’t help myself. A swell of nasty laughter cut through the snarling.

In the exact middle of the circle, there was a table and a chair. The table had equipment stacked on it, tubes and glass canisters. The chair was a monstrosity of whipped and curlicued iron, spikes screaming up from its back.

On the other side of the table, a familiar golden head. Dibs crouched, pale and slack-jawed, bruised up one whole side of his face, his dark eyes terribly empty. He was barefoot too, but his blue polo shirt and jeans weren’t torn up. He rocked back and forth a little, his hands clapped to his ears, trying to shut out the din.

My heart squeezed itself up into a rock. Poor Dibs.

Sergej raised his hands, and the sound coming from him shocked everything into silence. It petered out, a high glassy scream that trembled in the ultrasonic and speared the tender meat inside my head. The cry drained away, leaving every surface quivering, and
the assembled vampires—there were so
many
of them, my God—were still as statues.

Across the room, Christophe’s head lifted fractionally, dropped. A gleam of blue showed through his tangled, crusted, hanging hair. It was a shock to see him so dirty and battered. Yet another thing that made me feel like I’d stepped through a door and into an alternate universe, where nothing was right anymore.

I let out a tiny, sobbing sound. It shivered and died in that silence like a small animal crouched in a trap.

Sergej half-turned and grinned at me. Those black eyes sparkled on their surface, and it was then that I figured out what made him the closest thing to a king the vampires had. All the rest of them were made of hatred, true. But Sergej? He was hate boiled down to its bones. He didn’t need a
reason
. Christophe had told me something had happened on an old battlefield in Europe, and after that his father had . . . changed. Had drunk so much blood, maybe, that something in him swelled up and burst like a tick. Maybe it was the part of him that had stayed human enough to get close to someone and father a kid. Or maybe it was just the part that made every other vampire recognizably human, even if psychotic and killcrazy.