Strange Angels

cursed downstairs. A cupboard slammed shut. “You will breathe, and you will live. I’m not having it any other way, milna. Breathe.”

I tried. My eyes rolled back into my head. Darkness descended, a deep star-spangled night. My head pounded, excruciating pressure building behind my nose and eyeballs. Little spackles of light squeezed down as even my eyelids spasmed. Pain like a silver spike went through me, from the crown of my head to my soles, running down each branching nerve channel.

Graves galloped back into the room, cursing under his breath. Christophe’s hands left my face, and my head thumped onto the floor a second before he shouted and threw the glass of water straight into my face.

The seizure stopped. Spluttering and choking, I twitched like a landed fish on the floor and drew in another deep heaving breath, hitched, and let it out with a torrent of cussing that would have done Dad proud, even during truck-fixing sessions.

“Yeah,” Graves said, breathing heavily, when I ran out of air enough to curse and just sputtered. “I’d say she’s okay.”

“Idiot.” Christophe handed him the glass as I tried to wipe water off myself. My muscles were weak as overcooked noodles. “That was too close. Get a towel.”

“How about you get one? I already ran downstairs, and you’re the one who threw water all over her.” Graves leaned forward, eyeing me. “Hey, Dru. You were French-kissing a winged snake. Creeptastic.”

“It was stealing her breath, imbecile. Go get a towel.” Christophe shoved him, and Graves shoved back. The floor groaned sharply as their weight shifted. If I could have gotten in a smell through my nose it would have been the slightly oily dryness of pure macho.

Graves’s lip lifted, and his teeth were just as white as Christophe’s. “Don’t order me around, asshole. I was here before you.”

Jesus. Boys. I found my voice. “Goddammit, fuck you both. Get out of here.” It was hard to sound forceful with my tank top soaked and every muscle in my body loose as wet spaghetti, but I tried my damnedest. “Go downstairs and make me some hot chocolate. Unload the dishwasher. Do something useful instead of getting in a testosterone match in my bedroom.”

For a long, exotic moment they both stared at me, green eyes and blue burning. I managed to push myself up on weak arms, got my behind under me, and leaned against my mattresses, shivering. The heater puffed into life, but the not-sound of snow against the windowpane made me feel cold all over. I was gone. I was out of here, and someone did something to my body. Oh, Gran, I wish you were here for real and not just sending your owl. You could tell me what the hell to do now.

Tension snapped in the room, the air relaxing as they stepped away from each other. Christophe glanced at the window again, his profile still sharp and fanged, his hair sticking close to his head as if he’d gotten water dumped on him, too. His lips firmed up, sharp teeth retreating, and he looked like a new idea had struck him.

Graves, holding an empty glass from the kitchen, finally grinned at me. His eyes glowed, too, but green instead of blue. He looked as relieved as it was possible to get under his hair and beaky nose. “Sure you’re okay?”

No, I’m not. I’m freaked out, and you guys aren’t making it any easier. But my voice was steady. I was a master at putting on a steady voice. “Make me some hot chocolate. I’m cold. And both of you get out of here.” I hugged myself as hard as I could. I could be an actress. A talent for creative lying just has so many applications. “Or I’ll shoot you.”

Christophe didn’t look convinced. He blinked, as if just returning to the room, folding his arms and giving me a sideways glance. I expected his eyes to send little blue flashlight beams through the dimness. “What do you think —”

“Chris. Shut up.” Much to my surprise, he did. “Go unload the dishwasher. Graves can show you where everything goes. When I get downstairs, you can tell me what that thing was.”

They trooped obediently out of my room, and I rested my forehead on my knees. Regular aches and pains— my back twinging, my shoulder unhappy—returned like old friends, crawling back under my skin. This just kept getting more and more complex, and I wasn’t sure what was real and what was the Real World anymore. Where were the grown-ups who could handle this?

An idea quivered on the tip of my brain, but I was too weirded out to follow it. Instead, I breathed deep the way Gran had taught me, and tried not to think. It was pretty useless, though, because the same thought kept coming back, circling like Gran’s owl on soft soundless wings.

I could find that house again. I know I could. It’s from Before. And it’s in this city.

Why didn’t Dad tell me we used to live here?

CHAPTER 24

“Sergej.” Christophe handed me a mug of Swiss Miss. We didn’t have any marshmallows, and I couldn’t seem to warm up, even with a wool sweater on and Mom’s quilt around my shoulders. “He’s very old. You could call him the oldest we know of in North America and probably South America, too. He came from Europe after the war.”

“Which war?” Graves wanted to know. He leaned against the breakfast bar next to me. Christophe set another mug down on the counter and gave him a withering look.

“The Great War, of course. Not the genocide masquerading as war from that horrid little Austrian corporal. Sergej drank his fill on the battlefields of Łód and Gorlice-Tarnów. Before, he was merely one of the petty lordlings among the blood-drinkers. Something in the War changed him, and he came to America. Since then, he’s been spreading the disease here. Killing for fun and food, and contaminating the proud and the petty to swell the ranks of his legions. We’ve been trying to kill him for so long.”

That perked my ears right up. “We? We who?”

“The Order. Your mother was one of us.” He said it like he would say, That television show is on tonight, or, I’m going to pick up some milk at the store.

“The what?” I stared at him. “What the hell?” First she was a vampire hunter, now this. What does he really know about Mom? “She’s dead.”

“Indeed. The only svetocha in sixty years. Sergej himself came out of hiding to kill her. She was rusty and weak, and she must have hurt him badly, but he managed.”

Something horrible and buried rose briefly. We’re going to play the game, Dru. And that ticking, like a heartbeat, faster and faster, closer and closer. I shoved it down—it was only a dream, wasn’t it? I had other problems now.

Hold on just one red-hot second. First questions first, then we’ll get into this “order” thing. “So why would Dad be calling you?”

Christophe’s face changed. For the life of me I couldn’t say how. “I think he had finally found out he needed the Order. He blamed us for your mother’s death, thought a mere human could do what we couldn’t. He went out to hunt alone.”

I stared into the hot chocolate. It made a type of sense. Dad went wack after Mom died, and I never thought that much about it. It was just there. I didn’t remember Mom dying.

Did I?

I remembered Dad’s face, set and white, and him fighting with Gran. It was the only time I ever heard them disagree. Most of the time Gran just said mmmh or did whatever the hell she wanted to without bothering to give Dad the benefit of her opinion.

But that one time, when we’d arrived at the cabin in the middle of the night, they’d fought. We’d been driving with the windows down, the sharp cold smell of the mountains at night flooding through the car along with the purr and rattle of the engine. When we stopped, it had smelled like dust and new-cut grass, cold clear air and nighttime. I’d been so tired, curled up and sucking my thumb even though I was a big girl.