Reckoning Page 0,10
was apprehensive, yeah. But he hadn’t been fixing to hurt me. No, he’d been focused on the door.
In case something was coming through it.
Something like that makes you think. It really does. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to think about it.
Graves eyed me sidelong for a long while. Finally, the last of the anger died down. I saw it creep back into him, sinking under his caramel skin. You couldn’t see the marks of torture on him anymore, and the anger was something new.
Not anger. Rage. He didn’t have that before. I was the one who had that before.
I guess being tortured by vampires will do that to you. Guilt bit me hard, deep inside my chest, again. “Graves?” It was hard to talk, because my fangs were out and my hand was clapped so tight over my mouth I could barely move my lips.
I didn’t want him to see. To remember that he’d seen me with my face in Anna’s throat, drinking her blood.
He crouched, suddenly, and his hands moved. I almost flinched before I realized he was smoothing out the sleeping bag. “Nothing. Not doing nothing.”
A high dull flag of red stood up on each sculpted cheek under a screen of dark stubble. The stubble was pretty new; he’d been a smooth-cheeked boy when I’d met him. He still needed a few meals to replace muscle mass; wulfen metabolism burns pretty hot to fuel the change. It would burn in him to give him their strength and speed, even though he wouldn’t get hairy.
Not much, anyway. No more than any regular boy.
The tingling through my fangs receded. I finally peeled my hand away as he started rolling the bag up. My hair was probably sticking up all over, but I felt loads better. Not even stiff, but as if I’d taken a deep, refreshing nap. And there was the quilt—he must’ve brought it downstairs and covered me up. I searched for something to say. “You didn’t, um, want to sleep upstairs?”
Way to go, Dru. State the obvious.
“No.” The rage flushed through him again, retreated. “I didn’t.”
The touch was stronger now, and if it wasn’t for Gran’s training I probably would’ve been seriously disturbed by how strongly his anger rang in my skull. “Graves—”
Now why did I sound breathless?
“Look.” He finished rolling up the sleeping bag, snapped the elastic loops over it, and glared up at me. “I know I’m just a loup-garou, all right? I know. I’m just the deadweight holding you down. You dragged me along and I’m glad about that. I’m even glad I got bit by that thing up there. I handled everything they threw at me, and told him to go fuck himself more than once. Sergej.” He all but spat the name, and his face twisted up, bitterly. “So quit treating me like a little kid, Dru. I ain’t been a little kid for years. I’m not as Billy Badass as some of those stuck-up djamphir, but I’m learning and I’ll be hell on wheels when I’m done. You won’t ever have to worry again.”
Where did that come from? My jaw had dropped. I stared at him. What the hell?
“You don’t think I can hack it.” He leapt to his feet, carrying the sleeping bag with him. He’d slept in his coat, too, and it flapped as he moved. I’d stitched it up, clumsily, and now I was wishing I’d done a better job. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I already have. Whatever it takes to make you see, I’m gonna do it. You get me?”
Silence stretched between us. “Um.” I searched for something to say. I settled for the absolute truth. “What? No. I don’t get you. What the hell are you on about?”
I got one long, very green look, his eyebrows—eyebrow, actually, since nobody had held him down and plucked him up yet—drawn together and his mouth a bitter scowl. I was struck once again by how cute he’d gotten. Those cheekbones, and those eyes.
How had I ever thought, even back in the Dakotas, that he was dull? Or gawky?
I had the weird sinking feeling I was missing something important. What a thing to wake up to. And the dream was still filling my skull like cobwebs, something important glimmering in its depths.
He filled his lungs, his chest swelling as if he was growling again. When he opened his mouth, though, the only thing that came out was a yell. “I love you!” he shouted, his