Kin (19 page)

H
E
WAS
SO
FAST
.

She leapt from the top of the stairs, colliding with him halfway, the cracking of the rosewood banister lost in the noise they were both making. Rolling, the side of her head blooming with wet warm pain, his claws burning as they striped fire up her arm, and both of them fetched up in a tumbled heap at the bottom.

He shook off the daze first, his sleek head snaking back and forth as he rolled to his feet. The sound he was making scraped over Ruby's skin, sandpaper fury and wirebrush rage, and Cami's scream was lost under the scratching, roaring rumble.

Ruby fish-jumped, her entire body exploding up from the floor. She sidled a few steps, the wrecked living room opening up behind her, and didn't have any time to reassure her friends or say anything, because Conrad was already streaking forward.

Besides, the shift was burning all the way through Ruby, a glow no longer silver but red as sunset. Bones shifted, her skin twitching madly, kingirls didn't get furry like boys did. But the claws were just as sharp, the teeth were just as white, the eyes just as keen—and the hide just as tough.

She backhanded the Conrad-thing, a jolt smashing all the way through her. He was
heavy
. If he'd been regular kin she could have tossed him all the way back into the wall.

He wasn't. She didn't have time to think about why he was so much stronger, because he only slid back a few feet.

There was a popping zing, a crackle, and a bolt of blue-white arced from behind Ruby, splashing against Conrad's hide. Smoke and steam rose, a horrible scent of roasting, and under the flayed jeans—he was shifted so far even his clothes were bursting—and torn T-shirt Ruby could see boiling blisters erupt.

Looked like Ellie had enough presence of mind to throw a charm or two. Which was good, it was flat-out
great
, but if her aim was off she could fry Ruby just as well.

Doesn't matter
. She coiled herself, sinking down, palms slapping the hardwood floor and her claws slicing like an iron knife through pale feybutter.

He snarled, and she snarled back, both deep grinding noises.

His said,
I will kill.

Hers replied,
I am rootkin, and you will not have my friends.

Could he understand that? Or was his mind, just like hers, a wasteland now, the low umber and charcoal of a forest fire's aftermath, glowing coals and sparks still plenty capable of burning but nothing even approaching a coherent thought?

She knew only that she had to protect.

He scrabbled forward slightly, and she responded, sidling again. Couldn't afford to circle, they were behind her, if she could drive him out the door and—

He sprang, claws grinding as he launched himself, and Ruby uncoiled a half-second later. Her claws went in, piercing hide and grating against ribs, and she pulled him down from the height of his leap, crashing into the couch. More smoking, roasting smell, he clawed at her, bloodscent rising. Stripes of fire along the outside of her leg, her cheek, she kept twisting so he couldn't hook into her guts and splash them all over the floor.

Get out get out
—

If they ran, she could keep him occupied long enough for them to escape. It was worth it.

A terrific smashing. The wreck of a chair, brought down across the Conrad-thing's back. A flash of Cami, blue eyes glowing and her canines lengthened into sweet, wicked little fangs, her face a mask of effort as she grabbed another sharp chunk of the coffee table, lifting it high.

Ellie, her platinum hair rising on a breeze from nowhere and her hands alive with silver-spitting charmlight, tossed a complex, flashing charmsphere straight into Conrad's face. It burst, and blood burst with it, spattering Ruby as she squirmed desperately, her claws slicing deep in his hide.

He bellowed, a massive wall of sound, and Ruby was the only one who could hear the agony in that cry, the boy behind the monster.

She rose from the remains of the couch, shaking him off like water, and kicked him. He curled around the force of the kick, sliding back along the floor, and fetched up against the fireplace's bottom with a sickening crack.

Run!
She wanted to yell it, but her mouth was full of sharp teeth, her jaw the wrong shape for speaking. She snapped a glance at the two girls, Cami holding the heavy chunk of oak table aloft like an ink-haired barbarian princess in a rumpled St. Juno's uniform, beautiful and wild. Ellie's eyes were wide and silvery, and Potential sparks flashed in an odd pattern over her head, her platinum hair ruffling on her own personal breeze as her lips moved slightly, her long fingers spinning out threads of Potential.

They were so beautiful it made her heart hurt.

“Ruby look out—”
Cami's scream, choked off as something hit Ruby,
hard
, the wall smashing behind her. Red, pulsing unconsciousness swallowed her whole.

All the pinches, the squeezes, the little insults masquerading as affection. Taking her car. Putting the backpack in Thorne's room. Holding Oncle Efraim's shoulder as if he was true kin, as if he was a help and support.

And the
bodies
. Girls he didn't even
know
, and how had he gotten them into the woods? Just torn up and discarded.

Because of me
.

What happened next was a confused jumble. Snarling rage, the shift a sweet wine-red pain all through her, the world turning over and her bones full of flame. Shattering glass, the crackle of live Potential as Ellie screamed something, everything around Ruby smearing like ink on wet paper.

She bulleted through the gaping hole that used to be the front window, into thin fine soaking drizzle. The curtains, shredded by whatever had happened, flirted unsteadily on a cold breeze full of blood, anger, and the exhalation of an autumn night on the cusp of fullmoon.

A long trail of bloodspatter ended at a horrible, uneven shape.

T
HE
C
ONRAD
-
THING
SNARLED
,
NOWHERE
NEAR
B
ASE
FORM
o
r
shift, now. It was a black hulking thing, its paws having lost opposable thumbs and its mad golden eyes still terribly empty. It favored its left front paw, blood dripping from its thick pelt, its hide steaming and scorched.

It was what the Tantes and Oncles warned of, why they helped with the shift when you were young. Why you didn't do
taboo
things, even if you were Wild. The Moon's gifts had teeth and claws, and if you did not use them well, She would take Her blessings back.

With interest.

The shift fell away from Ruby, the hurts and claw-marks healing as it retreated. Her T-shirt flapped, sticky with cooling blood. Her own, and . . . and his.

The smoke had swallowed his smell. Red and ash, burning blood, a reek that meant
taboo
. He'd gone too far into the shift. He'd become what the Wolfhunters thought kin always were—mindless appetite, destruction, revenge.

Did I do that?
She stared at the thing.
Mithrus Christ.

“Ruby!” Cami, scrambling through the hole behind her. “Look out! He's—”

“It's okay,” Ruby heard herself say, dully. She'd been far gone in the shift herself, and she could have killed him.

She could even do it now. She could let the rage take her, all the hurt and pain and frustration and fear, and she'd be unstoppable. For all Conrad's bigger size and greater weight, he just didn't
get
that she was the dangerous one.

Because she wouldn't just kill him. She'd tear his body apart like he'd torn up those girls, and Hunter.

And then she would be what he was.

For a bare second she trembled on the edge of it, her gaze clear and steady, locked with the twin gold-ringed holes that were the beast's eyes.

She could be exactly like that.

“Careful. Broken glass.” Ellie, practical as ever, a thin-thread whisper over the buzz and crackle of Potential. “I think he's getting ready to tango again.”

“It's fine,” Ruby murmured. The dominance in her swelled. It held the beast pinned, like a butterfly on a specimen board. Cami had cried during that Science class at Havenvale, when Mr. Rambling had explained the killing jar and the pins through gem-bright wings, and Ruby had given Binksy Malone a filthy look when the bitch sniggered.

She'd shut Binksy
right
up, thank Mithrus.

The memory helped, a little. There were others crowding inside her—Cami, pale and barely breathing on a hospital bed until a silver medallion was torn away. Cami sobbing in her arms, while she and Ellie held her and tried their best to soothe.

Ellie on the staircase of a slumping, sliding house, turning away from the spider-shadowed thing above her, the thing that had almost robbed Ruby of her friend. And finally, Ellie hanging between her and Cami like wet washing, sobbing
Let me go
, and Ruby's own reply, ringing inside her like only the truth could.

Not now, not ever.

They'd come here to find her. They hadn't hesitated at all, just leapt in on her behalf, just like she'd always jumped in on theirs.

They'd seen her shift, too.

The Conrad-thing strained, lunging against Ruby's will. But there were other sounds in the dark now, too. Whispers and movement, and other gleams of eyes.

Woodsdowne kin melted out of the shadows, leaping the low stone wall around Gran's garden, flowing around the corners of the house, clambering over the roof and dropping down to land with soft authority. There was Oncle Efraim and Tante June and Tante Sasha, and Brent and Carissa and Harper and Joel, Oncle Zech and Oncle Tod and Oncle Barry and others. There was Hunter's mother, Tante Alissa, her lip lifted in a snarl as she scented the foulness that was the creature.

And there was Thorne, wet clear through, his dark gaze fierce and hot, his hair slicked down. He'd lost weight, but it just made the essential fire in him shine so much brighter.

He was alive.

The relief that hit her made her stagger, and her hold on the thing slipped a fraction. It scrabbled, but it was too late. The Oncles descended on him, snarling, but it was the Tantes who ripped his limbs free with heaving cracks, giving mercy as only the Moon's daughters could. They
gave
life, like the Moon—so that mercy was theirs to give, and they granted it.

The cousins clustered around, a solid wall blocking the awful sight, their voices lifted in savage song.

Later, she heard that when they ripped the clan cuff away, the rash turned out to be from a long, thin spiraling wound on his wrist. As if he'd wrapped a thin jangling silver thing around and around it, and pulled the clan cuff tight enough to make the collar cut his skin.

Ruby sagged. Thorne was still coming, stepping through the hollyhocks, crushing the dying marigolds, paying no attention to the rosebushes, just walking right through them, straight for her.

But it was Ellie who grabbed Ruby and spun her around. She shook her, once, twice,
hard
. Then Ruby was enveloped in a hug full of ice and wildness, Potential and Ellie's peculiar blue-tinged smell, sort of like the scented markers they gave you in fourth grade.

Cami flung her arms around them both, and it was her preternatural strength that kept them upright when Ruby's legs turned to noodles. She crumpled, and they held her in the rain, Thorne hovering anxiously an arm's-length away, smelling of worry and cinders.

The dam inside her broke again, and Ruby began to sob.

T
HIS
BLUE
-
WALLED
ROOM
IN
THE
F
LETCHE
R
CHARM
CLAN
mansion was familiar, if only because little marks of Ellie's personality were scattered all through it, from the shelf of heavy-duty tomes on charming theory to the cerulean scarves draped over the headboard of the wide, soft bed.

“It was Thorne.” Cami hovered near the small, obviously antique, white-painted vanity, watching Ruby's face, anxiously. Her skin glowed in the warm golden light, and there was no trace of the sharp canines she'd shown earlier.

Ellie rubbed at Ruby's hair with the towel, gentle and brisk. “It was kind of a shock to get a call from him, and he was so furious nothing made much sense. Livvie did some locate-charming—”

“Only because you were going to do it yourself if I didn't.” Livvie Fletcher, Avery's mother, folded her arms and gave Ellie a stern look. When she did that, you could see that she was older, and you could also see an echo of Avery in her high cheekbones and soft dark hair with its stubborn curl over her forehead. “Though I couldn't get a lock on Ruby until this evening. Which distresses me.”

“I was hiding,” Ruby said blankly.
In Juno's boiler room.
Nobody could have found her behind those walls.

She tried not to look in the mirror. She'd never shifted in front of them before, and uneasy relief warred with fresh worry. Ellie had shoved her into the scrubbed-clean white bathroom, and a hot shower would have been heavenly, except Ruby cried, softly, all through it. Not sobbing, just . . . leaking. Again.

“Hiding so well none of our clan could find you?” Mrs. Fletcher's tone was a question, but she didn't push. “Ellie took the charm-pendulum when it started twitching.”

“I stole it,” Ellie supplied, almost cheerfully. “I knew something bad was going to happen, and I left a note. But I suspect I'm grounded for it.”

“We'll talk about that later. Avery's furious you didn't take him.”

“He was asleep. He was out all night looking for Rube.” Ellie didn't look like the prospect of being grounded filled her with dread. She started combing Ruby's wet hair with gentle, efficient strokes. “Cami picked me up, and we just followed the pendulum. It's a good thing, too.”

“I'm sor—” Ruby began immediately, but Ellie tugged at her hair. Very gently.

“Stop that. Why didn't you say something? We knew something wasn't right, but you wouldn't
talk
.” Ellie's eyebrows had drawn together, and she looked almost fierce.

“F-for a change.” Cami shrugged when Ellie rolled her eyes. “Do you know how s-scary that was?”

Ruby hunched her shoulders. “I was trying . . . Gran wanted me to be . . . different.”

“Are you kidding? She's so proud of you.” Ellie finished combing, stepped back to examine her work, and nodded once. “Okay, let's get you some clothes. You can't go anywhere in a bathrobe.” She bounded away, across the room, toward a cherrywood wardrobe that looked big enough to hide a small country in.

“It probably wouldn't matter,” Ruby muttered.

Livvie Fletcher's gaze was kind, and worried as Gran's sometimes was. “Your uncle—Efraim, I think? He's downstairs waiting to take you to the hospital. That's where Thorne is, I gather. He's a nice boy, very polite.”

Since when?
She hadn't had a chance to talk to him—they had whisked her away, Cami piloting the Spyder through slackening rain while Ellie huddled in the back with Ruby, hugging so hard Ruby could barely breathe.

I need to go home
, she'd moaned, empty of everything but shock and the idea that she had to start cleaning up.

No you don't
, Ellie had replied, fiercely.
You need help, and you're going to get it. Don't argue.

“Ruby?” Cami, shyly. “C-can you . . . what
was
that?”

That was the question she'd been dreading. “Conrad,” she whispered. Even the name raised gooseflesh on her arms, under the soft, comfortable indigo bathrobe that smelled of Ellie and comfort. “He . . . he was sick.
Taboo
. He . . .”

“Don't.” Mrs Fletcher was suddenly right next to her. She bent down, and the hug was awkward even though Ruby could tell she meant to help. “Now isn't the time. I'm going to go tell your uncle you're getting ready. The police will be at the hospital. You're going to be all right, Ruby.”

Ruby nodded, and the silence that fell when Livvie Fletcher left was full of awkward edges.

“Thank Mithrus.” Ellie grabbed a handful of clothes. “Cami, you want something to wear? That's all wet.”

“I'm f-fine.” The Vultusino girl wouldn't look away from Ruby's face, which felt strange. Twitchy, as if she was shifting. “I've n-never seen you l-like that, Ruby.”

Ruby shut her eyes. Of course. What were they going to—

“Me neither.” Ellie padded toward her. “It was
beautiful
. I mean, scary as fuck, but beautiful.”

“Gorgeous,” Cami said firmly, and when Ruby opened her eyes she met Cami's blue gaze squarely. “I loved the way your eyes glowed. Don't you ever d-do that again, R-Ruby. We were scared. W k-kept trying to figure out how to help you—”

“She was trying to protect us.” Ellie, matter of fact, held up a thick black jumper. “I'd loan you panties, but that is just . . . well, I mean, unless you absolutely need—”

Ruby's mouth twitched. A slow, delighted grin spread across Cami's face.

It was no use. She couldn't hold back the laughter. It spilled out, a little screamy and breathless, but with her friends laughing too, you couldn't hear it, even with a kin's ears.

All you could hear was love.