Reckoning (18 page)

“Oh,
shit
!” I half-yelped, and Nat laughed.

“This is going to ruin my outfit!” she yelled, and Christophe leveled the shotgun at the window. The door behind us creaked, and I snapped a glance over my shoulder.

Little dried husks of things were shoving themselves through the broken door. Smoke roiled. The things had long scuttling insect legs, hard shiny carapaces, and little red pinprick eyes.

The
touch
flexed inside my head. The things were a hex all right, but one so delicately built and so massively powered it was leagues beyond anything Gran had ever managed to teach me. I
saw
the thin blue and red lines holding it together, complex knots cradling threads of force growing like a living thing, self-referential and hungry. Like a virus, or a geometric cancer in the messy fabric of the physical world.

It was beautiful.

Cold water sprayed from the sprinklers, hissing as it met the insects. They swelled in a steaming wave, and the door crumbled. Nat dragged me along, laughing like she was having a great time. The shotgun’s roar was tiny compared to the massive noise of the grenade’s explosion, and the window shivered into a glittering fall of safety glass. The flower arrangement on the table underneath it exploded.

Nat let go of me. She screamed, the change rippling through her, and bulleted forward. She took the window and a good chunk of the wall on either side with her, flying out into the night. I dug in my heels.

Oh, hell no. No way
!

Christophe pivoted. He glanced behind me and his face changed. His free hand jerked, and he lobbed another silvery thing underhand. I was trying to slow down, skidding against wet carpeting. But Christophe grabbed me, completing a full 360, and headed for the window. His arm was around me, he grabbed the waistband of my jeans, and I got a good faceful of his apple-pie smell. The blood-hunger woke, every vein in me lighting up like a marquee, and we hit the hole in the wall at warp speed.

Falling, weightless, I expected us to fall a lot longer but the jolt came before I was ready. Christophe took most of it, the
aspect
snapping over both of us like a stinging rubber band—
djamphir
can land very lightly, but I wasn’t ready. There was just so much I wasn’t ready for.

A huge grinding noise burst above us. We rolled, Christophe taking most of the momentum, and he might have been screaming. Or I might’ve. I don’t know, because the wall around the window twenty floors above us was a blossom of greasy orange flame. We fetched up against something, hard enough to jolt the breath out of me, and I walloped in a deep lungful of clean night air. The screaming stopped, my ears popped again, and I just lay there for a second.

It was a roof. We hadn’t fallen far—I mean, not far for a
djamphir
. Still, I could’ve killed us both by not being ready. I stared up at the fireball as it belched up, smoke streaming, and thought,
That’s a helluva lot of noise
.

Christophe, yelling something. He braced himself, and I realized I was staring over his shoulder because he was flat on top of me. For once, the thought didn’t make me blush. I was too busy looking at the fireball and the plume of black oily smoke.

He levered his weight aside, yelled again. “Are you
hurt
?”

I couldn’t find my voice. Shook my head, my hair moving against concrete. He grabbed the straps of my
malaika
harness and pulled me up, I kept staring, goggle-eyed. Fine thin threads of hexing unraveled, seeking hungrily, digging into cracks along the wall like veins. “Jesus,” I finally whispered, my lips shaping the sound, my fangs tingling as they lengthened, delicate little points.

He actually shook me. My head bobbled. “
Dru
.”

The snap of command pulled my chin down. He looked worried for a half-second before I blinked. The world came back into focus. Nat melted out of the shadows, her sleek hair ruffled and her linen jacket torn. The
aspect
smoothed down over me, an oil-balm working in through my skin, easing away hurts. Erasing the bruises.

“What?”

“She’s fine,” Nat snapped. “Let’s move.”

But Christophe paused. He still had his shotgun, for crying out loud, but his free right hand smoothed my hair back, tucking curls behind my ears. “All’s well,
skowroneczko moja
. I won’t let them catch you.”

That’s awful nice
. I couldn’t make any words come. I just stared like an idiot. But he seemed okay with that. He touched my forehead, brushing lightly with the pads of his fingertips. Then a trailing down my cheek, very soft, infinitely . . . tender.

Yeah. Like he hadn’t just thrown us both out a window.

“Come now,” he said quietly, under the noise. I heard sirens, the whooping of a fire klaxon, and the rushing suck of flame devouring oxygen through every hole it could find, like a kid sucking on a straw. “We must move quickly.”

I found myself nodding. “No kidding.” I sounded calm and businesslike. It was a surprise, but I was imitating Dad. Had he ever felt this unsteady, this lost?

You’re not lost. Christophe’s right here
.

It was more comforting than maybe it should’ve been. I grabbed Christophe’s hand, squeezed hard. His eyebrows came up, but he immediately looked away, scanning the rooftop. “Let’s go.”

And not a moment too soon, because a high chill hateful cry rose in the distance, slicing through all the other noise. It dug into my brain with sharp glass spikes, and I flinched. Nat inhaled sharply, her head upflung, and she actually sniffed.

Testing the air.

“
Nosferatu
,” she breathed.

Yeah.

Christophe pulled me across the rooftop, my fingers linked in his. His skin was warm, and the
touch
drank in the fierce calm surrounding him. There was a fire escape and a breath of roasted garlic—the restaurant was around here somewhere. Nat was right behind me, crowding close.

Thank God Graves is out of this
, I thought, and then I was too busy to think anymore. There was a fire escape going down into an alley, and as soon as we hit the alley we began to run.

Because another high, nasty whistling screech-cry echoed from far closer—the hotel’s roof, I was guessing. Christophe swore softly, and I put my head down and concentrated on keeping up.

The rest of
that run is a patchwork of confusion in my memory. Bolting across streets, into alleys, up fire escapes, rooftops blurring underfoot, Christophe more often than not hauling me along because I wasn’t moving fast enough to suit him. I wasn’t about to complain.

It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either. We stuck to pools of shadow, flitting from cover to cover, streetlights and city glow suddenly enemies instead of friends. The suckers wouldn’t use guns—not likely, Christophe said, but the Maharaj were another proposition. Once someone opened up on us with an assault rifle, and the sound of the bullets chewing into the street behind me still sometimes shows up in my dreams.

Christophe hanging and twisting to kick in a window, Nat blurring between changeform and girlshape as she ran, random reflections of light picking out iron grillwork on a balcony or the pattern of bricks on a restaurant’s facade. The moon, behind low scudding clouds and smiling like a diseased coin. The glow of Christophe’s
eyes as he scanned a rooftop, Nat crouching and panting a little while she rested for ten seconds before we were off again, her hair ruffling in the breeze. A car’s headlights throwing our shadows against a graffiti-tangled concrete wall.

“Got any more grenades?” Nat yelled merrily, and Christophe swore in reply, with breathtaking inventiveness. I levered myself up over the roof’s edge like I was muscling out of a swimming pool. My hair fell in my face and the bloodhunger burned all through me. The fangs dug into my lower lip; I had to be careful or I’d bite out a chunk of myself and they’d have a blood trail.

I was so glad, for once, that
svetocha
only have teensy top fangs; boy
djamphir
’s are larger and only on the top too. Sucker fangs are top and bottom, and they are serious business. I’d seen pictures of what those teeth could do. The jaw distends like a snake fixing to take down a huge egg, and sometimes they tear flesh to get at the liquid inside.

“Door,” Christophe said, as close to short of breath as I’d ever heard him. Nat’s boot had already thudded onto the metal door’s surface; it crumpled like paper. “Could you be any
louder
, Skyrunner?”

“I could,” she shot back cheerfully. “Would you like me to? Up. We’re almost there.”

I was glad. My ribs heaved; sweat stood out on my skin. We were just a jump ahead of the
nosferat
. There were so
many
of them, no time to take a breath, just the running and Christophe and Nat bantering back and forth like they were at a party or something. I’d heard Dad use that sort of humor before, with other human hunters.

I was too occupied running and not doing anything stupid to contribute. Plus, I couldn’t find anything witty to say.

I mean,
oh God oh God we’re all gonna die
doesn’t really fit the definition of
banter
, now does it.

The suckers kept screaming, hunting-cries echoing all over the city. I wondered what normal people were thinking of this, if they’d even hear, if they’d blame it on a neighbor’s television or something. There were sirens everywhere too, and fires. I wasn’t sure how much of it was just big-city warfare that happens on any normal night, and how much was suckers torching places where maybe
djamphir
or wulfen were fleeing—or trying to buy us some time to escape.

I didn’t know how many of the Order were in the city. Things sounded bad, and the terse questions Christophe threw at Nat when we weren’t scrambling were thought-provoking and terrifying all at once.

Inside, there were more stairs. I actually groaned before I could help myself, and Nat laughed. “Good for your ass!” she barked, and took them two at a time. Christophe’s hand closed around my arm. I didn’t need it—the
aspect
was still reliably doing its job. I’d been weaker and slower for so long, though, that I was kind of afraid of going all out. I couldn’t pace myself.

“Just a little further.” He’d gained his breath back, even though I could see the sweat drying in his hair. The soot and grime striping him looked like it was placed for maximum effect. “Extraction point’s on the roof. We’ll be safe in ten.”

I found enough breath for a single word. “Okay.” Then I concentrated on not being a hindrance. Our footsteps were in such close tandem they sounded like a single pair.

“Clear of the zone we’ll get a plane; we’ll land in Houston. There’s a Schola there—hot food and a good bed. Protection for you. They’ll have the
loup-garou
there, under restraint.” Christophe pushed me in front of him. “Keep going.”

I did. Nat sometimes leaned forward, her palms slapping the stairs as she flowed through changeform and back, stretching and
leaping so gracefully it was enough to make the heart hurt. She was down to her last clip of ammo; I knew because she’d merrily informed Christophe of the fact three and a half minutes ago.

Up, and up, and up, breath tearing in my lungs and the
aspect
blurring everything around me. When Nat gathered herself in the middle of the last flight, I barely slowed. She extended in a fluid leap; another metal door crumpled and she rode it down. Leapt free, twisting in midair to land on her boots and skid to a perfectly-controlled stop.

“Ta-
da!
” she cried, and the helicopter crouching on the rooftop, in absolute defiance of any codes or regulations, whined as its motor started. It looked vaguely military, dull black and
huge
, and there, in the opening on the side, was a familiar face.

Hiro crouched, his lean caramel-colored face set as it usually was. He half-rose, fluid
djamphir
grace evident in every line of him, his black hair writhing in spikes as the
aspect
poured over him like a river. He was on the Council, and he was scary—but he was also the most patient and approachable out of any of them except maybe Bruce. His winged eyebrows rose slightly, and if he was surprised to see us it didn’t show.

His hand shot out, bracing him as he half-stepped down and stretched his other hand toward me.

We were so close.

The glare was sudden and immediate, klieg lights switching on. Nat whirled, snarling, the white light tearing through my dark-adapted eyes. I flung up a hand, and there was a whining roar.

Hiro leapt, a small black shadow. The helicopter made a grinding noise, and the missile hit it squarely.

“
Get down
!” Christophe shoved me,
hard
. I fell, losing skin on my palms as I tried to catch myself, skidding across the rough pebbled
surface of the rooftop. Then the world turned white and rolled over, lifting up away from me. Every other massive noise that night paled in comparison. A giant warm hand scooped me up and flung me, air suddenly hard as concrete, and I skidded right off the edge of the roof. Somehow my body twisted, saving me without thought, claws dug into the side of the building with a terrific jolt almost breaking my wrists, my shoulders grating with pain. I hung, and it was a good thing, because flames belched over the lip of the roof and my hands let out another agonizing shriek of pain.

The
touch
swelled, a pipe organ of agony as
nosferat
shrieks cut through the din like hot knives through soft butter. The
aspect
was scorching, flowing over me, and my toes scrabbled against the side of the building, seeking purchase. Nothing, they just slipped, my arms tensed. My wrists and shoulders shrieked as I tried to haul myself up, but even with superstrength the angle was wrong. I smelled copper—thin rivulets of heat slid down my arms, soaking into my T-shirt.

Blood.
My
blood. The hunger woke up, fueling a burst of unhealthy strength. I let out a
huuungh
of effort, lost but still embarrassing under all the other racket. Managed a couple of inches, but my arms were shaking. My claws were ripping, little bit by bit, out of my fingertips.