by Dana Cameron
“Did you Google it?”
I nodded. “The number was blurry, but I managed to figure it out. And I got nothing but a part number for a plumbing company.”
“What if it’s not archaeological markings? Could it be longitude and latitude?” Claudia said, finally pushing a plate back. At least she’d left the glaze on it. Even the parsley garnish was gone.
“Not enough numbers,” I said, and Gerry nodded. “And there are letters that don’t fit.”
“What if it’s not in English? Or…what if it’s a telephone number? The old-fashioned kind, with the letters in front?”
I looked at Sean, surprised. It was the last thing I’d expect him to think of. We tried it out, and I got out my telephone to check, but unless it was for a number on Mars, it wasn’t a telephone code.
The telephone reminded me of Danny, and I checked, but there was no new message. But then a thought came to me. “Maybe it’s Leet.”
“What?”
I explained about the use of text, numbers, and UNIX codes on the Internet. “Danny’s license plate is 1337,” I said, “which is ‘leet’ or ‘elite.’”
Claudia tilted back her head and closed her eyes. “They don’t match anything I can think of in European languages, but the printing and numerals look like they were made by an American or European. Not much help.”
Sean said, “I think you’re right, Zoe. It’s a provenience mark.”
“But why would Grayling send me after this?” I said. “Unless we know what site it belongs to, we can’t do much with it. These things aren’t standardized internationally. Some countries have regulations and protocols about archaeological site marks, so I can start to check that out, but for now…” I shook my head. “I gotta think Grayling was trying to set me up in Paris.”
“What time is your meeting with Professor Schulz?” Claudia asked.
“About two. He has classes all morning.”
Claudia turned to Sean, who really did look green now. She took his hand, as if measuring his pulse, and peered into his eyes. “You’re exhausted. We booked a room at the Westin.” She handed him a map, pointed out the hotel. “Why don’t you go crash for a few hours? We’ll find you in time for lunch.”
He nodded and got up unsteadily. “Thanks. I’m sorry. I just…I’m just wiped out.”
I suddenly realized: Sean was the only one among us who wasn’t Fangborn, who’d be feeling the travel and lack of sleep even more than us. “No problem, Sean.”
“Zoe, a quick word?” he said.
“Sure.” I got up and we stepped off to the side.
“I’m worried about you,” he whispered. “I mean, I thought you’d just go to London, and we’d be back inside the week.”
“I know. I appreciate your help—I never would have made my flight if you hadn’t stepped in and caused that ruckus in Boston.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You should go home. You don’t need to keep on.”
He exhaled, frustrated. “No, that’s not what I meant. Can’t you leave this up to the Steubens? Or go to the police?”
“Sean, I can’t. Dmitri warned me against it. Honestly, you should—”
“I’m not leaving, Zoe. Just…I’ll catch you later, OK?”
I watched Sean leave. Gerry stood, having paid the bill. “Let’s walk.”
Clearly something was up; they wanted to talk without possibility of being overheard, even by Sean. After a few minutes, we found ourselves on the edge of a large green space in the center of the city, ringed by wooded areas. I had the impression it went on for miles.
Gerry looked around, then ducked down a secluded pathway, surrounded by trees. I followed suit and began to get very worried. It was as much a feeling as a sensation. I was keenly aware of where people were around us, as if all my senses were kicking into hyperdrive to reassure me I was safe.
I also realized it was a little like the feeling I had in Salem, right before the other Fangborn appeared at the cemetery, and again in Cambridge. Now that I was paying attention, that feeling of awareness seemed to get stronger. More accessible.
We came to a clearing, and Claudia nodded to Gerry. “I’ve got the perimeter.” She took off.
OK, now this was just plain odd. I wasn’t sure how I liked being left alone with Gerry, in the middle of nowhere.
“Calm down,” he said. “Danny’s safe, as far as we know, and we have a few hours until the meeting. It’s the only chance we have to give you a crash course in being Fangborn. Teach you some of what you should have learned as a kid.”
“Here? Out in the open?”
He nodded. “It’s risky, and it’s public. But it’s quiet here. The park won’t fill up until lunchtime. And some folks say being out in the open, near nature, helps them focus on the Change.”
“What is this, some kind of induction ceremony? Solemn oaths and burnt sacrifices?” Sure, I was nervous. This was only one aspect of my life right now that terrified me.
Gerry shook his head. “We can fill you in on the cultural aspects later. I’ll even buy you a cake that says, ‘Mazel tov! Today you are a werewolf!’ That is, if we all survive this. But for now, we just need to get you to Change at will.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve never been able to control keeping it away or summoning the Bea—it when I needed it.”
“When you’ve been a stray…not raised within a pack, you don’t get the training. So I’m not surprised you think this, but yes, you can Change at will. You must unlearn, young Skywalker.”
I backed off a step or two, mostly from the idea. A fern curled up from the leaf duff; I decided to be fascinated by it for a while.
I shook my head again. “I can’t…no, I don’t want to. I’ve worked very hard to keep the Beast contained. For a while I thought I was just insane. Then I worried that I was worse, some kind of serial killer. It’s too much to take, on top of everything else.”
“Beast is a nice word for monster.” Gerry very gently put his hands on my shoulders, touched his forehead to mine. “You’re not a monster. It’s only your other self, as much a part of you as dark hair or green eyes. You don’t have to be afraid of it—it’s you. And the Change…don’t tell Claudia I said this, because it’s not dogma—”
I was nervous and creeped out, so I giggled. “You said ‘dogma.’”
Gerry shook his head, not taking his hands from my shoulders. “Nothing funny here. Like I said, it’s my own personal opinion that the Change makes us like angels. With it, we fight evil, we protect humanity. This is a good thing.”
He was serious. He seemed incredibly naive to me, and what he was saying was a little too much like what my mother had told me about my father’s people, all these years: above the law, vigilantes, a gang. I still didn’t like the idea.
I thought Claudia was the psychic one, but Gerry maybe had a touch of that, too. “This will increase our chances of getting Danny back,” he said.
OK. Sold. I nodded.
“You trust me?”
I shrugged.
He cocked his head, then kicked off his shoes. “Fair enough. Without the cultural background, without even the most basic exercises in focus and control, it’s like getting someone…ah, to dance Swan Lake by telling them the steps, and without any music.”
“Swan Lake?”
“I’d usually go with a mixed-martial-arts reference, but you’re a girl.”
“Fuck you.”
He gave me a big smile. “For now, just…watch and be aware of what your senses tell you when I go.”
Then he Changed.
It was like the feeling while I waited in the café this morning, times twenty. Somewhere wrapped up in the astonishment was the urge to laugh. A wolf can only look so fierce with an Oxford cloth shirt and jeans hanging off him.
He Changed back. Gerry was so good at shifting around in his clothes quickly you’d never have noticed anything was amiss.
I chewed on my bottom lip. “What about…those half-wolfmen? Can y
ou do that? Could I do that?” Maybe being only half a Beast was a good start for me.
“Sure, but we’re going to focus on this for now. Get the basics down first, then the flashier stuff. Remember how it felt when I Changed. Give it a shot.”
I tried, but no luck. “Uh, what do you tell the kids you’re training? The ones who have problems?”
Gerry opened his mouth, then closed it. “Uhhh, they’re younger than you are by, like, ten years or more. By the time most Fangborn kids can Change, at puberty, it’s all they want to do. And I never came across any who were kept in the dark about how to Change and what they really were, like you were.” He thought about it. “With the kids I’ve taught, they have the ability; I need to get them to trust me, then we do a lot of exercises, learn to meditate a little, focus on my voice, that sort of thing.”
“Well, what do parents tell their kids when they’re little? Where’s the first place you start when you’re training them to get control of the powers they’ll eventually have?”
He shrugged and started in a voice made for nursery rhymes, “First the wolf in you runs around and makes sure it’s safe. Then the vampire in you chases away all the bad thoughts. Then the oracle in you tells you to get ready for an adventure. Then you go!”
I looked at him. “Yeah, that’s not going to work.”
“Told you. There are little gestures to help them remember each of the steps”—he mimed making wolf ears, vampire claws, and someone looking far away—“and help them not be afraid. I didn’t think you’d get much out of those either.”
“Maybe I’m really different. I keep telling you, it’s danger, a threat to my life that does it. Or the moon. Most of the time, anyway.”
Claudia stepped back into the clearing, nodding to Gerry.
“It’s not the moon. We haven’t got time to start grounding you in meditation, the first part of the whole training program, but relax, try to summon the feelings you have when you’ve Changed before—sensations, emotions, whatever.”
“Um, usually anger.”
“Go with that.”
I tried it again, and this time, I felt the slightest tickle, but it was so far away, it vanished as soon as I identified it.
Gerry shook his head. “You’re trying too hard. Bugging your eyes out, clenching your stomach, holding your breath. You look like you’re trying to hold back a fart.”
I had been holding my breath; I exhaled with a nervous laugh. “Look, usually this just comes rushing over me. Overwhelming me. Nothing active on my part.”
“Stop thinking of your furself as separate from you. That way you’re not using up all your focus and energy to prevent it. This is what they start us off with at the academy.”
He began to recite: “Breathe. You can’t do anything if you can’t breathe.
“Wiggle your toes. If you can’t wiggle your toes, the rest of you is probably too tense.
“Smell. What is nearby? Danger? Even if you can’t smell it, are you afraid?
“Move. If you don’t see or smell anything, start to cast over the rest of the area.”
He shrugged. “Then you focus on the wolf.”
I relaxed as he said, with no luck. I thought a moment. “You do it again.” I recalled I’d felt the Beast come on me easily at home, in the presence of other Fangborn.
He did, almost as soon as I asked. It was beyond weird, watching it, but it wasn’t as scary as it felt when the Beast took over me. Gerry was probably right, it was just training and getting used to it. He looked good as a wolf. He looked…not tame. Benevolent, that was the word. Even after seeing him do something I thought of as my own personal sin, I wasn’t afraid.
Yet I was always afraid when I felt the Beast come upon me.
I tried again, using that little frisson of his Change to sort of pull me along. It was a bit like riding a bike in the draft of someone else who acted as a windbreak. I tried to put aside resistance, tried not to think the rush was bad or evil. I just let go—
It worked. I’d turned into a wolf, nearly on my own. No moon in sight, no danger—
Something was wrong.
During the moment of disorientation as I Changed, a familiar smell, a long-lost smell, wafted into a wolf’s nose, then registered in a much slower human brain.
Danger…
My ears back, I turned around.
He’s here, he’s here…
There was Will, not twenty feet away from me, his mouth agape.
I had Changed into a wolf in front of the one man I swore would never see this side of me.
Habit and emotion won out.
I tore out of there like my tail was on fire.
Chapter 13
He’d seen me. He’d seen me. He’d seen me—
That phrase drove me on, running in a blind panic.
The man I loved, who I hated for getting so close to me, who I swore to protect, just saw me Change into a monster. How did he get here? How did he find me? Why is he here?
The Tiergarten takes up nearly a square mile in the center of Berlin. There are acres of woods around wide, grassy lawns, but a city is no place for a dog without a leash. I imagined it wouldn’t be long until law-abiding citizens took notice and did something about it. Then they’d discover I was a wolf, not a dog, and then, perhaps, a girl, not a wolf.
I needed a plan. Something besides running.
I galloped into another wooded area and hid for a moment, catching my breath. I surveyed the fields, now full of mothers and children playing in the sun. A few sunbathers lounged as business folk packed up their lunches and returned to work.
I didn’t have long; no doubt Gerry could track me if he wanted, and God knew what Claudia could do. Fly, maybe—isn’t that what vampires did?
Remembering the city map I’d read earlier, I watched the picnickers. Even though I’d attacked humans before, that had been to protect myself or someone else. I’d never felt as predatory as I did now, spying and calculating. It was all a matter of one strike, pure physics, acceleration, direction, and mass. And…conscience.
One young woman in a bathing suit finished applying sunblock and then settled herself gingerly on her blanket. In a moment, she’d be asleep.
I tried not to think too much about it as I ran toward her.
My timing was a little off and my luck a little bad. As I snatched up her tote bag and booked it, she shifted, readjusting herself on the blanket. I stepped on her hand, and she startled, screaming incoherently.
What’s German for “Holy shit, a big dog in a T-shirt and panties just stole my bag!”? If I kept this up, I might have to learn.
I booked it for the woods, then doubled back in the opposite direction under cover, angling toward a U-bahn station.
I tried to Change back; it took a minute because adrenaline and embarrassment were strong inducements to stay wolfy. I tried to remember what Gerry said, tried to remember that I had to Change back if I were going to figure out this whole mess and save Danny. Wiggling my claws? No problem. With something like a cross between soda bubbles up my nose and a burp, I Changed back.
I rifled through the girl’s bag, pulled on her wrap skirt and sandals, and straightened out my hair. While trying not to think about what had just happened.
I’d turned without a threat to my life. Without the moon. Without a criminal nearby.
Will had found me. Had seen me as a wolf. Why was he here?
I’d just ripped off some poor woman.
I’m not really a thief. I’d stolen before, in minor sorts of ways when things were tight. Paper from a copying machine, a couple of pens from a bank. Once or twice, when things were very bad, I would find a hotel catering to families, and when the kiddies were put to bed, I’d go through the hallways like a ghost, checking the trays put out in the hall after room service. Maybe it wasn’t nice, but as a teenager I was always hungry, and I didn’t want to put any more on my mother’s shoulders, especially after she’d given me the bigger of two scanty portion
s for dinner.
Taking the figurine from the museum didn’t count, because I was paying for that momentary lapse with my cousin’s life.
When I was dressed, I pulled out the wallet. There wasn’t much money in it, a few euros. So while I was no newcomer to a few shortcuts here and there, abuses of hospitality at most, I was always aware of people who didn’t have much. And the woman’s clothes and wallet did not say “wealthy” to me.
I stared at the wallet for a long time, not looking at the license or other cards. Finally I threw it as far from me as I could. I wasn’t going to take advantage of someone who might be as bad off as I was. Then I scattered the rest of the things around to make it look like a dog had stolen the bag and gone tearing through it.
The last thing to go flying was the cell phone, and that brought my other troubles into focus. The phone Dmitri had given me, my one link with Danny, was in my jeans pocket.
Back in the clearing. Where Will was.
Sweating with fear, I thought hard. OK, I’d have to find Claudia and Gerry soon, if only to snatch my things back—oh dear God, the figurines. In my backpack, along with everything I needed to save Danny, including my passport. Imperative, then, to find them, or rather, let them find me. I had no doubt they would.
Then it occurred to me—they had no idea who Will was. He hadn’t said a word, had he? Not my name, nothing that I could remember. Perhaps he hadn’t even seen me, and if he had…well, that’s what Claudia was there for, to make him forget.
I sighed with relief. Maybe I’d be OK.
They’d find me. And maybe Will would be out of my hair even before they knew he was a problem.
But as I heard a clock toll, I realized I was now running late to my meeting with Professor Schulz. I scooped up about four euros of loose change and ran for the station.
I found my way to the Oranienburger Strasse stop and walked from there, across the “Museumsinsel,” or Museum Island, where several of the most important collections in a city stuffed with fantastic museums were situated on a small island in a river.