Strange Angels

by Lili St. Crow

  “They’re going to kill him!” I yelled.

  “Better him than us!” Graves screamed back, and yanked me toward the truck.

  The sky had gone livid. Little pinpricks of ice were showering down, lifting and massing on random eddies and swirls as the wind, confused, keened and turned in circles. Graves yanked the driver’s-side door open and clambered in, and I followed.

  It’s not right to leave him there. It wasn’t. But Jesus, what else were we supposed to do? Because the werwulfen were even climbing on the roof, lean humanoid shapes running with fur, orange-yellow eyes like lamps. There were at least six of them, and one landed with a thump right in front of the truck and spread its lean, muscle-ropy arms, its black-gummed upper lip lifting and the thrum of its growl making the dashboard groan sharply.

  Graves and I both screamed, high, oddly harmonized cries that would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious.

  I jammed the key in the ignition and twisted so hard I almost bent it. The Chevy roused, its engine sound pale compared to the thunder rumbling around my house.

  OhGodohGod—I smacked the lever into reverse and didn’t want to turn around to see where I was going. As if I could have anyway with the camper stuffed full of my life. The truck slewed and jolted back as the werwulf loped forward, tongue lolling and teeth gleaming. The cord for the engine-block heater popped free like a cable in a high wind.

  Graves grabbed the dash as we plowed through the weak spot in the mountain of snowplow-piled ick. It was a lucky thing I hit right where I’d run into it coming home a few nights ago. The back end bore down, chains rasping, and I cut the wheel a little too hard. The truck groaned, shook itself like a dog coming out of water, and decided to settle.

  I jammed it into “drive” and hesitated again. Christophe was in there. August had said he was all right, and—

  “DRU!” Graves yelled, and I hit the gas. The chains bit and we lurched forward, but he was pointing out the windshield, as something long and sinuous, with thin membrane wings, landed on the hood and bonked itself a good one on the glass.

  I screamed again, a short little bark because I’d lost all the air I ever breathed, and for one blinding second I remembered what had happened last night after my unconscious, sleepwalking body opened the window. How the thing’s tongue had pressed against mine, cold and nauseatingly slimy, tasting of spice and dead rotten ooze, like a Thanksgiving candle gone horribly wrong.

  Like Christophe’s good smell, turned to badness.

  Christophe, back in the house with the werwulfen. I was too busy to think about it.

  I hit the windshield wipers. They smacked the mini-dreamstealer’s small wet snout, and for good measure I pushed the lever back and hoped the washer fluid wasn’t frozen. For some reason, it wasn’t, and it gushed up, spraying the thing.

  It screeched, the sound scraping against the inside of my brain, and was flung aside as the wind crested again, the truck’s springs groaning as fingers of cold air pushed against its side. My breath came in short sharp puffs of white.

  “Holy shit,” Graves whispered. “It had babies.”

  That’s what Christophe said. Christophe. “OhGod,” I whispered back. “They’re going to kill him.”

  “I thought he was going to kill you.” His teeth were chattering. Tiny round pellets of ice caught in his curls sparkled in the dimness; I flicked the headlights on. The street unreeled, and I saw the stop sign on the corner. Houses clustered around us, each of them with their porch lights on. Windows broke with sweet, sharp tinkling sounds, darkness crawling out from behind the blinds and oozing over jagged glass. The wind was suddenly full of thin wriggling things, diaphanous wings ragged and beating frantically as they dove for the truck.

  “Hold on—” Snow slipped and slid under the wheels. I gave it some more gas. We were achieving a scorching twenty miles an hour—faster than it sounds with the wind howling like a lost soul, a sky the color of rotten grapes overhead, and winged snakes with dull gummy poisoned fangs trying to splat themselves through the windows.

  I’m glad we’re not trying this in summer. The lunacy of the thought jerked a giggle out of me, a high-pitched, crazy little sound.

  I goosed the gas pedal again; the stop sign was coming up fast, and I had to pick a direction.

  Right or left?

  Not much time. I racked my brain for geography, but the goddamn things wouldn’t stop splatting against the glass so I could think. Right or left? Rightorleftrightorleftrightorleft—

  I jerked the wheel to the left, tapped the brake a little, and we started to slide. There was a smaller pile of snow, a hillock where the plow had scraped the slightly bigger road and blocked off the entrance to this one, and I had a mad moment of wondering if someone would get a stern talking-to once the neighbors called in and complained about not being able to get off their own street.

  One of the winged snakes hissed, a sound clearly audible through the windshield, and I suddenly knew without a doubt, the knowledge springing whole and complete and awful into my head, that there wouldn’t be any irate calls from anyone on my street. Ever. All the pretty houses that turned the cold shoulder to my house were only full of death and broken bodies, the little winged snakes tearing at flesh as they hatched. The mama snake might be dead or dying somewhere, but the babies were very much alive—and they were hungry.

  Dru. What have you done?

  Graves yelled something, but I had my hands full. The truck, unhappy with what I was asking it to do, fishtailed to see if I was paying attention. I got it back on track, bumping through the piled-high drift and feeling the front end bounce a bit. The chains bit again, the back end wallowing, and we pulled through onto the sanded road, traction suddenly giving me a whole new set of problems.

  There was no traffic. The winged things shriek-hissed, battering themselves against metal and glass—I wondered if their gummy little teeth would do any damage to a tire and had to let off the brake as a skid developed, steered into it, the wheel twisting like a live thing in my hands.

  Good one, Dru! Dad’s voice echoed in my head, as if he was sitting right next to me, teaching me what he called defensive driving. Physics is a bitch, ennit!

  “It is.” I barely recognized my own voice, high and breathy. The skid eased, and the crunching sound was the bodies of the winged snakes. They were falling rapidly now, flopping on the icy road surface before we rolled right over them, at a whopping twenty-five miles an hour now. “It certainly is.”

  “What?” Graves had both hands braced on the dash. The back was packed too solid to move much, but something rolled under the bench seat and I hoped it wasn’t the first aid kit. Or the field box. All we needed now was random gunfire.

  Oh, please God, no. Christophe. Why was I worrying about him? Why was it okay to leave him behind, but not okay to leave Graves?

  That’s not the right question, Dru. A slight hill sloped downward and the truck picked up speed, the horrible crunching noises reaching a peak as the wind moaned. I turned the wipers off—they weren’t doing anything and the snakes were falling like dead flies now. Tiny pellets of ice hit the windshield and bounced away.

  The right question is where the werwulfen came from, and why they’re after Christophe. Work on that. But I had too much to deal with already.

  Then, amazingly, a stoplight reared up ahead of us, and there was actual traffic on the cross-street. Not much, just a couple of cars, but the people inside probably didn’t know what to make of the things festooning the truck as we rolled through the green light. I let out a choked sound, realizing my cheeks were wet, and the streets snapped into a recognizable pattern behind my eyes. I was taking the bus route to school, probably because it was familiar.

  Holy shit. Goddamn.

  “Graves.” I had to cough to get my throat clear. The crunching under the wheels began to fade, serpent bodies running with thin black moisture as they melted off the car, decaying rapidly. “There’s a city map in here
somewhere. It was on the seat. Find it and navigate me.”

  “Yeah.” His voice broke. He sniffed, and I realized we were both crying—me steadily and messily, and him as quietly as he could. “Sure. Right. Fantastic. Where the hell are we going?”

  Oh Lord, I don’t know. “Burke and 72nd, out near the suburbs.”

  “Okay. Sure. Why are we going there?” But he peeled his fingers off the dash and swiped at his eyes with his coat sleeve. I couldn’t take my white-knuckled hands off the wheel, but I wanted to. I wanted to reach over and comfort him.

  I wanted someone to comfort me, too. “Because we won’t get out of town alive at this rate. Not on our own.” During the day. It’s still supposed to be day. The headlights cut a cone of brightness, and the streetlamps were on. The taste of oranges bloomed again in my mouth, terribly, wax coating my tongue. “That’s where we’ll find Christophe’s backup and an extraction point. We need backup. Backup is good. Getting out of town is even better.” God. Christophe. My throat hurt and my arm pulsed. I’d probably have finger marks all over me by tomorrow—if I saw tomorrow, that was.

  “Great.” Paper crackled. Graves let out a hoarse sound, and I pretended not to notice. My own sobs shook everything about me but my eyes and my hands, stiffly clutching the wheel as if it was a life preserver. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t know.” I can’t even guess.

  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 72nd; 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. 72nd Street had turned into McGill Road briefly, then jagged and become 72nd 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.