Lili St Crow - Strange Angels

“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.

Way out insuburbia, 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. 72 ndStreet had turned into McGill Road briefly, then jagged and become 72 ndAvenue, 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.

The shadows kept flitting behind us. Whatever it was could have overtaken us if it was really serious about it. We were barely crawling, and I’d started to shake, hungry and sick from adrenaline all at once.

I would have given a lot for another cheeseburger just about then. Or a strawberry shake. Or anything, really. Even some stale granola.

But not apple pie. The thought made me feel even sicker.

“There’s Compass Avenue.” Graves shivered, though it was warm enough with the heater blasting. “Next comes Wendell Road, and then Burke. If the map’s right.”

I eased off the gas, ready for the truck to misbehave at any moment. The dashboard clock was still set to Florida time, an hour ahead. I was getting sick of this polar bear shit. “How do people live up here? This is insane.”

“They dress up a lot. Do their hair. And drink. Beat their kids.” Graves shifted nervously. “They beat their kids a lot .” We rolled through two more intersections, then slowed to a creepy-crawl, the engine turning over smoothly, wipers muffled. “Why the hell are we coming out here again?”

“Because we won’t make it out of town before dark on our own. It’s already two in the afternoon.” I peered at the sky, squinted out the windshield again.

“We could make it. I’ve got money. We could just get the hell out of here. We could take a bus if the truck won’t—”

“A bus. Like we wouldn’t get caught at the station waiting for the next one when the sun goes down. For God’s sake, Graves, we need help .” I wondered if I should tell him that I was seeing little darting things in the mirror. He didn’t need that to worry about. “Huh.”

We slowed down.

Burke and 72 ndwas actually a three-way intersection. Directly in front of us, where the two roads split to make a Y, a stone wall rose. There was nothing else around; the houses had petered out half a block ago and open space—weedy lots or fields, who could tell—ran away on both sides. Just over the wall on the right, a red-tiled roof peeked, little bits of color peeping out under the snow.

“Burke and 72 nd. It’s got to be that place.” I goosed the gas, pointed us toward the right fork. “Jesus. Talk about conspicuous.”

“I’ve never been out this way.” Graves drummed his fingers on the door. “It smells bad.”

Well, you’re the one with the super nose now. “Bad how?”

“Rust again. And something rotting. Like a dumpster in summer.”

I sniffed deeply but didn’t smell anything. The ringing in my head was a constant; I was used to thinking through it now. I didn’t taste anything other than hunger and the thin metal tang of exhaustion. My back hurt, my throat hurt, my arm wasn’t too happy—I was just bad all over, and ready to hand over this whole problem to someone older and more experienced.

Why hadn’t I just given the keys to Christophe? He might still be alive if I had.

“I wish I’d just given him the keys.” My voice broke on the last word. I snuffled up another sob, pushed it down. It was time to stop being a whiner and focus on getting us out of town.

“I don’t.” Graves’s fingers drummed, paused. “What are we going to do, drive up to the house and walk in, announce we’re vampire hunters, and ask them pretty-please to—”

“We’re going in to find whoever Christophe had coming to pick us up. If I’m valuable to them, they’ll help us get out of town.” Then I’m going to sleep for a week, and after that . . .

After that, what?

“What if they . . .” He didn’t go any further, but I knew what he was thinking.

“Graves.” I swallowed, tried to sound hard and sure. “We’re leaving town together . Period. End of story. You got that?”

He didn’t say anything else. I didn’t dare look at him.

We crept along, snow now coming sideways and the truck’s springs making little sounds as the wind tried to push us into the wall. In a little while there was a driveway—obviously recently cleared—and the truck struggled through the turn as if I wasn’t controlling it. An ornate iron gate was open, swept back to either side, its curlicues heavily frosted with ice. In the middle of a vast expanse of circular driveway, a fountain lifted—some kind of shell shape with a big spike coming out of the middle. Drifts piled against the wall and the edges, but the driveway itself was clean.