And my mother . . .
Graves was swearing steadily, in a high breathy voice. He opened the driver’s door and shoved me in, hopped up after me. It was still warm, and I collapsed against the passenger window, glass cold against my fevered forehead. I stuffed Mom’s locket in my pocket, shoving it deep like a secret. My fingers were numb, and my palm burned.
“Jesus Christ,” Graves said. “Are you okay?”
No. No way was I okay. I licked my lips with a dry tongue. “Christophe?” I whispered.
“Scared the hell out of me,” he whispered back. “Showed up with those wulfen things; guess they’re on his side after all. Told me to drive right through the wall, that you’d die if I didn’t. Got up on the fucking hood and flew. Far out.” His arm snaked over my shoulder. “Far fucking out. Dru?”
I peeled myself away from the nice cold glass and collapsed against him, burying my nose in the soft warm spot between his shoulder and his throat. He hugged me, resting his chin on my wet hair, and this time it was okay that we were both crying. We clung together like shipwreck survivors, and snow covered the cracked windshield with soft, deadly kisses.
CHAPTER 28
I had my face in Graves’s narrow chest, and I was okay with that. He smelled good, and he was warm. The tears had trickled away, and his chin still rested on the top of my head. The windows were screened with breath-fog and with snow clinging to every surface it could find.
I could hear Graves’s heart, too, ticking away. Just like a clock, but without the eerie meanness of the sucker’s pulse. It was a clean sound, and it meant I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been this close to anyone in a while.
Except him.
The door opened and a blast of chilly air scoured the inside of the truck cab. Someone climbed into the driver’s side. It was a bit of a crowd, but the truck was big and the bench seat was long.
There was a long silence, a jingling sound as someone touched the keys in the ignition. Graves said nothing, so I figured it was okay.
And really, I didn’t care. The whole world could have gone up in flames at that point and I wouldn’t have given a rat’s patootie.
A breath of apples touched the cold stillness. “Please tell me she’s all right,” Christophe finally said.
“She’s okay.” Graves didn’t move. His chin settled more firmly atop my head and his arms tightened a fraction, that was all. “A bit beat up, but still breathing. She seems okay.”
“Thank God.” The djamphir let out a long, shaky breath. There was a scraping sound, and the engine turned over. The truck settled into running again, and the heater came on. Cool air poured through the vents. “Thank God again.”
“What happens now?” Graves wanted to know. I did too, but I didn’t feel like picking my head up and looking at either of them.
A slight sound of wet material as Christophe shrugged. “I take you out in the field and you get extracted. She’ll go to the Schola. I’m going to vanish.”
“Because there’s a traitor,” Graves supplied, and I was glad he was talking so I didn’t have to.
“Yes.” Christophe laughed, another bitter little sound. “This was my safe zone. There was no way Sergej could have known about this place, or that she would be coming here, unless someone in the Order told him. And someone in the Order sent the directive to set the wulfen on me back at her house. They didn’t realize I wasn’t him.” He sighed. “If I had been him, you two would have been dead by the time they got there. Juan—the yellow-eyed wulf you met—is fit to be tied. He was just following orders, but the directive’s disappeared. Someone’s covering their tracks.” He shifted a little on the seat. I wondered if he was still bleeding. “We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“So you’re sending us somewhere you know there’s a traitor.” Graves’s chin dipped even further, resting harder on the top of my head.
I thought about all this, felt nothing but a faint weary surprise.
“I’ve got friends at the Schola; they’ll watch over her just as I would. She’ll be perfectly safe. And while she’s there, she can help me find whoever’s feeding information to Sergej. She’s been drafted.”
Graves tensed. “What if she doesn’t want to?”
“Then you won’t last a week out there on your own. If Ash doesn’t find you, someone else will. The secret’s out. If Sergej knows, other suckers know there’s another svetocha. They’ll hunt her down and rip her heart out.” The windshield wipers flicked on. “Dru? Do you hear me? I’m sending you somewhere safe, and I’ll be in touch.”
“I think she hears you.” Graves sighed. “What about her truck? And all her stuff?”
“I’ll make sure they get to the Schola too. The important thing is to get her out of here before the sun goes down and Sergej can rise renewed. He’s not dead, just driven into a dark hole and very angry.”
“How are we going to—”
“Shut up.” He didn’t say it harshly or unkindly, but Graves did shut up. “Dru? You’re listening.”
Oh, God, leave me alone. But I raised my head, looked at the dash. There really was no option. Hair fell in my face, the curls slicked down with damp, behaving for once. “Yeah.” It sounded like I had something caught in my throat. The word was just a husk of itself. “I heard.”
“You were lucky. You ever put yourself in danger like that again and I’ll make you regret it. Clear?”
He sounded just like Dad. The familiarity was a ragged spike in my chest. “Clear,” I managed around it. My entire body ached, even my hair. I was wet and cold and the memory of the sucker’s dead eyes and oddly wrong, melodious voice burrowed into my brain. It wouldn’t let go.
That thing killed my father. Turned him into a zombie. And Mom . . . “My mother.” The same flat, husky tone. Shock. Maybe I was in shock. I’d heard a lot about shock from Dad.
Silence crackled, but then Christophe took pity on me. Maybe. Or maybe he figured I had a right to know, and that I’d listen to him now.
When he spoke, his voice was husky too, whether with pain or with the cold I couldn’t guess. “She was svetocha. Decided to give it all up, stop hunting, married a nice jarhead from the sticks and had a kid. But the nosferatu don’t forget, and they don’t stop playing the game because we pick up our marbles and go home. She got rusty and she got caught away from sanctuary, drawing a nosferat away from her home and her baby.” He put the truck in gear. The windshield was clearing rapidly. “I’m . . . sorry.”
“What else do you know?” I pulled away from Graves, his arm falling back down to his side. He slumped, looking acutely uncomfortable, a raccoon-mask of bruising beginning to puff up around his eyes. His nose was definitely broken.
“Go to the Schola and find out. They’ll train you, show you how to do things you’ve only dreamed of. God knows you’re so close to fully blooming, and once you do . . .” Christophe stared out the windshield, his profile as clean and severe as ever. His eyes were bright enough to glow even through the gray daylight. Drying blood coated his face, a trickle of fresh red sliding from a cut along his hairline. He was absolutely soaked in the stuff, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. “And when you hear from me, I’ll set you a challenge worthy of your talents. Like finding out who almost got you killed here.”
The truck was still running like a dream. Good old American steel. Dad’s billfold sat in my jacket pocket, a heavy, accusing lump.
Christophe measured off a space on the wheel between two fingertips, looked intently at it. “So what about it, Dru? Be a good girl and go back to school?”
Why was he even asking? Like I had anywhere else to go. But there was another question. “What about Graves?”