Strange Angels

One of the winged snakes hissed, a sound clearly audible through the windshield, and I suddenly knew without a doubt, the knowledge springing whole and complete and awful into my head, that there wouldn’t be any irate calls from anyone on my street. Ever. All the pretty houses that turned the cold shoulder to my house were only full of death and broken bodies, the little winged snakes tearing at flesh as they hatched. The mama snake might be dead or dying somewhere, but the babies were very much alive—and they were hungry.

Dru. What have you done?

Graves yelled something, but I had my hands full. The truck, unhappy with what I was asking it to do, fishtailed to see if I was paying attention. I got it back on track, bumping through the piled-high drift and feeling the front end bounce a bit. The chains bit again, the back end wallowing, and we pulled through onto the sanded road, traction suddenly giving me a whole new set of problems.

There was no traffic. The winged things shriek-hissed, battering themselves against metal and glass—I wondered if their gummy little teeth would do any damage to a tire and had to let off the brake as a skid developed, steered into it, the wheel twisting like a live thing in my hands.

Good one, Dru! Dad’s voice echoed in my head, as if he was sitting right next to me, teaching me what he called defensive driving. Physics is a bitch, ennit!

“It is.” I barely recognized my own voice, high and breathy. The skid eased, and the crunching sound was the bodies of the winged snakes. They were falling rapidly now, flopping on the icy road surface before we rolled right over them, at a whopping twenty-five miles an hour now. “It certainly is.”

“What?” Graves had both hands braced on the dash. The back was packed too solid to move much, but something rolled under the bench seat and I hoped it wasn’t the first aid kit. Or the field box. All we needed now was random gunfire.

Oh, please God, no. Christophe. Why was I worrying about him? Why was it okay to leave him behind, but not okay to leave Graves?

That’s not the right question, Dru. A slight hill sloped downward and the truck picked up speed, the horrible crunching noises reaching a peak as the wind moaned. I turned the wipers off—they weren’t doing anything and the snakes were falling like dead flies now. Tiny pellets of ice hit the windshield and bounced away.

The right question is where the werwulfen came from, and why they’re after Christophe. Work on that. But I had too much to deal with already.

Then, amazingly, a stoplight reared up ahead of us, and there was actual traffic on the cross-street. Not much, just a couple of cars, but the people inside probably didn’t know what to make of the things festooning the truck as we rolled through the green light. I let out a choked sound, realizing my cheeks were wet, and the streets snapped into a recognizable pattern behind my eyes. I was taking the bus route to school, probably because it was familiar.

Holy shit. Goddamn.

“Graves.” I had to cough to get my throat clear. The crunching under the wheels began to fade, serpent bodies running with thin black moisture as they melted off the car, decaying rapidly. “There’s a city map in here somewhere. It was on the seat. Find it and navigate me.”

“Yeah.” His voice broke. He sniffed, and I realized we were both crying—me steadily and messily, and him as quietly as he could. “Sure. Right. Fantastic. Where the hell are we going?”

Oh Lord, I don’t know. “Burke and 72^nd, out near the suburbs.”

“Okay. Sure. Why are we going there?” But he peeled his fingers off the dash and swiped at his eyes with his coat sleeve. I couldn’t take my white-knuckled hands off the wheel, but I wanted to. I wanted to reach over and comfort him.

I wanted someone to comfort me, too. “Because we won’t get out of town alive at this rate. Not on our own.” During the day. It’s still supposed to be day. The headlights cut a cone of brightness, and the streetlamps were on. The taste of oranges bloomed again in my mouth, terribly, wax coating my tongue. “That’s where we’ll find Christophe’s backup and an extraction point. We need backup. Backup is good. Getting out of town is even better.” God. Christophe. My throat hurt and my arm pulsed. I’d probably have finger marks all over me by tomorrow—if I saw tomorrow, that was.

“Great.” Paper crackled. Graves let out a hoarse sound, and I pretended not to notice. My own sobs shook everything about me but my eyes and my hands, stiffly clutching the wheel as if it was a life preserver. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I don’t know.” I can’t even guess.

CHAPTER 26

As if to add yet another layer of unreality, halfway there the sky lightened to depthless iron-gray in the space of a mile, as if we’d driven through some sort of porous wall and into normality again. Instead of little pinpricks of ice, dime-size snowflakes started whirling down, dancing to their own beat. The heater began to blow something other than freezer-draft, slowly warming up. My fingers were numb and I wished one of us had thought to throw a box of tissues in the car—wiping my nose was getting to be a necessity instead of just a nice thing to do.

Graves had finished crying and slumped against the seat, his hands loose and open in his lap. Driving actually wasn’t so bad if we stuck to the main streets, everything scraped and sanded, slippery but passable. I deliberately didn’t look at him.

I know that much about boys. They don’t like it when you watch them cry. Even if you’re still leaking yourself.

“What’s going on?” he said, finally. “Why didn’t they try to kill us? Those were the same things that bit me. Werwulf things.”

But the one that bit you belonged to a sucker, and we don’t know if these did. I nodded slightly, kept my eyes on the road. We still had three-quarters of a tank and the engine was warm now. “It was like they were driving us away.” I coasted to a stop at a red light, my fingers gripping the wheel so hard they ached. My head was still ringing, full of the peculiar clarity that follows a crying fit. “We’re going to get to the extraction point. Someone will be there. We’ll have to tell them what happened to Christophe. And they’ll be able to tell us what to do and get us out of here.” I hope.

The light turned green. I checked—the cross-street was deserted. There was a coffee shop on the corner, warm yellow shining through its windows but nobody moving inside. Streetlights burned, even though it was daylight. The snow was beginning to pick up. Our tire tracks stretched black behind us. I eased down on the gas.

“This is weird,” Graves said softly. “It’s like we’re the last people left on earth.”

I could have done without that thought. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t been thinking it myself. “Is it usually busier around here?”

“Yeah. That’s Marshall Street right there; it’s always hopping. Maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe we should stop there. Where I’ve got friends.” He wiped at his face. “I don’t trust whatever Christophe told you. Even if he checked out through your friend.”

I weighed the options. My head hurt with all the thinking I was asking it to do, and the tears clotting up my throat and threatening my eyes weren’t helping. “Anyone we find is just going to be in danger. We’re going to put them in danger. I might not trust Chris, but I trust August. He wouldn’t steer me wrong.”

“So what were the werwulfs doing?

“Werwulfen,” I corrected. How the hell should I know?

“Whatever. What were they doing? And those snake-things—”

“The snake-things were trying to get at us. But the werwulfen . . . I just don’t know. Maybe they were after Christophe, but the one that bit you, he wasn’t—I just don’t know, Graves. I’m sorry.” I got you into this. I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.