Strange Angels

not a teenage kid who had just been thrown into a window. “Are you going to behave, little bird?”

I might have even agreed with him, at least long enough to get his hands off my throat, but the wind rose to a shriek and I realized two things.

The light was really bleeding away fast, no longer bruised but dying, my ears popping under a sudden shift in air pressure.

And the growling wasn’t just coming from Graves.

The werwulf barreled through the door like a freight train and hit Christophe squarely in the chest.

There was a horrible crushing half-second as his fingers tightened on my windpipe before they were ripped away. I only found out I was screaming after I’d scrambled backward on palms and sneakered feet like an enthusiastic crab-walker at a drunken frat party, and spilled down the two steps onto chill garage concrete. I barked my elbow a good one on the doorframe, didn’t care, hit so hard my teeth clicked together and I almost lost a piece of my tongue.

Another furry leaping shape sailed over me, melting and reforming as it flew, and I flinched, running out of breath and hitching in more to scream again.

“DRU!” someone yelled, and Graves leaped out the door, narrowly missing landing on me by twisting in midair, with a kind of breathtaking, unthinking grace. He had something glittering in his right hand—my keychain, I realized, just as he skidded to a stop and the noise from inside the house began to crash instead of just roar. Wood splintered, something thrown against the wall hard enough to punch the drywall out toward me, splinters from the studs ramming through, and there was a massive wrecked yowl of pain.

I made it to my feet and hesitated for a split second, long enough to hear other crashes and howls. It sounded like more of them had arrived—shadows flitted across the open mouth of the garage, and the howling began.

If you’ve ever heard that sound, you don’t need it described, but here goes. It’s like a spiral of glass on the coldest night you’ve ever known, naked outside in the deep woods. Just hearing it is enough to give you nightmares about hunching near a fire and praying the wood holds out until dawn.

But what’s even worse—what makes it so much worse—is how the howling drills into your head and starts pulling on deep, secret things in the brain.

The blind, hungry thing on four legs that lives in all of us.

I clapped my hands over my ears. Graves grabbed my arm, his fingers sinking in so hard it almost went numb, and hauled me toward the truck—still parked crosswise, but it had started up just fine earlier. Thank God for the engine-block heater.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped to pack.

Another long lean bullet-streak of fur bolted into the garage, its padded feet slithering on smooth concrete starred with oil droplets from a car long since vanished. Graves let out a smothered yell. I clutched at him like a girl at a scary movie hanging onto her jock boyfriend, and the thing actually lifted its lip and snarled at us before plunging past.

“They’re going to kill him!” I yelled.

“Better him than us!” Graves screamed back, and yanked me toward the truck.

The sky had gone livid. Little pinpricks of ice were showering down, lifting and massing on random eddies and swirls as the wind, confused, keened and turned in circles. Graves yanked the driver’s-side door open and clambered in, and I followed.

It’s not right to leave him there. It wasn’t. But Jesus, what else were we supposed to do? Because the werwulfen were even climbing on the roof, lean humanoid shapes running with fur, orange-yellow eyes like lamps. There were at least six of them, and one landed with a thump right in front of the truck and spread its lean, muscle-ropy arms, its black-gummed upper lip lifting and the thrum of its growl making the dashboard groan sharply.

Graves and I both screamed, high, oddly harmonized cries that would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious.

I jammed the key in the ignition and twisted so hard I almost bent it. The Chevy roused, its engine sound pale compared to the thunder rumbling around my house.

OhGodohGod—I smacked the lever into reverse and didn’t want to turn around to see where I was going. As if I could have anyway with the camper stuffed full of my life. The truck slewed and jolted back as the werwulf loped forward, tongue lolling and teeth gleaming. The cord for the engine-block heater popped free like a cable in a high wind.

Graves grabbed the dash as we plowed through the weak spot in the mountain of snowplow-piled ick. It was a lucky thing I hit right where I’d run into it coming home a few nights ago. The back end bore down, chains rasping, and I cut the wheel a little too hard. The truck groaned, shook itself like a dog coming out of water, and decided to settle.

I jammed it into “drive” and hesitated again. Christophe was in there. August had said he was all right, and —

“DRU!” Graves yelled, and I hit the gas. The chains bit and we lurched forward, but he was pointing out the windshield, as something long and sinuous, with thin membrane wings, landed on the hood and bonked itself a good one on the glass.

I screamed again, a short little bark because I’d lost all the air I ever breathed, and for one blinding second I remembered what had happened last night after my unconscious, sleepwalking body opened the window. How the thing’s tongue had pressed against mine, cold and nauseatingly slimy, tasting of spice and dead rotten ooze, like a Thanksgiving candle gone horribly wrong.

Like Christophe’s good smell, turned to badness.

Christophe, back in the house with the werwulfen. I was too busy to think about it.

I hit the windshield wipers. They smacked the mini-dreamstealer’s small wet snout, and for good measure I pushed the lever back and hoped the washer fluid wasn’t frozen. For some reason, it wasn’t, and it gushed up, spraying the thing.

It screeched, the sound scraping against the inside of my brain, and was flung aside as the wind crested again, the truck’s springs groaning as fingers of cold air pushed against its side. My breath came in short sharp puffs of white.

“Holy shit,” Graves whispered. “It had babies.”

That’s what Christophe said. Christophe. “OhGod,” I whispered back. “They’re going to kill him.”

“I thought he was going to kill you.” His teeth were chattering. Tiny round pellets of ice caught in his curls sparkled in the dimness; I flicked the headlights on. The street unreeled, and I saw the stop sign on the corner. Houses clustered around us, each of them with their porch lights on. Windows broke with sweet, sharp tinkling sounds, darkness crawling out from behind the blinds and oozing over jagged glass. The wind was suddenly full of thin wriggling things, diaphanous wings ragged and beating frantically as they dove for the truck.

“Hold on—” Snow slipped and slid under the wheels. I gave it some more gas. We were achieving a scorching twenty miles an hour—faster than it sounds with the wind howling like a lost soul, a sky the color of rotten grapes overhead, and winged snakes with dull gummy poisoned fangs trying to splat themselves through the windows.

I’m glad we’re not trying this in summer. The lunacy of the thought jerked a giggle out of me, a high-pitched, crazy little sound.

I goosed the gas pedal again; the stop sign was coming up fast, and I had to pick a direction.

Right or left?

Not much time. I racked my brain for geography, but the goddamn things wouldn’t stop splatting against the glass so I could think. Right or left? Rightorleftrightorleftrightorleft—

I jerked the wheel to the left, tapped the brake a little, and we started to slide. There was a smaller pile of snow, a hillock where the plow had scraped the slightly bigger road and blocked off the entrance to this one, and I had a mad moment of wondering if someone would get a stern talking-to once the neighbors called in and complained about not being able to get off their own street.