Strange Angels

right before the bad guy rides in for the ultimate battle.

The sunlight dimmed, and a chill fiercer than the wind walked down my back. I was shivering, though I didn’t feel it, and Graves’s curly head popped out of the doorway. “What the hell are you doing, trying to freeze to death? You’re not even wearing a coat.”

I took my time, watching the street. Nothing felt hinky at all.

It just felt quiet. Empty.

Dead.

The snow must’ve cleared up sometime this morning when the sun rose, because we were all up having our hot chocolate and funny snakes with wings before dawn, and it was coming down hard then. What, everyone just decided to stay home today? Maybe. But. . .

The last piece of the puzzle slotted into place as Graves made a spitting sound of annoyance. “What the hell? Dru?”

I stepped back, shifting my weight uneasily, as if the porch might decide to fall apart at any second. “The porch lights.” I sounded queer even to myself. “They’re all on, and it’s the middle of the day.” It’s eleven, and it gets dark early this time of year. Real dark, real early.

“Yeah,” he said. “Christophe said that, too. What are you—”

“We have to go.” My teeth chopped the words into little bits, and I made it inside, pushing him down the hall and sweeping the door shut. Warmth closed around me. I locked the deadbolts and leaned against the door. How long until sundown? I don’t know, have to check. “Pack your stuff, okay? And help me with the ammo boxes, and—”

“Dru?” Christophe, from the kitchen. I didn’t know him at all, but I knew that tone.

The Oh shit there is serious trouble, honey, pack everything up again and let’s get movin’ tone. He appeared at the end of the hall, his sharp face suddenly graven with frowning lines that made him look a lot older.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve got to get the ammo packed.” He halted, regarding me, and I swallowed crow and a few lumps of my pride, too. “Will you . . . I mean, would you help us get the truck loaded?”

I had to keep leaning against the door because my knees were deciding again that they weren’t knees, they were actually noodles. Fully cooked noodles at that. And what I was really asking was something more like, Will you help me? Please?

Christophe’s blue, blue eyes flicked to Graves, and I was suddenly positive he was going to say, Sure I can, but we can’t take him. He’ll drag us down.

Oh, Christ. What was I going to do if he said that? Graves tensed, a movement I could feel even though all the starch had gone out of me, as Gran would have said. And I reached over, grabbed Goth Boy’s thin shoulder, and dug my fingers in.

Dad would never have left me behind. Not willingly. I was damned if I would leave someone else in the dust.

He bought me a cheeseburger. It was a ludicrous, laughable thought. But it was just the surface over a truckload of other things. I hadn’t heard a single word of complaint from Graves, not even over getting bit or having a gun held to his head. He’d done the best he could to help me, and that was something strangers rarely ever do. I was shipwrecked, and he’d been the only thing I could hang on to.

And he hadn’t let me down. Not once.

He was all I had. I wasn’t going to leave him here.

Christophe’s eyes fastened on my hand. He really did look old before his face smoothed out and he nodded, as if finishing a long conversation with himself. His shoulders went back and his chin came up. “You probably have a system,” he said, folding his arms. “What goes in first?”

“My bed—the mattresses. Everything else gets folded up and—” I stopped dead, as the next problem rose up and crashed into me. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry.” Christophe dropped his hands. “I’ll handle that. Start your packing, Dru. You, wulf-boy. Come with me.”

* * *

What does it say about your life when two hours of three teenagers working folds all of it up in the back of a Chevy half-ton’s camper?

I put Mom’s cookie jar in the top of the bathroom box and bit the packing tape, tore it deftly, and taped it down. “This one’s important,” I told Graves. “Pack the blankets around it.” Next to the fireproof box. The one with the ashes in it. God, Daddy, I wish you were here.

If wishes were fishes, even beggars would eat. Gran was fond of that saying, too.

“Got it.” Graves tramped out of the kitchen and toed open the door to the garage. Christophe had manhandled the garage door open, metal squealing in protest—the broken spring rubbing against itself with a sound like a lost tortured soul.

Well, maybe not exactly like that, but pretty damn close. Dad and I had both tried to get the garage open, knowing it was going to get cold, but in the end it was a lost cause.

But not, I guess, for a half-sucker. Djamphir.

Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?

But Mom had only smelled of fresh perfume and goodness.

Mom.

Too many questions. Not enough time to answer any of them.

“I know,” Christophe said into the phone. “Just send a pickup; I’ll get her to the rendezvous. Don’t worry about that.” A long pause while someone yakked on the other end. It sounded dire, especially with the way the wind was moaning a counterpoint; he’d been on the phone for ten minutes while I finished the last boxes and Graves carried them out to the truck.

He laughed, a sound twice as bitter as Graves’s little unamused bark. “Do you have to repeat yourself? She’s no good to us dead, and I’m the one who found her.” Another pause. “They can court-martial me later. Right now I need a pickup. I don’t care what the weather report—All right. Fine. Ciao.” He hung up, stared at the phone for a few moments, and turned sharply on his heel.

I was still on my knees, a roll of packing tape in my hands, watching him.

He took two steps to the sink, peered out the window. Eerie yellow-gray light slid through, touched his hair, and made the highlights livid. “Daylight’s going to fail before we’re out of town.”

I could only see a slice of sky through the window, cut off by an overhang and icicle-festooned gutters. It looked like the thunderstorm weather I’d seen a million times, only without the gasping-thick humidity you get below the Mason-Dixon. “It’s only—”

“Do you think this is natural weather, even for here?” He shrugged. “I should have made contact earlier. I was banking on being able to distract him. And I was banking on Sergej being certain your father wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring you here.”

You just shut up about my father. “Dad wasn’t stupid.” It came out a lot wearier and less sharp than I thought it would. “He had reasons for everything.”

“I don’t suppose you’d know how good those reasons were, would you? Never mind.” He waved his hand as if brushing away a fly. “We’ve got to get you out of here. I’ve got an extraction point. They’ll dock me for it later.” A tight, feral smile pulled up the corners of his lips, his blue eyes burning, and I watched an ink stain of sleek darkness slide through his hair and vanish, the highlights popping out like shafts of sun on a faraway horizon. “But bringing in a svetocha might balance that out.” He shrugged. “I’ll drive.”

Oh you will, will you? “Do you have your license?” I don’t know if I like the idea of you driving Dad’s truck. Or if I like how I’m suddenly some sort of good grade for you.

“What are you, a cop?” He held out his hand, and I automatically went to give him the packing tape.

Instead, Christophe’s fingers closed around my wrist, warm and hard. His eyes met mine, and I didn’t know what to think about what I saw burning in their depths. His smell shifted, somehow. Like the wind veering and bringing you a breath of honeysuckle on a summer’s day.

I stared up at him.