Strange Angels

CHAPTER 12

The buses were still running. Chained up and slow as hell on their nighttime schedule, but they were still running in the right direction, and we had our first bit of luck catching the 53 almost as soon as we got to the stop across the main thoroughfare from the mall.

We looked normal enough, shivering and cold; bus drivers don’t look too closely if you don’t seem actively inebriated. A cab was a lost cause—it also occurred to me during the wait at the bus stop that cabbies are probably inordinately curious about their passengers. That was no good.

I watched my house from the corner, shivering in my boots. Graves slumped against me. He’d been almost okay on the bus, but now his head hung and strings of wet curly hair fell in his eyes, curtaining his milk-pale face. His eyes were dilated again, and his lips were close to blue.

Snow in my front yard was pristine. The truck was still missing from the driveway. The light in the living room was on, a rich golden glow in the gloomy orange snow-city light. Thick flakes of white whirled down; both of us were covered in the stuff because I’d dragged Graves off the bus two streets away. He’d almost pitched headfirst into a drift, and we had to walk in the road because of the snowplows racking up mountains of frozen, slushy chunks of ick in the gutters. The sidewalks were damn near iced over and impassable, and sand crunched under my boots. Our tracks would be obliterated in less than half an hour.

Can werwulfen track through snow? Especially if they have a blood trail—I’ll bet they can smell it. I shivered at the thought. I didn’t even want to think about what the burning dog and the werwulf had been looking for.

Because there was only one answer for that, wasn’t there? It was an answer I’d run up against on the bus, the gun a cold weight in my pocket and Graves slumped against me, his head bobbling a little bit as we were bounced around.

It looked like nobody had messed with the house. It looked like the shooting had gone unnoticed. Snow made sound carry itself around weird, and the house had been pretty closed up. I wondered if anyone would have found me yet if the zombie had done what it set out to do.

Now there was a nice, happy thought.

There was no cover, but I didn’t want to struggle around through the drifts to the back. For one thing, I didn’t want to see the shattered debris of the door the zombie had come through any sooner than I had to. For another, Graves was slumping more and more heavily each passing second. I was doing okay keeping him moving, but I didn’t feel up to carrying him if his legs gave out.

“Come on.” I didn’t say it nicely. I all but dragged him up over the mountain range of road-snow piled at the bottom of our driveway. Then it was slogging through snow midway up my shins, each step dragged down with powdery, icy weight. My nose dripped and my cheeks were raw. My fingers felt like frozen sausages. Graves started making a thin noise in the back of his throat, like he was going to pass out.

I didn’t blame him. I bet his shoulder hurt like hell. Wulf bites are messy; they grind a lot when they clamp down. He was lucky to still have some use of his arm, his hand tucked limply in his pocket to keep him from looking like Frankenstein’s monster. The wound had been still raw and messy when I peeled up the bandage to check it, just after we got off the bus; a good sign for him not changing just yet but a bad sign for him possibly staying out of unconsciousness.

I dug in my coat pocket for my keys. “Don’t you dare pass out on me now, soldier,” I hissed. The strap of my bag cut into the space between my shoulder and neck, and with Graves’s unwounded arm over my shoulders I felt like Atlas holding up the world. I was so tired even my eyelashes hurt. My back was a solid chunk of pain, my side flaring with a red sensation, just under a really bad stitch, with each breath.

The key went into the doorknob; it took me two tries and a round of cursing before I could get the deadbolt open, too. I pushed open the door and was faced with the remnants of zombie stink, not too bad considering how we both smelled now. The house’d had time to air out through the back, I guess.

Graves stumbled. I propped him against the hallway wall and closed the door. Then I got out my gun and I swept the house just like Dad had taught me. Every place we lived we went through the drill, covering fire angles and searching as a two-man team. He also made me do it alone while he timed me. I’d only done it four or five times with the stopwatch in this place, but that’s enough when you’ve been doing something like that for years.

The living room was a shambles, but the only sign remaining of the zombie was thick, fine powder-ash ground into the carpet, a meaningless smudge inside tattered clothes. There was a bullet hole in the wall, and another one lower down I hadn’t noticed before.

A little paint and spackle will fix that right up. I shivered, let out a shapeless sighing sound like a sob. My nose ran, clear snot dripping down my lip. I wiped at it with my sodden coat sleeve and continued.

The kitchen was icy and unfamiliar in the dark. The back door hung on its hinges, sound except for a huge hole in the middle of it. There was plywood in the garage—I could nail something up there and hang a blanket over it for insulation. The enclosed porch was cold and dank, smelling like a root cellar, and the glassed-in screen door was miraculously undamaged. I wrestled it closed through a wad of wet snow and looked for something to brace it with, found exactly nothing, and gave up. The snow would drift up against it and keep it closed if I was lucky. Besides, if we had to get out in a hurry, I couldn’t lock or block it. I still hadn’t swept the upstairs.

Upstairs everything was as I’d left it. The whole house was still.

Quiet as a tomb.

Downstairs, Graves’s eyes were half-closed. “Nice place,” he mumbled, but the words had a slurred quality I didn’t like. His lips were bluer than I liked, too. Pale drops of sweat and water stood out on the ashen gray his skin had turned into, and his pupils were so dilated I could barely see the irises, just dark holes.

I locked the front door and got him upstairs, bullying him up each step. I was sweating and clammy by the time we finished. Then the hard part started. I got him out of his wet clothes, ignoring the snickers as I stripped him down to his tighty-whiteys. He went into my bed under the blankets, and his eyes closed the rest of the way. He sighed just like an exhausted little kid and was out.

I dropped my bag, shucked my coat, and started struggling down to sports bra and panties. I didn’t think he’d die of hypothermia—he’d been bitten, and the fever from the bite might help.

What, so he can tear open your throat when he changes?

I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was so cold I didn’t feel cold anymore, which was a bad sign. I just felt tired. So goddamn tired.

I climbed into bed, stacking the blankets on top of us. Then I took him in my arms, shivering. He was icy, I wasn’t much better, and he was making that thin, hurt sound again. I realized I was lying on his shoulder and tried to rearrange myself, managing to move so I wasn’t grinding down on his injury. His shirt, torn up and used as a bandage, was chilly and tacky-wet.

“What’re y’doin’?” His tongue was too thick for his mouth. I hoped he wasn’t changing. His skin was smooth enough against mine.

All the wulfen I’d ever seen were bad shadows in the rearview mirror, or looking just like everyone else who hung out in a bar catering to the Real World. In other words, weird as all get-out. If he changed . . .

I couldn’t even finish the thought. My bones had turned to lead bars, along with my eyelids and even my wet hair. If we both died of hypothermia, all of this would be academic anyway.

Graves shifted uneasily, stilled. The prickle of hairiness would give away the change, and the sound of bones crackling. Dad had talked about it—the sound of their bones reshaping, the snarling, the fur rippling out.

God, I hope that’s not happening. I let out a long, shaking breath. “Warming you up.”

“Jesus.” His eyes dropped closed, struggled open. “Y’cold.”

“So are you.” The gun was on the nightstand. If he changed, he’d probably start to scream when his bones began to remodel themselves. I’d have enough time to take care of the problem.

Dru, you’re not thinking straight.

I knew I wasn’t. But I was so completely exhausted.

The wind started to moan outside, but inside my room everything was hushed. My fingers and toes hurt, needles rammed all the way through flesh and bone. I hoped we weren’t going to lose toes to frostbite. But it wasn’t as cold as it could have been if it was still snowing, was it?

I couldn’t think. My head was full of mud. I should have warmed him up and gotten something over the hole in the back door. Snow would trickle into the porch if the screen door didn’t stay closed, and I’d have a hell of a time cleaning it up.

A little warmth began to steal back into me, then a little more. Graves’s cheeks flushed, and he started to sweat. He stopped making that noise, and would jerk himself awake every time his eyelids fell. The time between those little twitches got longer and longer, his breathing evening out.

“Dru?” he finally whispered.

“What?” I roused myself with an effort. Tired. Got to get up and fix the back door. Then have to think of something. Something I have to do.

I couldn’t remember.

“Are you naked?” His eyes fell shut again, and he made a little hitching sound like a snore.

Oh, for Christ’s sake. But I fell asleep before I could work up the energy to be pissed off.