Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (27 page)

Chapter Twenty

I Changed back and waited until Vee was asleep and the driver was occupied with navigating our way back to Boston.

“Excuse me a moment,” I said to the driver and the other
vampire
. “I’ll … just be a moment.”

I closed my eyes and found myself in the lab. Every surface was crowded, as if several field crews had returned at once with the season’s results. Acid-free boxes, wooden crates with exotic shipping labels, and bundles of notebooks and memory sticks were being sorted by a crowd of what appeared to be undergraduate assistants I’d never seen before.

“Sean, what have we got?” I stepped out of the way of a particularly overeager young woman carrying bags of soil collected for analysis.

Sean clapped his hands together hard and began to rub them together, Mr. Miyagi style. He held them out like he was going to heal me, or testify. “First things first. You understand what I am, right?”

“Yeah, you’re an epistemological device,” I said without thinking. “You’re here to educate me about what I am, or what I’m becoming. The problem has been, I can’t bend my mind around some of the stuff you’re trying to impart.”

As soon as I said it, I felt like an idiot. The blast and the superabundance of artifacts hitting me had filled in the blanks, nudging me toward the truth. I’d known for ages, it seemed, but it hadn’t
trickled down to my conscious self. Or I hadn’t wanted it to; I
wanted
a friend, and had stubbornly insisted Sean was just … Sean. I
swallowed
, admitting to myself for the first time that Sean wasn’t truly alive, that this was only my memory of him used in the service of the bracelet.

“At least, I know now, it’s not you driving me to those excessive thoughts of violence, Sean,” I whispered. “I need that memory of you, at least.”

“Hey, Zo!” His hand on my back was a comfort. That was an illusion I could live with. “Well, you know I’ve always been about the self-preservation, but yeah, I’m only interpreting. And your survival is paramount.” He shrugged. “Pretty much at any cost.”

At any cost? I hoped I still had some say in that. I nodded and swallowed. “And whatever these artifacts do, the thing I called
Pandora’s
Box and the other vessels are using you as an interface to try and teach me. Guide me to more artifacts.”

He gave me the thumbs-up. “A-plus.”

“But the problem is, now I have the artifact Dmitri wanted to have, the Yoruba bowl, but it came with a lot of other incomplete artifacts, and I need to know how I’m going to get them to …”

I couldn’t think of a word that didn’t sound stupid or horrifying.

“Integrate. With you, with the other …” Sean said a word that I didn’t understand. “Tools, is what Quarrel called them. What you’ve been calling the bracelet.”

I didn’t like the sound of the word “integrate,” not one bit. But it would have to do for now. If I didn’t learn about them, I couldn’t use them. “Right. So how am I supposed to do that? I have ninety percent of the lidded bowl, but not the whole thing, and the rest of the things I saw, the beads, the clockwork …”

I could feel them but couldn’t control them, not the way I was learning to use the others. “I need to know what gives me control of them—or lets me access them?” A thought struck me. “Like the disc, from Venice? That was the part that … activated the portal in Pandora’s Box.”

Sean shook his head, smoothing his mustache with a finger, something I’d seen him do thousands of times before. “You know as well as anyone, Zoe. Not every artifact lasts, and even if they do, not every artifact remains intact. There’s no difference with these artifacts. It’s the same thing.”

“Yeah, but … I
need
them,” I said, feeling stupid. “I mean … it’s important for me to have them. The day after tomorrow—”

Sean shrugged. “What can I say? You gotta fake it until you make it.”

“You can’t be more helpful than that?” My frustration boiled into anger. “I mean, a direct answer would kill you?”

He opened his mouth, and I held up a hand to stop him. “Yeah, yeah, got it, dead already. But why not more forthcoming if I’m asking the right questions?”

He shook his head, clucking. “You only get what you can understand. Maybe you’ll understand more of them when you … level up. Because part of it … it’s a test. You gotta show the work if you want the grade.”

I didn’t think slapping Sean would do any good—smacking him in real life had never stopped his wiseass teasing—but I was giving it serious consideration purely for its cathartic effect. I took a deep breath. “What else y
ou got?”

“What else
you
got?”

I opened my mouth to swear, but somewhere between parting my lips and moving my tongue, a light blinded me. If I’d been in the real world and not this video game of my mind, I’d have thought a supernova or an atom bomb was going off. In my lab, my ego abounded, and I got to throw myself a parade when I got a big idea.

Then I stopped dead because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I needed to get back to the outside here and now, but then another thought stopped me. One idea led to an avalanche, and I wasn’t sure I could keep up with it.

One thing at a time.

I ran to a cupboard. No more locks. I pulled the door open, and there it was: the lidded bowl, as real as it had been in the museum. I flung open more cabinets until I found what I wanted. Until I found the artifact that said the right thing to me.

Two of the copper beads were glowing faintly, oh so faintly white. Of Native American origin, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I suddenly knew …

No, the beads didn’t match the bowl, not in material, shape, or cultural origin—and didn’t fit the broken part—yet. But I was betting that I could make them.

Okay, this was the opposite of what I’d had drummed into my head in college: you absolutely do not force a fit between two
artifacts
. One professor had confessed that, as a young man, he’d been caught filing down the edge of an unrelated potsherd to make it fit a nearly complete pot. Back in those days, corporal punishment was considered a valid pedagogical tool:
his
instructor had slapped him upside the head. Even if you’re trying to make a full reconstruction, you don’t use another artifact. You use a slightly different color in your replacement material—whether it’s part of a reconstructed pot, necklace, or sword. This let people know the pot had mostly survived, and this is what we thought was correct … because in the end, even if we’d repaired thousands exactly like it, we still were making only a very ed
ucated guess.

This wasn’t archaeology I was doing in the lab—not really. I’d used the techniques I’d learned to try and learn about these objects, but it was, for all intents and purposes, magic. My magic. Until I figured out the real rules, I got to make them up myself.

I prayed they’d work.

I found an empty space on the lab bench, and stared at the beads. There was more light now that they were closer together. As
I exami
ned the lidded bowl, I saw that there was a vacant space where another piece of carving had been. If I’d been lucky, maybe I would have found that or the Order would have found it, and they’d be all in a nice big pile, some assembly required.

But that’s not how it worked, and whoever—whatever—had designed this had known this might happen, that the artifacts might not be preserved intact, so they’d scattered pieces to a
hundred
, to a thousand vessels across the world, perhaps inspiring tens of
thousands
of Fangborn … artificers to make objects with certain powers or connections. Redundancies built in, so that at some point, down the line, someone could put the pieces
together
, and by doing so, demonstrate he—or she—should get the prize. Get th
e power.

So maybe there were spare parts, too.

I took the bowl and placed the rest of the copper beads next to it. So far, so good. Their pale golden glow intensified ever so slightly. I took the turquoise and carnelian headdress—
a girl’s sinsile, Central Asian, probably from the twentieth century
, I knew all of a sudden—and put that next t
o them.

I had no idea what to do next. They simply did not fit. They were from all over the world, all different time periods, nothing to do with each other. And I couldn’t see how to make them fit.

“Make” was the word. I was in my head. None of this was real—not real as in the real world. So I had to make want to fit.

I emptied my mind as far as I could, closed my eyes, and let my hands rest over the artifacts. I could see how they wanted to go—with other artifacts. Like a dog pulling on its leash, or a child dragging his heels, the artifacts clearly wanted to be elsewhere. The resistance reminded me of magnets repelling, but I coaxed them, just a little. Suggesting how they might go together, thinking of a new form that would complement both. I was changing both artifacts to what they needed to be. What I needed them to be.

But they weren’t there yet. I had the pieces; I didn’t have the
knowledge
.

I found myself back in the car, weeping with frustration.

“Anything I can do?” the vampire asked.

“I’m sorry, I can’t
 … 
” I took a breath. “What’s your name?”

“Keenan.”

“Keenan, thank you, no. There’s nothing you can do.” The terrible thing was I was the only one who could do anything, and I still didn’t know how.

I dozed until we reached a Family house in the South End of
Boston
, to join the rest of the team. Two adjoining buildings had been made into one massive house, fitted out to support and protect the Fangborn in any emergency. There was barely time to clean up and enjoy a two-hour-long debrief with an older Cousin in a plaid shirt, before I fell asleep in my clothes.

When I woke, it was late afternoon the next day. I wanted a shower badly, but I hesitated. Naked, I’d be forced to see how the artifacts in Salem had transformed me. I sat for a long five minutes before I decided: it was done, and there was nothing I could do about it. I smelled of smoke, blood, and sweat. I needed a shower.

Slowly, I stripped off my shirt. My left shoulder now matched my right. I craned around, but that was all I could see on my torso. Time to shuck off my cargo pants—time to wash or, better, burn them. They were filthy. Nothing on my thighs, but I noticed my right ankle now had a set of jeweled tiles similar to the bracelet. None of the gold metallic mesh on my legs. Not so bad, but …

A deep breath. I peeked in my panties. Nothing new. Still Zoe.

I sighed with enormous relief and got into the shower.

Having slept, banished dread, and showered, I was now ravenous. It suddenly occurred to me that this was certainly one reason Fangborn shifters ate so much. The energy we expended in the course of a day, never mind with shifting, required an equally
massive
replenishment. As soon as I finished cleaning, I went to the kitchen. Unless someone came looking for me, I was pretty sure I’d find someone there.

Will MacFarlane walked in from one side of the big industrial kitchen. He was preoccupied, tired, and clearly not eating enough. He stopped when he saw me making a sandwich.

I put down the knife on the island and took a few steps forward just as he did. Then I stopped. We both flushed at the same time. I don’t know what he was feeling, but I was at least uncertain and definitely angry. Will had left me in the lurch in a very bad place, and even his pummeling the snot out of Buell didn’t make him my friend—much less my boyfriend—if his next move was to try to turn me into the very people I’d escaped from.

I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. As glad as I was to see Will was safe, what I really wanted was a little peace and quiet and some food.

“Zoe? Are you okay?” He walked over to the sink, got a glass of water, trying to figure out what to do. He kept his distance, too. Maybe a little embarrassed by his actions. Maybe still a little wary of me. “Claudia told me what you were after with Vee Brooks. Did you find it?”

“I got what I was after, but I’m still struggling.” I thought of the burning museum. “I’m a little beat up. How are you?”

“Same. Beat up. Struggling.”

I believe apologies go better with food. I wasn’t sure yet who needed to apologize to whom, but we all needed to pull
together now
.