dream where you’re running, but you can’t move fast enough? Where the entire world is wet concrete, glorping around you, while you’re searching for something and knowing you won’t ever find it? Heart pounding, stitch grabbing your ribs with clawed fingers, the breath tearing in and out of your lungs while everything around you is suddenly, eerily slow?
But I had the touch, and I burst out the front door of the Schola just as the black SUVs were rousing themselves. Two of them, just starting to pull away.
“No!” I yelled, skidding to a stop. “NO!”
The brake lights popped on. They sat there and idled for a few seconds. My hands were fists at my sides, and my cheeks were wet. My hair was probably an unholy mess, and my feet throbbed. Of course—I was only in socks. Goddammit.
“No.” I stared at the cars. The touch settled, feathers brushing up and down my entire body. “No. Please, no.”
The second SUV’s engine cut off. The back passenger door opened, and he slid out slowly.
Like an old man.
Black jeans, black T-shirt, boots, no long black coat now. Instead it was a hip-length leather jacket, probably borrowed from Shanks.
My sock feet crunched in gravel. I was off the steps in a heart-beat, and he met me halfway. I grabbed him like he was a lifering, and I realized the yelling was me.
“No, goddammit, you can’t leave, not just like that, you just can’t! You can’t just leave me!”
“Calm down,” he began, but I ran right over the top of him.
“Calm down? I don’t think so! What the hell are you thinking? What the fucking hell is wrong with you? You can’t just leave me here and ride off into the sunset, for fuck’s sake! What do you think you’re—”
“Dru.” He tried to untangle himself, but I held on grimly. “Come on. Take a breath. Let me explain.”
“I wish you would!” I yelled. I grabbed the front of his jacket and actually shook him. His hair swung, I shook him so hard. “I wish you goddamn well would explain, for once!”
“Dru.” Sharp, now. “Shut up.”
I did. I held onto his jacket and planted my feet. Stared at the notch of the top of his sternum, where the collarbones met it. Coppery skin on his throat, vulnerable because he’d just shaved. There were two little red marks on his throat, but I didn’t want to look at them. They were right over his pulse, and I’d put them there. So I just stared at that notch instead.
Silence. It was a beautiful summer morning, and my heart was on fire and cracking at the same time.
“Is it because I suck blood?” I said, finally. In a very small voice. “Because that’s disgusting. I know.”
His fingers curled around my shoulders. It was his turn to shake me, twice, my head bobbling a little bit. “No. Dru, dammit, look at me. Look.”
I looked up.
His eyes were still green. But there were huge dark circles under them, and his jaw was set. He looked like he was in pain, and his cheeks were hollowed out.
He looked awful.
But the corner of his mouth tilted up slightly, and there was a shadow of the Graves I knew. He let go of me long enough to dig in his coat pocket, and when he pulled out a battered pack of Pall Malls I wasn’t surprised.
I let go of him. He lit up, inhaled deeply, and offered me the smoke. I shook my head, my nose wrinkling, and the small smile got a bit larger.
Just a bit.
When I was just about to grab him and start screaming with frustration again, he lowered the cigarette. Twin dragons of smoke curled out of his nostrils. “It’s not you.” His shoulders hunched. “Cliché. Sorry. I wanted it to be easier on you. Because I . . . there’s some things you can’t fix, Dru. You’re great at fixing things. If anyone could do it, you could. But you can’t do this one.” A long pause, and he swallowed, hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing. “You can’t fix me. I’m broke.”
“You’re not making any sense.” The rock in my throat made it hard to talk.
“Sergej.” His face twisted for a moment. “He was inside my head, Dru. It wasn’t the vampires that burned your grandmother’s house. It was me.”
I just stared at him, my mouth ajar.
“Christophe caught me. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t fight him off. Not all the way.”
“But I . . .” I fixed that!