Strange Angels (27 page)

Well, isn’t that special.“So you’re saying I’m part sucker.” I touched my mug with a finger. It was scorching hot.

“The upir can’t stay away from human women. Sergej is . . . Well, the more powerful they are, the more mating allures them. He’s always been careful to kill the offspring as well as the mother, though, lest they become a threat. All djamphir are survivors, or descendants of survivors.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders stiffening. “They would kill us on sight if they could. And we return the favor. Just one big happy family.”

And I thought Dad and me put the “fun” in “dysfunctional.”“So this Order, they’ve been trying to kill this Sergej guy?” The one you say killed my mother?

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. It was just that my dad didn’t raise an idiot. Sure, this guy had a good story and had saved my life, but good stories are as common as sneezes in the Real World. So he was djamphir , so what? It didn’t mean he had my best interests at heart.

Or that everything he told me was the strictest truth. On the other hand, what reason did he have to lie to me? Or keep me alive?

“Since 1918. He’s canny, and he doesn’t come out of hiding. Instead, he sends his minions, and he’s old and glutted enough to have plenty of those . Like the wulf you saw the other night, the one with the pale patch on his temple? That’s Ash.”

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Graves shivered, and so did I. I pulled the quilt closer around my shoulders, leaned into the counter. “How did a werwulf end up working for a sucker? Aren’t they enemies?”

“Sergej,” Christophe said quietly, “is an expert at breaking things to his will. Even wulfen. Ash has been his for a long, long time.” The silence following this was only broken by the sound of the saucepan moving, and the chuckling hiss of snow against the window, until Christophe shook his head and continued. “If we could catch Sergej in the open, we could probably kill him. Especially if we had a svetocha . A fully trained daughter of one of our best.” The milk sloshed back and forth in the pan. “I don’t think you realize just how rare you are, Dru.”

Sends his minions. Would they happen to include a burning dog, too? Or was that something else?“What about the burning dog?”

“Burning dog?” Christophe sounded thoughtful. “Tall and black, before it ignited?”

I thought of its glassy darkness before it inhaled and lit up like a burning Christmas tree.

“Yeah. Big teeth. And it was huge.”

“Big as a horse,” Graves said.

“Ah.” Christophe said nothing more.

“That’s where the streak-headed wulf—Ash—first showed up. Following the burning thing.”

Christophe nodded thoughtfully. “Ash and a tracker. How did you—”

“We drowned it in a fountain,” Graves supplied helpfully. He actually sounded proud.

“Then Dru shot that wulf-guy. After he bit me.”

Christophe was very still for a long moment. “Ash and his trackers have been the death of many a good soldier of the Order. And two raw, untrained—”

“Yeah, we kicked his ass.” And nearly died. But I kept that part of it to myself. My ribs twinged a little as I moved. “Wait a minute. How many of you guys—Order guys—are there?”

Christophe drew himself up, unconsciously straightening. “A few thousand Kouroi here in the States. More in Europe. Quite a few in Asia. We’re all over.”

You are, huh?“How come I’ve never heard of you? Dad and I have been pretty much all over the continent and I’ve never heard a single thing about you guys.”

“If you know how to listen, you probably have. Your father’s friend August Dobroslaw in New York, for example. He’s one of us.” A dismissive half-wave with his hand, and Christophe went back to keeping the milk moving as if it was the most interesting thing in the world.

I felt like I’d been pinched somewhere numb. August. I’ve been thinking about him lately, too. I nodded. “Then I can call him and he’ll verify your story.” My hair fell in my face. I lifted the hot chocolate and sipped it gingerly. My tongue got burned. I had to suck in a long breath. Snow spattered against the windows, and I shivered. I was still cold. The wind had a hungry sound again tonight, and I wasn’t feeling safe even with Graves next to me.

Even with Christophe standing in the kitchen fiddling with the saucepan. “Do it and find out.” His shoulders dropped. “If he does verify my story, as you put it, you think you could be a little nicer?”

“I’ll try.” It was my turn to sound sarcastic. Graves made a restless movement next to me, and I bumped him with my shoulder. Letting him know I was with him.

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It helped me, too. The pressure of his arm against mine was comforting. Graves drew in a deep, dissatisfied breath. “I want to know something. How are these things finding Dru?”

Silence, broken only by the sound of small snow pellets hitting the window. It was a hell of a good question.

The zombie found me because Dad knew where I lived. The streak-headed werwulf might have been watching the truck, and in any case he’d gotten a good noseful of me at the mall—which didn’t explain how he’d arrived at the mall. If the burning dog was a tracker, as Christophe said, that explained some things—but not where it had picked up my trail in the first place.

And what about whoever was knocking on the door before dawn? I hated to admit it, but that bothered me the most. Why hadn’t whatever-it-was tried to get in? Unless the warding had kept it out, which meant it could have been a sucker. Maybe even this Sergej. The name sent cold little fingers sliding up my back. I had more to think about. Like how exactly had Christophe found me?

And the thing, whatever it was, that had opened up my bedroom window and sucked my breath out? A snake with wings, Graves had said.

Dreamstealer, Christophe called it. Revelle.

I was still cold, gooseflesh spilling up my arms and down my back. Had it been a dream, or had I been outside my own body ? That was a creeptastic idea, and something all too likely—it was just the way the touch could work. Gran would have known what to say about it. Hell, even Dad might have had a clue. I could have asked him some questions.

“Have strange things been happening to you lately, Dru?” Christophe poured hot milk into his mug, picked up the spoon, and stirred it. The saucepan was set aside, every drop of fluid gone. He’d gauged the amount just right. “Things you didn’t know you could do?

Strange things, strong things, things you shouldn’t know suddenly clear as day to you?”

He turned and leaned against the counter, his eyes glowing slightly. The kitchen was dark but the dining room light was on, and his hair still looked sleeker, lying close to his head without all the highlights reflecting.

“Other than hexing my teacher and having the world stop like a movie on pause?” I shrugged. “I’ve always been weird. My grandmother called it “the touch”. It’s gotten stronger. But all of this is weird, even for me.”

“ That’ssaying something.” Graves took a huge slurp, made a low half-swallowed belching sound, and I was surprised into laughing. He gave his own peculiar painful laugh, too, and I felt a lot better.

Christophe studied us, his face shut like a book. “Then you’re close to blooming, Dru. Becoming a full svetocha. ” He blew across the top of his mug. “I wish I knew. . . .”

Blooming?I let Mom’s quilt slip down a little. My hands were warmer now. “You wish you knew what? We’re in a sharing space right now; you might as well ask.” Graves bumped me back with his thin shoulder, and the urge to laugh hit me again. You know how it can just suddenly bubble up at the most inappropriate times? Like you’re just sitting there, and a thought hits you sideways, or the absurdity of the world just smacks you out of nowhere and you have to swallow a giggle?

Yeah. Like that. I swallowed the sound; it stuck in my throat and threatened to turn into a belch. My shoulder burned dully, and my back was stiff. Getting knocked around and

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having someone lying on top of you doesn’t do much for back pain.

“I wish I knew how your father thought he was going to train you or hide you long enough for you to survive into adulthood. Among other things.” Christophe sighed, and set down his mug with a click. “I’ll be in the living room.”

And just like that, he walked away. He moved down the hall like he knew the house better than I did, and a few seconds later the formless mutter of the television blurred through the hiss of snow.

“I don’t like him,” Graves half-whispered.

“You already said that.” I took another scalding gulp of hot milk and sugar. There isn’t even any real cocoa in this. It’s all just artificial flavor. For a moment I thought about Gran’s hot chocolate and I wished, suddenly and fiercely, that I was five years old and safe again. And then I thought of Gran always washing the floors with herb mixes meant to keep evil away, and I wondered how safe I’d really been. “I’ll call August tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

How the hell should I know?But I did. I finished swallowing and leaned against the counter, watching the pattern of whirling white outside the window. “Then I’m going to find out everything I can about this Sergej guy. If Chris is right, and he killed my dad . . .”

I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat.

Graves didn’t think much of the notion, even half-formed and unstated. “Then what? If he’s right and they’ve been chasing him for so long, what the hell are we going to do?”

We?But I suppose it never occurred to Graves that he might want to sit out whatever was going to happen next.

No. Of course it hadn’t occurred to him. I’d thought of ditching him more times than I could count, and I suddenly felt like a complete asshole for it. My chest felt funny, tight and warm at the same time. “My dad wasn’t a dumbass. He taught me a lot. Maybe he taught me something these guys don’t know.” Dru, you’re lying.

But what else could I do? If Christophe was telling the truth, this Sergej guy—those cold insect feet walked up my back again—turned my dad into a zombie. You don’t just forgive something like that, do you?

But I was just a kid, and I was seriously out of my depth here. I’d shot a werwulf, yeah, and done a lot of running away. And I’d found the truck, but that was more Gran’s owl than me.

If this was a game, I was losing pretty badly. I should probably get the hell out of the stadium while I was still alive.

“Oh.” Graves’s shoulder bumped mine again, hot milk slopping inside my cup. Warmth stole back into my fingers and toes, finally.

Still . . . “But maybe these Order guys could teach me something too. And you. There’s got to be something good in being stuck on superhero, right?”

He sighed heavily. “If it makes me fall asleep and then wake up craving two whole greasy pepperoni pizzas, man, I don’t know.”

I actually laughed, cupping my mouth in my hand to keep it down.

“I noticed something, too.” Graves didn’t even crack a smile, and motioned toward the living room. “He’s not answering your questions, really. I mean, not completely. Not like he doesn’t have something to hide, you dig?”

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I guess not.“If he is who he says he is, he’s got reasons not to.” But I met Graves’s eyes, and we stared at each other for ten seconds or so, the meaningful type of stare that can happen when you know someone and eye-talk is more efficient than spending a half-hour stumbling with words. Snow slid against the window, and a thread of cool draft touched my cheek. I was going to have to put a real back door on soon, even with the almostenclosed porch out there. Graves shrugged. “If you say so.” I still don’t trust him, his green eyes said. There was hardly any hazel left, and the contrast was startling against caramel skin. Seen in profile, his nose looked proud instead of just too damn big for his face. When he shivered a little and hunched his shoulders, I had the sudden urge to put my arm and Mom’s quilt around him, and just stay there for a while.

The thought made me feel warmer, but I didn’t do it. Instead, I finished my hot chocolate. It was still too hot, but it didn’t feel like liquid lava going down. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Why don’t you call this August guy now?” Graves hunched his shoulders even further.

“Because it’s nighttime in New York, and if it’s night, he’s out hunting.” I shuffled around the breakfast bar and put my mug in the sink. “Hey, Graves?”

“What?” Cautious, his shoulders still hunched.

He must be used to people trying to get rid of him,I thought, and the sharp jab of pain that ran through me twisted all the way down. “Thanks. You got that thing off me, right?”

He stared into his hot chocolate like it held the secret to the universe. “Yeah, well, the window was open and it was really cold.”

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?But then I realized what he meant. It even called a creaking, half-painful smile to my face, and the last of the cold and goose bumps flushed away on a wave of welcome heat.

No problem, Dru. First one’s free.

CHAPTER 25

As soon asI 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.