Strange Angels

It was my sharpest memory of childhood, the first rock to loom up solidly in a fog of conflicting impressions before the time I actually started paying attention to everything around me. I guess you could say that’s when I started growing up, smelling the sharpness of winter leaves, hearing the ticking of Gran’s stove, the smell of frying eggs because Gran was cooking them just as we rolled up the rutted, potholed dirt road dipping and swinging up to her place.

Gran had actually yelled.

What you gwun do, Dwight? That chile ain’t old enough to know what’s happenin’!

Dad’s voice, hoarse with something that might have been tears, though it was funny to think of Dad ever crying. Damn straight she’s not. Which is why we’re here. Nothing can get to her here. You may hate me, old woman, but I’m doing the best I can.

And every time I would beg and plead to go with Dad, he would just smile and ruffle my hair. Not now, princess. When you’re older.

Gran would snort and set her false teeth together, and after Dad left she would keep me busy for days. There was no shortage of work up at her cabin, and maybe she thought it wouldn’t give me time to think.

But a lot of waiting for your dad to come back and collect you gives you plenty of time to think, whether you’re pitchforking hay or gathering berries or helping make salt pork.

None of that was going to help me now. I had to concentrate on what was in front of me. Think, Dru. What would Dad ask? “Who is this Order?”

“The Order,” Christophe said, like I would say, Duh, breathing! “Professional hunters, mostly djamphir—the Kouroi. Though there are some of his kind.” He waved a languid hand over his shoulder at Graves, whose face was set and almost white. “They do help.”

“He’s loup-garou,” I supplied helpfully. “A half-imprinted werwulf. Stronger and faster than human, but not as strong as the furry type. We know that. We’re not totally stupid.”

Graves gave me a single, extraordinary glance. I don’t know whether he understood that I didn’t like Christophe’s dismissive tone. But we’d been over it in the books just that afternoon, for God’s sake, and we had a better idea of what had happened to him.

Graves was luckier than either of us had guessed. Not every kid who gets bit is a virgin—or gets bit by a wulf old enough and strong enough to half-imprint through that.

And more importantly, I didn’t want Sucker Boy here thinking Graves was a second-class citizen or something because I’d gotten him bit.

“Exactly. There are full werwulfen as well as loup-garou in the Order.” Christophe poured more milk into the saucepan and kept it moving. His own mug stood at attention right next to the stove. “The skinchangers are the princes of their type.”

Well, isn’t that special. “So you’re saying I’m part sucker.” I touched my mug with a finger. It was scorching hot.

“The upir can’t stay away from human women. Sergej is . . . Well, the more powerful they are, the more mating allures them. He’s always been careful to kill the offspring as well as the mother, though, lest they become a threat. All djamphir are survivors, or descendants of survivors.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders stiffening. “They would kill us on sight if they could. And we return the favor. Just one big happy family.”

And I thought Dad and me put the “fun” in “dysfunctional.” “So this Order, they’ve been trying to kill this Sergej guy?” The one you say killed my mother?

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. It was just that my dad didn’t raise an idiot. Sure, this guy had a good story and had saved my life, but good stories are as common as sneezes in the Real World. So he was djamphir, so what? It didn’t mean he had my best interests at heart.

Or that everything he told me was the strictest truth.

On the other hand, what reason did he have to lie to me? Or keep me alive?

“Since 1918. He’s canny, and he doesn’t come out of hiding. Instead, he sends his minions, and he’s old and glutted enough to have plenty of those. Like the wulf you saw the other night, the one with the pale patch on his temple? That’s Ash.”

Graves shivered, and so did I. I pulled the quilt closer around my shoulders, leaned into the counter. “How did a werwulf end up working for a sucker? Aren’t they enemies?”

“Sergej,” Christophe said quietly, “is an expert at breaking things to his will. Even wulfen. Ash has been his for a long, long time.” The silence following this was only broken by the sound of the saucepan moving, and the chuckling hiss of snow against the window, until Christophe shook his head and continued. “If we could catch Sergej in the open, we could probably kill him. Especially if we had a svetocha. A fully trained daughter of one of our best.” The milk sloshed back and forth in the pan. “I don’t think you realize just how rare you are, Dru.”

Sends his minions. Would they happen to include a burning dog, too? Or was that something else? “What about the burning dog?”

“Burning dog?” Christophe sounded thoughtful. “Tall and black, before it ignited?”

I thought of its glassy darkness before it inhaled and lit up like a burning Christmas tree. “Yeah. Big teeth. And it was huge.”

“Big as a horse,” Graves said.

“Ah.” Christophe said nothing more.

“That’s where the streak-headed wulf—Ash—first showed up. Following the burning thing.”

Christophe nodded thoughtfully. “Ash and a tracker. How did you—”

“We drowned it in a fountain,” Graves supplied helpfully. He actually sounded proud. “Then Dru shot that wulf-guy. After he bit me.”

Christophe was very still for a long moment. “Ash and his trackers have been the death of many a good soldier of the Order. And two raw, untrained—”

“Yeah, we kicked his ass.” And nearly died. But I kept that part of it to myself. My ribs twinged a little as I moved. “Wait a minute. How many of you guys—Order guys—are there?”

Christophe drew himself up, unconsciously straightening. “A few thousand Kouroi here in the States. More in Europe. Quite a few in Asia. We’re all over.”

You are, huh? “How come I’ve never heard of you? Dad and I have been pretty much all over the continent and I’ve never heard a single thing about you guys.”

“If you know how to listen, you probably have. Your father’s friend August Dobroslaw in New York, for example. He’s one of us.” A dismissive half-wave with his hand, and Christophe went back to keeping the milk moving as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

I felt like I’d been pinched somewhere numb. August. I’ve been thinking about him lately, too. I nodded. “Then I can call him and he’ll verify your story.” My hair fell in my face. I lifted the hot chocolate and sipped it gingerly. My tongue got burned. I had to suck in a long breath. Snow spattered against the windows, and I shivered. I was still cold. The wind had a hungry sound again tonight, and I wasn’t feeling safe even with Graves next to me.

Even with Christophe standing in the kitchen fiddling with the saucepan. “Do it and find out.” His shoulders dropped. “If he does verify my story, as you put it, you think you could be a little nicer?”

“I’ll try.” It was my turn to sound sarcastic. Graves made a restless movement next to me, and I bumped him with my shoulder. Letting him know I was with him.

It helped me, too. The pressure of his arm against mine was comforting.

Graves drew in a deep, dissatisfied breath. “I want to know something. How are these things finding Dru?”

Silence, broken only by the sound of small snow pellets hitting the window. It was a hell of a good question.

The zombie found me because Dad knew where I lived. The streak-headed werwulf might have been watching the truck, and in any case he’d gotten a good noseful of me at the mall—which didn’t explain how he’d arrived at the mall. If the burning dog was a tracker, as Christophe said, that explained