Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (4 page)

I managed a backhanded punch to the head of the next guy when the world went crazy. A jolt of electricity coursed through my body, and I hit the parking lot surface hard.

Fucking Tasers.

Unable to move, I watched the fight blearily. Will had found assistance; Buell was nowhere to be seen. I saw a man’s boots near my face and flinched—

“Zoe!”

Strong hands took me by the shoulders, hauled me up. “Zoe, I got you!”

It was Adam.

“Will’s over there!” I shouted.

“He can handle himself,” Adam said. “Jesus, you’re a mess! We need to get out of here before the cops come.”

I half-fell, he half-dragged me. When I tried to step over a parking barrier, I went down completely. Adam scooped me up and threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I didn’t like being head-down, bumping into Adam’s back, but when I raised my head to insist I could walk, I saw Buell.

“Adam! Behind you!”

I knew Adam was good in a fight, and he thought fast. He stooped, just long enough to roll me off his shoulder, then tackled Buell like a dummy on a football sled.

I hauled myself up, elated to see Buell hit the ground and hear his head hit the pavement. Distantly, I felt the Call to Change, to end him, but I could barely even stand.

Adam pulled Buell up by the shirt and beat his face in.

Then he stopped. Let Buell fall to the ground, unconscious. Came back for me.

“No! Finish him!” I shouted.

“No time. We need to get you out of here, now. Can you walk yet?”

I nodded and he offered me an arm. I turned back to find Will.

I pulled against Adam’s grip. “We need to—”

But Will was watching me. He saw Adam, shook his head, and dove back into his own car and took off. The others of the TRG followed suit; sirens in the distance, driving everyone away.

“Will—?!”

Adam shook his head grimly. “Will’s gone, Zoe. Will’s safe.”

I protested, but the rest of Buell’s friends were also taking off. One helped Buell get up; they glared at us. Adam drew an enormous pistol and brandished it. They wouldn’t be following us.

Nightmare Man looked like shit after my beating. And then the ones he’d had from Will, then Adam.

That was enough to bring a painful smile to my face as we limped to the car. I fell in, pulled the door shut, locked it.

Adam got in. “There’s a trash bag and baby wipes in the door pocket.” We had the drill down to a science after the first two times I’d gone barreling out of the car and then returned to make a quick getaway. “And clothes and a pair of shoes in the back—but it looks like you could use the first-aid kit. Jesus, Zoe, what did that guy do to you?”

It was nice to know that someone had my back. If it hadn’t been for Adam …

I swallowed. I didn’t really want to talk about it. I pulled the cuffs of my hoodie over my ragged hands. “Bad … things.”

Unwanted tears sprang to my eyes. “Stuff … things are happening with the bracelet, I think, Adam. It seems to be triggered by hellebore toxin, too. I had these visions, and they got worse, weirder, after he injected me. I don’t know how—”

“Wait—he knew about hellebore?” Adam turned from the road to look at me. “Zoe, was that guy part of the Order?”

“What Order?” The idea of getting a lead on these guys, of finding Buell and ending him, was like a tonic.

“The Order of Nicomedia.”

Chapter Four

“The Order of—what was that?” I asked. “Wait, you said something about that—”

“Yeah, right before you went vaulting out of the car to catch that murderer outside Baltimore.” He shook his head. “It’s surprising you retain anything at all, with so many distractions. The Order of Nicomedia. They’re a … Fangborn hate group is the easiest way to put it.”

“Right, okay, Danny had told me about them, too. He was all excited about finding some of their historical records. What was it? The account of Father Gerard? Or Gilbert or Saint G-something? In England, he said. But I thought they were a medieval thing, all het up about catching demons? And that these guys today were just unorganized loonies who bought into that history.”

“No, they’re still very much in the picture,” Adam said grimly.

“How can they know about the Fangborn, much less hate us? Don’t the vamps make sure no one remembers seeing us?”

“Sure, but … statistics.” He shrugged. “You guys have been around so long, at some point, things were bound to get out. A rumor here, an accumulation of coincidences there, an eyewitness who escaped—it was inevitable. They’ve been trying to learn about you, to stop you, if they can.”

I opened my eyes, thinking furiously. I still felt too awful to sit up. “Why? We’re the
good
guys.”

“Yeah, well, you look like demons to the rest of us. Don’t you remember what that was like?”

I remembered the beasts in the video I’d seen and shivered. The Fangborn were nothing like that, I knew now, but it hadn’t been so long ago I’d been trying to damp out the imagined monster in the mirror with dope and booze.

I nodded and closed my eyes again. “If you know about the Order, of course Danny knows, and Will McFarlane and the TRG do, too. That’s why they showed up; they were after the Order.”

“That makes sense,” Adam replied. “The TRG would want to stop whatever the Order was doing to Fangborn. The Order have done a good job of capturing Fangborn and using that information to try to get rid of you.” He made a turn. “Some have a misguided notion of what you are; some just think you don’t deserve to exist, that you pose a threat to humanity. Some want your powers, and some claim to have artifacts that belong to the Fangborn—”

My mind flew to Rupert Grayling, an elderly criminal in
London
who claimed to be part of a group seeking ancient
Fangborn
artifacts
. But as for wanting our power, I recalled a
certain
R
ussian th
ug, Dmitri Parshin, who’d made my life pretty awful. I wondered if he wasn’t connected to the Order, too. “Is there—how can I find out about them? I need to know more. And these
artifacts
—where are these things kept?”

“You need to know more than you just found out?” He straightened at the wheel and glanced over at me as we pulled into our motel. “The Order is dangerous, Zoe. As for the artifacts … Senator Knight only told me that he was a vampire shortly before I … left his employ. But before then, he had me studying the Order for a while. I saw your guy but didn’t recognize him. Did you get a name?”

“Jacob Buell, I think,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes again. I opened them at once: that face would be lurking in the dark corners of my mind forever. “And an impression of his family history, too. I should have taken his wallet. I was too out of it to think.”

Adam shook his head. “These guys, they’re able to be secret because they’re paranoid and they’re ruthless. We have no idea who half their leadership is, because their facilities are rigged to blow if they can’t defend them. Something that makes us very careful about trying to get past their guard.”

“Well, I can maybe help you with that.” I raised one finger, noticed gratefully that it was nearly whole again, and gestured weakly at my backpack at my feet. “I grabbed some of his notes before I bailed. Maybe it has something about the artifacts in it.”

Adam shook his head. “From what I know, there are tens of thousands of these artifacts and sites, and some of them are small, fragmentary. As for the Order’s locations, they’re fluid; we shut down one of its centers, another one pops up elsewhere. Whatever you got, I hope it was worth it. We should get you some food.”

“Not hungry.”

“That settles it. When a Fangborn doesn’t want to eat, things are bad.”

The thought of food made me sick but also reminded me I was, in fact, really hungry. “Okay, let’s … let’s try some caffeine first. And about a gallon of water.”

Fortunately, Adam didn’t wait for me to change my mind, but stopped at a convenience store for my water and cola, then hit the drive-through on three different fast-food joints.

“That should hold you until we get you cleaned up, and we can get some real food.”

“You sure you don’t want some?” I said around the last bite of the second burger.

He looked at the take-out disdainfully. “No. Clearly you’re feeling better.”

I nodded, fishing out the last of the fries from the bottom of the bag. Then I started on the chicken as he drove us back to our motel.

I finished eating; the caffeine and the water helped flush the
worst of the toxins from my system. It seemed to take forever until my
natural healing abilities kicked in. I recovered to nearly normal in
an hour. My fingertips were entirely healed but still throbbed,
tender
from the process. It was enough just to know that I was
healing
.

Scary, once you have abilities and start to use them, to think that they might be gone for good.

It was a testament to my hyped-up Fangborn metabolism that I
was thinking about more dinner. It was a testament to my humanity that I realized I needed to wash up first. “If you can wait ten
minutes
,
I’m going to grab a shower. Then we’ll get you your ‘real food. ’”

“I’ll be checking my email,” he said, pulling out his phone.

Once in the bathroom, the door closed, I took off my pants, plugged the tub, turned on the shower, and got in. I washed my hair while I waited for the water to soak into my shirt, bra, and panties. Then I stripped the rest of the way and washed quickly under the cold water, as much to keep from lingering over any of the still-sensitive parts of my body as to get to the next dinner. The soapy water filled up as I rinsed off. I turned off the water and stepped out to dry myself, letting my clothes soak in the cool water. Waste not, want not, and it would expedite washing up this evening. T
he col
d water was good for getting most of the blood out, too. Fugitive
werewolves
learn to be frugal with time and money.

I felt almost normal as I got dressed. I hesitated, then tried calling the number I last had for Will. Still disconnected. I put my phone away, and then Adam and I went to a diner. We ordered, then ate in silence. Adam had a rule about business;
unless
we were about to be attacked, no work until most of the food was gone.

I could get behind that. I needed to concentrate on eating. Healing had brought back my prodigious appetite.

He had a coffee, and I pulled out my bag.

The cards tumbled out, cascading across the table. A few sailed right off the opposite side, and Adam had to bend down to retrieve them from the floor.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.” We scooped them up, sorted them out. I had about half of the deck. Many of the images were crossed out.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“No.”

“I don’t recognize any of these folks,” I said. “Do you?”

“No. Remember, I wasn’t as familiar with most of the community as you were, even.”

“Here’s one, Japanese name, last seen in Turkey,” I said. It was the same card I’d seen before.

“That makes sense,” Adam said. “As you can probably tell by their name, Nicomedia was an ancient city in Turkey. It was such a cultural crossroads, it’s only logical there would be a number of Fangborn there, and therefore lots of the Order, too.”

There had certainly been a lot of different factions at the Battle for Pandora’s Box, I recalled. “What are all these abbreviations there? I wonder—”

“You all want anything else?” The waitress gestured with the coffee pot. “Heat you up?”

“No, thanks. Just the check, please,” I said. I hastily removed the cards. I hadn’t heard her approach and didn’t know what she’d seen. I really was out of it if she’d taken me by surprise. Whatever she’d seen, it would have looked odd. “Anyway, I don’t know if these will do for the family reunion, Freddie.”

Adam gave me an odd look. “Well, we don’t have to. It was just a thought … Gracie.”

I rummaged in my bag to find a credit card, and put it on the check.

Adam frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t use that.”

“That” was a credit card I’d been given by Dmitri Parshin, the Russian heavy who’d started me on this journey by kidnapping my cousin Danny and demanding I find the keys to Pandora’s Box for him. Getting Danny back had taken me across Europe, and Parshin had wanted to make sure my poverty didn’t slow me down. “Well, we can’t keep burning through your cash.”

“It was in your bag at the TRG. If the government is trying to find you—”

“They would have done so by now. Remember how we went through all this before and tested the card? Nothing happened.”

It was true. After arguing about the card the first time, Adam had agreed to a test. We staked out an ATM. Adam used Parshin’s credit card to get cash. We watched and we listened to an app that tuned into the local law enforcement channels. Nothing. I was guessing that Dmitri had connections with the Russian mob, because the card and the phone he’d given me continued to be paid for and continued to be untraced.

“I still don’t like it,” Adam said. “I don’t want Parshin to find you, either.”

“Sorry.” But I wasn’t really, and I paid the bill with Parshin’s credit card.

We went back to the room. I took out the memory stick and handed it to Adam. He booted up his notebook and slotted it in.

It was nearly blank, the grid of a calendar. There were regular appointments, always the same: an entry with a date. And a code. We tried a few things, but nothing made sense.

It looked like meetings or events that Buell wanted kept secret. There were a few weeks of this sort of date keeping; then they ended altogether on October 7, about two weeks from today.

There was only one entry after October 7, written in plain
English
.

My blood froze as I showed it to Adam. The last entry said, “Year One.”

Buell was planning the end of something.

That night, while I was asleep, I saw the archaeology lab again.

So much more solid than the vision I’d had earlier in the day, so much clearer to every sense. It smelled like dust, dirt, wet cardboard, rust, and nonporous scientific surfaces, with a chemical overtone of polyvinyl acetate and toluene.

In other words, it smelled like home. If I couldn’t be working in a perfectly measured, perfectly excavated hole in the ground, trowel in hand, this was my idea of heaven.

I opened one of the cupboards and saw the bundled brushes, small and large, fine and coarse, for cleaning artifacts. Fine-nibbed pens with ink for marking them, and neat boxes of three-mil plastic artifact bags in every size, with Sharpie markers for labeling. There were paper bags for organic samples, and pens, pencils, and nail polish. Glues for mending. Graph paper in all scales, lined paper, blank paper for making recording sheets, everything in its place, nice and neat and new.

All of which was wrong.

Archaeology labs are almost never nice and neat and new. Most often they’re stuck in unused spaces like basements, and even when they are on the newer side, the gear has been reclaimed from decades past. A mix of old and new and very old.

This was all pristine. And wrong.

Sean was there again, too. I’d heard his voice in my head, but today was the first time I’d ever seen him. Twice now.

He’d just finished stuffing the last of a sandwich into his mouth. He threw out the paper bag he’d brought it in and was washing his hands at the sink as he chewed. Large as life, even in death; reddish hair and Van Dyke beard. Sean was in his field clothes. He looked at home.

He gave me a nod. “Hey.”

Like it wasn’t anything special, like he was always here. Like I was always here.

“Hey,” I said. I missed my friend terribly. I wanted to run to him, throw my arms around him, but I tried to be casual, so I wouldn’t scare him off. So I wouldn’t have to leave.

I was drawn to the shelf next to the fume hood, with the
chemicals
in carefully labeled brown bottles. Across the room, stacks and stacks of screens in slotted frames for drying artifacts. I pulled one of the wooden frames out and saw all was well: bags washed and
drying
, artifacts neatly labeled to match the bag’s provenience, everything sorted by type and ready for cataloging. I didn’t
recognize
the
artifacts
—they were from someone else’s project—but the ceramics were colorfully decorated with geometric patterns finely delineated in jewel-like colors. I had to squint to confirm they were actually hand-painted and not rendered by some machine.