Strange Angels

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.

“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.