Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (30 page)

“What were you before?”
I shivered, repulsed.

“There was no before. There is only now, perhaps the next meal. The next fight.”

I was sickened. Had this been a human, once? A Fangborn? It no longer mattered; it had no other purpose but to destroy my kind, throw them into disrepute. There was nothing for me here.

I leaned on the knife and ended it.

I hauled myself up—my knees feeling weak. No, it wasn’t just me. There was a rumbling under the ground, familiar, odd. Deep in the pit of my stomach. Weren’t all the trains and air traffic grounded.

Oh, not some military strike—I prayed we could keep things from that point of no return.

The ground lurched, a section of road collapsed a few blocks down.

I recognized the rumble from Quarrel’s open cave outside of Bursa.

Not a military strike. Not the way I was used to thinking of it.

“A slight miscalculation in my arrival, young one!” Quarrel shouted in my brain. “I had intended to”—he used a word I didn’t understand—“to exactly where I sensed your presence. I am however making great haste in these dirty tunnels.”

Dirty tunnels—Quarrel was in the sewers. No time to ask how he’d arrived, or what he’d fed on to get himself so far.

“Quarrel, what are you doing?” I asked, desperation making my voice squeak. “We’re trying to keep the Normals from
discovering
us!”

“Which is why I chose to use these dirty tunnels, rather than go overland. You reminded me of the debt I owe my younger kin and the guidance I owe them. And there is the great matter of the wrath I bear against the Order of Nicomedia.”

A break in the ground, a crack grew into a fissure, the asphalt buckled, and a manhole cover fell into a sinkhole. A flash of dark color, scales rippling, jewels falling away, and Quarrel proceeded up the sewer line, making a beeline—dragonline?—for the
Schuyler
Building and me.

He was going to tear down the Order’s building.

I didn’t know if it was worth trying to vamp a dragon, but I gave it a shot. I took a deep breath, summoning an authority I didn’t feel. “Quarrel, you must not! They have information here, and
artif
—Fangborn tools! I must stop the man who has them! Please don’t tear down the building while I’m here!”

The last plea sounded desperate, but the rumbling slowed, then stopped. “Very well. I will give you two turns of the glass. And then I will strike.”

“Two hours? It’s not enough—”

“Zoe Miller, I have expended all of my energy to—he used the word I didn’t understand again—here. You would not have me die in the dark in this filthy place?”

“No, of course not—”

“I won’t leave you. I must do this.”

I took a deep breath. “No, I understand.”

I had to get to Porter, first, and get the mask I’d seen out of there. I reached for my phone to call Vee—where was she?—but it had been destroyed during my last fight.

I climbed the stairs as fast as I could. Finally, I reached the top floor.

The door swung open, almost as if the latching mechanism were broken.

My nose twitched; something was up. I stepped into the room.

A floor of old-fashioned marble tiles, black and white, in what would be a reception area.

“Not on the white ones—that’s the water where the
alligators
live. You can only step on the black ones. That’s the path to
safety
.”

A childhood memory from Danny came screaming back to me with all the force of a fighter jet blasting through the sound barrier.

I recalled what Adam had said that most Order facilities had been rigged with traps. I remembered the horror of the destroyed Museum of Salem. This would be no exception.

It wasn’t the tile. There was an ever so faint feeling of something wrong, millimeters below the bottom of my boot. I pulled my foot up.

I thought about the mind-lab and was there.

Sean was there, sitting on the counter. Of course; why would he sit on a perfectly good stool?

“I need answers.”

He looked up from the crossword he was doing. “About what?”

“How to get to Porter. Traps, explosives.”

“Anything like that?” He shook his head. “Nothing I know about. Your best bet is down the hall. The coffee room.”

“I have a coffee room?”

“First door on the left. And Zoe, you need to hurry.”

I ran down a hall I’d never seen before. In the “coffee room” was a number of men. It struck me that they were all men I’d killed, or if not killed, had their blood, quite literally, on my hands.

“Anyone know about Porter?” I shouted over the din of coffee cups and cutlery. “His Boston lab? Where the traps are rigged?”

Mutters in foreign languages I now understood, at least within the context of my space. A Russian guy dressed in combat gear said something. I let the words sort of seep into my brain, and the meaning made itself apparent.

I don’t know whether I was speaking Russian or English, but it was getting through to both of us. “Do you know anything about the bracelet and other artifacts? The mask?”

He shrugged.

“How about Porter?”

Another shake of his head.

“Wait, where did we—?”

“You killed me at Efes.”

Ephesus. I killed a number of men that day. I can’t remember his face, I thought with a pang. “Uh, right.” I thought about it. “Tell me what you do know, then.”

He started rattling on a bunch of stuff about mercenary troop movements in Nigeria, and weapons and supplies, but none of it was going to help me.

“More specific,” I said. “You know anything about explosives, booby traps, that kind of thing? How would you rig a floor like the one outside?”

He ran down a list of statistics, which again meant nothing to me. “How do I avoid it? Or disarm it?”

In a heavy accent, he said, “You can’t disarm. It can only be set up from the other side, like a moat. Avoiding it?” He shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. “Run along the ceiling, if that is what your kind do.”

“Thanks for nothing,” I muttered. Why did my mental world not screen for sarcasm and bigotry?
I returned to the real world and the tiled hallway.

Run along the ceiling? Not me.

I looked up, and saw the lighting figures, long, low, and
stylish
. The lights were out, of course, but I could jump to them, swing myself across. Maybe.

It had been a long time since I’d tried the monkey bars. But that isn’t what stopped me; half-Changed, my upper body strength was more than up to it, wounded or no. The thing that worried me was the long space between the last lighting fixture and the doorway, where there was a row of blue tiles. I figured I needed to get past them to avoid the blast. It would take a good deal of swinging and a landing worthy of an Olympian to make it. Werewolf I might be, but gymnast I am not.

I soon discovered another problem: the light fixtures had never been made for swinging. I made it across the first three, but the last pulled from the ceiling. I yelped, trying to time my last swing while avoiding the floor, but it broke. I threw myself into a roll, but my feet brushed the tile as I rolled through the door.

I was almost all the way through when it blew.

Shaped charge
, I realized, the Russian filling in knowledge I didn’t knew I had. Aimed to go toward the way I’d come in, not toward the lab. Cut off access, kill intruders.

Alert those inside, if they weren’t already aware.

Too late.

I threw myself to one side, landing on my bad shoulder.

My scream was drowned out by the explosion. It would have blown me to bits, if I hadn’t already been moving forward.

My ears were ringing in several different tones, and I couldn’t hear anything else. I’d lost more blood, and my back was still aching, so I directed what energy I had to healing them. I’d just
announced
myself; I’d better be ready for whoever was home.

A generator whine came from the second office down. The lights were on because Porter was there.

Game face on, I took a deep breath and went to the office.

Sebastian Porter was a younger version of his father: tall, graying hair and beard, a pale face with hectic color in patches on his cheeks. Glasses. A paunch that jutted through clothing that was at least twenty years out of date. Something about him confused me, but I kept my eye on him, assessing his moves. He glanced up, nodded, and continued to calmly pack files into a brief case.

“I’m glad you’re here, Miss Miller.”

I watched him, wary of other traps and weapons. I needed what he knew. I needed the mask that had drawn me here. It would be nice to take him alive if at possible, to shut down the Fellborn
attack
.

It was hard to clear my throat, clogged with dust from the
explosion
. “I’ve been very curious to see the person who hates my kind so much.”

“Not hate, Zoe.” He shook his head gravely. “Never hate. The Order has evolved beyond fear in demons to wanting to be prepared for the inevitable moment when the Fangborn attempt to enslave humanity. You know the Fangborn population has been rising in recent decades? I believe that’s significant. My father did, too. We want to make sure we find a way to contain, defeat, or replicate your powers. To maintain the status quo.

“My father worked with the TRG because he thought there would be a way for the two populations to learn to live together. He and the good senator disagreed on how to go about the tests—Knight insisted on keeping certain … data … secret. Ed
ward Knight h
ad him killed. But my father knew better than to trust a vampire, and he’d taken precautions. His work was synthesizing the various chemicals the Fangborn use, for human benefit. The serum he’d created to resist the vampiric persuasion was, alas, a failure, but he left me his notes. I’ve been able to improve on his work, and
I follow
ed my own path as well. To create a response equal to the Fangborn threat.”

“So your secret weapon, these … these Fellborn … were made to discredit the Fangborn as well as destroy them.”

A blank look, then an amused smirk. “‘Fellborn?’ A dated, inaccurate, and sentimental term. The Model One and Model Two. Well, we would have reached the next point release faster if it hadn’t been for your mother. When Knight killed my father, the Princeville staff were never quite up to snuff after. A shame your mother left; she was a very important step in creating the M
odel On
e.”

The urge to tear his throat out overran me. “She was nothing like them!”

“No, of course not. That was the point. We were working on a model that would be refined through generations, by genetic
manipulation
able to hide within the human population, adding to the models as we went. The idea was that they might not remember what they were and yet would have all the instincts to cover up their activities. My father thought it was an important way to keep the benefit of the Fangborn while removing whatever urge they might have to take over more. Mainstreaming, if you will. A few more babies, and we might have hit the right combination, but your mother left. God knows what prompted her. I always thought it was Knight’s doing.”

My head swam with the knowledge.

“Eventually, I scrapped that program; we never could speed up the process enough to be satisfactory, and the Fangborn threat was growing. Later, I took a partner and we have been working to our mutual satisfaction for some time now.” His face went expressionless, save for another faint shadow of amusement. “Not always on the same page, and we certainly don’t tell each other everything, or the reasons for, but I have my research, and it gets results, too. I provide him with information, and he supplies the subjects.”

“Jacob Buell.” I shuddered and the idea they were turning the Fangborn into “subjects” nauseated me.

I thought about the split that Quarrel had described and the scurry to tie up the loose ends since then. I was a loose end to Knight. Ma and I were loose ends to Porter—a failed prototype, an escaped white rat with an interesting gene. The idea that I might have been any part of his attempt to create the Fellborn—and fuck him
and
his etymological finger waving, anyway—made me queasy.

No time, no time—not even to learn more of my murky past. Quarrel was on the clock. “I’ve come for the artifact as well as you.” I prepared myself for resistance.

He nodded. “It’s right here.” He shoved a case toward me. “I suspect it called to you when I took it out of the safe, correct?”

“Yes.” He was going to give it to me? Nothing came that easy. I gestured. “You open it.”

“There’s no trap, Zoe.” He pushed the case closer and unlatched it. “And you know that’s true.”

He was telling me the truth.

“So, why?”

“I want to see what will happen. I’ve never been able to
convince
my partner to let me use one on a subject, lest they become too strong. I’m very curious to watch the process.”

“I’m just another subject for you?”

He said nothing, a small smile on his thin lips.

I needed the mask. I swallowed my anger; I had no desire to be of any service to him. I removed the lid of the large box.

There was the thing I’d sensed. It was huge; at first, all I could make out was a black face with a long beak, with red lips and eyes outlined in white. Straw cascaded around it. I handled it very cautiously, and when I finally lifted it up, I could see what it was: a mask, from the Pacific Northwest, I thought, maybe Canadian, First Peoples. Some kind of bird, probably a raven, with a straw mane in back. The beak opened, revealing two animal faces
flanking
a human face; the bottom of the beak fell down to form the body of the human head. Something to be used in dances, to tell myths, I thought. It was modern, which surprised me, but no less beautiful or perilous for that.