Strange Angels

“I thought he was going to kill you.” He stared out the windshield as I stole a corner-of-the-eye glance at him. “I wanted to tear his throat out.”

I don’t think he was going to kill me. But he certainly wasn’t playing nice. Graves sounded like he was having a hard time with the idea of anyone killing anything—I knew exactly how that felt. So I decided to change the subject. “How did you get my keys?”

“He dropped them.” Silence wrapped around us both. Empty streets in the middle of the day, not a soul to be seen—even wrapped up and picking their way along the sidewalks. “God, this is weird.”

You bet it is. Can a sucker do this? Change the outside world? Is that possible? Or are people just feeling the bad outside and wanting to stay in? The tires crunched. Snow kept falling, getting thicker by the minute. “Dig under the seat. There’re a few metal boxes. One’s blue, that’s first aid. The second one’s red, you don’t want that either. The one under me is gray, and it’s got a gun. We want that one.”

He waited for a few seconds. “I suppose that would be a good idea. I don’t want to mess with it, though.”

“Just get it out.” I probably didn’t want him messing with it either, if he wasn’t used to firearms. “I’ll handle the shooting, I guess. You just turn up the superhero.”

He didn’t find it at all funny. “I’m serious, Dru. I saw him hurting you, and I just—”

I know. “Did he hurt you?”

“Nah. I broke the window, though.” A jagged, bitter little laugh. He fiddled with the seat belt, and I thought of telling him to buckle up. “I was really worried about that, too. Go figure. I saw him hurting you and it was like . . . something inside me woke up, and I wanted to kill him. Really kill him, not just like saying you want to kill someone. You know? Like I wasn’t even myself anymore.”

“Oh.” What did you say to something like that? My heart gave a funny little skip. “I’m glad you’re here. This would he horrible on my own.”

I expected a flip answer and a flash of humor, but he just slumped further into the seat, bent down, and started digging underneath. “Yeah, well.”

Well, you can’t expect him to be very happy about this, Dru. My eyes flicked to the driver’s-side mirror for a second, catching . . . something. I kept looking, but it was gone and didn’t come back. Just a shadow. The ringing in my head wouldn’t go away. My shoulder hurt, and my arm wasn’t too happy either. “Are we close?”

“Turn south on 72^nd; it’s two streets up. Then just follow that until we hit the suburbs.” He curled himself up to half-lay on the seat, peering underneath and digging for the field box. “How often does something like this happen to you?”

“Not very,” I admitted. I swiped at my burning cheek with the back of my hand. Tears rose again. I pushed them down, wished I had a hankie or something. Dad always had a hankie. Most of them had his initials embroidered on them in Gran’s neat, careful stitches. “More like never. Dad was always around.”

“I’m sorry about your dad, Dru.” He peered up awkwardly, his head almost in my lap. His eyes were very green, and since he wasn’t a white boy, he missed out on the blotchy part of crying.

I attempted a half-smile, ended up with a weird grimace. “I’m sorry you got bit.” I rubbed at my eyes again. The snow hissed under the tires, clumped on the windshield wipers.

“We’re sure I’m not going to get all hairy like those other things, right?” He tried a smile that looked like it hurt and fished out the field box.

Another shadow flickered in the mirror. Was it nerves, or was there really something back there? I risked going a little faster. “Absolutely. Even Christophe said so, and it was in the Ars Lupica, too.” Dad paid good money for that book and never found a chance to use it. I wish he was here to see it useful now.

I flinched. Dad. Christophe. Both gone. There had to have been at least a dozen werwulfen.

Why hadn’t they attacked us?

Graves sat back up. “Jesus,” he said quietly.

I heartily agreed. And the snow began to fall in rivers.

CHAPTER 27

Way out in suburbia, the streets had naked trees clutching at the sky, their cold limbs grasping at soft white ribbons and sometimes festooned with icicles. Some actually had Christmas lights up, though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet. Or maybe they just hadn’t taken them down from last year.

The streets were scraped and sanded out here too, but they were fast blurring under the onslaught of snow. 72^nd Street had turned into McGill Road briefly, then jagged and become 72^nd Avenue, narrowing, winding, and branching off like an artery getting further and further from the heart. The houses got a little bigger, the sidewalks broad and scraped clean. I saw flashes of fields, too—weird blank expanses of flatland, scarred only by the lines of ditches and more naked, shivering trees. The wind howled. Graves played with his half- empty pack of Winstons, glancing longingly at the window every now and again. If the wind wouldn’t have torn a cigarette out of his hand, he could have had all the smokes he wanted. I might have even joined him, no matter how bad it smelled.

And, you know, if I could have forgotten the slithering, thumping sounds of the little winged snakes hitting the truck. I suspected that might make me nervous about rolling the windows down for a good long while.

The shadows kept flitting behind us. Whatever it was could have overtaken us if it was really serious about it. We were barely crawling, and I’d started to shake, hungry and sick from adrenaline all at once.

I would have given a lot for another cheeseburger just about then. Or a strawberry shake. Or anything, really. Even some stale granola.

But not apple pie. The thought made me feel even sicker.

“There’s Compass Avenue.” Graves shivered, though it was warm enough with the heater blasting. “Next comes Wendell Road, and then Burke. If the map’s right.”

I eased off the gas, ready for the truck to misbehave at any moment. The dashboard clock was still set to Florida time, an hour ahead. I was getting sick of this polar bear shit. “How do people live up here? This is insane.”

“They dress up a lot. Do their hair. And drink. Beat their kids.” Graves shifted nervously. “They beat their kids a lot.” We rolled through two more intersections, then slowed to a creepy-crawl, the engine turning over smoothly, wipers muffled. “Why the hell are we coming out here again?”

“Because we won’t make it out of town before dark on our own. It’s already two in the afternoon.” I peered at the sky, squinted out the windshield again.

“We could make it. I’ve got money. We could just get the hell out of here. We could take a bus if the truck won’t—”

“A bus. Like we wouldn’t get caught at the station waiting for the next one when the sun goes down. For God’s sake, Graves, we need help.” I wondered if I should tell him that I was seeing little darting things in the mirror. He didn’t need that to worry about. “Huh.”

We slowed down.

Burke and 72^nd was actually a three-way intersection. Directly in front of us, where the two roads split to make a Y, a stone wall rose. There was nothing else around; the houses had petered out half a block ago and open space—weedy lots or fields, who could tell—ran away on both sides. Just over the wall on the right, a red-tiled roof peeked, little bits of color peeping out under the snow.

“Burke and 72^nd. It’s got to be that place.” I goosed the gas, pointed us toward the right fork. “Jesus. Talk about conspicuous.”

“I’ve never been out this way.” Graves drummed his fingers on the door. “It smells bad.”

Well, you’re the one with the super nose now. “Bad how?”

“Rust again. And something rotting. Like a dumpster in summer.”

I sniffed deeply but didn’t smell anything. The ringing in my head was a constant; I was used to thinking through it now. I didn’t taste anything other than hunger and the thin metal tang of exhaustion. My back hurt, my