Strange Angels

needed to get something on my shivering skin. I was also hungry as hell.

First things first, though. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, scooped the gun off the table, and went into Dad’s room. I came back with nylon rope—good for rappelling, tying down a load in a pickup, and, not so incidentally, for tying up a kid who might turn into a werwulf.

Werwulfen, especially new ones, have a real problem with silver. That part of pop culture is real enough. The chain around his neck wasn’t rubbing red blisters into his skin, which was a good sign. Neither was the skull earring, pressed against his cheekbone by the way his head was turned slightly to the side. A pulse beat strong and steady in his throat. He was skinny but had a lot of good muscle—and if he started to change on me, he would have the kind of hysterical strength that could throw me across the room without thinking twice about it. Or even noticing.

He’d be too busy looking for his first chunk of raw meat.

What am I going to tie him to? The mattress? Jesus, a fine time to wish I had a four- poster.

Fortunately, Dad taught me a lot about knots. A trucker’s hitch will cinch someone down—it just gets tighter the more you struggle—and if he couldn’t get enough leverage, he couldn’t come after me. First I trussed his wrists and elbows, then his knees and ankles; then I ran four more lines between the mattress and the box spring. That was a trick. Each one I secured with a trucker’s hitch.

If he had to go to the bathroom, he was out of luck. I could always get a new mattress. I couldn’t buy a new trachea.

With that done, I washed up. No hot shower for me—I couldn’t afford the time. But clean clothes and a scrubbed-clean face does wonders for any girl’s mood—even if that face is dead white, hectic flares of color on the cheeks, and with pupils wide enough to look half-wild. The zit on my temple had vanished, and no more seemed to be rising.

Go figure. My hair was a total loss, though. Humidity and cold made me look like the Bride of Frankenstein, except without the cool white zigzags.

That made me think of the streak-headed werwulf, and I shivered. I found a dry pair of sneakers because my boots were still sopping wet, and was ready to start solving problems.

Downstairs, snow had spilled in through the screen door on the little porch, and it was bastard cold. I looked longingly at the box of Cheerios on the counter—my stomach growled just thinking about it—but went to hunt in the garage for plywood instead. My scrounger’s luck was good, and in less than ten minutes I had the snow cleared away and plywood bracing the screen door; I nailed more plywood up outside over the hole in the actual back door. I swept up broken glass, listening to the wind moan outside. My fingers were numb and my breath made little clouds in front of my face. I began to regret ever waking up.

I rigged some blankets on a line over the back door to insulate it, taping it down with duct tape, every girl’s best friend. Then, finally, I turned up the heat and shivered through my first bowl of cereal. The milk burned, it was so cold. The entire house smelled like fresh air plus a faint, rapidly fading taint of zombie. I was so hungry I didn’t even mind.

As soon as I finished the cereal, I put a fresh clip in the gun and checked on Graves. He was still out cold, breathing through his nose and mouth the way little kids do. The house began to warm up, and I sat on the stairs for a long time, hugging myself and staring down the hall at the boxes and the bullet holes blown in the wall.

What are you going to do, Dru?

The hollow place inside me didn’t answer. I knew I should get up and eat something else, but I just kept staring at bullet holes. Nothing sounded good now that I had a lump of cold cereal in me.

I held the gun loosely in my right hand. If Graves started to change . . .

Well, technically you’ve already killed one person, sweetheart. Dad’s voice, cool and calm, like every time I was being an idiot. One more shouldn’t be that hard. Just wait until he changes and put him down. You should have done it at the mall.

Still, it was oddly comforting knowing there was someone in the house who wasn’t going anywhere. Kind of pathetic, but I’ve spent so many nights alone waiting for Dad to come back it was nice to hear the silent sound that means someone else is breathing in the same space. So what if he’d turn into a big hairy beast and try to kill me? The first time a werwulf changed it was unstoppable until it got blood.

That’s what the books said. I didn’t have any reason to doubt them. Or Dad, who said the same thing.

This is rapidly getting out of hand. Dad’s phrase, delivered with a straight face and usually a gun in either hand. What are you going to do next, Dru?

I needed a plan. The trouble was, I didn’t have one.

“I suppose I should get the living room cleaned up,” I said to the quiet. “Wait for him to wake up. Then we’ll see.”

The hollow place inside me wasn’t satisfied by that. Dad was dead. He wasn’t coming back. I was alone in the world, and I’d gotten some kid who had tried to help me bitten by a werwulf. There were other things I had to think about, but I was damned if I could remember them. I felt very small and very alone, sitting there on the stairs.

Racking up the score here, kiddo. I shivered, hugging my knees. The snow was really coming down, wind moaning against the corners of the house. It was 8 a.m. and dark out there, except for the directionless glow between the whirling quarter-size flakes from reflected city light. Gonna need a new back door. Unless you’re blowing town.

I couldn’t blow town. Graves would need someone to explain to him what was going on. And someone had killed Dad.

That was what I’d been trying not to think. I mean, I’d killed Dad. But it hadn’t really been Dad. You can’t make a zombie when someone’s still alive.

You just can’t.

Someone turned him into a zombie. You don’t wake up one morning as one of the reanimated. Someone killed him and turned him into a zombie. He wasn’t in good shape, either. There was a lot of trauma to those tissues—they rot quicker when they’re injured before they die.

I felt like I was in one of those snow globes—you know, where you shake them and the entire inside fills with whirling white. Everything inside still and motionless, surrounded by floating bits of ice. I was trying not to think what I had to think next, and succeeding only in filling my head with static.

I don’t know how long I would have sat there if I hadn’t heard a sharp, surprised half-yell from overhead.

Graves was awake. I hauled myself up and trudged up the stairs, the gun cold and heavy in my hand.

I didn’t want to do what I thought I was going to do.

Tough luck, chickie babe. You have to.

* * *

He stopped struggling against the ropes as soon as he saw me. The blankets had rucked up away from his toes. The room was warmer, and sweat plastered his long, dead-black hair to his face.

We stared at each other for a few moments. Then he lifted his chapped fingers—lying on his side, it was about all he could do. His voice was husky, and he said the absolute last thing I’d expect a kid who’d gotten bit by a werwulf and tied to a bed to say.

“Kinky.” He arched one half of his unibrow, his eyes burning green around the holes of his pupils. He didn’t look ready to sprout hair or fangs.

We were coming up on twelve hours since he’d been bit.

“I never figured you for the bondage type,” he continued. “How the hell am I going to piss?”

Smart kid.

The gun was loaded with one in the chamber. I clicked the safety off, praying that the next five minutes would go well. I advanced nervously into the room, giving myself plenty of time. The knots looked like they were holding just fine.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions.” I managed to keep my tone even. “If you give the right answers, I’ll cut the ropes off and we’ll go from there.”

He licked his lips. His eyes flicked between the gun and my face, and he went very still.

Something told me he knew I wasn’t bluffing.