Strange Angels sa-1

by Lili St. Crow

  Amazingly, he smiled at me. “You’re bossy.” His pupils were still huge, but a little color had begun to come back into his face, especially along his cheekbones. “I like bossy chicks.”

  Jesus. At least someone around here was feeling better. “Shut up. You’re going to have to do exactly what I tell you to do. Got it?” Or we’ll get arrested. Or maybe just killed.

  “Sure. You do this to all your dates?” It was a type of courage over a screaming well of panic. He was really a brave kid, or maybe it was just the shock.

  “I don’t date.” I never stay anyplace long enough to date. “Is that silver?” I pointed to his earring, forgetting I still had the gun in my hand until he flinched. He covered it well.

  “I guess so. The guy I bought it from said it was.”

  “What about that? The chain?” This time I used my left hand to point at his necklace. My bag’s down in his room. I need my bag.

  It was too risky. All of this was too risky. If I went back down to Graves’s little bolt-hole, we could be caught by the cops (bad) or caught by the possibly rabid werwulf (even worse), healed and ready for round two. They recovered quick. I had to get both of us out of here.

  I need my bag. The urge was like the urge to pee. I wanted my bag the way little kids want a hug after they’ve scraped their knees, the way you want sunshine after a long rainy month, or a drink of water in the desert.

  “The chain’s silver.” Some sense came back into his eyes. Giving him questions to answer was a good idea.

  “Good. I’m going to go get my bag. You stay here.”

  That made his eyes wide and wild, the pupils shrinking so the green irises showed. “Don’t leave me here!” He scraped himself away from the stall, his voice bouncing off tiles.

  I shushed him again. “Look,” I whispered fiercely, “you don’t know how to move under cover. I’m going to go down and get my bag. I’ll come back for you and I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  “It’s not safe here?” Sarcasm tinted his tone, but at least he said it quietly. “Jesus. What was that thing?”

  “Werwulf. I told you.” I looked nervously at the entrance, hoping nobody heard us, hoping nobody was in this part of the mall. Were they gone? It wasn’t like the cops to clear a scene in under an hour. Then again, if it just looked like a really weird vandalism thing, they might not stay too long. There had to be plenty of other stuff happening out in the world tonight. Bad weather always strains the emergency infrastructure.

  I chewed my already-sore lower lip, tried to think. I needed my bag, and I needed to get us both out of the mall and back to the only safe place I knew. How would Dad do it?

  If I thought about it that way it seemed almost doable. Almost. Except for the not-having-any-idea-what-to-do-next part.

  “Stay here.” I was already thinking about cover, plotting out routes and backtracks.

  Graves grabbed my arm with surprising strength. “Dru. Don’t leave me. Please.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him to shut up and do what I told him, but then I got a good look at him. Deathly pale, the high spots of feverish color still standing out on his cheeks, about ready to fall over by the way he swayed on his feet, his fingers biting into my upper arm. His other arm hung limp and useless.

  If I left him here in the girls’ bathroom, I might come back and find him unresponsive or already changing. I struggled to think clearly, but my clear-thinker seemed busted. I should have left him there. Dad might have shot him just to cut down on the variables; he would definitely be telling me to get a move on. The longer I stayed here, the more dangerous it was.

  I didn’t have anyone else, and I was the reason Graves had been bit. It must hurt like hell.

  “Dru.” He couldn’t speak louder than a sandpapery whisper, and his fingers dug in with feverish strength. I was going to bruise there, too—if I hadn’t already. There didn’t seem to be an unbruised place on my body. We were both in pretty bad shape.

  Another thought rose: Graves’s arm awkwardly around me while I cried. He hadn’t asked questions or tried any funny business.

  I couldn’t leave him here.

  “All right,” I told us both. “Stay right behind me. Move the way I do. We’re going to try to stay under cover. How many different ways can you get me down to your room?”

  The relief crossing his transparent face bit me hard in the chest. If he hadn’t been so pale, he would have looked like Christmas. “Four or five. Take your pick.” He swayed, caught himself, and tried to straighten. “I’ll keep up. Just don’t leave me.”

  Four or five different routes was good news, if I kept him conscious enough to navigate me. “Okay.” I tried again to think clearly, failed just as miserably as before. “I need my bag, and our best option’s a bus route that’s still going out east. Are any going to be running?”

  “The 53.” He nodded, his hair flopping in his face. Even his nose looked pale, for God’s sake. “Runs all night, even when it snows. I can get you there.”

  I took an experimental step toward the entrance. He swayed after me, and I thought I had maybe twenty minutes before I had to hold him up.

  Move it, Dru. “Okay,” I said again. “You and me, Graves. Let’s go.”

  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.

  CHAPTER 13

  I woke up with a pounding headache, stiff and sore all over, with a back made of torn-up iron bars and something wrong with my left arm because Graves’s heavy goddamn head was lying on it. I sat bolt-upright and flinched as still, cold air met bare skin. I was sweating—he was warm. Sweat cooled rapidly on my back and shoulders. My mouth tasted like day-old coffee mixed with ash.

  Graves was on his back. He didn’t protest when I scrambled painfully out of the bed, because he was utterly, deeply asleep, his hair lank over his face, his nose lifting proudly. The very, very slight suggestion of epicanthic folds made his closed eyes exotic, the fan of his charcoal lashes even and regular against his cheekbones. The bandage was crusted with blood and something yellow, traceries of blue-black spreading along the vein map up his neck and down his arm, onto his chest.

  Doesn’t look good, does it?

  I looked around for clothes. I still smelled traces of the burning thing from yesterday all over me, but I needed to get something on my shivering skin. I was also hungry as hell.

  First things first, though. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, scooped the gun off the table, and went into Dad’s room. I came back with nylon rope—good for rappelling, tying down a load in a pickup, and, not so incidental
ly, for tying up a kid who might turn into a werwulf.

  Werwulfen, especially new ones, have a real problem with silver. That part of pop culture is real enough. The chain around his neck wasn’t rubbing red blisters into his skin, which was a good sign. Neither was the skull earring, pressed against his cheekbone by the way his head was turned slightly to the side. A pulse beat strong and steady in his throat. He was skinny but had a lot of good muscle—and if he started to change on me, he would have the kind of hysterical strength that could throw me across the room without thinking twice about it. Or even noticing.

  He’d be too busy looking for his first chunk of raw meat.

  What am I going to tie him to? The mattress? Jesus, a fine time to wish I had a four-poster.

  Fortunately, Dad taught me a lot about knots. A trucker’s hitch will cinch someone down—it just gets tighter the more you struggle—and if he couldn’t get enough leverage, he couldn’t come after me. First I trussed his wrists and elbows, then his knees and ankles; then I ran four more lines between the mattress and the box spring. That was a trick. Each one I secured with a trucker’s hitch.

  If he had to go to the bathroom, he was out of luck. I could always get a new mattress. I couldn’t buy a new trachea.

  With that done, I washed up. No hot shower for me—I couldn’t afford the time. But clean clothes and a scrubbed-clean face does wonders for any girl’s mood—even if that face is dead white, hectic flares of color on the cheeks, and with pupils wide enough to look half-wild. The zit on my temple had vanished, and no more seemed to be rising.

  Go figure. My hair was a total loss, though. Humidity and cold made me look like the Bride of Frankenstein, except without the cool white zigzags.

  That made me think of the streak-headed werwulf, and I shivered. I found a dry pair of sneakers because my boots were still sopping wet, and was ready to start solving problems.

  Downstairs, snow had spilled in through the screen door on the little porch, and it was bastard cold. I looked longingly at the box of Cheerios on the counter—my stomach growled just thinking about it—but went to hunt in the garage for plywood instead. My scrounger’s luck was good, and in less than ten minutes I had the snow cleared away and plywood bracing the screen door; I nailed more plywood up outside over the hole in the actual back door. I swept up broken glass, listening to the wind moan outside. My fingers were numb and my breath made little clouds in front of my face. I began to regret ever waking up.