Strange Angels

CHAPTER 25

As soon as I woke up the next morning, grainy-eyed and feeling like I’d been beaten with a lead pipe, I stumbled downstairs and ate some cereal standing up. Graves got up while I was doing that, took one long look at me, and headed for the living room. I heard him say something to Christophe, and they both went out the front door.

The smell of apple pies didn’t quite fill the house, but it was there, a thread under everything else. It was kind of hard to take Christophe seriously when he smelled like baked goods. I wondered if other djamphir smelled like Hostess Twinkies and sniggered to myself.

Then I remembered Christophe kneeling in the snow with a shotgun to his shoulder, facing down a streak-headed wulf and all but laughing, and the sniggers dried up.

I yawned and padded to the chipped yellow plastic phone attached to the wall. There was one number, at least, that I had memorized, because it was so easy. And, well, you don’t forget a guy who can snap a flame off his fingers while other guys could only flick boogers. Especially not when you spend a month in his apartment while he’s out with your dad, dealing with a demonic rat infestation.

And another month while your dad is off doing who-knows-what, coming back all beat-up and scary looking. August liked my omelets, and I must’ve cooked hundreds of them for him.

The phone rang five times before he picked up and cursed. August’s voice was nasal through the line, laden with Brooklyn wheeze, every vowel cut short like it personally offended him. “This better be good.”

“Hi, Augie.” I tried to sound cheerful. “It’s Dru.”

“Holy . . .” There was a sound of sliding cloth, paper, and a clatter like he’d just dropped a knife. It didn’t take him long to recover. “Hi, sweetheart. I miss your omelets.”

I’ll bet you do. You ate two of them a day because you wouldn’t bring home anything but eggs and vodka. It was an adventure getting you to buy some bread. “I miss your coffee. Hey, August—”

He was quick on the uptake. Something probably didn’t sound right to him. I probably didn’t sound right to him. I didn’t even sound right to myself, with a dry stone trying to lodge itself in the back of my throat.

“Dru, honey, where’s your dad?” And why isn’t he the one on the phone, was probably what he wanted to say.

“He came down with a bad case of reanimation.” I tried to sound flip and offhand, but I think I succeeded only in sounding scared. And tired. And like I just got up.

August actually choked, and I heard a metallic sound as if he’d dropped something else. “What? Holy fu—uh, I mean, damn. Where are you now, kid?”

Oh, no you don’t. “I want to ask you a few questions. First, are you part of the Order?”

A long ticking silence crackled in my ear. Finally, I heard the click of a lighter and a long inhale. I could see his apartment, the full ashtray on the spindly kitchen table, the window that looked at a blank brick wall, the walls loaded with protective items from different cultures—African masks, ojos de Dios, a heavy silver crucifix. I could almost hear the traffic outside his building, but that could have been because it was clearly audible through the phone. “Holy shit. Where are you?”

Like I’m going to tell you until I know what’s really going on. “Are you a part of the Order, August? Yes or no.” My dad didn’t raise an idiot. You know that.

“Of course I am, what did you think? Where are you, honey?”

I told him, and he sucked in a long harsh breath.

I knew that sound. It was an adult getting ready to Deal With Me. I never in a zillion years thought I’d be relieved to hear it.

August didn’t mess around. “Where’s Reynard? He should be there. Put him on the line.”

Oh wow. “Christophe? He’s out on the porch having a cigarette and bonding with my friends.” In other words, Graves is keeping him occupied so I can make this little phone call. “You know him?”

“He’s only one of the best the Order has. Dru, you have to get out of there. Tell Christophe it’s a red zone and you have to be gotten out of there.”

I’d never heard August sound frightened before. “Because of Sergej?” The name stung my tongue, and I wondered if it was because of the touch or because I knew it was a sucker.

It was the first sucker’s name I’d ever known. Some people who know about the Real World won’t say them. They’ll use initials or code words.

August almost choked. “Goddammit, Dru, this is serious business. Get Reynard and put him on the line.”

Finally, someone was going to deal with this. An adult. A real adult. “Fine, you don’t have to yell. Hang on.” I dropped the phone on the counter and stamped down the hall to the front door, jerked it open.

Graves’s head swung around—he had a cigarette halfway to his mouth and looked pale under his perpetual tan. He was wearing my gloves, though they were a little too small for him, and the edge of his long black coat flapped as the wind cut across the porch, rattling the bits of dead plants that hadn’t been iced down. His hair was a wind-lifted mess, but Christophe, calm and immaculate, wore the same sweater and jeans. He stood near the hole in the porch railing, his head up as if he was testing the wind. Blond highlights streaked through his hair again, and they almost seemed to move.

The cold cut right through me, and I wondered if he could teach me how to walk around in the middle of it so easily. “August wants to talk to you.” It was like carrying messages for Dad, and I didn’t have to name the feeling swelling behind my heart.

It was relief, getting stronger with every second. Here was someone more experienced than I was, even if he was my age. Just what I’d wanted, right? Someone who could tell me what to do now that the lines that kept my life on track had vanished. Between August and this guy, things would get Under Control. It would be Handled. It would be Dealt With.

Chris gave me an odd look as he passed, his blue eyes darkening and apple spice drifting in his wake, and I shivered. Graves pitched his butt out into the snow, the glow of the cherry vanishing in a gray glare caught between cloud-hazed sky and white-shrouded ground. “He checks out?”

I nodded. Something dry and hot caught in my throat. “Yeah, he checks out all right. Come in, it’s freezing.”

Graves pushed past me, and I glanced out over the street. It was so quiet, a blanket of white over everything. The snow had come down hard and pebbled, a moaning wind flinging it everywhere, and the radio said ice was coming. The morning had dawned clear and sunny, but now the sky was overcast and lowering, striations of darker cloud like ink just dropped into water billowing under the higher cloud-cover.

Huh. I stepped out onto the porch, cupping my elbows in my palms. Hugging myself. It was dead quiet except for the uneasy sound of air moving, the porch posts and the corner of the house like a ship’s prow, slicing the waves and producing a low hum of torn air.

We could have been on the moon, I realized. The house set away from the other houses like that one kid at school who’s always dressed just a little bit wrong.

No wonder nobody’d come to greet us when we moved in, or heard the gunshots and screaming.

The street was an evenly frosted expanse of white. The two driveways that didn’t lead into a garage had car-sized lumps of unbroken snow, the paint jobs peeping out from underneath—the blue mini-van at the corner, the green, wallowing Ford across the street. And in front of the garages were wide, pristine ribbons of snow leading down to the street.

Why doesn’t this feel right? I had to look a little harder before the assumptions I made started crumbling and the wrong note in the orchestra jangled hard enough for me to catch it.

No tire tracks. There wasn’t a single break in the snow. The street looked as deserted as a Western town right before the bad guy rides in for the ultimate battle.

The sunlight dimmed, and a chill fiercer than the wind walked down my back. I was shivering, though I didn’t feel it, and Graves’s curly head popped out of the doorway. “What the hell are you doing, trying to freeze to death? You’re not even wearing a coat.”

I took my time, watching the street. Nothing felt hinky at all.

It just felt quiet. Empty.

Dead.

The snow must’ve cleared up sometime this morning when the sun rose, because we were all up having our hot chocolate and funny snakes with wings before dawn, and it was coming down hard then. What, everyone just decided to stay home today? Maybe. But. . .

The last piece of the puzzle slotted into place as Graves made a spitting sound of annoyance. “What the hell? Dru?”

I stepped back, shifting my weight uneasily, as if the porch might decide to fall apart at any second. “The porch lights.” I sounded queer even to myself. “They’re all on, and it’s the middle of the day.” It’s eleven, and it gets dark early this time of year. Real dark, real early.

“Yeah,” he said. “Christophe said that, too. What are you—”

“We have to go.” My teeth chopped the words into little bits, and I made it inside, pushing him down the hall and sweeping the door shut. Warmth closed around me. I locked the deadbolts and leaned against the door. How long until sundown? I don’t know, have to check. “Pack your stuff, okay? And help me with the ammo boxes, and—”

“Dru?” Christophe, from the kitchen. I didn’t know him at all, but I knew that tone.

The Oh shit there is serious trouble, honey, pack everything up again and let’s get movin’ tone. He appeared at the end of the hall, his sharp face suddenly graven with frowning lines that made him look a lot older.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve got to get the ammo packed.” He halted, regarding me, and I swallowed crow and a few lumps of my pride, too. “Will you . . . I mean, would you help us get the truck loaded?”

I had to keep leaning against the door because my knees were deciding again that they weren’t knees, they were actually noodles. Fully cooked noodles at that. And what I was really asking was something more like, Will you help me? Please?

Christophe’s blue, blue eyes flicked to Graves, and I was suddenly positive he was going to say, Sure I can, but we can’t take him. He’ll drag us down.

Oh, Christ. What was I going to do if he said that? Graves tensed, a movement I could feel even though all the starch had gone out of me, as Gran would have said. And I reached over, grabbed Goth Boy’s thin shoulder, and dug my fingers in.

Dad would never have left me behind. Not willingly. I was damned if I would leave someone else in the dust.

He bought me a cheeseburger. It was a ludicrous, laughable thought. But it was just the surface over a truckload of other things. I hadn’t heard a single word of complaint from Graves, not even over getting bit or having a gun held to his head. He’d done the best he could to help me, and that was something strangers rarely ever do. I was shipwrecked, and he’d been the only thing I could hang on to.

And he hadn’t let me down. Not once.

He was all I had. I wasn’t going to leave him here.

Christophe’s eyes fastened on my hand. He really did look old before his face smoothed out and he nodded, as if finishing a long conversation with himself. His shoulders went back and his chin came up. “You probably have a system,” he said, folding his arms. “What goes in first?”

“My bed—the mattresses. Everything else gets folded up and—” I stopped dead, as the next problem rose up and crashed into me. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry.” Christophe dropped his hands. “I’ll handle that. Start your packing, Dru. You, wulf-boy. Come with me.”

What does it say about your life when two hours of three teenagers working folds all of it up in the back of a Chevy half-ton’s camper?

I put Mom’s cookie jar in the top of the bathroom box and bit the packing tape, tore it deftly, and taped it down. “This one’s important,” I told Graves. “Pack the blankets around it.” Next to the fireproof box. The one with the ashes in it. God, Daddy, I wish you were here.

If wishes were fishes, even beggars would eat. Gran was fond of that saying, too.

“Got it.” Graves tramped out of the kitchen and toed open the door to the garage. Christophe had manhandled the garage door open, metal squealing in protest—the broken spring rubbing against itself with a sound like a lost tortured soul.

Well, maybe not exactly like that, but pretty damn close. Dad and I had both tried to get the garage open, knowing it was going to get cold, but in the end it was a lost cause.

But not, I guess, for a half-sucker. Djamphir.

Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?

But Mom had only smelled of fresh perfume and goodness.

Mom.

Too many questions. Not enough time to answer any of them.

“I know,” Christophe said into the phone. “Just send a pickup; I’ll get her to the rendezvous. Don’t worry about that.” A long pause while someone yakked on the other end. It sounded dire, especially with the way the wind was moaning a counterpoint; he’d been on the phone for ten minutes while I finished the last boxes and Graves carried them out to the truck.

He laughed, a sound twice as bitter as Graves’s little unamused bark. “Do you have to repeat yourself? She’s no good to us dead, and I’m the one who found her.” Another pause. “They can court-martial me later. Right now I need a pickup. I don’t care what the weather report—All right. Fine. Ciao.” He hung up, stared at the phone for a few moments, and turned sharply on his heel.

I was still on my knees, a roll of packing tape in my hands, watching him.

He took two steps to the sink, peered out the window. Eerie yellow-gray light slid through, touched his hair, and made the highlights livid. “Daylight’s going to fail before we’re out of town.”

I could only see a slice of sky through the window, cut off by an overhang and icicle-festooned gutters. It looked like the thunderstorm weather I’d seen a million times, only without the gasping-thick humidity you get below the Mason-Dixon. “It’s only—”

“Do you think this is natural weather, even for here?” He shrugged. “I should have made contact earlier. I was banking on being able to distract him. And I was banking on Sergej being certain your father wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring you here.”

You just shut up about my father. “Dad wasn’t stupid.” It came out a lot wearier and less sharp than I thought it would. “He had reasons for everything.”

“I don’t suppose you’d know how good those reasons were, would you? Never mind.” He waved his hand as if brushing away a fly. “We’ve got to get you out of here. I’ve got an extraction point. They’ll dock me for it later.” A tight, feral smile pulled up the corners of his lips, his blue eyes burning, and I watched an ink stain of sleek darkness slide through his hair and vanish, the highlights popping out like shafts of sun on a faraway horizon. “But bringing in a svetocha might balance that out.” He shrugged. “I’ll drive.”

Oh you will, will you? “Do you have your license?” I don’t know if I like the idea of you driving Dad’s truck. Or if I like how I’m suddenly some sort of good grade for you.

“What are you, a cop?” He held out his hand, and I automatically went to give him the packing tape.

Instead, Christophe’s fingers closed around my wrist, warm and hard. His eyes met mine, and I didn’t know what to think about what I saw burning in their depths. His smell shifted, somehow. Like the wind veering and bringing you a breath of honeysuckle on a summer’s day.

I stared up at him.

The garage door opened and Graves hopped in. “It’s getting colder,” he announced. “And I’ve got the last boxes in. Have to hand it to you, Dru, it’s packed tighter than Bletch’s . . .” The words died.

Christophe pulled. I came up in a rush—he was strong. Not regular wiry-strong, or even as thoughtlessly twitchy-strong as Graves had been with the werwulf imprint burning in him. He pulled me up as if I was a piece of paper, and the only thing scarier than the strength was the sense of restraint, like he could crush my wrist if he chose to. I ended up too close to him, and he pulled again, as if he wanted me even closer.

I stepped away and twisted my hand, breaking toward his thumb. That’s the weakest part of any grip. My shoulder protested, and so did my back. I was going to have to find some aspirin or something.

He did let me go—but I wasn’t sure, suddenly, that I could have pulled away if he hadn’t let me.

He wasn’t that strong before. Or was he, and just not showing it?

Graves stood stock-still, watching us both.

“Keys, Dru.” Christophe’s teeth gleamed in the weird stormlight, one of his wide feral smiles. “The sun’s fading, and if I can feel it, we can bet Sergej can too.”

I struggled with this, briefly. I drove when Dad got tired, so I knew the truck better than anyone else right now. I knew how it shimmied when it hit a certain number of miles per hour and how to tap the brakes in snow; I knew how it was likely to wriggle its butt when it was packed to the gills and a whole host of other little things. I also really didn’t like the idea of handing over my keys to this kid, no matter how much August vouched for him.

But August had. And I’d wanted someone to take care of me, hadn’t I?

I just hadn’t thought it would be some kid my own age, no matter how mature he seemed. If this was the “best” the Order had . . .

And I didn’t trust him enough. He was just too . . . dangerous. “Where are we going?” I finally said.

“The extraction point’s in the southeast section of town. Burke and 72^nd. If you’d have come down there when I invited you, before Sergej knew for certain you even existed, I could have gotten you out of town and safe in the Schola in a trice.” Another easy shrug. “But we have to work with what we’ve got, now. Give me the keys, Dru.”

My bag lay on the counter. I dug in it for a moment, and my keychain jangled as I finally fished it out. “It handles weird when it’s loaded. I should drive.”

“Dru.” Christophe’s tone was icy. “If you want to get out of this alive, you’d best do as I say.”

Well, gee, when you put it like that . . .

“Wait a second.” Graves took two long swinging steps forward. His hair all but snapped and crackled with electricity. “She’s driven the thing before, all the way across town in a whiteout. And it’s her truck.”

“I didn’t ask you to yap, dog-boy.” Christophe made a sudden swift movement, but I saw him coming and yanked the keys back.

It was a close thing—his fingers grazed mine and I skipped nervously to the side, clearing the breakfast bar and dragging my bag with me. It fell, the strap fetching up against my free hand, and everything inside it shifted. That put me between the two of them, and right in the cold draft from the garage.

Get the situation under control, Dru. “Let’s get this straight.” I had to clear my throat, because the look on Christophe’s face—eyebrows drawn together a fraction, eyes burning, mouth in a tight line with no hint of a smile—made him look twice as dangerous.

And, I had to admit, very pretty, especially with his hair shifting back and forth. That smell of his should have been ludicrous, but it just made me hungry.

I wet my lips with my tongue, a quick nervous flick. “It’s my truck, I’ll drive. You’ll stop making nasty comments to my friend. We’ll all get along until we get out of town, and when we do that you can go back to your Order and Graves and I will be on our way.” The wind shifted again outside, its moan veering toward a crescendo. The yellow-green light made everything look bruised, and a queer ringing under the sound of the wind threatened to fill my ears.

I tasted wax oranges, and my vision wavered for a bare half-second.

Not now, dammit. This is important. I pushed it aside and kept my gaze locked with Christophe’s, daring him.

Once, in this little podunk outside St. Petersburg, we’d run across a huge beast of a dog guarding a place we really needed to get into. Dad didn’t have the touch, but he showed me something else that day. He called it “starin’ down, before the throwin’ down, honey.” It meant just looking at the thing in your way as if it was no bigger than a pea, making up your mind that it wasn’t going to scare you or move you.

Dogs can smell fear, and sometimes people—or things from the Real World—are the same way. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a dog can also smell when you’re the alpha. It takes the same kind of flat look and decision to be fearless as facing down a bunch of jocks bent on harassing someone.

Shoulders square. Heart thumping, but not too hard. Eyes glazed with dust and buzzing with what I hoped was power. I gave him the look I’d practiced in the mirror so many times, and pretended I was Dad, grinning easily in a bar frequented by the Real World, hands loose and easy, one of them resting on a gun butt and the other just touching a shot glass, while I sipped at a Coke and pretended not to notice.

It should have been Dad there. He would have sorted Christophe right out.

“Where do you think you’re going to go that Sergej can’t find you?” He made another grab for the keys, but the world slowed down and I was quicker again—just by a fraction, but still. Graves sucked in a breath and I skipped backward again, hoping he had the sense to move.

“I’m not so sure he’s the problem, Chris.” I ducked through my bag’s strap and backed up again. Another few steps would get me to the door to the garage, and if I took my eyes off him I wasn’t so sure he would stay put, either.

There were a whole lot of things I wasn’t sure of anymore.

The djamphir’s hand made another swift move; my eyes darted instinctively, and things got very confused. I heard a snarl and a clatter, my feet shot out from under me, and the keys were ripped out of my hand. Something very warm and hard clamped around my throat, and Graves let out a high, yipping yell. Glass shattered.

Christophe’s hand tightened just a little, and I choked, staring up at his three-quarter profile as he looked toward the other window, the one that looked at the bit of greenbelt running at an angle beside the house.

The window he’d just thrown Graves against. Right over the spindly little kitchen table that had been here when we moved in.

He looked down at me, fangs sliding beneath his upper lip, his eyes burning. The highlights had bled out of his hair, slicking it back against his head, and his eyes were actually glowing in the bruised, ugly light slanting through the kitchen.

“I’m being patient,” he hissed, the t’s lisping slightly because of the fangs. “I’ll get you and your pet through this alive, but you have to do what I say. Got me?”

How did he do that? And the other thought, so loud I could have sworn I said it out loud. Could he teach me that?

“Sonofabitch,” Graves growled, and the obscenity shaded into a low sound that rattled broken glass as cold wind spilled into the room, laden with the flat iron tang of snow and violence. “Dru? Dru?”

He didn’t even sound human, though it was recognizably my name.

“As soon as the sun fails out here, all your neighbors will wake up.” Christophe’s fingers weren’t cutting off my air, but there wasn’t any space to wriggle, either. “I only wounded the dreamstealer; it probably crept through every window on the block and laid eggs in their sleeping bodies before dawn rose. When those young hatch, they’ll be hungry, and here you are. Such a nice little morsel.” He cocked his head slightly. “On the good side, Sergej probably doesn’t know you’re alive, but he’s suspecting, since his expensive little assassin didn’t come back, and as soon as the sun fails he’ll—Stay where you are, dog-boy!” He lifted his free hand and pointed, probably at Graves. The growling subsided a little, but it was the sound of a wolf getting ready to spring, not a teenage kid who had just been thrown into a window. “Are you going to behave, little bird?”

I might have even agreed with him, at least long enough to get his hands off my throat, but the wind rose to a shriek and I realized two things.

The light was really bleeding away fast, no longer bruised but dying, my ears popping under a sudden shift in air pressure.

And the growling wasn’t just coming from Graves.

The werwulf barreled through the door like a freight train and hit Christophe squarely in the chest.

There was a horrible crushing half-second as his fingers tightened on my windpipe before they were ripped away. I only found out I was screaming after I’d scrambled backward on palms and sneakered feet like an enthusiastic crab-walker at a drunken frat party, and spilled down the two steps onto chill garage concrete. I barked my elbow a good one on the doorframe, didn’t care, hit so hard my teeth clicked together and I almost lost a piece of my tongue.

Another furry leaping shape sailed over me, melting and reforming as it flew, and I flinched, running out of breath and hitching in more to scream again.

“DRU!” someone yelled, and Graves leaped out the door, narrowly missing landing on me by twisting in midair, with a kind of breathtaking, unthinking grace. He had something glittering in his right hand—my keychain, I realized, just as he skidded to a stop and the noise from inside the house began to crash instead of just roar. Wood splintered, something thrown against the wall hard enough to punch the drywall out toward me, splinters from the studs ramming through, and there was a massive wrecked yowl of pain.

I made it to my feet and hesitated for a split second, long enough to hear other crashes and howls. It sounded like more of them had arrived—shadows flitted across the open mouth of the garage, and the howling began.

If you’ve ever heard that sound, you don’t need it described, but here goes. It’s like a spiral of glass on the coldest night you’ve ever known, naked outside in the deep woods. Just hearing it is enough to give you nightmares about hunching near a fire and praying the wood holds out until dawn.

But what’s even worse—what makes it so much worse—is how the howling drills into your head and starts pulling on deep, secret things in the brain.

The blind, hungry thing on four legs that lives in all of us.

I clapped my hands over my ears. Graves grabbed my arm, his fingers sinking in so hard it almost went numb, and hauled me toward the truck—still parked crosswise, but it had started up just fine earlier. Thank God for the engine-block heater.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped to pack.

Another long lean bullet-streak of fur bolted into the garage, its padded feet slithering on smooth concrete starred with oil droplets from a car long since vanished. Graves let out a smothered yell. I clutched at him like a girl at a scary movie hanging onto her jock boyfriend, and the thing actually lifted its lip and snarled at us before plunging past.

“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 72^nd, 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.