Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (11 page)

He danced back, away from me, hands up. “What … did anything happen in there? You weren’t in there very long—didn’t you find what you were looking for?”

I frowned. If I were going by purely circadian guessery, I would have said I’d been down there for at least two hours. I checked my watch. Barely five minutes had passed. I had spent at least twice that long taking pictures and sketching.

Time had gone crazy during my time on the ship burial.

Fuck.

I cleared my throat, could feel it healing. The pain receded faster now, with reassuring Fangborn speed and resilience. “You didn’t hear anything, see anything?” I asked. “No lights, no earthquake, no—” I stopped myself before I could say “giant snake.” That refreshed my memory of the world serpent, Jormungandr, and raised other ancient symbols of serpents: Ourobouros, Leviathan, sea monsters …

“No. You went in. A few minutes went by, quiet as anything. You came out again. There was no earthquake.”

“Oh.” I said faintly. “That’s good. I’m glad no one else was involved.”

And it was good. The less my explorations made an impact on the Normal world, the better, as far as I was concerned. “We’d better get out of here. In case there were … alarms or something.”

I shivered. Fall was quickly turning to winter here, and I’d need to find another layer, maybe some gloves, soon, if we stayed. Long sleeves, gloves, and layers could be useful, though. If I was very lucky, all the interactions with the Fangborn vessels would remain like carefully considered tattoos, located where the judge couldn’t see them. Above the wrist, below the collar.

The longer that I kept these things a secret, the better, as far as I was concerned. Besides, it was only common sense. Even if there were no powers that came with these additions, I didn’t want to risk someone deciding to flense the gold and stones from my body for their monetary value. I didn’t know what would happen to them, or me. I couldn’t risk looking like a target. Being a werewolf was one thing; being a jewel-encrusted freak was quite another.

The bracelet was much as it had been: flat colored gemstones that seemed to be set in gold or silver metal. Another rank of stones—some nearly translucent and some green-veined in milky white—had been added near the elbow. I could deal with that, I’d already learned to live with it. But what I’d seen on my shoulder …

Thinking again about the murderous impulses I’d had—hell, the extracurricular tracking of evil outside of my range on the drive from Virginia—and the reaction from Gerry Steuben and the
Victorian
Fangborn couple slowed me down. What if all I’d learned about the Fangborn was wrong? What if, contrary to what Gerry had taught me, the Fangborn weren’t always right, weren’t always on the side of good? It was a nice notion, but if it were false, it suddenly threw every Fangborn kill into a sinister light.

Or what if Gerry was right? What if it
was
just me?

The idea of stopping to eat made me feel sick, but Adam insisted that lunch was next on the agenda.

As much as I didn’t want to be seen in public, I let him pick out a place, and we headed in that direction. I was just glad things were so simple for him. Arrive in Denmark, acquire an artifact that nearly killed me from underneath the noses of two antique
Fangborn
who seemed to think I was the bad guy, and experience some kind of time–space shift before lunch. It was soothing to know there were uncomplicated lives out there.

My head was swirling, so full of questions. There was no room for hunger. I wanted a drink. I wanted six.

The look in the female werewolf’s eyes as she vanished—

I saw a trash can, pulled over to the side, and threw up. No longer in physical pain, I couldn’t shake the hollow feeling that I’d been punched in the stomach.

“Hey! Hey, awww.” My hair wasn’t long enough to hold, but having hooked it back over my ears, Adam hovered over me, unable to do anything else while I was sick. He rummaged in his pockets and came up empty. Looking helpless—when does a guy not look like he wants to run at the sight of tears?—he held out his sleeve for me to use instead of a tissue.

I held up a hand, having found a paper napkin in my pocket. Wiped my mouth and threw the napkin away afterward.

Walked on without another word. After a minute, Adam caught up with me.

“Tell me … what happened in there?”

I gave him the short version, blandly, emotionlessly. His expression went from disbelief to horror, to shock. “My God, Zoe—how are you feeling now? Is there anything I can do? Are you
gonna
be sick again?”

“No. I think I’m done.” I’d been alone so much since the bracelet came that I was increasingly aware of how much I valued simple human sympathy. It made me want to cry, but if I started now, I wouldn’t stop. I distracted us both. “What worries me though, is the weird costumes those Fangborn were wearing.”

Adam was also eager to talk about something else. “You don’t think they were taking part in some ritual, do you?”

“No. I mean, I think it was some kind of sacred space, maybe like Ariana and Ben were guarding in Venice? There were bodies, very old, wrapped in shrouds. I think it was a Fangborn—well, not burial ground. Crypt? I think I was seeing a funeral.”

Adam nodded.

I hesitated before I could bring myself to say it. “But I think it was a funeral from a hundred and something years ago.”

He kept walking but slowed down a little, his face thoughtful. “Why?”

“There were more bodies when I originally went in. Fewer with them, and the new one … wasn’t the new one when I went down there.”

“You sure it didn’t roll off the boat? Things got pretty pitched there, you said.”

I shrugged. I knew what I saw. “Ritual garb for a people as old as the Fangborn? I’d think it would be earlier than the nineteenth century.”

“Um. So … what was it you were seeing?”

I shook my head. “Something out of time … time out of joint.”

He tilted his head skeptically. “Yeah, well, a lot of nationalist traditions began in the nineteenth century. Fangborn aren’t any different from other people.”

I laughed, a raw, empty noise. I had a suite of jewelry that argued otherwise. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe I’ll remember something later, to explain it all.”

I didn’t think I would, though. I was starting to think that
either
the two Fangborn or I had traveled in time, or somehow our realities had brushed up against each other, and we’d been able to interact. Whatever it was, I didn’t like the fact that they’d seen me as something to attack, that my presence had driven them
to Chang
e.

First Gerry, then the Danish Fangborn. What the hell was
going
on? Was it me who elicited that reaction, or the jewelry? Could I stop it before some well-meaning and shortsighted
Fangborn
did me in?

Or was I turning evil, so far as the Fangborn knew it?

Chapter Ten

I didn’t feel any different, but … what did evil feel like, inside? Would I suddenly crave violence, mayhem, and kitten sausage sandwiches? Would I feel as if I’d grown warts and sores on my soul? Somehow, I didn’t think that’s how it worked. I’d have to pay very careful attention.

Bad enough being a werewolf, but at least I had connections, however tenuous, in the Fangborn world. I’d believed—hoped—that with them, I’d been on the side of good.

Adam led me by the hand to the train station. On the train back to Copenhagen, I started shaking, a purely physical response to fatigue and the morning’s violence. Numb and lost, I needed to reboot. I had three choices for that: a bookstore, a library, or a
museum
. Bookstores and libraries wouldn’t be much good if I couldn’t read Danish. Artifacts, well, I didn’t need signage to lose myself thinking about them.

We checked into our hotel room, left our bags there, and washed up. I was still feeling hyper and disconnected, so we found our way over to the National Museum of Denmark. I wandered from hall to hall, antsy and fidgeting, not really wanting to be there after all. Ordinarily, I would have been slavering over the treasure hoards, the swords and helmets, the pottery. Now it only reminded me of why I wasn’t at home in the museum, and of the new skin I seemed to be growing. Adam mistakenly thought I was doing research, and I quickly divined my mistake. Silver and jewels aren’t as interesting when you’ve found them spontaneously embedding themselves in your flesh; armor isn’t as appealing when you’re developing a skin that resembles an insect’s carapace. Didn’t matter how pretty, how marvelous. It wasn’t truly me, and everything around me underscored that. I’d never felt so out of place, and feeling that in a museum made it worse.

My friends were no longer my friends. My traditional refuges no longer offered me shelter or solace. I wasn’t me—I only had the artifacts calling me and the bracelet driving me to them.

I reached the case full of Viking trade goods. My throat tightened. My restlessness converted to a panic I hadn’t even known on the ship that morning, and it possessed me. I ran, bowling over a guard, who shouted. Terrified I’d Change, I tore back through the galleries—back in time from the Viking Age to the Stone Age—to the lobby and out the doors to fresh, cold, salt air.

I didn’t Change, but if I’d been any slower, the people I passed might have seen a flash of fur, a glimpse of fang and claw.

I ran past the flat-faced brick buildings, government offices with splendid, strange steeples, and across bridges until I was winded. Then I ran a while longer. Finally, I had to stop. I’d run out of Copenhagen and had no idea where I was.

I could follow my trail back, came the answer instantly.

I couldn’t run away from my problems. I couldn’t lose myself. I couldn’t find myself.

It might have been my newfound abilities of command and persuasion, or my new trick of seeing things that weren’t there. It might have been old instincts. I found a liquor store almost without trying. I didn’t want to give into old, bad habits and so walked past the cases of beer and wine until I found a bottle of water. I picked one up and walked to the counter.

“Will there be anything else?” the clerk asked.

I shook my head, then turned and picked up a tall glass bottle. “Is this strong?”

“Aquavit? Yes, very, if you’re not used to it.”

“Good.” I put that one on the counter, considered putting it back. Then grabbed another.

A slight, noncommittal tilt of the head, and the clerk bagged up my bottles.

I walked back to the hotel, ignoring my phone and Adam’s repeated texts. I stopped suddenly and looked up, having found what I didn’t know I was looking for. The department store inspired me. I stopped by the hardware and kitchen departments and made quick purchases. Didn’t want to think about what I was going to do.

Back at the hotel room, I locked the door after me. I pulled a glass off the counter, unwrapped it, didn’t bother with ice. Opened the first bottle and filled the tumbler.

I drank like it was a magic potion. This would bring answers, or at the very least, peace for an hour or two.

Herbal, a little basil or mint or licorice. A little different from vodka, but same general principle. Exactly the right kind of burn …

Too much thinking, Zoe. Not enough drinking. Get busy.

I drank another long swallow and topped up my glass. There was more than one way to run.

It took three glasses before I started to feel it, and then it walloped me. Hard. Very Scandinavian, I thought. All civilized and composed until it turned berserker.

I stood up; the room whirled. My feet didn’t connect to my brain, and I laughed out loud. I settled into the drunk with a kind of satisfaction. At least I knew the reason this time: a bad day when bed spins were a preferred alternative. I shoved myself up and got to work.

I took another tumbler full, drank it down to stop the last warnings of a sensible mind. The roiling in my stomach was equal parts
alcohol
and fear about what I was going to do. I set my depart
ment-sto
re purchases out in a neat line on the desk, with almost ritual care.

I took off my shirt, slipped my arm out of the bra strap on my right shoulder. I put on the oven mitt, and picked up the screwdriver I’d bought. Regarded it for a moment. Lifted it up and placed it just below my collarbone.

I made myself look in the mirror again. There was a line of flat jewels, much like those on the bracelet, just below my right
collarbone
, close to my shoulder. When I turned my shoulder to the mirror, I could see several more along the back of my shoulder and my spine.

Connecting this was a fine mesh of gold, embedded in my skin. Occasionally, the mesh was interrupted by a tiny round
jewel
, as if scattered haphazardly across my shoulder. When I turned, the light reflected a little more on my shoulder and back, and if I didn’t look hard, it was almost as if I’d brushed a metallic glitter on m
y skin
.

I brushed my hand across my collarbone, as if giving the gold and stones one more chance to fall off. It was a little like feeling a different set of bones beneath my skin. Somehow the metal and stones were still capable of transmitting my sense of touch.

The bracelet, I’d grown use to looking at. It was lovely, easily concealed. Even the new stones and fine mesh, I could have lived with, even if they had been … inactive. Just body mod, unasked for, but unique and beautiful. But the bracelet and its new counterparts were getting weirder, and I was too afraid of the changes I was experiencing to ignore them.

I’d get rid of it all, I’d decided.

Another quick drink, and using both hands, I awkwardly
steadied the screwdriver, then jabbed it down hard, aiming it
under
the jeweled tiles on my collarbone

No stabbing pain, as I’d expected. Green lightning flowed up the shaft, raced up my arm, and encircled me. Burning, like hitting the broiler with your hand and not able to get it away, burning down, into the bone, burning like hell itself.

Some part of me was still free to drop the screwdriver. As soon as it fell away, now a piece of slag with a blob of plastic handle, the pain stopped. But the threat was still there:

Try it again, and you’ll get the same.

I knew to expect a shock—that’s what had made the
technicians
at the TRG facility so nervous about me—but that had been described as “fork in the socket,” not a lightning strike. I’d seen something like it before, when the vessel took over at Ephesus. It hadn’t been a threat then, just an opportunity.

You’re ours.

Without pausing, I picked up the knife. A second mitt, the first still smoldering on the floor.

More lightning. A spear of pain, from my fingertips to my toes.

Bad dog.

When I could breathe again, I ran my hand over my
shoulder
—
nothing. No burns, not even a scratch. That emboldened me to look at myself in the mirror again. Not a nick, not a dent in the stones. The gold “mesh” was unmarked. The tiny dots of jewels were a winking constellation. There was no seam, just a fading of the gold into the skin at its edge; it moved as I did. The stones were cool to the touch, as always. The skin beneath my fingertips—body
temperature
. Eerie, familiar, different. Me.

I had to keep them. Maybe whatever it was I was gaining would be worth it.

I had to believe that. Looking at the still steaming was-
screwdriver
, had-been-knife, I knew I didn’t have a choice. I
wanted
to believe it, too, because otherwise I had to question my every action, especially my Fangborn instincts.

I felt my body dismantling the last of the liquor not burned from my system, mining for useful chemicals and rejecting the rest. A little anesthetic effect, none of the usual illness I should have had with this much booze.

Great. Now I didn’t even have that crude escape.

I staggered over to the bed and collapsed, this time into an exhausted unconsciousness.

The lab appeared almost immediately. Sean was there, looking harried.

“You know that’s not going to work, right? You’re not on your own time now, Zoe, and we have a lot to do. Can’t afford you trying to avoid work, not when things are so close.”

He nodded to a chair at the bench and hopped backward onto the desk.

“I thought that was my desk,” I said.

“You got here late, you didn’t call it. You get the bench.”

I didn’t feel drunk, and I now knew that there was no respite in unconsciousness, either. I resigned myself to it. “What’s the plan?”

“You left the museum a little fast,” Sean said. “You know why?”

I shrugged again. “Residual panic attack?”

“If you’d hung around, you would have figured out the connection. Still some leftover data you didn’t give yourself time to process from the ship. Some of the artifacts were broken or worn, so it’s not going to be as complete a process as it should be.”

“What process is that?”

Sean, as usual, ignored me when he didn’t want or know enough to answer my questions.

He scrolled through a couple of catalog pages on the computer on the desk—I had a computer? It was a nice one. Then he paused, and almost before my brain had registered what my eyes were seeing, I knew what it was.

The exhibit at the museum had reminded me of one of the figures from the miniature ship. It was the Arabic trade connections, with some of the materials the Viking raiders and traders had brought back from the far east in the early tenth century.

“Why now?” I asked, and then I lost my patience. “Why is this so important for me to see? Why don’t you
tell
me?”

“Can’t tell you what you’re not ready for,” Sean said. “The ship was damaged in your flight from the basement. Connections were lost. Maybe you can do something about it.”

He went to a storage cabinet and pulled out the miniature
golden
ship. There didn’t seem to be any inconsistency between seeing the new tiles at my collarbone, and the fact that the ship was here, largely intact.

I looked at the fragment of the ship that had broken off and compared it with the larger piece. I got the idea of the sort of things I’d need to do to repair it.

“How do I fix it?”

Sean rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Zoe, this is your place. Go through the computer and see if you have any gold or stones or pieces you can use. See how far that gets you.”

I nodded, and started going through the catalog. I didn’t remember making this, but it certainly was in patterns I recognized, and the search navigation was easy enough.

There was gold wire listed in the catalog, with a cabinet location. I found that, then some metal snips, which happened to be in the first drawer I opened. I didn’t know if they were the right kind, but they were right there, so I decided to give it a whirl. I clipped a small piece, then held it up to the ends of the oar to check the
measurement
.

The gold wire began to writhe in my fingers, and like a worm, contracting and extending by segments, reached for the broken edge and … grabbed on and became a part of it.

The thing wriggled a bit more, then settled down to be chilly gold again.

Well, that’s good,
I thought, surprised,
because I don’t know anything about soldering.

I examined the mend. There was an obvious difference between the two metals, but somehow the connection itself seemed to be the important thing.

My headache dissipated. The relief was amazing. I hadn’t realized how much it had been throbbing, ever since my fight in the basement.

I tried the same thing on the other repairs and it worked, for the most part. The metal was easiest to replace, but a few of the little shields had snapped off during my escape, and I had nothing that would replace them. Conservators in the real world would make a repair with modern materials that were close enough in color and texture to suggest the original, but not so close as to suggest it was whole. I found a few scraps in random drawers, and considering, took one that was a half circle of dark green,
translucent stone.

I put it over the broken edge, to see if there was any … empathy. A slight tug, and I knew I was on the right track. I reached for a file, and found it in the tool drawer as soon as I thought of it. Ran it across the edge of the green fragment to shave off a few edges, held it to the shield fragment. It snapped into place, melded with the original.