“Augie—” It was barely a whisper. My mouth wouldn’t work right. Oh my God, it’s him. It’s really him.
“I barely escaped Sergej himself.” The name made everyone wince and sent a glass spike of pain through my head. I finally shook away from Leon’s hand and made it to my feet. “It’s all here. The original transcript and a recording. Treachery so unspeakably vile it would steal the heart of any who heard it. Copies of the directives, signed by each member of the Council, altered after the signing.” August gasped in a breath, and Christophe stepped aside, deftly focusing every eye on him. I saw it, even though I didn’t believe it. The relief was . . . Jesus.
Indescribable. That was the only word that applied.
August never once used the aspect that month I stayed in his Brooklyn apartment. He went out almost every night, hunting, and came back battered sometimes. I’d cooked him dinners. I’d helped him bandage himself, and I hadn’t thought much about how fast he healed. In the Real World, anything goes. I didn’t have any gift for healing; that was Gran’s thing.
Still, seeing him, even as beat up and bloody as he was, was like Christmas.
“August!” I yelled and slipped my arms out of my hoodie as Leon grabbed at its back. I was over the wooden railing in a second, and I hurled myself at him. “August!”
“Eh, Dru.” Half-Bronx, half-Brooklyn, all Augie. “Never thought I’d see you again.”
I shoved past Christophe and threw my arms around August. Hugged, hard. He smelled horrible, but I caught the familiar tang of cigarette smoke. August could make a thin yellow flame spring up on his index finger.
He was real, and he was here, and he was a piece of the life I thought was gone for good. I forgot everything else, even the tangle that was Graves missing and Anna lurking somewhere, in the flood of scalding relief.
Hot tears slicked my cheeks. I just kept saying his name over and over. He winced, and I eased up on the hug a little.
“Dru—” Christophe said, trying to pull me away.
But I clung to Augie. I wouldn’t let go. He wrapped one arm around me. “Easy there, księżniczko. Break my ribs, eh?”
“Augie!” The sickness went away. I hugged him even harder, forgetting again that he was hurt. And the smell of dried blood on him didn’t make the aspect rise. I was too goddamn happy. “Jesus! Augie!”
“Pick one,” he said. “Now be quiet, Dru. Got work to do.”
I shut up. But I still kept hugging him.
“I got here in time.” He lifted the large red file with his free hand. It was spattered with blood, both black and crusty drying red. “It’s in here. Christophe?”
“I did not doubt you, Augustine.” Christophe subtracted it from his fingers. Opened the accordion file and pulled out, of all things, a mini tape recorder. The papers inside made a whispering sound as he closed the file with its rubber band, then tossed it. A passionless, accurate throw, flying in a perfect arc to land at Bruce’s feet.
“I require the Council to view—and hear—the evidence,” Christophe said and held the recorder up.
He pushed the “play” button. It was an old-fashioned model, and the hiss of magnetic tape filled the expectant, watery silence. I might’ve worried about nobody being able to hear it in this cavernous space, but the djamphir were all utterly quiet.
I’d read the transcript when Dylan dug it up. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the shock. The first voice was cold and male, with a funny lisping tone because the fangs made it hard to enunciate. It was a sucker’s voice, chill and final as the grave, rasping with hate.
“Do you have it?”
The other voice . . . God. “The information’s well-guarded.”
The sucker sounded like he was losing patience. “That’s none of our concern. Where is she? We are prepared to pay for the information.”
“Keep your money,” Anna said. “I just want the bitch dead.”
The sucker laughed, a horrible silk-soft, rotting sound. “I can arrange that.”
Kir let out a high-pitched moan. Nobody paid any attention.
“How can we be sure?” the sucker continued. “He will need some guarantee.”
Anna made a short, dismissive sound. You could just see her waving her hand, waving it away like it was no big deal. “Oh, that’s easy. I’ll take care of that. A prearranged signal, from the very location. You take care of her and I . . . ”
Static filled the tape then. My mouth was desert-dry.
“Ephialtes,” the sucker hissed. I was cold all over, wet with sweat under my T-shirt. Aching as I held onto Augie. He had his arm around me. But Christophe had turned, and he was staring directly at me.
Do you see? his cold eyes asked me. Do you see now, Dru?
And I did. But I didn’t understand. How could you sell someone to the vampires? And if Anna was with the Order, she would know what the suckers could do. How they savaged djamphir, not stopping until the body was reduced to rags of flesh and splinters of bone.
And I heard her again, from the vault in my memory where the really bad stuff hid. The stuff I didn’t ever want to think of again, the things the touch showed me that I didn’t want to see.
Don’t let the nosferatu bite. A prearranged signal from the very location. It meant our house. My mother’s house. The house where I lay asleep upstairs until she woke me up. The yellow house with the oak tree in front, its branches twisted and blackened by whatever Sergej had done to my mother’s body.
How could Anna betray another svetocha, even one she hated? How could anyone do that?
“Keep your commentary to yourself and pass along the message,” Anna said calmly. And the sound of a phone being laid down in a cradle clicked through, right before Christophe hit the stop button. He still stared right at me, his mouth a thin line, and I got the feeling he was trying to tell me something.
I didn’t know what. I couldn’t even begin to guess. But it was like he’d thrown me a line, and the thin cord that stretched between us poured a flood of heat into me. It ran up into my cheeks, and I closed my eyes and leaned against Augie. He swayed a little.
“You should look elsewhere for your traitor, Kouroi. Not at me.” Christophe’s heel scraped the floor as he turned away.
Murmurs raced through the crowd. I wished I could open up the ground and crawl into it. I felt sick all over. It was Anna. Anna had done it, betrayed my mother to the vampires.
Don’t let the nosferatu bite.
Why?
But I knew why. The horrible shape under the blanket in my head twitched.
Where is he . . . if you’re hiding him . . .
“Dru.” Christophe was very close now. “You have something to tell us. Something you remember.”
I shook my head. No. God, no. I didn’t want to remember anything about that night. I didn’t want to remember what happened after I went to bed. I didn’t want to remember Anna’s visit or my mother hiding me before she went out to fight.
The only thing I wanted to remember was Dad’s face when he opened up the hidey-hole in the closet and collected me. He’d told me I was safe and taken me out to the car, and we’d driven for days to Gran’s house.