Strange Angels (26 page)

It didn’t feel good.

“ Damnit.” Christophe made it to his feet in a single curling, fluid motion. His hair was slicked down against his head, dark and sleek. “God and Hell both damn it. I didn’t think he’d send that .”

“Who? Who would send—someone sent that?” Graves’s knees were all but knocking together. It sounded like his teeth were chattering, too, but his eyes burned feverish-green.

“Holy shit. What the hell was it?”

“A wingéd serpent, come to rob the nest.” Christophe shouldered him aside and checked the window. “She must have let it in, thinking it was someone else. Or . . . What I wouldn’t give to know—” He halted, staring at the glass and the river of snow whirling down, some of it brushing the pane with little spidery sounds. “He must think she’s close to blooming. But I didn’t know he had access to a dreamstealer—only the Maharaja breed them.” Frustration pulled his tone taut, edged each word with steel. Can I die now?I dry-retched again. It felt like all my innards were trying to crawl out the hard way. I thought I was outside. I know that house. That was where we lived Before. Before the world changed. Before Mom—

Could I find it again? I probably could. The memory wasn’t fading like other dreams. Instead, it was sharp-etched, each individual owl feather shaded just so, every twist of the oak’s branches easily remembered, burned into the space behind my eyelids. But my body folded up on itself in revolt, each muscle locking down. God, what’s happening to me?

Christophe drummed his fingers on the window. The sound went straight through my head and I curled into a tighter ball. “If it was clear, I could track it. Especially now that it’s wounded.” He cast one bright glance over his shoulder. “That was a smart move, skinchanger, to hit between them.”

“Thanks.” Graves didn’t sound like he accepted the compliment. I coughed, swallowed, and hoped I wouldn’t throw up for real. Would someone mind

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cluing me in? But it seemed pretty obvious—something hinky had come up to the window, and I’d mistaken it for Granmama’s owl.

Or had I? I’d been gone, not here at all. I knew Gran’s owl, and I knew that house. “It was from Before,” I managed, through teeth tight-locking together. I was cold as if I’d been wandering out in the snow.

Hadn’t I been?

“Get water.” Christophe grabbed Graves, shoved him toward the door, and shook his hands like they had something icky on them as soon as he let go. “Get a glass of water. Hurry. ”

Graves bolted, his curlywild hair all but standing up. I heard him bouncing down the stairs far too quickly, careering off the walls.

Christophe turned away from the window and dropped to his knees beside me. “Stupid,”

he hissed. His eyes were burning, and when I managed to tilt my head and look up there were dimples in his lower lip—where the fangs slid out from under the top lip and touched, ever so gently.

I couldn’t even care. I was too busy.

What, me? What did I do?My heart gave an amazing leap and settled into pounding in my chest. It was getting harder to get air in through the retching, little sips of apples mixing with the fading cloy of rotting feathers. It was funny, it didn’t seem like my body was rejecting dinner. It was more like a full-body spasm forcing a dry little sound up through the pipe of my throat and out of my mouth.

Christophe leaned down. His hands cupped my face, twisting my neck awkwardly. “You will breathe,” he said calmly. Those eyes glared blue at me, colder than a thin winter sky. Snow hissed against the window, and Graves cursed downstairs. A cupboard slammed shut. “You will breathe, and you will live . I’m not having it any other way, milna . Breathe.”

I tried. My eyes rolled back into my head. Darkness descended, a deep star-spangled night. My head pounded, excruciating pressure building behind my nose and eyeballs. Little spackles of light squeezed down as even my eyelids spasmed. Pain like a silver spike went through me, from the crown of my head to my soles, running down each branching nerve channel.

Graves galloped back into the room, cursing under his breath. Christophe’s hands left my face, and my head thumped onto the floor a second before he shouted and threw the glass of water straight into my face.

The seizure stopped. Spluttering and choking, I twitched like a landed fish on the floor and drew in another deep heaving breath, hitched, and let it out with a torrent of cussing that would have done Dad proud, even during truck-fixing sessions.

“Yeah,” Graves said, breathing heavily, when I ran out of air enough to curse and just sputtered. “I’d say she’s okay.”

“Idiot.” Christophe handed him the glass as I tried to wipe water off myself. My muscles were weak as overcooked noodles. “That was too close. Get a towel.”

“How about you get one? I already ran downstairs, and you’re the one who threw water all over her.” Graves leaned forward, eyeing me. “Hey, Dru. You were French-kissing a winged snake. Creeptastic.”

“It was stealing her breath , imbecile. Go get a towel.” Christophe shoved him, and Graves

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shoved back. The floor groaned sharply as their weight shifted. If I could have gotten in a smell through my nose it would have been the slightly oily dryness of pure macho. Graves’s lip lifted, and his teeth were just as white as Christophe’s. “Don’t order me around, asshole. I was here before you.”

Jesus. Boys.I found my voice. “Goddammit, fuck you both . Get out of here.” It was hard to sound forceful with my tank top soaked and every muscle in my body loose as wet spaghetti, but I tried my damnedest. “Go downstairs and make me some hot chocolate. Unload the dishwasher. Do something useful instead of getting in a testosterone match in my bedroom.”

For a long, exotic moment they both stared at me, green eyes and blue burning. I managed to push myself up on weak arms, got my behind under me, and leaned against my mattresses, shivering. The heater puffed into life, but the not-sound of snow against the windowpane made me feel cold all over. I was gone. I was out of here, and someone did something to my body. Oh, Gran, I wish you were here for real and not just sending your owl. You could tell me what the hell to do now.

Tension snapped in the room, the air relaxing as they stepped away from each other. Christophe glanced at the window again, his profile still sharp and fanged, his hair sticking close to his head as if he’d gotten water dumped on him, too. His lips firmed up, sharp teeth retreating, and he looked like a new idea had struck him. Graves, holding an empty glass from the kitchen, finally grinned at me. His eyes glowed, too, but green instead of blue. He looked as relieved as it was possible to get under his hair and beaky nose. “Sure you’re okay?”

No, I’m not. I’m freaked out, and you guys aren’t making it any easier.But my voice was steady. I was a master at putting on a steady voice. “Make me some hot chocolate. I’m cold. And both of you get out of here.” I hugged myself as hard as I could. I could be an actress. A talent for creative lying just has so many applications. “Or I’ll shoot you.”

Christophe didn’t look convinced. He blinked, as if just returning to the room, folding his arms and giving me a sideways glance. I expected his eyes to send little blue flashlight beams through the dimness. “What do you think—”

“Chris. Shut up.” Much to my surprise, he did. “Go unload the dishwasher. Graves can show you where everything goes. When I get downstairs, you can tell me what that thing was.”

They trooped obediently out of my room, and I rested my forehead on my knees. Regular aches and pains—my back twinging, my shoulder unhappy—returned like old friends, crawling back under my skin. This just kept getting more and more complex, and I wasn’t sure what was real and what was the Real World anymore. Where were the grown-ups who could handle this?

An idea quivered on the tip of my brain, but I was too weirded out to follow it. Instead, I breathed deep the way Gran had taught me, and tried not to think. It was pretty useless, though, because the same thought kept coming back, circling like Gran’s owl on soft soundless wings.

I could find that house again. I know I could. It’s from Before. And it’s in this city. Why didn’t Dad tell me we used to live here?

CHAPTER 24

“Sergej.” Christophe handedme a mug of Swiss Miss. We didn’t have any marshmallows,

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and I couldn’t seem to warm up, even with a wool sweater on and Mom’s quilt around my shoulders. “He’s very old. You could call him the oldest we know of in North America and probably South America, too. He came from Europe after the war.”

“Which war?” Graves wanted to know. He leaned against the breakfast bar next to me. Christophe set another mug down on the counter and gave him a withering look.

“The Great War, of course. Not the genocide masquerading as war from that horrid little Austrian corporal. Sergej drank his fill on the battlefields of Lód and Gorlice-Tarnów. Before, he was merely one of the petty lordlings among the blood-drinkers. Something in the War changed him, and he came to America. Since then, he’s been spreading the disease here. Killing for fun and food, and contaminating the proud and the petty to swell the ranks of his legions. We’ve been trying to kill him for so long.”

That perked my ears right up. “We? We who ?”

“The Order. Your mother was one of us.” He said it like he would say, That television show is on tonight , or, I’m going to pick up some milk at the store.

“The what ?” I stared at him. “What the hell?” First she was a vampire hunter, now this. What does he really know about Mom? “She’s dead.”

“Indeed. The only svetocha in sixty years. Sergej himself came out of hiding to kill her. She was rusty and weak, and she must have hurt him badly, but he managed.”

Something horrible and buried rose briefly. We’re going to play the game, Dru . And that ticking, like a heartbeat, faster and faster, closer and closer. I shoved it down—it was only a dream, wasn’t it? I had other problems now.

Hold on just one red-hot second. First questions first, then we’ll get into this “order”

thing.“So why would Dad be calling you ?”

Christophe’s face changed. For the life of me I couldn’t say how. “I think he had finally found out he needed the Order. He blamed us for your mother’s death, thought a mere human could do what we couldn’t. He went out to hunt alone.”

I stared into the hot chocolate. It made a type of sense. Dad went wack after Mom died, and I never thought that much about it. It was just there . I didn’t remember Mom dying. Did I?

I remembered Dad’s face, set and white, and him fighting with Gran. It was the only time I ever heard them disagree. Most of the time Gran just said mmmh or did whatever the hell she wanted to without bothering to give Dad the benefit of her opinion. But that one time, when we’d arrived at the cabin in the middle of the night, they’d fought. We’d been driving with the windows down, the sharp cold smell of the mountains at night flooding through the car along with the purr and rattle of the engine. When we stopped, it had smelled like dust and new-cut grass, cold clear air and nighttime. I’d been so tired, curled up and sucking my thumb even though I was a big girl. It was my sharpest memory of childhood, the first rock to loom up solidly in a fog of conflicting impressions before the time I actually started paying attention to everything around me. I guess you could say that’s when I started growing up, smelling the sharpness of winter leaves, hearing the ticking of Gran’s stove, the smell of frying eggs because Gran was cooking them just as we rolled up the rutted, potholed dirt road dipping and swinging up to her place.

Gran had actually yelled .

What you gwun do, Dwight? That chile ain’t old enough to know what’s happenin’!

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Dad’s voice, hoarse with something that might have been tears, though it was funny to think of Dad ever crying. Damn straight she’s not. Which is why we’re here. Nothing can get to her here. You may hate me, old woman, but I’m doing the best I can. And every time I would beg and plead to go with Dad, he would just smile and ruffle my hair. Not now, princess. When you’re older.

Gran would snort and set her false teeth together, and after Dad left she would keep me busy for days. There was no shortage of work up at her cabin, and maybe she thought it wouldn’t give me time to think.

But a lot of waiting for your dad to come back and collect you gives you plenty of time to think, whether you’re pitchforking hay or gathering berries or helping make salt pork. None of that was going to help me now. I had to concentrate on what was in front of me. Think, Dru. What would Dad ask? “Who is this Order?”

“ TheOrder,” Christophe said, like I would say, Duh, breathing! “Professional hunters, mostly djamphir— the Kouroi. Though there are some of his kind.” He waved a languid hand over his shoulder at Graves, whose face was set and almost white. “They do help.”

“He’s loup-garou ,” I supplied helpfully. “A half-imprinted werwulf. Stronger and faster than human, but not as strong as the furry type. We know that. We’re not totally stupid.”

Graves gave me a single, extraordinary glance. I don’t know whether he understood that I didn’t like Christophe’s dismissive tone. But we’d been over it in the books just that afternoon, for God’s sake, and we had a better idea of what had happened to him. Graves was luckier than either of us had guessed. Not every kid who gets bit is a virgin—

or gets bit by a wulf old enough and strong enough to half-imprint through that. And more importantly, I didn’t want Sucker Boy here thinking Graves was a second-class citizen or something because I’d gotten him bit.

“Exactly. There are full werwulfen as well as loup-garou in the Order.” Christophe poured more milk into the saucepan and kept it moving. His own mug stood at attention right next to the stove. “The skinchangers are the princes of their type.”