Strange Angels

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 peeling 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.

But you saw the fangs, Dru!

“What the hell are you?” I wished I hadn’t ditched the gun, but told myself again that it had been a good idea—one of the few good ideas I’d had in the last couple days. What was I going to do, start shooting in broad daylight? That would have been a fine how-do-you-do. The wind shifted, and I smelled apples again. My mouth watered.

His smile stretched, became a model of lunatic good cheer. “I could ask you the same thing, little girl. Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”

“You knew my name.” I struggled with the lunatic urge to pat Graves’s head. Just stay still for a second; let me question him.

“The name is not the thing,” Christophe said, tipping his head back a little and addressing the cold blue sky. The sky that was, in fact, the exact shade of his eyes.

Go figure.

His gaze swung back down to me, and he shrugged. “Should we move this conversation inside? That is, if you can keep a leash on your little lapdog there.”

Graves stiffened, but he didn’t move. The thrumming growl coming from him petered out, and he rose, slowly, his heels coming down and the rest of him unfolding fluidly. “What is he, Dru?” Thank God, he sounded at least reasonably calm. “He doesn’t smell right.”

“Look who’s talking.” Christophe folded his arms. He should have looked ridiculous with snow plastered all over him, but somehow he didn’t. “I told you, I am djamphir. I am of the Kouroi. I hunt the beasts that fill the night. And you, Miss Anderson, are like and unlike. Why didn’t you tell me what you were?”

“You killed my father.” But I didn’t sound so sure. I wasn’t so sure, now. “What, I was supposed to trade baseball cards with you?”

“I didn’t kill your dear Papá. I warned him away, but he was determined. He had a bone to pick with Sergej.” His face twitched, a shadow rolling over it as I watched, fascinated. “Don’t we all.”

“Sergej?” The name sent a thin glass spike of pain through my skull. My skin chilled, and I realized we were all standing out in the goddamn snow. “Who’s that?”

Christophe stared at me like I’d just asked what oxygen was. Then he bent over, wheezing, and I realized he was laughing.

You know, I thought I’d gotten used to weird, but this is something else. I’d dropped my arm. Now I grabbed Graves’s sweater and pulled him back. He came without resisting, his head dropping forward like a little boy’s. “I don’t feel so hot,” he said, very softly, and coughed.

“I’m not surprised.” My teeth were gritted so hard the words had to struggle free. “I think we have some reading to do.” I didn’t want to turn my back on Laughing Boy, so I had to walk backward, high-stepping to get my feet out of the snow. The front yard looked like a tornado had hit it. Thank God nobody was home in the middle of the day to see this.

I almost went down hard on the porch steps; Graves grabbed the railing and we swayed drunkenly. Step by step, we retreated up, Graves leaning on me heavier and heavier. The vitality was running out of him like water out of a broken cup. Laughing Boy stopped wheezing and watched this with interest.

“I don’t suppose you’ll invite me in.” He grinned, the same feral grimace that had bared his teeth earlier. They were so white, pristine.

But they weren’t fangs. Not now.

“Nope.” I beat Graves to the punch, just in case he didn’t know that was a really bad idea and decided to say something.

“I’m not like a nosferat, you know.” Christophe moved forward smoothly, his feet still not denting the snow. How did it get all over him if he can do that? “I don’t need an invitation to step over your threshold.”

Yeah, you came right in past the wards and the threshold. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” my mouth replied, with no real direction from me.