Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (22 page)

I figured it could wait until then to tell them I wasn’t going with them. Short as time was, I had a date with Quarrel.

Chapter Sixteen

“So where is this mountain near Bursa?” Danny asked, staring at his cup of tea the next morning. I’d just broken the news that I was going on a vision quest. “I only ask because I’m going with you.”

“It’s about three hours southeast from Istanbul. I think
Quarrel’s
home must be in the mountains near the national park there. And I don’t think you should come. I can go faster by myself.” I reached over and grabbed the cheese and honey. I’d become addicted to Turkish honey.

“Unless you’re going to Change fully into your wolfself and run the whole way there, you’ll be relying on planes and cars like the rest of us,” he retorted, clearing his plates.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“Yeah, we will.” Danny’s uncharacteristic sarcasm rejected my soothing tone.

I finished breakfast and discovered that I would have an entourage. Danny was coming with me because he’d decided that one way or the other, we weren’t going to be separated again. I actually agreed; I’d learned there was no protecting anyone by keeping myself away. But then Vee insisted on coming because Danny was, and she wasn’t going to let
him
out of
her
sight. Toshi had agreed to stick around for a week, until he could decide how he could best hurt the Order. Claudia had whispered to me that Toshi’s fiancé, Sergio, had sacrificed himself so that Alexandra could hide during the worst of the “close down” and hopefully pass along what had happened.

His desire for vengeance made me uneasy.

Claudia and Fergus were heading back to the States to help the Fangborn prepare for what was shortly to come.

The drive was long and hot, the car cramped. The transition from the urban center was marked by steeper hills, fir trees, and rocky hills. Leaving the city seemed to help our fatigue and fraying tempers, though; Danny had a good-natured “Boston versus New York” argument with Vee about everything from food to sports. It started to get heated, so I turned to Toshi.

“Where are you from?”

He didn’t stop looking out the window and hadn’t joined in any of the conversation until now, so I was surprised when he answered. “I grew up in Vancouver. Been over here a couple of ye
ars now.
”

“Oh,” I said, hoping he’d keep talking, let us help him lessen his mournfulness, if he could. “Is there anything I can—”

“Nope. Claudia offered me a vampire’s solace and forgetting, but I’m not ready. I want to feel this until I can do something about it.” He turned back to the scenery, and was silent the rest of the way there.

We caught the ferry to Yalova, and several hours later, we arrived at the base of the hill, the image matching the one in the “invitation” Quarrel had planted in my head. “You guys pull up a rock, okay, and wait here? I have to go in. By myself. I don’t know what’s up there, but I didn’t think Quarrel’s invite included guests.”

“Sure,” Vee said. Toshi sat down without a word.

Danny looked around nervously. “What’s that noise?”

“Bees,” Vee said.

“The hills are covered with hives,” I said. It was just like my vision of Quarrel. “See those small white boxes everywhere?”

“That’s
bees
? But … I can feel the
vibrations
—that’s an
awful
lot of bees.” Danny closed up his car and sat in the shade, gingerly, first checking to make sure he wouldn’t sit on anything flying.

“I’ve got no signal on my phone,” I said. “So if you hear screams, run.”

“Not funny,” Vee said.

“Nope, it isn’t. Well. Back in a bit.” I raised a hand in farewell, and started to climb.

The heat was worse as I climbed, but it enhanced the smell of herbs and pines that drew the bees. Despite the clouds, the bees kept up their rumble, a threatening heaviness on the air. It darkened, and I felt the first drops of rain on my head when I saw the entrance to the cave.

There was a spring here, and the bees gracefully dipped down to drink for a moment before flying off. I couldn’t see much in front of me; the pencil flashlight I used was swallowed by the darkness, and even werewolf vision didn’t seem to help. I wondered if the lack of light was supernatural.

The cave tunnel turned and turned again, and began sloping somewhat. I was going deeper into the cave, farther away from t
he worl
d.

Too far. I suddenly felt the weight of the mountain over me, threatening to crush me in every dimension.

I lost my nerve.

If I leave right now,
I told myself,
I can find my way back.

I had no magic ball of thread, like Ariadne. I had no breadcrumbs like Gretel. I had no elf-light, like Frodo.

If I hold my breath,
I thought,
I can make it back to the entrance without claustrophobia or geology killing me.

I turned. I tripped. I hit the ground hard, feeling skin scuff off my knees and jagged ancient stone bite deep into my palms. A sharp crack; my penlight broke. I scrambled up and skidded. Throwing my hand out in front of me, I hit a rock surface I hadn’t known was there. Pain shrieked up my arm, and I felt cold air, not from an outside source—the air was as stale as ever—but because of the blood springing up on the skin of my palm.

I’d gotten completely turned around, maybe even lost myself in a branching tunnel. I found another wall where I thought my way back should be should be. The ground tilted up under my feet, and my stomach dropped away, as panic overwhelmed me—

Fool to go into a cave. Worse fool to continue without a light, a map, a team, a clue …

A dead fool, if I didn’t keep it together.

I stopped, closed my eyes, and tried to focus on my own trail. I could follow my own scent back to the surface. It should be easy, since I’d been the only thing living that had been this down this tunnel in who knew how long …

Check that.

There was something else.

Not human, not animal. It lay ahead of me, not behind.

Someone was living in the tunnels. Someone—something—I had to find. I reached out with my proximity sense, not really sure what I was looking for or even if I wanted to find him.

I wanted to curse my nose, which might have gotten me out of there but was telling me to move on. There was no telling which filled me with more dread: finding Quarrel or failing to meet him.

I took a few steps forward, my knees unsteady, my gait faltering, thinking of what Quarrel might have to be, to live underground like this. That brought unwelcome images of Grendel, Grendel’s mother, giants, trolls … a vague recollection of a Chilean myth that spoke of Cherufe, who lived in magma and ate sacrificial victims. And weren’t caves meant to be the entrance to the Mayan underworld, Xibalba? I had absolutely zero desire to meet the Mayan death gods. In fact, the more I thought about it, there were
no
underworld gods I wanted to meet, no subterranean beasts I could imagine that wouldn’t spell trouble for me—

I saw light.

I thought it was a trick of my eyes at first, phosphines created by my time in the darkness. It gave me something to focus on while I tried to find my way.

The light didn’t move. It stayed to one side if I turned, and didn’t repeat itself as I blinked and looked away. Maybe it was a phosphorescent growth, but it was real and it was ahead of me.

I found my track, and then I had a choice: forward, to who knew what; or back out, to safety and strife?

I thought of the others waiting for me out there. Adam—
wanting
him now made me blush, but I longed to be enfolded in his arms. All
the others at home, trying to contain an army of monsters
created
by the Order. Safety wasn’t even a relative term anymore. It was a myth. I’d been brought here for a reason.

The desire of leaving the dark for the cliff side still tugged at me, every instinct screaming against continuing into the dark alone.

I walked toward the pinpoint of light.

It seemed to take a long time for the light to grow any bigger, and I wondered if there wasn’t some gas in the ground that was making me hallucinate. The bitter smell grew heavier, however, so if I was seeing things, I was smelling them as well. It didn’t reassure me much, but I tried to remember that my nose and eyes were not easily fooled.

The light grew, and so did my sense of fear. I couldn’t—now that I’d come this far—believe it would be a patch of glowing fungus or some pool filled with pale and bug-eyed luminescent fish that I would find.

The smell was … worrying. Faintly familiar.

As I neared, the light blossomed to blinding. It hadn’t taken me long to miss sunlight. Eventually, I could see rock outlined by sun, a hard dark split in the sky, stone below clouds.

More colors added suddenly to the blue and white of sky and the black and brown rock. Sparkling, too bright to distinguish at first, I wondered if the temporary light deprivation was playing tricks on my eyes again.

Another flash, a glittering rainbow, as if an ocean wave broke under the sun, or a swarm of tropical birds or insects had suddenly wheeled around as one. The lights settled down, paused, and then rose up in a wave again.

It wasn’t rock, and it wasn’t a wave. Something was alive, breathing, in that cave open to the sun.

Ninety percent of me wanted to turn and run. The other ten percent made a compelling argument for curiosity killing the cat.

I’m no good at math. Besides, I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. I had to move closer.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust against the brightness of the light and the color. The odd curves, the repeating patterns were again eerily familiar and as alien as anything I could wrap my head around.

At its thickest point, it was the size of a small elephant, and maybe ten meters long. It looked like a pile of jewels; the brilliant flashes of color I’d seen covered most of the surface of its body. That’s where the familiarity nudged me again, but my brain was shutting down at the possibilities of what I was seeing.

Finally, I had to rely on good old primitive mammal pattern recognition to pick out things that might have led to arms, and lumps that suggested legs tucked under a massive body and tail. Whatever it was curled up on its shining self, asleep. It was a steely bluish-black; the other colors were reflections of the textured surface.

Another heave of its massive body. My brain offered me a name, a word; logic rejected it before I got to the second syllable.

I tried a few other words and came back to the first.

The body shifted, a head emerged, defined itself, vaguely lizardlike, with a long ridge extending from the back of the head down the spine. The smooth waves of breathing became irregular; it was stirring awake.

If I was going to run, it had to be happening now. Two minutes ago.

My feet wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t move, literally, to save my own life. Fascination and horror and disbelief rooted me, dried my mouth, set my knees shaking.

The air changed; the beast was awake, knew I was here. My Fangborn impulses put me on guard; I understood my body
chemistry
altered a little in response, preparing for both offense and defense.

A snort, loud, echoing, sounded briefly like a small jet
engine
. The head and neck extended—I could see the patches of jewel-crust over the metal scales, eyes like black diamonds—and stretched, and the beast rolled over slowly, with a cascade of pebble clicks and rattles, so that it was facing me. I had a glimpse of a dark reddish gold underbelly covered with the same dense armor dotted with jeweled scales.

Its head was much nearer now.

I tried the word I’d rejected before.

Dragon.

Not an alligator or a platypus or a giant catfish or a trick of t
he lig
ht.

Dragon.

The dragon yawned, showing foot-long silvery fangs. Another ripple of lead-footed dread seized me, followed by another, stronger shift in my own body chemistry. However strange I must have looked to Normals, the dragon was one of my own kin, and I’d never encountered anything so alien, so human feeling, and yet so unrecognizable …

Holy shit,
hic draconis.

I tried to think of what I knew of dragons. In Western
culture
, there was nothing good I could recall. They were generally
considered
to represent chaos and evil, generally defeated by a storm god-hero, like Gilgamesh or St. George or Thor or Zeus. In the East, it was a whole different point of view, and dragons represented the universe and were guardians, protecting continuity, wisdom, the seasons, and the crops.

I wondered which tradition this one ascribed to?

The dragon stopped yawning. Swung its head around and looked at me. Again, the click and clatter of jewels on stones.

That got my mind back on track. An interested dragon is not something to ignore.

Startlement was not a look I expected. It was nearly as freaked out as I was.

Another roar, like a blast furnace. I threw my hands up against the inferno, too feeble and too late. I half-Changed.

No blast of fire, no poison cloud. It was trying to communicate with me, using its actual voice. “Too loud!” I shouted. “Too loud!”

“My apologies.” Suddenly the voice I recognized as Quarrel was in my head. The dragon had switched to telepathy. Its voice like ancient oak; perhaps a little weathered at the edges, but nearly stone at its core. If I’d been a Normal human, I would have peed myself and run blindly in front of a Mack truck to get away from that scrutiny. As it was, I had to use all my will to concentrate on his voice, and more importantly, keep my fangs from showing in response to a perceived threat.