CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A couple of weeks
went by, and no Anna. I stayed as close to Graves and the wulfen as I could, and I noticed some of them—tall boys with muscled shoulders and a habit of dropping their heads and stepping aside when I glanced at them—showing up in the halls and sticking around. Benjamin said nothing, but I caught him and Leon exchanging glances. The blonds seemed oblivious, but their shoulder holsters were now in plain sight instead of quasi-hidden under jackets.
I kept hoping Graves would decide to come back up on the bed. But no. He went back to sleeping on the floor in his sleeping bag, and he moved the bag a little farther away each night until he ended up almost at the door.
So I just went to class, kept my eyes and ears open, did my homework, and endured Aspect Mastery as well as I could.
It was the only school I’d ever been to where I actually looked forward to gym class. At the other Schola the directive had been to stop me sparring with anyone. All part of the plan to keep me dumb and vulnerable, and poor Dylan hadn’t known what to do. I hadn’t been there long enough for him to figure out how to go about breaking the rules over me either.
Here, though, things were different.
I hit the mats hard and bounced up, warmth flooding my body as my teeth tingled. “
Very
good!” Arcus yelled, teeth white against the darkness of his face. “Turn, turn turn!”
I did, instinctively throwing an elbow up to catch his strike. My arm went briefly numb; his fist headed for my face. I ducked aside instead of back, grabbed his wrist with clumsy fingers, and
pulled
. My teeth stopped tingling and ached, a bolt of warm sensitivity crackling along my jaw, and the fangs would have dimpled my lower lip if my mouth hadn’t been open while I gasped for air. Sweat flew as I helped him fly past me, my knee bolting up. The strike had no weight behind it because I had to fall back and get my balance.
He whirled on the balls of his feet, the
change
rippling under his ebony skin. Wiry dark hair sprang loose, crawling up from his flesh like a fast-forward of plants growing. He was built like a football player, and pretty graceful too. His wide nostrils flared, taking in quick sharp breaths. “No! Press your advantage while you can!”
“Don’t have the footing!” I snarled back. “You’d knock me over!”
“Then you shouldn’t
lose
your footing, girl!” He spread his arms, the crackling of bone receding as he dropped back into human form, hair retreating along his cheeks.
I skipped back half-nervously, hands up and ready. Watched him.
He feinted; I didn’t fall for it. Moved closer, looked like he wanted to close with a jab or two, but I faded to the side. As long as I had plenty of room I wasn’t doing too badly. He hadn’t pronounced me completely hopeless, at least, which I’ve heard he sometimes does.
They had me sparring with wulfen teachers here because the happy stuff in a
svetocha
’s blood—the same stuff that will make me eventually toxic to suckers after I hit the girl version of the drift and bloom—tends to drive
djamphir
a little crazy once it hits oxygen. Wulfen can smell it, sure—but it doesn’t drive them nutzoid.
Not any more than just-plain-human blood does. Which is to say, just a little. But I wasn’t bleeding yet. And Arcus was careful.
All the same, I wondered why Dylan hadn’t just had a wulfen teacher start training me. But he’d been a by-the-book sort and terminally indecisive as well. I couldn’t hold it against him, though. Seeing as how he’d done the right thing and given me the unedited transcript.
And seeing as how he was probably . . . dead.
I ignored that thought, too. While I was fighting I didn’t have to think about any of that. It was pure action and reaction, and sometimes I even forgot what was going on and thought it was Dad pushing me to work harder, be faster, think better.
And at the end of gym class, I could usually steal ten minutes or so for
t’ai chi
in the locker room’s echoing damp-fogged space. The familiar movements soothed me, and after the first half-minute I didn’t care so much that I was basically practicing in a bathroom.
Do it where you gotta
was one of Dad’s mottos.
Or was it a mantra? That’s one of those questions that’ll drive you crazy.
Arcus blurred in, with the spooky streak-on-glass speed wulfen use, and I went down hard. But my sneaker came up, socked a good one into his midriff, and he tumbled over me with a short growl of surprise. I rolled, gaining my feet in a graceless lunge, and skipped back some more. A curl had worked loose of my braid and fell in my face, blonde veining along its length as the warm-oil feeling of the
aspect
flooded me in fits and starts.
It was doing that more and more lately. I was closer than ever to “blooming” and having the real fun begin. When I hit my drift, I’d suddenly be faster, stronger, harder to kill. I’d become toxic to suckers. I might even get a bit taller or have my weight distribution change, which I figure was a fancy way of saying
might get more breasticles maybe.
My face might change, too. It would happen over a week or so, and afterward the real fun would start.
Yeah. Couldn’t wait.
Not
.
Arcus should have been coming after me like a freight train. Instead he’d frozen, looking up over my shoulder. I didn’t snap a glance to see, but the silence filling the long windowless room wasn’t normal. Usually, this gym is full of first-year students learning katas or doing light sparring. The mats covering the floor are in good repair, and there are even bleachers pushed up against the walls, ready to be pulled out for basketball games.
I hear wulfen are really big into hoops. Hadn’t seen a game yet, though.
Djamphir
are supposed to play polo or lacrosse. I mean, what the hell? I’d rather watch werwulf basketball any day.
Arcus straightened. He cast me an unreadable glance, and I was vaguely gratified to see he was sweating a little too. I must’ve given him a run for his money.
The head gym teacher, a
djamphir
with short feathery platinum hair, appeared to my left. “Milady. A moment?”
I still didn’t look away from Arcus.
Never take your eyes off’n ’em,
Dad always said, and it was good advice. I swallowed hard against the stone in my throat, pushed the thought of Dad away, and kept my stance loose and easy.
“Milady?” The teacher sounded nervous. I backed up another two steps. Arcus did, too, and I could swear the wulfen looked pleased. He dropped fully into human form, the extra bulk sliding away and a brief flash of orange lighting in the center of his pupils.
“What’s up?” I finally swung my gaze around and discovered the teacher was pale.
“I’m to clear the room. You’re to wait here.” He paused, his blue eyes darting nervously. “
Milady
.” His eyebrows rose significantly.
I wished they wouldn’t call me that, but then I cottoned on. My stomach twisted up into a high hard knot. “Oh. I . . . okay, I get it.” And I couldn’t help myself—I looked around for Benjamin. Didn’t see him. I
did
see Shanks across the room, idly leaning against the wall near the double door heading out to the east hall. The emo-boy swoop across his forehead, fringing his dark eyes, was shaken down even more emphatically than usual. “I just wait here?”
The teacher—I remembered his name, Frederick—lifted his eyebrows, and a little of his color came back. “Yes, ma’am.” He turned on his heel, and the news had traveled by jungle telegraph. Boys looked curiously or gratefully at me and left, heading for the locker room. When I glanced back, Shanks was gone.
Crap. Here it comes.
I should have backed up to the wall. But I just stood there. Whatever happened now I’d ride out; then I’d get Graves somehow, and we’d go.
I couldn’t say I was sorry.
The gym emptied out. Dust motes danced in the air under falls of fluorescent light.
I felt curiously naked. It was the first time I’d been really truly alone in forever, and the gym was a huge empty space. The boys’ locker rooms were huge as well, with at least twenty communal tubs full of the weird waxy bubbling stuff that soothed hurts and made everything heal up like crazy.
But the girls’ locker rooms were tiny in comparison, though big enough to do a complete Yang long form in. None of the three or four gyms I’d gone to sparring practice in had more than a three-tub girls’ locker room.
Because
svetocha
were so rare. I shifted my weight nervously and tried to figure out what she would want from me now.
Maybe I’d get a chance to tell her Christophe wasn’t my thing.
Yeah. That’d be real fun all the way around. And the more I thought about it the more I knew Graves was right. She wouldn’t believe that.
Sweat itched all over me, and I pulled my T-shirt down. There was a scrape of rug burn on my forearm, past my elbow. Or would you call it
mat burn
, since I’d gotten it scrambling to get up while Arcus—
“Hello, Dru.”
I half-turned, and there Anna stood in a pair of clinging pink sweats and a red tank top. Slim and pretty, her curling red-tinted hair pulled artlessly back and her fangs dimpling her candy-glossed lower lip as the
aspect
slid over her. The curls lengthened and loosened. She looked like an ad for Victoria’s Secret workout gear.
I slouched shapelessly. Sloppy gray T-shirt, green knit shorts I’d borrowed from somewhere, and my socks were probably dirty, too. They even felt gray against my toes, and my sneakers were new but already showing signs of hard use. I don’t believe in getting clothes that just look pretty or that’ll fall apart—they have to stand up to a lot of abuse.
Dad was real big on dressing for efficiency.
Anna surveyed me from head to foot, and my mother’s locket cooled against my chest. I’d tucked it under the T-shirt, but I never took it off. I could replace the chain if it broke during sparring, but I didn’t want to lose the locket by setting it down somewhere.
It was all I had left. And I suddenly didn’t want her greedy little blue eyes on it.
We were in here with just each other. I couldn’t see her bodyguards, and I wished like hell someone had stayed behind to watch this.
It didn’t look like it would end well. This sort of thing never does. I know what it feels like right before it starts.
Like thunderstorms threatening, prickling against the skin. Only this one felt like a hurricane just looking for a place to come to shore.
“What the hell do
you
want?” I didn’t have to work to sound unwelcoming. The space at the back of my palate that warned me of danger dilated, roughening, and this time the taste of rotting wax oranges was spoiled by a copper tang. The pressure of fangs against my lower lip turned probingly insistent. They were sharp, but I didn’t want to open my mouth and show them off.
She stepped forward, and I dropped into stance without thinking about it. Weight balanced, arms loose and ready, and every nerve awake.
“You’re bristling,” she said finally. A wide, sunny smile stretched her candy-gloss lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “You look like your mother.”
From anyone else, it would have been a compliment. She said it like a curse.
The dream turned over uneasily inside my head. This time I didn’t fight remembering it. “That just burns you up, doesn’t it?” My mouth bolted, the way it was beginning to do. I was sucking at the keeping-my-head-down thing. But having people try to kill you over and over again kind of robs you of a lot of tact. Not that I ever had much to begin with. I hadn’t needed it with Gran, and Dad didn’t care what I said as long as I didn’t cuss around him. “Why did you hate her so much?”
Anna actually rocked back, her weight on her heels as if I’d pushed her. Her eyes narrowed, her face contorting and smoothing in under a second. The grimace was so quick I almost doubted I’d seen it.
But that flash of hate in the very back of her pupils stayed longer. This time I was sure. And I’d just guessed, yeah. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that in Anna’s personal hate sweepstakes, Christophe and my mother were about neck and neck. Score one for me guessing someone else’s dirty little feelings. I didn’t even need the
touch
to do it.
So why did I feel guilty?
The
svetocha
took a gliding step to the side and I tracked the movement, the way Dad had taught me to.
When it’s just one person you keep your feet down and your eyes on ’em, honey. Don’t let ’em move you around much, but don’t back down neither.
God, if I could just stop hearing his voice in my head, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“I didn’t hate her.” The sound of the lie was a sweet, tinkling bell. She had such a pretty voice. Candy over venom. “I just thought she should leave certain things alone. Certain things she wasn’t cut out for.”
“What kind of things?” My pulse picked up, running just under the surface of my skin. I’ve been in enough schoolyard fights to know the difference between them and deadly serious business. This one could go either way, and it all depended on the next few minutes.
Anna kept just out of range. Another few gliding steps and the doors were behind me. At least I had room to back up.
This is crazy. She’s another
svetocha;
she’s supposed to be on your side
.
But I didn’t believe it. Not the way she was looking at me. Over Christophe? Because she hated my mother? What did that have to do with
me
? I wasn’t either of them; why couldn’t she just leave me alone? I’d always thought antimatter girls grew out of it. That it was just a phase or something.
Guess I was wrong.
“All sorts of things. Things you’d do well to leave alone, too.”
Jesus. I’ve had enough of this.
“Oooooh.” I mimicked a shiver. “So scary. Why don’t you go play your mind games somewhere else? I’m busy with important stuff.”
Like surviving. And trying to figure out who here wants me dead.