His arms clamped down like steel bands, and he growled. Terror short-circuited everything inside my head, and I still don’t know how I got free, rolling away along a slippery, gucky strip of rotting leaves.
He growled again and scrambled fluidly to his feet. I scooted backward, my filthy palms skidding in muck and dirt, and hitched in a breath to scream, as the wulf gathered himself, the white streak glowing at his temple like a neon sign, and leapt, straight over me, colliding with a shape in midair and both of them falling less than three feet from me with a jarring thud, squirts and puffs of fog evaporating. Hissing, tearing, bone-ripping sounds filled my head as I lunged away from this new madness. They rolled, the white streak bobbing, and an unutterably final crunching sound was followed by a hot black gush that splattered the trees in every direction. Sucker blood smoked where it landed, and some of it whizzed past my face, speckling my sweater and sending a stripe of thick warmth up the left leg of my jeans. I cried out, a small sound of disgust lost in the larger noise as the streak-headed wulfen threw back his head and growled, a shattering thunderous noise.
I was still trying to get away, scooting backward in wet jeans, the smoking vampire blood puffing into that same greasy mist once it had finished eating through denim. I was going so fast, in fact, that I ran smack into a tree for the first time that night. Which was pretty miraculous, you know, it being only the first time instead of the fourth or fifth.
A keg of dynamite went off inside my head, and my ribs screamed in pain. I was pretty much full of agony all over, and pretty goddamn sure I’d pulled something in my back again, too. God, if I lived to be an old lady I would probably have so many back problems, but it looked like I wouldn’t be around that long.
The streak-headed werwulf hitched himself up and jerked across the space between us. Furrows of dead wet leaves exploded up, and he dug his claws in and stopped, his snout in my face and his breath touching my wet skin. The fog retreated behind him, pulling back like singed fingers.
I let out another small sound, this one cut in half as my breath hitched, every aching muscle tensing in preparation. His breath chuffed in, chuffed out, and it smelled oddly like peppermint and copper.
His eyes were inches from mine, his longer, sleek nose almost touching the tip of my just-human one. A long, long inhale, and I leaned back into the trunk as far as I could. The gleam in his dark eyes was horribly human, and just as terribly hurt and insane. The white streak glowed at me, so bright I thought another random beam of moonlight had gotten caught in his fur.
He sniffed me again and made a low, painful sound. His mouth couldn’t shape a human word, so I had no idea what he was saying, whether he was threatening me or…
Or what? Why was he just crouching there, staring into my eyes? The tree behind me was an icy wall of rough steel, and my legs were still twitching, trying to push me right through it. The werwulf leaned forward again, making that queer, horrible noise, and I smelled hot copper.
Blood. Someone was bleeding. Was it me? Had I just not felt it when he clawed me open?
A rushing noise filled my head, and I heard the beat of muffle-feathered wings just before the werwulf dipped forward, his cold nose-tip pressing my cheek for a moment. Then he melted away.
He ran across the small clearing, hitching and favoring his front left paw-hand, and vanished into the trees just as I heard someone yelling my name.
“Dru! Dru! Goddamn you Dru where are you?” It was Graves, screaming-hoarse, and I was faintly surprised. I was even more surprised not to be dead. There was no fog now. The trees were silvered only by moonlight and festooning ice.
I sagged against the tree, vampire blood smoking all over my ruined, filthy clothes, and I did the single most inappropriate thing I could.
I began to laugh. High-pitched, whistling laughter as insane as the broken thing peering out through Ash’s eyes.
CHAPTER 10
“Let me get this straight.” Dylan’s hair was wildly mussed, his aspect shining through as he struggled to retain his composure. The way his fangs kept popping out and retreating was not happy or helpful. “Three dead nosferatu on your trail, you’re beat up and covered in their blood, and you can’t remember what happened?”
I couldn’t stop shivering. I just nodded. My hair dripped muddy water, and I smelled like I’d been dipped in death.
Graves had his arm around the blanket he’d wrapped me in, and he made a restless movement. “Come on. Let’s get you somewhere warm.” He gave Dylan a green-eyed glare and started up the hill, half holding me up.
“Wait a goddamn second.” Dylan didn’t think much of this. “The Schola was broken into. They went right for her classroom. She somehow escaped a trio of hunters, none of whom we can identify yet, all three of them eviscerated out here in the damn woods. She needs to tell us what happened so we can—”
“Have her die of hypothermia? Good plan. Jesus Christ, you guys are jackasses.” The hem of Graves’ coat flapped as he sped up. “Look at her, dammit. Her lips are blue and she’s covered in crap. Is she bleeding? Do you even care? No wonder there’s no girls around.”
I wondered what that had to do with anything, couldn’t figure it out, and hiccupped out another long string of half-hysterical, muffled laughter. I kept glancing around and flinching whenever I saw white moonlight.
Dylan’s eyes glittered in the dimness. “Shut up, dogboy. Just because you’re a prince among your kind doesn’t mean you can—”
That hot pocket of rage bubbled up inside me. This was getting ridiculous, but I welcomed the heat, because it was anything other than the dazed, panicked numbness. “Dylan,” I heard myself say, between two choked giggles and a coughing snort, since there was mud in my nose. “You call him a nasty name again and I’m going to knock your teeth out.” I found that my wet feet could still grip the ground, and, even better, my weak shivering legs could still carry me. “Graves…” The word died in a spate of deep bronchial almost-retches.