Strange Angels Read online

  My coat was lying on the floor right next to him. It looked innocent, but I knew what was in the pocket. What would he say if he guessed what I’d been about to do?

  Just who was this kid, anyway? “Why are you doing this?”

  His shoulders hunched again. He took a massive bite of cheesy steak sandwich and closed his eyes. The floor was hard and cold, and I wondered where he’d slept last night. I hadn’t even thought about it before.

  He chewed, his hair hanging in damp black strings over his eyes, and shrugged. “Mrfle.”

  What the hell does that mean? I decided to let it go. He’d brought me down here, after all, and I wasn’t one to throw stones when it came to abnormal living arrangements. “Thank you. I mean, it’s been bad. Thanks.” The urge to tell him something, anything, rose in my throat.

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Want to talk about it? It’s cool if you don’t.”

  What could I tell you that you’d believe? At least when I had Dad I wasn’t so lonely.

  Dad. I heard that weird bellow again, air forced through a frozen throat. What had the zombie been trying to say? Anything?

  Tears prickled my eyes for the thousandth time, hot and hard. The lump congealed in my windpipe. I had to breathe deep. I was starving, and I don’t think straight when I’m hungry. “My dad.” I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite.

  It was really good, salty and cheesy and full of fat and carbohydrates. The bun was fresh, and it was still warm.

  “What about him?” Graves said it carefully, and I could have laughed.

  “It’s not what you think. He’s dead.” The word sounded strange in my mouth. A single syllable that didn’t belong to my Dad. It belonged somewhere out there, and putting it in a sentence with him was wrong, even though I knew it was true.

  If he was surprised, he hid it really well. His eyes got really wide and very green. He took another bite, chewed thoughtfully. Snagged a handful of curly fries and stuffed them in his mouth, still watching me. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  I reached over to the bed and fished my artist’s pad out of the tangled mess of the sleeping bag. I opened it to the drawing of Dad’s truck. “Do you know where this is?”

  He took the paper. His eyes widened briefly, again. He swallowed again, throat working. His earring glittered at me, like a signal. “This is really good.”

  Duh, I’ve been drawing since I was five. “Thanks. Do you know where that is?”

  “No.” He waited, his eyebrows up. His mouth made a little inquisitive movement, and he licked the grease off his fingers.

  Shit. “I have to find it. I have to find our truck so I can . . . Well, I have to find it.” I took a bite, swallowed it without tasting, and laid down the sixty-four-million-dollar question. “Will you help me? Please?”

  “Help you find that building?” He shrugged. “Sure, I guess. It’ll take a while with all the snow. The radio said it won’t stop for a week. We’re in for a regular old whiteout.”

  I waited for him to ask more questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he just ate, watching me between bites. When he finished the first sandwich, he started on the second. I listened to the silence outside the walls, chewing reflexively. It might have been cardboard for all I could taste.

  He was halfway done when he stopped chewing and looked at me. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  I don’t know yet. I wish I did. If I told you, you’d think I was crazy. “It’s pretty bad.” That was about all I could say.

  “Okay.” He shrugged again. “Sounds interesting. We’ll start looking tomorrow. But we’ll have to do it after school.”

  My jaw threatened to drop.

  His shoulders hunched again. “You think I want to live in the corners like this for the rest of my life? I’ve got a plan. I’m going to get my GED and go to community college; then I’m going to go to real college. I’m going to be a mathematician. They get paid crap until they get tenure, but after that it’s pretty cool. I’m going to be a physics professor.”

  A physics professor? I tried to imagine him as an adult, or as a teacher, and failed. The effort made my brain hurt. He was just so gawky and young. “Everybody’s got to have a goal.” Odd relief bloomed under my breastbone, filled my entire chest. “You don’t skip school?”

  “No way. It’s a one-way ticket back to foster care if I fly above the radar, you know.” The thoughts crossing his face went too quickly for me to even guess at before the wall went back up behind his eyes. “That was my first time, with you.” He grinned, a fetching, lopsided smile that he ended up stuffing more curly fries into. “You’re a bad influence, Dru.”

  You have no idea, kid. I was startled into another laugh. The sandwich tasted pretty good after that.

  CHAPTER 8

  Night came quickly, and when Graves decided it was safe he led me back out through the maze of passages. The mall was deserted, lights turned down low. The fountain on the first floor was shut down too, its surface placid and quiet. Silence wrapped around all the chairs upended on the tables in the food court, tiptoed down the halls, sheathed the stores in darkness. In here, you couldn’t hear the wind. We might as well have been on another planet.

  Graves leaned over the waist-high barrier and yelled wordlessly into the mezzanine, the sound ricocheting off floor and ceiling, a weirdly distorted echo bouncing back. He surveyed the result with a satisfied air. “See? Pure liberation. You do it.”

  I let out a shattering war-whoop, the kind I used while sparring with Dad or doing my katas. Graves flinched, but his own yell rose with mine. My cry broke on a laugh, his did the same, and he pushed at me with his bony shoulder, almost toppling me over. I pushed back, and I suppose that’s when I started thinking he was a friend instead of just some kid.

  The noise died away. “Sometimes I play the games in the arcade by myself,” he said meditatively. His eyes glittered in the half-dark. “It’s nice having someone else around. You want to play some air hockey?”

  I almost shuddered at the thought. “No thanks.” My wrist still hurt, along with the rug burn on my left hand. And my back was still unhappy, despite the ancient bottle of Tylenol Graves had stashed in his bathroom. “Can I just walk around?”

  “Sure. I’m going to check a few things out. Stay away from Sears, they have a working camera last I looked.” He grinned, then whirled on his toes and strode away with a bounce in his step, his long black coat fluttering.

  I stood there for a few minutes, my eyes closed. Dad’s jacket was heavy and warm. The mall was dark, only the barest of night-lights on in store windows. Grates were pulled down to close the stores off, everything from rolling iron contraptions to glass sheets stopping ghosts from shoplifting. The chill of possibly getting caught walked along my shoulders. If any cops showed up, I’d get busted for possession of a weapon and God alone knew what else.

  Stop worrying, Dru. I sighed, the tension leaving my neck for a few seconds. I felt a little naked without my bag, but I couldn’t carry it everywhere. If you could get caught, Graves wouldn’t be here. He’s smart enough.

  Matter of fact, he was distressingly smart. He didn’t look like a math geek; I wondered if the goth bit was camouflage. It’s not every teenage boy who wants to be a physics professor when he grows up. He probably had a nice rational mindset that would think I was batshit if I started telling him about some of the things I’d seen.

  What did I care, anyway? It wasn’t like he was going to be a permanent fixture in my life.

  You have other problems. Start by figuring out how Dad got turned into a zombie.

  I needed to go back to Dad’s books and do some research. The second and last group of zombies we’d run across had been near Baton Rouge. And that had been straight-up voodoo like that guy in South Carolina, not native to the Midwest. There might be other stuff in the books about zombies, stuff we hadn’t looked at last time because we hadn’t needed it. I’d been too busy with unhexing to really pay attention
to Dad putting the corpses down again.

  The books were in the living room. Had the neighbors even heard the gunshots? The thought was like poking at a sore tooth with your tongue. All I could answer was probably not, since there hadn’t been any sign of cops when I’d left. But still . . .

  I didn’t know nearly enough, and sneaking around a mall at night wasn’t going to answer the questions.

  Just what are you thinking of, anyway, Dru? I turned to my left and stuck my hands in my pockets, the cold weight of the gun against my right-hand knuckles. If I inhaled really deeply, I could smell fabric softener and the ghost of Dad’s aftershave. It wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been.

  I put my head down and ambled along the gallery, past the Hillshire Farms—breathing out smoky meat and processed cheese even through the glass door—and a chain store selling cheap jewelry by the ton. My boots made almost no noise against the short, tough-as-nails industrial carpet, and it was dark.

  It was nice to be in here after everything was closed up. The silence was vast and downy, like soft feathers. The half-light was restful; it hid everything. There was nobody around to see me if I chose to smile or frown, nobody looking to see what I was wearing, nobody I had to lie to or watch out for. I could stare in the windows or stop outside Victoria’s Secret, examining spindly lingerie-clad mannequins spotlit for the night, and nobody would think I was strange.

  It wasn’t as cool as I thought it might be. After about ten minutes of wandering around I began to get a little nervous. I couldn’t even hear the wind. With that much silence, the inside of my head started to get a little crowded with other sounds. Remembered sounds.

  Like the tapping of fleshless fingers on glass. Or the hideous, scratching, frozen-throated bellow of a zombie.

  Someone turned him into a zombie. It was the thought I’d been avoiding ever since I’d pulled the trigger again and again. You don’t just happen to trip and fall and turn into one of the reanimated. Someone did it to him. Who? Probably the same someone he was after.

  Someone, or something? The thing behind the door? I was awful certain my dream was real, and that I’d seen Dad’s next-to-last moments on earth.

  Which led me to the not-so-comforting thought that I might start dreaming of really gruesome things. It wasn’t going to be fun if I did. Gran had never taught me much about dreams; we’d been too busy during our waking hours. All she’d ever said was, Dreams are false friends, honey Dru. They don’t show you what you need or what’s sure; they most just show you nothin’ you can hang onna peg. Just maybes, that’s all.

  I stopped just outside the movie store and rubbed at my forehead with the heel of my left hand. If I rubbed hard enough, I wondered if I would come up with something that would fix the huge hole in the world.

  Things like this weren’t supposed to happen. It was like a regular bad dream, except it kept happening. Dad was gone. Really gone, not just coming back near dawn bloody and exhausted. He was irrevocably, absolutely, finally gone.

  Just like Gran. Just like Mom.

  I was alone. The fact that I’d been trained to be self-sufficient wasn’t comforting at all. I wanted my dad.

  I was just about to go down that particular mental road when I heard something I shouldn’t have, something that froze me in place, staring at the blank TV screens that during mall hours showed whatever movie the employees had been told to push that week. My own reflection—curly wild dark hair, big white-ringed eyes, glaring white cheeks, and camo jacket—stared at me, replicated in each glass shield.

  The crash and tinkle of broken glass was followed by a crunch and a low, sonorous growl that scraped not only at my ears but inside my head, dragging through the center of my brain. Pain flared behind my eyes, and I pitched forward, catching myself on the window with my left hand and forehead. The jolt clicked my teeth together hard. Copper bloodtaste spilled down my throat as my heartbeat slammed into overdrive, pounding so hard in my belly and chest black spots whirled and danced through my vision.

  I found myself on my knees, shaking the growl out of my head. The pain vanished as soon as it had arrived, and I was only disoriented.

  Get up, Dru! Dad’s voice barked at me. Get under cover! Do it now!

  I set my teeth and breathed in the way Gran taught me, pulling myself back into a compact ball inside my own skull. The growl slid into a lower, purely physical register, and I lifted my head, peering with watering eyes down the long empty hallway broken only by potted plants, benches, and carts full of useless crap covered for the night. There was a ruddy glow creeping up the walls, and I heard a rushing crackle under the growl.

  Now that the thing wasn’t echoing inside my head, I could think. I scrambled on hands and knees to the shelter of a huge potted palm, probably fake, and smelled smoke. I wasn’t sure if it was real smoke or just my own panic. My right hand dug in my jacket pocket, the weight of the gun cold and reassuring. I slid it free of the fabric, bringing it up nice and easy and clicking the safety off as the growling swelled, plucking at the outside of the small ball I’d made of myself inside my head.

  Another thing they don’t tell you about this sort of thing is how much it makes you want to pee. I really wanted to find a bathroom, my bladder suddenly incredibly, painfully full. No time for that—I slid over to the side and peeked down the hallway.

  Whatever it is just broke the glass on a second-floor window. Then I realized entrances to the top level of the parking lot were on the second floor, and a quarter of the way up this arm of the mall was one of those entrances. It was just past the shop with the funny-smelling lotions.

  What the hell? I breathed in, tasted smoke and something else, something icy and fresh, with an iron undertaste.

  Outside air.

  Then it padded into view, long and lean against shifting shadows. It was the size of a pony, covered in weird glassy hair, shaped like a mother of a big shaggy dog. My head hurt, the way it did when an apparition was getting ready to materialize, draining the warmth out of the air and sucking up all the ambient energy most people barely recognize they’re swimming in.

  I sucked in another soft breath, catching myself before I made a noise. It was a close call. Be quiet, Dru. Be really quiet. This is so not good.

  I suppose I get a prize for stating the obvious, even inside my own skull.

  The dog-thing inhaled, snorting through a nose the size of the Grand Canyon. As it exhaled, its jaws parting and the huge obsidian teeth sliding against each other, it made a sound like a match applied to a gas leak. Smoke fumed off its shoulders, lifted from its spine.

  It ignited. Orange and yellow flame raced along its back, dripping down the glassy fur, spattering the flooring. The scorch of it rolled down and hit the back of my throat—burning plastic.

  The thing was on fire.

  I was stupid. I gasped. I couldn’t help it.

  It heard me.

  Its blind fiery head swung around, questing. Then it snorted, and the heat of it rolled down the hall and brushed the leaves of the fake palm tree above me. The quiet rustling was almost lost in the sound of its claws snicking as it loped unerringly forward.

  A burning dog. The size of a Shetland pony. Running straight at me.

  I scrambled to my feet, my mouth dry and tasting like thick liquid copper. I bolted. My boots slapped the linoleum as the thing let out a howling growl with the rush and crackle of flame underneath it, belching with foul, sulfur-impregnated, roasted air.

  I put my head down, barely aware I was screaming like a goddamn cheerleader in a horror movie, and ran for my life.

  CHAPTER 9

  I pounded down the hallway and jagged to the left as the mezzanine opened up in a well of darkness, my legs thick with terror and refusing to work right, the gun clutched uselessly in my right hand as my arms pumped. The escalators were turned off for the night, but I skidded around the corner and took the frozen stairs three at a time anyway, my hips and shoulders jolting each time I landed. The thing
behind me—it’s burning, the rational part of my brain howled, and the other part, the part Dad had trained into me, replied with an iron imperative to fucking move I know it’s burning!—gave out another roar as it thumped into something with a crash, and the whole thing began to seem like a nightmare. I’d wake up any second now, safe in my bed, with Dad downstairs watching cable.

  It smelled horrible, rotten eggs and burning foulness. I ran like a rabbit, fleet with terror, my boots slapping down with little squeaking sounds. Something that sounded like Dad was screaming in my ear, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t listen.

  Instinct saved me. I threw myself aside as a bullet train of compressed air screamed past, holding the smearing crimson and orange of the burning thing, stretched out in a full leap. I fell heavily, not bothering to try and stop myself, barking my head on something. Warmth dripped down the side of my face. I scrambled to my feet and tripped again, knocking over chairs—overflow from the food court, a nice little nook where people could sit and eat their fast food while looking at the fountain—

  The fountain! The click inside my head was so loud I almost didn’t hear the burning thing howl again, a long, cheated rasp of ignited rage. I made it to my feet with hysterical speed and bolted, my back burning with pain and something torn loose in my side.

  Behind me. It was behind me again, and it was fast. I couldn’t hope to outrun it. Twenty feet between me and the fountain, and I wasn’t going to make it.

  MOVE! Dad’s voice bellowed in my head, as if we were in Louisiana again with the cockroach things scuttling in the basement and the ammo clips jittering in my shaking hands.

  I moved. I don’t know how. One moment I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get there in time, the next I was there.