Strange Angels

by Lili St. Crow

  He tapped out a coffin nail and lit up, stuffing the pack back in his pocket. His breath was already a cloud of smoke. “Yeah, well, so is sex and drugs and everything else worth doing. So what’s our next move? You’re the expert here.”

  I’m no expert. I’m just a kid. “I don’t . . . I mean . . . my dad did all the planning.” I couldn’t believe I’d just said something so mealy-mouthed.

  “So? What would he do?” Graves’s coat flapped. He exhaled a stream of tobacco smoke. His nose wrinkled. “Gah. This doesn’t even taste good now.”

  “Then why do you do it?” He would get everything together and go back to those warehouses, looking for the “scene” so I could tell him what happened. He would take me to canvass the occult stores and the bars where they know about the Real World and find out who this Christophe is and where he sleeps—if he could cajole the information out of someone. He’d barricade the house or move somewhere else.

  But there was no way I could find a lease on my own without some serious work, and a hotel would be expensive and full of nosy adults unless it was a flophouse, which would be expensive and full of nasty people looking to take a bite out of a teenage girl.

  I could make sure all the windows and doors at home were barred to evil—Gran had taught me that. It wouldn’t stop a zombie—but I had someone with me now, right?

  And I had guns. And grenades.

  Great, Dru. So you could blow both yourself and your new friend up? Dad told you never to mess with the grenades!

  But Dad wasn’t here. I was on my own. Except, well, for Graves.

  Who shrugged, taking another drag and screwing his face up hard. “Habit. I’m an addict, okay? Can we get back on topic? What would your dad do?” He didn’t look like he was going anywhere. He looked, in fact, determined to stay put.

  It was probably a bad thing. It might get him killed. But I couldn’t help feeling relieved.

  I couldn’t help being glad he was around.

  “He’d make a daylight run.” I was shivering so hard the words almost got chopped into bits. “Where I found the truck. He’d go back and start digging where that streak-headed wulf scuttled away to. Track it if he could.”

  “Streak-headed?” He waved it away as soon as I opened my mouth, his cigarette trailing a line of smoke. “No, don’t tell me. I’ve got a better question. Was that you? Did you do that to ol’ Bletch?”

  I swallowed the lie I meant to tell. “I guess so. It’s called a hex. I’ve never thrown one before.” And that’s something to worry about too. Where the hell did that come from? I’ve never been able to do that.

  But I’d never been so angry before, had I? Or so hopeless. And I was doing new things all the time now. The touch was getting stronger.

  “Then how do you know it was you?” He looked down at his feet, obediently carrying him over the sidewalk. Stopped and motioned me around an icy patch; there was only room for one person to walk. “Looked to me like she had a heart attack once someone called her a bully to her face.”

  “Did I call her a bully? I don’t remember that bit.” I shuffled, picking my way around the ice. The glare of sunlight off snow pierced straight through my head, and I was suddenly very aware of my empty stomach.

  There was a sound of moving cloth. “It was great, Dru. You said what everyone’s been thinking for years.”

  “I’m glad you approve.” Still, I hexed her. Dammit. Gran would have a cow. Dad would take one look at my face when I got home and give me the Lecture About Using Gifts Responsibly. My bag was too heavy. I fussed with the strap, trying to get it to not cut into my shoulder.

  Graves’s half-yipping laugh came again. “I was about to stand up and applaud, but people started screaming.”

  When his coat came down on my shoulders I gave a half-startled, nervous sidling step or two, almost dumping myself on the bank of road-snow. Again. “Are you crazy? It’s fifty below out here!”

  He shrugged, his thin shoulders moving under a ragged red wool sweater that had seen better days. He had brought a lot of his clothes over, and it was a relief to see him in something new. “You’re making me cold, you’re shivering so hard. I’m used to this, Florida girl. Just say thank you, okay?”

  I winced half-guiltily, remembered I had told him about Florida. “You’re nuts.” But the coat was warm, and I pushed my arms through the sleeves. My bag bumped my hip, and as soon as we got home I’d have to clean it out. “Let’s go home. I want some lunch and we can plan.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We walked in silence for a little while, crunching under each footstep like little bones clicking and breaking. I smelled him on his coat—healthy boy, deodorant, testosterone, cigarette smoke, and the faint tang of fried food. My cheeks tingled, but I didn’t blush. Instead, I stared down at my feet, moving independently of me like good little soldiers, and hunched my shoulders so I could take a deep breath. Funny, but you don’t really realize how personal it is to smell someone. He wasn’t Dad, but he was right here with me.

  I bit my lip, then I opened my mouth. “Graves?”

  “What?” He sounded wary. I would too, if I was dealing with a crazy girl who had just hexed a stupid history teacher and told me all about suckers and wulfen.

  “Thank you.” The coat was really warm; I could see why he wore it. The shivers began to ease. The clearheaded sense of being cried out and ready to get to work dawned over me like a blessing.

  I could tell he was grinning by the sudden feeling of warm sunshine on my back. “No problem, Dru. First one’s free.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The truck was still parked cockeyed in the driveway, and the phone was ringing when we let ourselves in. Graves went straight to turn the heat up, and I reached the phone just as the tinny repeated shriek ceased. “Probably the school calling to tell on you,” he said, with his bitter little bark of a laugh.

  There were a lot of missed calls lately, but the thought of that one sent a chill up my spine. “Jesus. I suppose you could pretend to be my dad.” I struggled out of his coat, now wet with slushy ice near the hem since he was so tall it dragged when I wore it. My shirt held a faint ghost of cigarette smoke now, too, as well as an even fainter ghost of deodorant.

  “You’ve got some kinky ideas, Miss Anderson.” The heater wumped into life. I passed him in the hall and headed straight for the first weapons crate.

  The gun came out of my bag, and I discovered I was sweating. What had I been thinking? It was loaded, one in the chamber, and the safety (thank God) on. Going to nice suburban schools meant I didn’t have to worry about metal detectors, but it was still stupid to pack heat to Foley High.

  Dad called it “the rabbits”—when a hunter got stupid, blunted by fear or the walloping unreality of the Real World. I suppose a better term would be shell shock, or even monster shock.

  I was about to strip the gun and set it back in the box when my head jerked up. A half-second later, the doorbell rang. I jerked around, my nostrils filling with the smell of coppery rust. It mixed uneasily with the sudden wax-citrus tang in my saliva.

  Ohshit. And something occurred to me—it was broad daylight, sun splashing off the snow.

  Suckers don’t go out during the day. So it was something else.

  But what?

  There was a fast, light flurry of taps on the door. And the shimmer of something weird behind it, clearly visible. The blue lines of warding weren’t visible, but I could feel them, thread-thin, running together and humming. Gathering themselves like blue lightning.

  If whatever-it-was took two steps to the side, it could peer in the huge, uncovered window and see me crouching near a weapons crate, my frozen hands locked around a nine-millimeter and my legs suddenly cramping.

  OhGod. Not right now.

  But you don’t get to choose what comes after you, and when. If you did, life would be a lot simpler, wouldn’t it?

  Graves appeared in the doorway to the living room. His eyes were wide, white-ringed, a
nd he looked almost as scared as I felt. His cheeks were cottage-cheese pale under their even goldenness. For an ethnic boy, he certainly got pretty white.

  “What do we do?” he mouthed, and I didn’t even try to pretend there wasn’t serious bad news standing on the porch.

  I snapped a glance at the front window and the wasteland of snow that was the front yard. Jesus. I’ve got him to protect, too. He’s not trained for this.

  I motioned him back with one hand, eased myself down to the floor, and began to crawl-slink along the carpet, gun in one hand. I checked and rechecked to make sure the safety was on, and was careful to point it away from my fool head.

  More light taps. The sense of breathing, amused impatience welling up behind the door sent chills down my spine. Crawling over the discoloration on the carpet gave the chills more weight. There was a faint, rotting tang of zombie, not enough to make me gag but enough to make me wish I didn’t have to slither over it.

  I made it to some halfass cover—a row of boxes to one side of the television. The angle was bad, but I could at least see a slice of the porch and, hopefully, whatever was at the door.

  Dust got in my nose as I shimmied behind the boxes. The urge to sneeze filled my nose, trickled down my throat, and damn near made my eyes water. Do this right, Dru. You’ll only get one shot. I got my legs up under me as another flurry of taps hit the door.

  I rose, carefully, slowly. Peered over the top of a box holding spare clothes and blankets.

  The angle was indeed bad. But through the glass, I could see a moving shadow as whatever was out there shifted weight, probably from one foot to the other.

  Assuming it had only two feet.

  But weird stuff usually only came out at night. This was wrong, all wrong. I pointed the gun carefully, braced myself. The top of my head felt very, very exposed, poking above the boxes.

  “Dru—” Graves half-whispered. There was a queer sliding noise, ending with a click.

  What the hell was that? The shadow moved slightly.

  “Dru—” Graves, again. Like we were in class and he was trying to pass a note or get someone to copy from.

  Yeah, sure, like this kid’s ever copied. Puh-leeze. “Shut up,” I whispered, as quietly as I could. Should I take a shot through the wall? I thought the angle was better over here. Dammit.

  “The door,” Graves whispered. “The locks are moving.”

  Oh shit. I scrambled to my feet and launched myself over the boxes. It was an amazing leap—I don’t even remember my wet boots touching the floor on the other side. I piled into the hall past Graves, shoving him down and aside. The door, its locks rotating and clicking into the open position, the knob turning slowly and paradoxically too fast for me to stop it; I barely got the safety off, raised the gun as the door blew open, a wave of intense cold streaking down the hall.

  The lightning-crackle of the warding didn’t even slow him down.

  The blue-eyed boy’s fingers closed around my wrist, and he casually twisted the gun free. It clattered on the floor, thankfully not going off.

  There’s one thing to be said for your dad leaving you a fifty and a reminder to do your katas. When a bad guy busts into your house and grabs you, you can punch him in the face hard enough to make him stagger back, blood pouring from his patrician nose.

  Red blood. Not black, and not sheened with the opalescent slug-trail of sucker blood. Memory clicked inside my head—the drips on the snow that night had been red blood too.

  Suckers bleed black; there is no hemoglobin left in them. It was why they needed fresh transfusions all the time. I hadn’t thought of it before, too tired and scared to think anything like straight.

  Too late now.

  What the hell?

  He stumbled back, his hair no longer dark-wet and sleek but light brown and shaggy, and I took a step, foot coming down solid and other leg bending, knee jackhammering up, and I got him a good one in the nuts—or would have if his arm hadn’t swept down and smashed right above my knee, harder than anything human had a right to hit, deflecting my knee just a little bit. A burst of apple-pie scent came out of somewhere and hit me in the face.

  Graves finally let out a yell. The blue eyes flickered past me, but I was already moving. Dad always said that the nut shot was great if it went through, but a girl always had to have a backup—because a guy won’t expect you to go for the nuts and for something else.

  I guess since the groin is the center of a guy’s world, he rarely guesses it isn’t the center of yours.

  My fist, already folded up, headed for his throat like an express train. Next came the open palm, the heel of the hand striking just under the nose and driving up so the nasal promontory broke and slid into the brain. If I could just move fast enough.

  Work it, Dru! Harder! Harder! Dad’s voice, yelling—but there was no time for that, because there was a shattering roar behind me and something bulleted past, something long and lean, moving faster than it had any right to, hard to look at because it was blurring like clay under fast-running water. It hit the blue-eyed boy and threw him back at least six feet, and they were still going when the boy’s head clipped the lintel and they tumbled out the door, onto the porch, and out of sight.

  What the—? But I was already moving, forgetting the gun and tearing for the front door. The noise was immense, a growling roar mixed in with high-pitched but unmistakably male laughter, along with thumping that shook the whole house.

  That was Graves. Hairy and moving like a bullet on speed.

  He wasn’t supposed to change! It seemed to take forever to reach the door, and by that time they had shattered the porch railing and dumped off into the front yard. There was a sickening crack! and an amazing fountain of snow jetted up.

  “Stop it!” I screamed, but they weren’t paying any attention. There was so much snow it was hard to see what was happening, but it looked like the blue-eyed boy had Graves—or what had been Graves—by the scruff and was flinging him around.

  I took three steps, launched myself off the porch, and flew just like Supergirl, fists outstretched. I tackled the blue-eyed boy hard, all the breath driven out of me and my shoulder giving a huge burst of pain, and knocked him ass-over-teakettle. We went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and I gave the kid a good sock in the stomach before I realized what he was yelling.

  “I’m here to help you, fucking morons!”

  I rolled free, snow stinging my hands and face, and leaped to my feet just as Graves launched himself again. Time slowed down; my hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of his wild, curly hair—wilder and curlier now. He wasn’t furry all over, but he was changed, something inhuman shining out through his burning-green eyes and the air hardening and shimmering around him like heat off a black sidewalk.

  I gave a huge yank, only mildly concerned at the fact that I shouldn’t have been able to move fast enough to catch him. The world had gotten very, well, basic, and the fact that this new kid was bleeding red had just truly made its way through a haze of adrenaline.

  Better not rabbit anymore, Dru. Come on. Control the situation.

  My abused shoulder gave a howl, but I held on grimly; Graves’s legs flipped out from under him, and he let out a sound like that dog in the cartoons reaching the end of his chain and getting roinked but good. I let out a hurt little cry, my fingers cramping, and Graves hit the ground, his hair—vital, curly, springing with harsh life—slipping free of my hand.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” the blue-eyed boy snarled. His face was a mask of blood, the right half already puffing up and discolored from my first punch. He was, again, not dressed for the weather—a black V-neck sweater about as thick as a piece of paper, jeans, and black sneakers caked with snow. I caught another breath of a good, spicy apple smell, and wondered if one of the neighbors was baking.

  Sunlight gilded his hair, bringing out blond highlights in the brown. It looked like a new, expensive shaggy cut, and when Graves snarled at him he snarled back, lips peeli
ng back and exposing teeth that were only bluntly human. They both made rumbling sounds—Graves like a huge-ass, very pissed-off dog, and Blue Eyes like metal rubbing against itself.

  “Just hold on a minute.” I reached down. Graves had struggled up to sit on his haunches in the snow. He was still actually growling, a low deep thrumming sound that rattled my teeth. Just to be safe, I put a hand on his head—not that I’d be able to stop him if he launched himself now, but it was worth a try. “Graves? Hold on a second, please.”

  “He can’t hear you,” Blue Eyes said. “The beast has him.”

  “Screw you,” Graves snarled, and I was really happy to hear that.

  Werwulfen don’t talk. Not in their animal form, anyway—the streak-headed one hadn’t been able to do much more than make weird noises. Their mouths aren’t made right for talking once they shift into their other form.

  Talking was a good sign, and it meant not-werwulf. But that was definitely what he’d been bitten by, he hadn’t changed in twelve hours, and he’d been a virgin, right?

  It should have meant he was safe. But Graves was doing all sorts of things he wasn’t supposed to. I wished again I knew more about all this, instead of just what Dad and I could piece together with the help of some moldering leather-bound books passed from hunter to hunter and kept behind the counters of real occult stores, not brought out until a hunter presents his bona fides.

  Books I should have been spending some serious time with instead of moping, by the way.

  “Just everyone hold on. Hang on for one red-hot second.” I dug around in my memory, pointed at Blue Eyes with my free hand. “You. Christophe, right?”

  He actually gave me a correct little half-bow, spreading his arms, and I began to feel a little faint. Because even though he didn’t have fangs now and his hair was sticking up, powdered with snow, he still rested on the top crust of a drift like a feather. My eyes struggled with what my brain was seeing, gave up, attacked the problem again, and decided since he was standing in a flood of bright sunlight, he was Something Else.