Strange Angels

CHAPTER 28

I had my face in Graves’s narrow chest, and I was okay with that. He smelled good, and he was warm. The tears had trickled away, and his chin still rested on the top of my head. The windows were screened with breath-fog and with snow clinging to every surface it could find.

I could hear Graves’s heart, too, ticking away. Just like a clock, but without the eerie meanness of the sucker’s pulse. It was a clean sound, and it meant I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t been this close to anyone in a while.

Except him.

The door opened and a blast of chilly air scoured the inside of the truck cab. Someone climbed into the driver’s side. It was a bit of a crowd, but the truck was big and the bench seat was long.

There was a long silence, a jingling sound as someone touched the keys in the ignition. Graves said nothing, so I figured it was okay.

And really, I didn’t care. The whole world could have gone up in flames at that point and I wouldn’t have given a rat’s patootie.

A breath of apples touched the cold stillness. “Please tell me she’s all right,” Christophe finally said.

“She’s okay.” Graves didn’t move. His chin settled more firmly atop my head and his arms tightened a fraction, that was all. “A bit beat up, but still breathing. She seems okay.”

“Thank God.” The djamphir let out a long, shaky breath. There was a scraping sound, and the engine turned over. The truck settled into running again, and the heater came on. Cool air poured through the vents. “Thank God again.”

“What happens now?” Graves wanted to know. I did too, but I didn’t feel like picking my head up and looking at either of them.

A slight sound of wet material as Christophe shrugged. “I take you out in the field and you get extracted. She’ll go to the Schola. I’m going to vanish.”

“Because there’s a traitor,” Graves supplied, and I was glad he was talking so I didn’t have to.

“Yes.” Christophe laughed, another bitter little sound. “This was my safe zone. There was no way Sergej could have known about this place, or that she would be coming here, unless someone in the Order told him. And someone in the Order sent the directive to set the wulfen on me back at her house. They didn’t realize I wasn’t him.” He sighed. “If I had been him, you two would have been dead by the time they got there. Juan—the yellow-eyed wulf you met—is fit to be tied. He was just following orders, but the directive’s disappeared. Someone’s covering their tracks.” He shifted a little on the seat. I wondered if he was still bleeding. “We’ve got to get her out of here.”

“So you’re sending us somewhere you know there’s a traitor.” Graves’s chin dipped even further, resting harder on the top of my head.

I thought about all this, felt nothing but a faint weary surprise.

“I’ve got friends at the Schola; they’ll watch over her just as I would. She’ll be perfectly safe. And while she’s there, she can help me find whoever’s feeding information to Sergej. She’s been drafted.”

Graves tensed. “What if she doesn’t want to?”

“Then you won’t last a week out there on your own. If Ash doesn’t find you, someone else will. The secret’s out. If Sergej knows, other suckers know there’s another svetocha. They’ll hunt her down and rip her heart out.” The windshield wipers flicked on. “Dru? Do you hear me? I’m sending you somewhere safe, and I’ll be in touch.”

“I think she hears you.” Graves sighed. “What about her truck? And all her stuff?”

“I’ll make sure they get to the Schola too. The important thing is to get her out of here before the sun goes down and Sergej can rise renewed. He’s not dead, just driven into a dark hole and very angry.”

“How are we going to—”

“Shut up.” He didn’t say it harshly or unkindly, but Graves did shut up. “Dru? You’re listening.”

Oh, God, leave me alone. But I raised my head, looked at the dash. There really was no option. Hair fell in my face, the curls slicked down with damp, behaving for once. “Yeah.” It sounded like I had something caught in my throat. The word was just a husk of itself. “I heard.”

“You were lucky. You ever put yourself in danger like that again and I’ll make you regret it. Clear?”

He sounded just like Dad. The familiarity was a ragged spike in my chest. “Clear,” I managed around it. My entire body ached, even my hair. I was wet and cold and the memory of the sucker’s dead eyes and oddly wrong, melodious voice burrowed into my brain. It wouldn’t let go.

That thing killed my father. Turned him into a zombie. And Mom . . . “My mother.” The same flat, husky tone. Shock. Maybe I was in shock. I’d heard a lot about shock from Dad.

Silence crackled, but then Christophe took pity on me. Maybe. Or maybe he figured I had a right to know, and that I’d listen to him now.

When he spoke, his voice was husky too, whether with pain or with the cold I couldn’t guess. “She was svetocha. Decided to give it all up, stop hunting, married a nice jarhead from the sticks and had a kid. But the nosferatu don’t forget, and they don’t stop playing the game because we pick up our marbles and go home. She got rusty and she got caught away from sanctuary, drawing a nosferat away from her home and her baby.” He put the truck in gear. The windshield was clearing rapidly. “I’m . . . sorry.”

“What else do you know?” I pulled away from Graves, his arm falling back down to his side. He slumped, looking acutely uncomfortable, a raccoon-mask of bruising beginning to puff up around his eyes. His nose was definitely broken.

“Go to the Schola and find out. They’ll train you, show you how to do things you’ve only dreamed of. God knows you’re so close to fully blooming, and once you do . . .” Christophe stared out the windshield, his profile as clean and severe as ever. His eyes were bright enough to glow even through the gray daylight. Drying blood coated his face, a trickle of fresh red sliding from a cut along his hairline. He was absolutely soaked in the stuff, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. “And when you hear from me, I’ll set you a challenge worthy of your talents. Like finding out who almost got you killed here.”

The truck was still running like a dream. Good old American steel. Dad’s billfold sat in my jacket pocket, a heavy, accusing lump.

Christophe measured off a space on the wheel between two fingertips, looked intently at it. “So what about it, Dru? Be a good girl and go back to school?”

Why was he even asking? Like I had anywhere else to go. But there was another question. “What about Graves?”

The kid in question glanced at me. I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or not. But I meant it. I wasn’t going anywhere without him.

He really was all I had. That and a locket, and Dad’s billfold, and a truck full of stuff.

A shadow crossed Christophe’s face. The pause was just long enough for me to figure out what he thought of me even asking that question, and how hard he was weighing the likelihood that I might be difficult. Or just letting me know I didn’t have anywhere else to go. “He can go with you. There are wulfen there, one or two other loup-garou. He’ll be an aristocrat. They’ll teach him too.”

That’s all right then. I nodded. My neck ached with the movement. “Then I’ll go.”

“Good.” Christophe took his foot off the brake. “And for the record, next time I ask for the keys, hand them over.”

I didn’t think that merited a response. Graves scooched a little closer to me, and I didn’t even think about it. I put my arms around him and hugged. I didn’t care if it hurt my arm and my ribs and my neck and pretty much every other part of me, my heart most of all.

When you’re wrecked, that’s the only thing to do, right? Hold on to whatever you can.

Hold on hard.

We bounced out through the gingerbread gates, which were knocked inward, the wrought iron curling like it had been in a fire. Christophe turned left, tapped the gas, and we bumped out onto the road. The stone wall continued to our left, snow falling thick and fast. The sky, however, was brighter. You could finally tell there was sunlight up there, instead of just a flat pan of aluminum.

“It looks different now,” I said, stupidly.

“Sergej.” It was all Christophe needed to say, and I shut my mouth.

What else could a sucker do?

Had Dad been chasing him all along? Because he’d killed Mom?

What else was I going to find out at this Schola? How to walk on snow without leaving a track, how to float while I fought?

Too bad I wouldn’t learn what I really wanted to know. I had a sneaking feeling I wouldn’t ever learn what I really wanted to know.

As soon as the stone wall ended to our left, he cut the wheel. I braced myself—there were ditches out here, and deep ones, running alongside the roads—but the truck merely bumped a little, up and over, and we were swimming through a wheel-deep sea of snow. The truck jounced and whined, and the cracked windshield was still a little foggy with all of us breathing hard.

We jolted and swam for a long time; then Christophe made a quick inquiring movement with his head. The blond highlights had slid back through his hair, little bits of them visible through clotted, drying blood. He didn’t seem too bruised, though. “Ah.” He let off the gas, and the truck rolled to a stop. “That should be transport now. Get out and wait for them.”

“Here?” Graves didn’t think much of the idea. “You’re going to leave us in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Oh God, don’t argue. I pulled at his coat. “Yeah. Sure.” I reached for the door handle, pulled it. The door swung open with a protesting creak, and snow puffed in on an arctic breath. The temperature was dropping. My nose was full, but I didn’t want to think of what. “Whatever you say, Christophe.”

I didn’t mean it to sound snarky. Really, I didn’t.

And besides, I could hear what Christophe could. A thwopping, thudding sound I’ve heard on a lot of TV shows late at night.

“Dru.” Christophe leaned over the seat, his mouth twisting down. I couldn’t smell apple pie now, and part of me was vaguely glad about that. “I’m sorry. I—”

I didn’t want to hear it. He hadn’t told me everything, but I’d left him for dead. I guess we were about even, especially after he took on something so old and so powerful. Something that wanted to kill me.

Something that would have killed me.

What do you say when someone takes on a really badass, murdering sucker for you? There just aren’t words for that.

“See you around, Chris.” I pulled at Graves; he slid out behind me without protesting. It was like agony to stand upright again, my hamstrings and glutes singing in pain, my neck like a solid bar of crying steel. I grabbed my bag, too. Half my body groaned in protest when our feet sank into knee-high snow, and I slammed the truck door on whatever Christophe wanted to say next.

The truck idled, and the thopping sound got closer. It hovered into view—a red-and-white helicopter, the only blot of color in the wasteland around us. The stone wall was in the distance, swallowed up in white, and the snow was coming down so heavily even the city in the distance, or the houses a few blocks away, wasn’t visible. Fierce cold swallowed my sneakers and stung my calves.

White spray fumed up as the helicopter hovered for about twenty seconds, its downdraft scraping snow away before it touched down. I gingerly ducked through my bag’s strap, held up an arm to shield my eyes, and almost missed it when a hatch opened on the side and a figure leaped down, bent over, and scuttled for us.

The truck pulled away. I still had the gun in one hand. For the life of me I couldn’t remember if I’d clicked the safety on. I looked down to check, found it was on, and the scuttling figure reached us.

It was a brown-eyed kid in an orange parka, a thatch of curly brown hair filling up with snow because he’d shoved the fleecy hood back. “Holy shit!” he yelled over the sound of the ’copter. “You’d better give me that.”

Whatever you say. I handed the gun over. He checked it expertly and made it vanish under his parka. “Don’t worry, I’ll give it back. Come on, we don’t have much time.” He waved, way up over his head, at the retreating truck, and then reached out to grab my arm.

I twitched, Graves stiffened, and Orange Parka’s hand stopped in midair. He turned it into a beckoning motion, like a mama duck trying to pull recalcitrant ducklings along.

“Sorry about that. We just got scrambled half an hour ago; I’m all excited. Come on.” His voice broke, reedy against the onslaught of the helicopter’s noise, and we trudged through the snow after him, bending almost double when he did. My hair tried to lift up and strangle me in the downdraft, and the hatch on the side of the ’copter opened again. There was a step. I put my foot on it, grabbed the handles, and Graves boosted me. I almost creamed my head a good one against the top of the hatch, and wondered if the rotor blades would grab my hair.

The space was cramped and full of weird angles, but it was warmer than outside. I wedged myself in a part-bench seat that looked like it was made for a third-grader, and Graves piled in, wedging his taller frame beside me. The pilot didn’t even look at us, and the hands on the controls were bigger and thicker than mine, though they looked young and smooth-skinned.

Jesus, how many teenagers are doing this sort of thing? I strangled a tired, half-hysterical snort-giggle—my nose was still full. Graves reached over and grabbed my hand, and the curly-headed kid hopped in and closed the hatch. The noise dropped, but not by much. He reached up and whapped the pilot twice on the shoulder, and the helicopter immediately lifted, whining.

My stomach turned over, hard.

“Hi,” the curly-headed kid called, dropping into the little jump seat behind the pilot’s chair. His hands moved with ease and familiarity, buckling himself in like it was the most natural thing in the world. He had a snub nose, freckles, and a wide innocent grin. “I’m Cory. Welcome to the Order. You must be Dru Anderson. We’re really excited to meet you.”

I closed my eyes, collapsed against a porthole showing the white earth receding like a bad dream, and cried. Graves clutched at my hand, his palm sweating, and he didn’t let go.