Strange Angels

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, and 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