Christophe grabbed me. He was ashen, his cheeks sunken. But his eyes blazed, and the
aspect
on him was like a drenching perfume. I could
feel
it, waves of invisible power lapping at my skin.
Nobody else felt even remotely like him.
My chin jerked forward, quick as a striking snake, and my teeth champed together again, a bare inch from his throat. This close I smelled the salt of sweat on him, and his body half-under mine was maddeningly far away. I was cold and hot all at once, fierce sensations fighting for control of me.
“
Dru!
” he barked, and I froze.
I knew that voice. It was like Dad’s
shut up and hand me that ammo
tone. It meant I needed to stop and pay attention, and I did. My eyelids fluttered, turning everything into shutter clicks.
“How many?” Bruce demanded from across the room. Funny, but he sounded scared. “Reynard?
How many?
”
The shudders had me like an animal shaking something in its teeth. But the bloodhunger retreated, and nausea rose with a fast hard cramp.
“Three.” Christophe’s reply was a breath of sound. “You’re lucky she doesn’t need more.”
“Goddamn you.” Bruce moved. A whisper of cloth, and Christophe tensed. I made a weird whining sound. It felt like I’d been pulled apart and bolted back together with the wrong parts, every bit of me aching.
A bolt of heat hit my stomach and spread out, a haze of warm contentment. It soothed the aches and soaked in, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d just been bleeding all over the place I thought, maybe, that I could stand up.
But I let my eyes shut. It was a relief to just lie there in Christophe’s arms and know he was handling it.
A little voice inside me tried to tell me I should be worried about something, but I shut it off. I had all I could worry about already. There was no more room on my worry plate.
“He already has. Go away.” Christophe’s voice was a dry husk. He cleared his throat. “All of you. Give her some privacy. If the aura-dark hits her—”
“It won’t. She’s
svetocha.
” It was one of the other
djamphir
, and he sounded awestruck. “Look, she’s fine. Blood pressure normal, pulse a little elevated but fine—she’s going to make it. Look at her shoulder.”
I didn’t want to look at my shoulder. I curled more tightly against Christophe and thought of my torn T-shirt. Heat stained my cheeks, a different heat than the goodness swirling down my skin. “Christophe,” I murmured and felt vaguely ashamed.
“All’s well,
skowroneczko moja
.” A light touch—his lips against my tangled hair. “Everything is well in hand.”
That was what I wanted to hear. I kept my eyes tightly shut.
“You take unacceptable risks.” Bruce had to force the words out between clenched teeth. “Do you hear me, Reynard?”
“Yap at someone else, ibn Allas. I’ve done what I set out to do.” Was Christophe actually sneering? It was hard to tell with my face buried in his chest. He took deep heaving breaths. “I’m here, and if Kouroi will stop trying to kill me I’ll be the best ally you have. As long as you keep her safe.”
“Anna will be caught. She’ll pay for what she’s done.”
“What are you going to do? She’s
svetocha
, and her Guard is fanatically loyal.” Christophe moved. He surged up from the floor, faltered, and righted himself. “You helped with that. Every one of you on the Council turned a blind eye or actively encouraged it. She’s a monster. God willing, the
nosferatu
will find and kill her if she doesn’t make devil’s bargains with them first.”
“She’s spoiled and manipulative, but not a—”
“She opened fire on a mass of Kouroi and another
svetocha
, Bruce!” The machines let out sparking, staticky, unhappy sounds. “She betrayed one of our own—
more
than one—to Sergej! When will you see?”
“This will not bring Elizabeth back!”
Silence. And with the silence, a gathering, rising growl. I shrank further against Christophe until I realized the sound was coming from him. My mother’s locket was warm and quiescent against my chest.
Footsteps, and the door closing. The sense of presence leached out of the room, and Christophe made a short violent movement, carrying me with him, gaining his feet and making a harsh sound of effort. My nose bumped his collarbone, and one of the machines gave a strangled squeal, stopped its beeping. The one keeping track of my heartbeat kept going, though. My pulse raced, high and fast and hard. It felt like I was on jet fuel, or maybe too much caffeine.
Christophe wrapped his arms around me and put his face in my hair. We stood like that, my shaky legs gradually gaining strength. I swallowed several times, the bloodhunger prickling at that spot on the back of my palate. He still smelled like apples and cinnamon and heat. Each time I inhaled, the scent would stroke across that sensitive spot, and a shudder would go down me. The machine keeping track of my pulse would send out another cascade of beeps.
“What happened?” I finally whispered.
“You should have stayed with Leontus,” he whispered back. “The seats would have given you cover.”
I didn’t know why I was surprised. “You
knew
she’d do something like this?”
“No. I thought it was likely. She’s deconstructing.”
Is that what you call it?
I tried, gently at first, to push myself away from him. He didn’t let go. We struggled like that for a little while, me halfhearted, Christophe finally sounding amused.
“You can’t stand up on your own. Stop pushing me.” But he set me down on the operating table. It moved a little, like it didn’t want to support me, but he held me there until I could balance myself. When I braced my unwilling legs against the floor it even felt kind of stable.
I clutched the torn T-shirt together over my chest and blinked. All of me was rubbery and aching despite the heat in my core, the feeling of well-being spreading out in waves.
I didn’t want to think about what was in my stomach, providing those waves.
“Here.” Christophe made a sudden movement. It took me a second before I realized he was pulling his sweater off over his head. “It’s dirty, but . . .”
And then he offered it to me.
I wasn’t sure where all the blood I used to blush came from, especially now. But I flushed a deep, deep red and started stammering something.
He pushed the sweater into my hands and turned away, looking at the wall across the room as if it held the secrets of life.
It wasn’t so much the sweater or the way half of me was hanging out of my now-only-fit-for-the-rag-pile shirt. It wasn’t so much the pale matte of his skin, striped with drying blood.
It was the three angry pucker-shaped holes in his back, looking curiously bloodless as they closed, slowly but visibly healing. Bullet holes, healing before my eyes.
And the scars.
He looked like he’d been rolled in broken glass. The scar tissue crawled up and down his back, pale shiny ropes against the otherwise perfection of his skin, reaching nasty-looking fingers up around his ribs. They moved as he breathed, and I sat there and stared for a bit while my heart thudded and blood soughed in my veins and I found out I was still alive.
“Dru,” he said finally, “do you have it on yet?”
“Oh. I, um. Just a sec.” It took me two tries to get the rags of my T-shirt off, and my arms shook when I pulled the sweater over my head. It even smelled like him, and there were three holes in the back. But the front was pretty much okay, even if the V-neck was a bit deep on me. He looked deceptively skinny, but I saw the muscle moving as he shifted his weight a little bit, then hardening like a marble statue when he went still in that way older
djamphir
do.
Those were bullet holes. Bullets he’d stopped while he was crouched over me. But the other scars . . . Jesus.
“What are those from?” I whispered.
For just a split second, his shoulders hunched as if he was embarrassed. “We can scar, you know.” Flat, quiet. Informing me, nothing more. “Before we hit the drift. And after, if the wound is severe enough. Life-threatening.”
I didn’t want to point out that he’d avoided the question. Again. My teeth tingled, especially my upper canines.
They’re fangs, Dru. Call them what they are.
“What happened?” It seemed like I couldn’t make my voice work like usual. The pretty-much-healed fang marks on my wrist twinged once, and I rubbed them against my blood-sodden jeans. The whole room was drenched with the coppery smell, taunting the bloodhunger.
He stiffened. “I was disobedient. Are you done?”
I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Um. Thanks. Christophe—”
He rounded on me, eyes blazing, crossed the distance between us with two quick steps. I was suddenly nose-to-nose with him, so close the heat coming off him in waves caressed my cheeks like sunlight on already burned skin.
“I
told
you to stay there. There was cover there, and Leontus would have made sure you were safe.” The words were raw, like they were sandpaper-scraping his throat to get out. “I could have
lost
you.”
My mouth was dry. I said the first thing that came into my head, and it was a harsh husky whisper just like his. “Chris . . . I’m not
her
.”
I meant,
I’m not my mother.
He looked startled just for a second, but his eyes never wavered. They were direct and unblinking, and how could I ever have thought they were cold? Because now they were blowtorch-blue. Eyes like that could burn wherever they touched you, and my heart crawled up and lodged in my throat.
“No,” he agreed. “You’re not. She never caused me this agony.”
What could I say to that? The way he was looking at me was making my head feel funny. Was making all of me feel funny, and not just in that
oh God I just almost died way
.
Christophe leaned in. His mouth was mere centimeters from mine. “She never made me think I would die of heart failure. She never,
never
made me fear for her this way.”
I swallowed audibly. My throat clicked. If I leaned back to get away from him, I might just topple over on the operating table.
But I didn’t want to lean away. “Christophe . . .” His name died on my lips. All of me was suddenly exquisitely sensitive, all my hairs standing up, and I was halfway to forgetting that I was covered in sweat and dried blood.
His lips touched mine. I almost flinched, the shock was so intense. Then lightning hit me.
I mean, I’ve gotten carried away a couple times, usually with moderately cute city boys when I knew I wasn’t going to be around for more than a week or two. This was nothing like sloppy open-mouth puppy kisses in the library stacks, or a stolen half-hour of necking in the secluded part every playground has for games. His tongue slid in, and it wasn’t like he was trying to stuff my mouth with it. It was like he was inviting me.
It wasn’t like Graves, either, the comfort and the safety. This was . . .
Tingles ran through all of me, not just my teeth. I forgot the usual things that go through your head when this happens—things like
Oh God did I brush my teeth enough
or
I wish he wouldn’t breathe like that
or
Someone might be coming
. I forgot about being scared I might do it wrong.
I forgot about everything except the heat and light running through me. One of his fangs brushed mine, a jolt scorched through us both, and I sank into him for a long long moment before breaking away to get in a breath and discovering that, yeah, there was an outside world and it was hard and cold and bright and smelled like blood and metal and pain.
Christophe kissed my cheek. He murmured something I didn’t quite hear. Every inch of me ran with multicolored electricity.
Wow
.
“Never,” he said softly in my ear. His breath touched my skin, and I had the sudden desire to squirm just because I
had
to move, and my clothes were hot and confining. “Do you understand?”
“Um,” was my totally profound response.
He reached up, his hands cupping my face, and leaned into me, bumping my knees aside. Stared down at me, and his expression wasn’t the hungry-wolf look he’d worn while staring at my mother. It was something else.
Just what I didn’t know. It was just . . . something else. Something more vulnerable. Like he was afraid at any second I’d flinch back or tell him not to, or something.
I couldn’t stand to see him look that way. So I closed my eyes and tipped my chin up a little, and he kissed me again. It wasn’t the same this time.
No, this time it was better. And again I forgot about everything else, including Graves. For a few seconds I was just me again.
And it was
great
.
Then the real world came crashing back in. I stiffened, and he drew back. He still held my face gently, his skin very warm against mine, and I found out I was touching his ribs, running my palms up and down like I was playing with Gran’s washboard.
I pulled my hands away. “Um,” I said again. “Christophe.”
“Dru.” Slightly amused. I kept forgetting how well his face worked together.
“I think . . .” I couldn’t even say what I was thinking. Except
Wow
. And more
wow,
and a side helping of
um
.
Yeah. Embarrassing. And Graves . . .
Graves had left me behind. There it was. He’d left me, and Christophe had come back. Was that how it was?
“You’re right,” he said, as if I’d said something profound. “There are still things to do. And we should clean up. Both of us.”
I nodded. He leaned in again, and I was a little disappointed when he only kissed my cheek, a chaste pressure of lips.
“Do you trust me now?” he asked, and I could only nod. And wonder why he asked me
that
, of all things.