Strange Angels sa-1

by Lili St. Crow

  It smelled horrible, rotten eggs and burning foulness. I ran like a rabbit, fleet with terror, my boots slapping down with little squeaking sounds. Something that sounded like Dad was screaming in my ear, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t listen.

  Instinct saved me. I threw myself aside as a bullet train of compressed air screamed past, holding the smearing crimson and orange of the burning thing, stretched out in a full leap. I fell heavily, not bothering to try and stop myself, barking my head on something. Warmth dripped down the side of my face. I scrambled to my feet and tripped again, knocking over chairs—overflow from the food court, a nice little nook where people could sit and eat their fast food while looking at the fountain—

  The fountain! The click inside my head was so loud I almost didn’t hear the burning thing howl again, a long, cheated rasp of ignited rage. I made it to my feet with hysterical speed and bolted, my back burning with pain and something torn loose in my side.

  Behind me. It was behind me again, and it was fast. I couldn’t hope to outrun it. Twenty feet between me and the fountain, and I wasn’t going to make it.

  MOVE! Dad’s voice bellowed in my head, as if we were in Louisiana again with the cockroach things scuttling in the basement and the ammo clips jittering in my shaking hands.

  I moved. I don’t know how. One moment I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get there in time, the next I was there.

  Water gushed up in a sheet as I threw myself over the lip of the fountain in a wide receiver’s dive, getting a sudden mouthful of chlorine and stale chill, my head barked something else—the concrete holding up some ridiculous Swiss-cheese sheet metal the water cascaded down while the fountain was turned on. More pain jolted down my neck. I was really racking up the score here. If this was a video game I’d be yelling at the stupid screen right now. Or throwing my controller at it.

  The burning thing howled. Spattered with filthy mall-fountain water, it landed heavily as I scrabbled, a gout of foul-smelling steam belching up. Heat rolled through the water clawing at my arms and legs. I grabbed the sheet metal and pulled with both hands, my right clumsy because of the gun clicking against the rattling flimsy edifice. I pushed myself aside and fell again as the creature smashed spastically into the metal with a hollow bong that would have struck me as goddamn hilarious if the water hadn’t been boiling. I landed hard again, breath driven out of me in a howling scream, and heard a yammering electronic sound. Had that been going on the whole time?

  It slid down the metal and landed with a splashing jolt.

  Steam drifted in great eddies from the once-placid water. The fountain bubbled and buzzed. I scrabbled for the stone ledge and just made it, hopping up and perching like a frog with trembling legs.

  “Holy shit,” someone was saying, someone with a high trembling voice very much like mine. I felt my lips shape the words, numbly. My hair dripped in my face and something warm and sticky was in my eyes. “Holy shit. Jesus Christ.”

  I coughed, water blowing out of my nose. Red drops pattered in the bubbling froth of the fountain. I was bleeding, but it didn’t seem important. I was soaked to the skin and my fingers ached around the butt of the gun. My clothes were too heavy, full of blood and sulfur-stinking water now. I was shaking like an epileptic.

  “Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “Jesus Christ.”

  A slight movement caught my eye and the gun leveled itself, my finger cramping on the trigger. My gasping shallow breaths were suddenly audible even over the racket. Smoke and steam drifted in the air. Dots of coolness spattered me from overhead. The sprinklers were going. It was raining inside the mall. The burning thing lay in the water, twitching hard enough to send up little splashes and waves of froth.

  Graves stared at me. He was on the other side of the fountain, wreathed in steam, his mouth ajar and his eyes wide.

  Where the hell did he come from? The gun didn’t care. My arm was straight, my aim was good, and I could hardly miss from this range. I gasped, my ribs heaving as I struggled to breathe, to get enough air into my starved lungs. I made harsh racking sounds, coughing at the reek in the steamy air. It was a sauna in here, and the sprinklers weren’t helping.

  Graves rose, his hands palm-out, the classic don’t shoot stance. His mouth was ajar and his eyes were dilated. His gaze kept flicking between me and the thing thrashing in the fountain as it drowned in something inimical to it, still superheating the liquid. It was dying; I knew it was dying. I choked on the smell, shaking, but the gun didn’t waver.

  “Dru—” He shouted it, over the wailing of the fire alarm. My entire arm cramped with the need to do something.

  I pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 10

  The second shape—the thing that was leaping for Graves—was longer, leaner, and its fur was shorter, gray instead of glassy and smoking. A white streak bolted up the side of its long, oddly-shaped head. It stretched out in full leap, its snarling muzzle starred with ivory teeth sharper than knives, strings of saliva pouring out of its mouth. My first shot went wide, and the thing bowled past Graves, knocking him aside as easily as I might shoulder a grade-schooler out of the way. Goth Boy went flying, his coat flapping once with a sound like a sheet snapped out to lay flat while making the bed, and the gun spoke again.

  I tracked the thing just like Dad had taught me, training taking over. Blood bloomed on its pelt. It looked like a steroid-pumped fur rug, muscle rippling under its fur, and its eyes were alight with unholy yellow.

  The werwulf screamed a high yip of pain and tumbled off to the side, landing on the fountain’s lip with a sickening crack. I would like to say I hopped gracefully down off my perch, but the truth is that I fell and scrambled around the other side of the fountain, looking for Graves. Cordite pulled sharp against all the other smells filling the mall. I retched once, a heave that came all the way up from my toes and kept crawling.

  Graves shook his head, dazed. He’d levered himself up on his elbows, blinking in befuddlement. He saw me, and his eyes widened. They were a thin ring of green around a dilated pupil, the whites rolling like a terrified horse’s. Still, the green rim was a line of emerald fire.

  “Get up!” I screamed, and scrambled to my feet, grabbing his arm in my left hand and hauling with every ounce of strength I had left over. He came up a little more gracefully than I might have under the circumstances, and his cheeks were flour-pale, spots standing out high along the arches of his cheekbones. The silver earring swung, smacking my face as he ran into me, blind with fear. “Move, goddammit!”

  It wasn’t my voice. It was Dad’s harsh bark transplanted to my throat.

  I had no idea whether I’d wounded the werwulf enough to keep it down or not, and the walloping electronic noise plus the steam was making it hard to think. I had to think if both of us were going to get out of this alive.

  This one’s all about you, Dru. No Dad around to bail me out.

  Our feet slipped in spilled water. I dripped blood and fell heavily to my knees in the tide. That was why it was my fault—if I hadn’t tripped, almost biting a chunk out of my tongue when I landed, the werwulf would have hit me instead of Graves. They collided with rib-snapping force, and he screamed the high girlish scream of a squirrel in a trap.

  I yelled something unrepeatable and shapeless anyway, brought the gun around, and kicked. My boot connected solidly with the werwulf’s sleek canine head, and, like a gift, the thing crouching over Graves’s body turned around and snarled at me, the eyes glowing like diseased sunlight, its gray streak shocking against the wiry darkness.

  My voice cracked as I screamed, and I squeezed the trigger again. The sound was deafening. Gore splattered, the nine-millimeter’s barrel smoking with cooked splashback. The werwulf spilled away, its muzzle gaping.

  I’d shot it in the jaw.

  It fell over the lip of the fountain and began to throw up stinking gouts of reddish, steaming water, the smell of cooked fur adding to the thunderous stench.

  Graves moaned soundless
ly under the noise of the alarm. I realized it was a fire alarm, and cursed in a long gasp. The boy’s shoulder was shredded. The wulf had bitten him.

  Shit. Oh shit.

  I struggled with myself. The best thing to do was leave him. He was bitten, and that was bad news. I needed to get the hell out of here quick. The cops and the fire brigade would be here any second despite the snow, and how was I going to explain all this? Even my well-honed talent for creative lying wasn’t up to the task.

  Graves opened his eyes. He stared at me, his mouth working under the braying alarm. Water plashed. I snapped a glance at the wulf, which was rolling around holding its jaw with two lean, furry hands, producing an amazing bubbling howl with each heaving of its ribs. I looked back at the boy and for a second, I couldn’t remember who the hell he was or what I was doing here. All I could think of was the hideous, horrible smell as Dad’s body rotted away right in front of me.

  I was on my own. This one’s all about you, Dru. You’re making the call now.

  “Get up.” I didn’t recognize my voice this time, either. “Get the fuck up, kid. We’ve got to go.”

  Amazingly, he set his jaw and struggled to his feet, holding his shoulder. Blood spilled between his fingers, black in the dimness.

  First thing to do is get us away from that wulf. It’ll heal quick and it’ll be pissed. We can’t go back to the room; it’ll come after us there and we’ll be trapped like rats in a hole. Where can I take him? Think!

  There was only one place. I had to hope the cops weren’t there—and that nothing else was there, either.

  Which meant I had to get Graves moving, treat him for shock, and navigate both of us through a blizzard.

  Oh, jeez. Blood dripped down the side of my face, warm and wet. My back spasmed, and I’d pulled something in my arm, too. I was a song of aches and pains, and I wanted to lie right down and let them do whatever they wanted to me as long as I didn’t have to move or think anymore.

  Great.

  CHAPTER 11

  Once I’d scrubbed the blood off both of us and gotten a pressure bandage onto Graves—the strips of his shredded shirt, actually, ripped up in the food-court restroom—the long dark coat buttoned up didn’t look half bad. Neither did he, except for being so pale and shock-eyed.

  I got us out of the restroom and up onto the second level of the mall into another one just in time. We weren’t leaving a trail of water and blood now, though we still both stank to high heaven. I used plenty of paper towels to scrub the worst of the gunk off, shivering as adrenaline wore off and the fact that I’d just been dumped in a fountain by a big burning thing and shot a werwulf in the face occurred to me over and over again.

  Like this. I’d look in the mirror at the long nasty gash along my hairline and think, I’m going to have a scar when that heals. Then my mind would shiver sideways, and I would hear the zombie again, tapping its bony fingers on the back door. Or the streak-headed werwulf’s snarl. Or the burning thing’s thrashing as it drowned.

  And I would let out a hurt little quivering sound, clapping my hand over my mouth in case any of the cops were looking around the mall. I didn’t think they would—there was a clear trail of scorching from the broken windows to the fountain, and it was so messy around there it wouldn’t be immediately obvious what had happened.

  The thing that worried me more was the wulf. Had he been rabid, newly changed, or just pissed off? Wulfen don’t normally go after humans; there is too much fresh raw meat you can get easily in a supermarket. The exception is right after they shift the first time, but it would make no sense for a first-time wulf to want to get inside a building. From what I’ve heard, they usually want to run out and get some fresh air.

  The thing that worried me most of all was a big burning dog the size of a Shetland pony. Had it been after me? After Graves? Or just pissed off because it had to buy some new clothes?

  I didn’t hear any footsteps, but after a while the alarm shut off. I waited. Graves was propped against the inside of a stall, shivering so hard his teeth clicked together rapidly. He was in shock, and I didn’t know what to do for him. The bite—would he begin to change? I should have left him behind. You don’t fool around with werwulf bites. You just don’t. It was a law. When he started to get hairy and hungry, I’d have to—

  Christ no. Don’t think about that. I checked my watch again. Still ticking, even though it took a licking. Just like me.

  My legs shook, tired all the way down to the bones. My head was full of cotton wool. I hurt all over, adrenaline fading in fits and starts.

  I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls’ pee-palace. I listened with every fiber of my being, focusing out, my entire body becoming an aching pair of ears. The compact ball of my self inside my head relaxed too, sending little fingers out, searching for any disturbance.

  I heard nothing. No voices, no sounds of movement.

  Okay. How do I get us out of here?

  I could bet that the werwulf, if it was still alive, had fled. They’re strong and unholy quick, but they avoid the authorities just like suckers. A cadre of cops with firepower and vests can cause plenty of damage, and neither wulfen or suckers want to be caught in the open like that. It attracts too much attention. They live by staying at the edges of things, under the cover of night.

  Of course, the cops and other authorities didn’t want news of the weird getting out; it might cause a panic. Cops, EMTs, firemen—they cover up this sort of thing as a matter of course, consigning it to the dead-file section. Dad always argued with August about whether it was a Conspiracy or just the human need to have things fit into neat little boxes.

  So neither side, Real World or officialdom, wanted to meet each other face-to-face. Even if cops had vests and greater firepower, a wulf could wreak a lot of havoc. They’re expensive to replace, fine officers of the law. Freelance hunters like Dad have to make do with even more firepower and sneaky cunning, understanding their prey in order to think three steps ahead of it.

  Too bad I was just a kid. Dad was the brains of the operation. I just tagged along and told him where to find the biggest weirdness, or broke a hex or two. I mean, I was a great accessory, the best weirdness detector around, but he was the boss and the brains and the one with the guns. I was worse than useless on my own, and I had someone else to worry about now, too.

  But the situation is what the situation is, Dad always said. There was nothing else to do but keep going. If I stopped now I’d drown without even a bubble.

  “What’s going on?” Graves whispered. He sounded about three years old and scared of the dark. “Jesus Christ, what’s going on?”

  “It has nothing to do with Jesus,” I whispered back, checking the gun for the fiftieth time. If I’d had a spare clip for the gun I’d have racked it in, on the theory that it was better to have a full one than a half-empty one if something else happened.

  Dad, you should be proud of me. I’m thinking like you. Trying to, anyway.

  I just hoped I could think enough like him to keep us both breathing.

  Graves blinked at me. “You shot it.” His voice shook like a bad engine. “I thought you were going to shoot me.”

  I should. Dad probably would. I shut my eyes, leaned the back of my head against the tiled wall, my wet hair finally stopping its dripping. “I wasn’t aiming at you.”

  “What was that thing?” His hand clamped over his shoulder, the pressure bandage mercilessly tight. “It had teeth. It had big teeth. It smelled.”

  “It was a werwulf.” I shouldn’t tell him anything. I should put a bullet in his brain. Dad would put him down as a casualty before he changes. Once bitten, you have twelve hours, sometimes less. That’s a fact.

  And a wulf who knew about a hunter was a liability. Dad always said “liability” like it was a filthy word. To him, it probably was.

  “You know about these things?” The question ended on a squeak.

&n
bsp; I shushed him. If he made noise and the cops heard it—were they still around? I checked my watch again. Eight thirty-eight p.m., or 1638 hours if you were all military. Fifty-three minutes since I’d moved us to this bathroom. Was it enough time for the cops to clear a scene this weird?

  Outside it would be getting colder. I was bruised and exhausted. I walked cautiously past the stalls to the sinks, where I took another deep breath in, all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, and looked in the mirror.

  There was that long but freshly scabbed-up gash along my hairline, but if I left my hair down I’d just look wet and scruffy. Anyone out tonight would probably be wet as well. If I could get us downtown I could probably hail us a cab—if the cabbie was suicidal—and take it to three streets over from my house, and hope nothing was waiting for me inside.

  Yeah. And I could fly to the moon, too. If it was bad enough to shut the mall down early, there was little chance of a cab, right? But these people were serious about snow. Maybe they had everything scraped now.

  There was a sound behind me. Graves floundered around the end of the stalls. “Don’t leave me here.” At least he didn’t shout it, but he might have thought he was shouting, his voice was so hoarse and constricted.

  My throat closed up on me. Dad had told me over and over again what to do if something happened to him. I usually tuned it out—who wanted to think about that? Not me, that’s for sure. But still . . . Don’t take on any weight; you’ll drown. You remember that if anything happens to me. You take care of yourself, Dru. You be strong and do what you have to do.

  But this kid wasn’t a sucker or a werwulf yet. He was just a kid. He’d brought me food and let me see his private hideaway. I got the idea he didn’t do that a lot.

  He’d trusted me. I couldn’t just leave him.

  Could I?

  “I’m not going to leave you.” I sounded funny even to myself—breathless, as if I was running up a hill. “You’re going to have to do what I say.”