Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (17 page)

“Well, we can help,” Vee said reluctantly.

I know she was still fatigued from the last time she helped. It was good of her to offer in spite of her reluctance, so I tried to make light of it. I snorted. “Yeah, great. A tweaked werewolf, a broken vampire, and an oracle who doesn’t play well with others.”

“Hey. Don’t be mean.” Danny had spoken up out of instinct, but when I turned around to smile at him, he was looking away and blushing.

Oh, hell’s bells. He wasn’t talking about me, or at least not just about me. And I didn’t think he was coming to Toshi’s defense.

Danny was avoiding Vee’s gaze so hard, I thought he’d sprain something. Maybe it was almost getting shot earlier, but he was showing distinct signs of being smitten.

I was gonna have to have a talk with him. Vee didn’t want to be here in the first place, and she’d abandoned me in an awful hurry back in the bar in New York. I’d have a quiet word with him later, but as soon as I had the thought, I decided: no, I couldn’t. Not unless he asked me. He was a grown man, and he’d figure—

No. Fuck that. He was my cousin, and if I thought he was going to get hurt with Vee, I was going to tell him. Later, and in private, but I was going to clue him into exactly how changeable she was. How dangerous.

I pulled out the maps I’d borrowed from Danny. “What if … what if there is access another way? There are a number of buildings right up against the back of the church—what if the pool under that church extends outside the church bounds?”

“It’s better to break into a house than a church?” Vee said uncertainly.

“Not better—easier. Maybe we can sneak in another way, someplace not so heavily fortified.” I put the maps aside. “You guys still in?”

They were. We waited until dark, then returned to the
Ayvansaray
neighborhood. The streets were still busy, but less than they’d been during the day.

On the street behind the church, we stopped. “Okay,” I said. “How are we going to do this?”

“You and Toshi are going to go down to the spring, of course,” Vee said. “There’s nothing I can do if I go down there.”

“I don’t know,” Toshi said. “I’m worried that if I go down there, whatever the mosaic did will happen again. I really don’t want to fight you, Zoe.”

We shared a look. I didn’t want that, either. I also knew I had to go anyway. I didn’t know what I might be when I came out.

“Okay, how about this? You guys spread out behind me so that if I need help, I can holler.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine! I want to help, I just …” Toshi hooked his bangs out of his eyes. He looked plain uncomfortable.

The lights from the shops and teahouses were dim and gave us plenty of shadows to hide in. We found the buildings that abutted the church’s property, and lucked out when one dusty, unlit storefront had a cobwebby “For Sale” sign in it.

The door was jammed shut, wedged closed with a shim of wood. It wasn’t even locked—there was no reason to. It looked like it was going to fall down any minute, the wood practically splintering in my hands when I was able to work the door open.

The others were down the street, within hollering distance, and I had my phone in case of trouble. It didn’t seem like nearly enough.

My hackles went up a few steps into the room, enough to get me into the shadows. I wished for a flashlight, not because I couldn’t see well enough in the dark, but because it would have made me less nervous to introduce some light into that place.

“Zoe, you should get out of here ASAHP,” Sean whispered. “And by ‘HP,’ I mean ‘hypernaturally possible.’ Whatever it is that you were looking for here—it’s gone.”

He was right. I wasn’t getting a glimmer of anything that might have meant I was in the right place, and between the bracelet and the other pieces that had glommed onto me, I knew how very sensitive I was becoming to the presence of such things. I should have realized earlier that if I hadn’t sensed it from one floor above, it was no longer here.

But replacing the desire to find more of the artifacts was a growing compulsion to Change. A faint but growing scent of something foul was drawing me in farther. It was the same odor as at Princeville and in New York. The Order of Nicomedia had been here. I tried to resist and couldn’t; this time the thought hurt as well: there was another artifact calling, something down here I needed to see.

I half-Changed and followed the trail to the back of the room, where there was a door in the farthest corner. Rather than a flight of steps, the floor gradually sloped around and down. The floor here was much more recent than the rest of the structure, and cleaner, except for the built-to-Order evil.

Something was beyond wrong when evil seemed broken.

I followed the ramp, ran down and around, faster and
faster
, until I was practically throwing myself haphazardly down th
e ram
p. I slowed as much as I dared, but the urge to find the source of the wretched smell was overpowering. I tried my phone, but the walls around me blocked the signal. I cursed and stowed it back in my pocket.

Maybe a story or two down, much deeper than I expected, I heard the trickle of water, the far reach of the spring that fed the well next door.

I heard their breathing and pacing even before I opened or even reached the steel door, fastened from the outside with a thick sliding bolt. I threw it back and pulled the heavy door open.

The room was dimly lit. Nothing supernatural in the room now; I knew instantly that the relic or whatever had been taken. There was nothing in the room but living beings.

But not human beings. Not Fangborn.

There were four of the things like the one I’d encountered in Senator Knight’s complex near Ephesus. Like the thing I still saw in Buell’s tablet. Something that wasn’t Fangborn or Normal, but a hellacious combination of the worst traits of both. They shambled forward in torn clothing at the sound of the door.

Too late. Drawn by the desire to end them, and compelled by their scent, I was helpless to resist. I was sucked into the trap.

They were on me before I got five steps inside the room.
Humanoid
, stench of unwashed and hairy bodies; blood; and open, festering wounds—

They were hungry, starving, and had been fighting each other, trying to kill something to eat.

They were slower than me, which was a blessing, but still
faster
than a human, so it took everything I had to keep up speed. To keep from being killed. To keep from being dinner.

They were mindless, or at least speechless, and if there was any other kind of communication among them besides growls and snarls, I couldn’t detect it.

The stink was unbelievable and almost knocked me down before they could get to me. And while they might have started off in full sets of clothing—ordinary street wear—now they were missing significant articles, or the pieces were ill-fastened, like that of a toddler who’s made it through the day by shedding clothes and staining and tearing at what was left. I realized that if these things were perverse interpretations of the Fangborn, they were being dressed as pale imitations of humans, the clothing hiding their slack skin and grayish hair. None of them wore shoes. Their elongated feet and claws would have made wearing such
uncomfortable
, even dangerous.

Every effort to make them appear unremarkable only had the opposite effect. The rolling gait, the almost-human eyes so far apart over the whiskered muzzle increased their profoundly disturbing aspect. Ears on top of the head could be hidden with a hat, but it would take sunglasses and a twenty-gallon hat to cast those jaws and teeth into shadow.

Even as I gathered myself for the onslaught, my face
contorted
with disgust. I shook myself, trying to focus, but understood a
dreadful truth:

That’s how I look to Normals. That’s what the girl in New York saw when she saw me.
I’d put the idea of my only personal Beast so far from me, had gotten so used to my several selves that I’d
forgotten
what that revulsion had felt like once upon a time.

This was the Order’s secret weapon.

No time out for revelation, no extra credit for getting the clue. No time for horror, no time for reflection. It was on.

It was not a coordinated attack, but that hardly mattered. They tripped and shoved each other to get at me, made no attempt to surround me, so there was no logic to the assault. I tried to remember everything I’d learned sparring with Gerry and watching boxing with my babysitter, Martin. I was uncertain being a werewolf would be nearly enough.

Get the first move off. If you’re going to fight, don’t wait for them to come to you. Go with your strengths first—don’t save your best moves for later. And whenever possible, fight dirty.

I ran to the one who was closest and on the outside edge of his fellows. I closed the last few steps between us and kicked him in the gut. It was like kicking a bag of cement, and maybe that added a little pepper to my follow-up punch to his throat. He hit the ground.

I had a faint hope that with one of them down, the others would turn on him to sate their hunger. No such luck; they ignored their fallen fellow and concentrated on me. Which kinda confirmed for me the worst possible news.

It wasn’t just hunger driving them. They were homing in on me because they were designed to go after Fangborn, just as they were designed to attract us.

A side kick kept my momentum going, but one of the creatures grabbed my leg and pulled it out from under me. I hit the stony ground hard, knocking the air from my lungs.

I rolled and tried to sweep the legs out from one of them.
Contact
, but just barely. He stumbled into another creature,
buying
me a moment.

I was halfway to my knees when one of them kicked me square in my furry cheek. It hurt as bad as if I’d been smooth skinned. Claws ripped across my muzzle, missing my eye by a fraction. Whimpering, I scrambled away on my hands and knees. Another beast hauled me up and bit deep into my upper arm. I was aware of the smell of pig shit and formaldehyde even as I felt the pressure, like a vise, first, then the awful tearing of teeth through muscle.

I felt strong, crooked teeth graze my bone and the horrible abrading reverberated throughout my body.

Howling, I punched him in the head. Twisting away made it worse. He was hanging on for dear life.

Another advanced. I could do something about that. Grabbing my attacker by his head, I turned with him and shoved him into the advancer.

Bitey closed his mouth tighter, if that were possible, for a shocking instant, then let go, lunging for the attacker. He bowled him over and managed to sink his fangs into the other’s neck. Although drawn to Fangborn, they could be distracted by bloodlust. I took that opportunity to reach behind him with my good arm and rake my claws along his throat. He fell in a heap on the first.

I turned and despaired. One was still alive. I was losing blood at a terrible rate, and the world swam before my eyes. My face was on fire, my left arm almost useless. I tried to raise my hands, but had no energy left for an attack. I was down to defense.

One step away from me, his chest exploded.

I heard the echoing roar of the shot an instant after, or so it seemed, and watched numbly as the body fell to the ground. I stepped back to avoid the pooling violet-black blood.

I looked up dully. Vee stood there, a smoking pistol in her hand. Toshi and Danny had their hands over their ears, and their faces said they wished they could cover their eyes, too.

I tried to move, I wanted to be away from that pile of death, but I tripped over my own feet, and fell down. I just wanted to be left alone with my misery and put my right arm over my head to block out the world.

“Fuck a duck, Zoe!” Vee said. “This is—” She broke off,
gagging
.

Toshi knelt over me so he could work on me.

“Oh, shit, Zoe.” He shook his head, not knowing where to start.

“Arm,” I croaked. “Bad.”

His face was ashen; I’d made a point of not looking at the wound myself. My left sleeve was hanging on by a thread; he pulled it away and dropped it. It was so soaked with my blood, it made a wet squishy noise when it hit the floor.

Another sloshing by my head; Vee had filled her hat with water from the spring.

“We don’t know whether that’s clean or not,” Danny protested. “That could do her more harm than good if it’s full of microbes.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I drank some in the church yesterday.”

“What?”

“The priest offered me some, said it was good luck. He also said the water was regularly tested. I couldn’t not drink; it would have been rude.”

“You could have said, ‘No, thank you,’” Danny said. “That was dumb.”

It was. “I’m okay today—no puking, no ill effects.”

“It’s the least unhealthy thing in this room right now.” Toshi sniffed the water and then poured some over my arm. “It’ll help irrigate the wound and get the larger pieces of dirt, anyway.”

The water hit my arm; a thrill of pain, and then …

It was cold almost all the time in Nebraska. Unless it was
summer
, during which the sun beat down, broiling us. Never anything in between. I never saw Will, except sometimes across the yard between the men’s and women’s camps, and never knew what was going on in the outside world unless someone smuggled in a phone or radio. The oracles were kept separately, outside information of any sort deemed likely to upset the resident alien “clients” of the camps. The best we hoped for was news that the lawyers had found another argument to try; the worst was when one of the Others got mixed up with the true Fangborn and their supporters—

“Zoe? You okay, Zoe?”

I opened my eyes. I was still in the basement. “Yeah, Toshi?”