Hellbender (The Fangborn Series Book 3)

by Dana Cameron

  Luanne Whitbeck couldn’t see a damn thing, either. She pulled up. Hard.

  “We’d be better off heading back to McGrath,” she said. She looked at me, trying to decide.

  I didn’t think I’d used any pheromones on her, but she sighed and turned around.

  “Okay. One more try.”

  Another realization: Today, Luanne’s gonna have to be an old, bold pilot, the kind that don’t exist.

  Luanne sat up on top of the windscreen, peering out. Then she glanced at the controls.

  She finished the loop. “Gonna be close.”

  “Gonna be close” meant we may end up smeared on that little dirt line segment.

  “Here we go.”

  We made the descent. For a critical thirty seconds, we could see the landing strip. It seemed smaller than a football field, impossibly narrow. But it had a light and it was clear, for the moment.

  “Hang on.”

  We hit with a bump and immediately started decelerating. I hoped it wasn’t skidding I felt . . .

  As the trees slid past us, I reviewed the scant emergency procedures I was given at the beginning of the flight before I figured out that there wouldn’t be any need for them if we went over the side. According to the maps I’d looked at in McGrath, the drop off the strip was close to seventy feet.

  Luanne pulled up hard.

  We stopped, finally, ten feet from the edge.

  Every single muscle in my body was tensed for falling, crashing, dying. I tried to relax them, with varying degrees of success.

  “That’s closer than the manual recommends,” she announced after taking a breath.

  I was inclined to agree. Breathing unnecessarily would, it seemed to me, tip us over the edge. “Mmm . . .” I finally took a deep breath, rotated my shoulders. “Thanks.”

  She understood I meant “Thanks for the ride, for not killing us, for getting me here.”

  “No problem. Who are you going to visit?”

  “I’m not sure.” I’d been so busy finding my way here and making connections that I had no idea of how I’d find the house on the hillside. We’d landed on a small mountain, and there were foothills and mountains all around us. “I’m looking for a log cabin–styled house, red shutters, on the side of a hill?”

  “You want Fatima Breitbarth’s house.” Luanne paused, opened her mouth, and then shut it again. “I’m sorry. It’s just kind of unusual to come to Kuskokwim if you don’t have a pretty good reason.”

  “I have a good reason,” I said. “Just not a lot of details. Can you point me toward it?”

  “Sure.”

  We said good-bye and I saw Luanne batten down her plane for the night. The weather was turning bad indeed. I pulled up my hood and followed the pilot’s directions, keenly aware that every eye in the village was on me. Curtains twitched in the windows of the tiny, weather-beaten single-story houses that clustered by the river along a dirt road. Another road wound around the base of the mountain we’d just landed on. Gas tanks were behind every house—How did the fuel get here? I wondered—and a few of the more ramshackle places looked as though they still utilized outhouses. I nodded and greeted the five people I met on the road, which was probably about a tenth of the population, telling them I was heading to Fatima’s house and asking, was she in?

  “Maybe,” one of the kids on a three-wheeler said. “Sometimes she takes off into the bush.”

  My heart sank, and I thanked him. He tore off down the road toward the one large, modern building, which I assumed was a community center or school.

  While it was possible I could track her down in my wolfself, I couldn’t handle another detour. I really needed Fatima Breitbarth, whoever she was, to be at home right now. Among other things, it had started to rain, and in Alaska, October feels more like winter than autumn.

  By the time I finished the hike up the hill, it was pouring down, and it was cold. Any colder and the snow would have been flying. In my borrowed and mended clothing, I was not dressed for the coming winter.

  I knocked. A light at the back of the house gave me hope, and when I felt the vibrations of an interior door opening, I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry quietly.

  Fatima Breitbarth was very old indeed, with bone-white hair piled up on top of her head in a style that seemed appropriate to the nineteenth century. The skin of her face was brown and fine and paper thin, her sharp features reminding me of the Moorish trader I’d seen in a vision once. She wore wool trousers that were getting rubbed thin at the knees and a sweater I’d seen in an L.L.Bean ad.

  “You’re Zoe Miller, aren’t you?” Her accent was a mix of Arabic and German. “Please come in.”

  “What? How the hell do you know that?” I said, crying harder now. “How do you all keep knowing when I’ll arrive before I know I’m going myself?”

  She smiled and guided me into the house, and waited until I had controlled my sniffling before helping me with my coat. “Even if I didn’t know the sound of Luanne’s plane arriving off her usual schedule, even if I didn’t have the airstrip in McGrath calling this morning to let me know someone was on the way, even if it wasn’t for Viktor Denisov tracking down Family in Alaska to find the one closest to Kuskokwim and let me know, even if everyone in the village didn’t know, for perfectly mundane reasons . . .” She shrugged. “I could feel it in my bones. It’s always been my private theory that the older we get, a little bit more of the oracle takes over to make up for the lack of speed, the dullness of tooth. If we’re not killed outright before now. It’s just a shift in roles, an easing out.”

  I wondered if that wasn’t in part why older Fangborn didn’t react to evil the same as we younger folk did. The way I used to. A dulling of the senses, an easing out, as she said.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling abashed. “It was oracles who greeted me in Japan, even before I knew I was there.”

  She nodded. “I have dinner ready.”

  I was grateful for anything that helped someone anticipate making a meal.

  As we ate, I told her about my visions. “The original one showed me what looked like Egypt. The most recent showed me this place, too. You coming here, with the village’s name on your ticket.” I pushed my empty dessert plate back, having declined, barely, thirds. “It’s a long way from Cairo, isn’t it?”

  “The longest possible way.”

  “So, why?”

  “It is quiet. Exquisitely quiet, and I have earned the rest. The cities I’ve visited, the crowd of bodies, the crowd of minds . . . After a hundred and fifty years of that riot, with another fifty of wandering before? About seventy-five souls seems just right.” She smiled. “I can do my job here—oh, it’s still not as easy as being an oracle, when one can telecommute sometimes if necessary. But I can protect the artifact, and this village is the best protected in the world, while I have teeth in my gums. Besides, there’s not much use these days for a werewolf so broken down, so useless. I’m almost outstripped by the technology.”

  I swallowed, trying to figure out how I must bring up my mission.

  She put her coffee mug down. “It’s okay. I know why you’re here. It’s fine.”

  “You know why I’m here?”

  “Of course. For the one reason I’m here.” She tilted her head toward the back of the house. “Just because I moved, doesn’t change my job description. Also, it’s why I chose this place. No one gets here without a lot of effort, and you don’t need to be an oracle to know when someone new is on the way. So ja, I knew you were on your way, and why. And it’s fine.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. It would be more like Ariana and Ben in Venice than Roskilde, then. “So, you’re going to help me?”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said, pouring more coffee for herself. “For now, rest.”

  “Do you mind if I . . . There are a few people at home I’d like to talk to, if I can.”

  “Use my computer,” she offered. “I’ll get you set up.”

  When
it was Will’s face I saw on the screen, the honest face, the cowlicked brown hair, I squeaked with joy. “You look good! So good! When I last saw you—” When I’d last seen him, I’d pulled him back from the brink of death. At least I’d done that much right. I never would have forgiven myself if Will had died.

  His warm laugh was part happiness to see me and part disbelief; his perennial look of skepticism, one eyebrow often raised, was a wonderful thing to see. “I haven’t shaved in two days. I need a shower, but there’s so much work to do. It seems like five minutes is a luxury. I’m so glad to see you! It’s like being back in the field again. I’m so glad . . . you’re okay.”

  Last time he’d seen me I’d vanished to Japan, via thin air. Our relationship had moved from awkward, when he was my TA in college and refused to date me, to torrid, when we moved in together, to nonexistent, when, worried that I was a psychotic killer, I dumped him. It became complicated when we met again, when I discovered he knew I was a werewolf before I did, and then ended again when he was convinced to believe that I’d been corrupted by my new powers and he tried to turn me in. Our time together had not been boring, to say the least.

  I nodded. “I haven’t got much time. I’m about to fall asleep where I stand. But I wanted to see a familiar face. A friendly face,” I conceded. Maybe asked.

  “More than friendly, I hope.” Will shook his head. “Never forget that, whatever else we need to sort out, Zoe, I love you. We have history between us.”

  “And some prehistory, too,” I said, smiling as I finished our private joke. One of the most wonderful moments we’d ever shared was after we were reunited in Greece. It had always been our dream to visit ancient sites together. That we’d spent more time fighting the kidnapper Dmitri Parshin and government agents than touring ruins didn’t matter. We’d rekindled our love on a yacht under Aegean moonlight . . .

  I caught myself in the intimate memory and blushed. “And I wanted to say that I’m coming back to Boston, as fast as I can. I just have something I have to do here first.”

  He raised the eyebrow. “Okay. Be . . . be careful. God, it sounds so dumb, but I couldn’t not say it.”

  “I’m right there with you.” I gave him Fatima’s name and contact information and then wished him good night. “I’ll see you soon!”

  “Zoe, I love you.”

  I hesitated no more than a fraction of a second. “And I love you.” It was the truth, but I wasn’t sure what it meant between us now.

  I signed off before things went any further. I was so confused about our relationship. I still seemed to have feelings for Adam, who was there when Will had misguidedly betrayed me. I simply had no idea what to do about it and for now had decided to keep affairs of the heart on the back burner. There were bigger problems at hand.

  Almost immediately, a request from Vee Brooks. I answered happily. “Lookit you! All alive and teleporting!” Her face was broken by a huge smile, her Cleopatra curls pulled back into a knot. “Jesus, Zoe, you had us worried!”

  I knew “us” meant her and Danny, my cousin. Vee had returned to the Family after keeping her distance for some time, making a living in high tech. An oracle, she wasn’t thrilled that her precognition and her vast talent at amplifying another’s power were always in demand. The exertions left her depleted. She’d only rejoined the Fangborn efforts when I’d found her, triggering a vision of Danny. They were a new couple, and the intensity of our plight would test their relationship.

  Vee looked exhausted. Her eyes were tired and her dark face was drawn, so I gave her the short version of my doings.

  “There was one weird thing.” I told her about the sword that I’d felt an attraction to but had not assimilated. “It’s weird, like pieces that were added over the centuries to form one piece made by three different artisans. You got any clues?”

  She laughed. “Uh, no. That’s way out of my wheelhouse. So far out, I can’t even suggest where to start looking.” She tapped at the keyboard. “What you need is someone who already knows all this stuff and isn’t going to be hand-waving and referencing Star Trek, Warren Ellis, or Heinlein. You need someone with real, hard science skills.”

  “I need someone who knows this stuff and the Order’s experiments and isn’t afraid of hacking.”

  “Well, how about someone from the Order?” She tapped some more, brought up some files that flashed by in a blur.

  “Yeah, right.” I sat on the counter. “That’ll work. Half of them are on the lam—”

  “You did not just say ‘on the lam’—”

  “Half are dead, half are in prison, and at least a quarter of the rest are just plain uncooperative.”

  “Dan was right; you really can’t do math.”

  “But you take my point.”

  “I do. And because I am just a demon with a search engine, I have what you want.”

  “How?”

  “I’m pretty sure most of it is genetic—my parents were pretty smart, too—but lots and lots of study. Practice, to embellish talent.”

  “Ha. Ha. No, I mean, how did you find such a person?”

  “Like I said—the Order. I searched who we have in custody, or who we can locate—who isn’t dead, etcetera. Then I checked the reports and interviews the Fangborn have for their contacts with any Order personnel, especially in the science branches. That leaves very few, but there is one within five hundred miles. She’s not been super-cooperative, but I bet we can find some leverage.”

  “Not so much leverage that she goes squealing to the press or does something even more drastic,” I said. I didn’t like the idea now that it was a possibility.

  Vee shook her head. “The vampires say she’s reasonably trustworthy, and you’ll be able to tell, won’t you? She just has a problem dealing with us being ‘vigilantes.’ If you can reason with her, maybe we can get somewhere.”

  “I think you should reason with her. I’m not going to be the one who can talk her into it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you can speak at least a little of her language and appeal to her sense of scientific curiosity. Or just offer to pay her a lot of money. Tell her she’d be doing her country a service—all of these things will work. Do anything, but I need help, fast, Vee.” I worried a hangnail, still not liking the idea, but I didn’t have a choice. “I’m in way over my head, and things are getting out of my hands way too easy.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Vee. Give Danny a hug from me, okay?”

  She smiled. “I’ll give him a hug from me and say you said hello.”

  “That will do. Talk to you soon.”

  I ended that session.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?” Fatima asked. “Otherwise, you should probably get some sleep.”

  I wanted to stay up and talk to her, about her role in the Family and life in Egypt, but fatigue took over as soon as she mentioned it. I gratefully accepted her offer of a nightgown, though flowered flannel was as far from my taste as you could get. It felt . . . reassuring. The light was still on in the kitchen as my eyes sagged. I fell asleep on the couch, listening to the clicking of the computer keyboard and the soft patter of rain on the roof.

  The next morning, I woke quickly and smelled coffee in the kitchen.

  We ate in silence, and when Fatima set her plate aside, I remembered with regret my real purpose in being here.

  “So . . . ,” I began.

  “Zoe, as I said last night. I know why you’re here, and it’s perfectly all right. You can do what you came to do.”

  “You can let me have . . . whatever it is?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no. You have to take what you came for, and I have to stop you. It’s the only way.”

  I needed that artifact. I needed its power. I couldn’t let her keep it. I remembered the fight I’d had with Toshi Yamazaki-Campbell and how, half-dead already, he’d almost killed me. I’d almost killed him, driven by the artifacts to demon
strate our potential.

  No.

  She tried to stand up, reached for me. I hurried to support her, and she clamped on to my arm and stood up, with tottering difficulty. “Ouf . . . It takes me a long while for the joints to warm up in the morning.”

  My throat closed and I felt myself slump. I had to kill this old woman? I knew she’d fight to the death to protect her charge.

  “Come on, no point in waiting. Let’s get started.”

  I’d reached my limit. “No! This is enough. This is bullshit! I’m not going to do this. The other stuff . . . Buell? Turkey? I was trying to defend myself. I’m not going to do this.”

  “Zoe, you have to. It’s been written.”

  “Fuck written! I don’t buy written!”

  One disapproving look almost stopped me.

  “I won’t do it,” I insisted. But as soon as I said it, I knew how childish I sounded. “Fatima. I can’t.”

  “Zoe. You must.” She shook my arm. “We don’t have a lot of time. Help me through the door. I’ve been waiting for this, thinking about this, for a century. I knew it would come, someday. Please.”

  This was as fucked up as anything I could think of. After so much sacrifice, I had to—

  Fatima patted me on the arm, but that only made it worse.

  “You’re going to make me angry, Zoe,” Fatima said in a moment. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

  She caught me in a hitching breath as I stared at her.

  “Yeah, I know Bruce Banner. I’ve been around since before comic books.” She gestured to a stack of DVDs and a player next to a screen and satellite equipment. “And I have a lot of time to watch movies. Let’s get this over with. Help me in.”

  I gave her my arm. What else could I do? My thoughts raced: Maybe I could keep her talking, slip some sleeping pills into her coffee? Maybe I didn’t have to—maybe I could just lock her in her room or something?

  She went to the kitchen, rummaged behind the cupboard, and I heard a switch click.

  “Okay, I’ve got the alarm off, and the traps have been disarmed. It’s out back.”