Seven Kinds of Hell

by Dana Cameron

  Rupert Grayling had mentioned colleagues, other collectors in search of what I believed were Fangborn artifacts, possibly including Pandora’s Box. Berlin had revealed the presence of government authorities who knew and sought control over the Fangborn. Clearly, many more people knew about the Fangborn than was good for me. They might be connected, but there was also animosity among them, given Grayling’s murder and the American who assaulted Dmitri. Could I use that strife to my advantage? Might there be allies for me there?

  Dmitri had a fragment of an artifact that had belonged to my father. He looked nothing like the picture I had, so I knew Dmitri couldn’t be my father. But what was their connection? What could he tell me about Dad?

  An obstacle in the shape of a vaporetto strike greeted us in the morning. It was challenging, navigating the walk to Piazza San Marco through the curving canals and labyrinthine streets; the waterbuses would have made it easier, and it would have been fun to see Venice by water. The houses were tall and narrow, pale shades of yellow, pink, green, and white, humped in against each other on the tiny blocks surrounded by water. Occasionally we’d encounter an open space, a campo or little plaza, each with the neighborhood church situated on one side, with a fountain in the center of the square. The traffic on the canals was busy so early in the morning. There were boats for everything we might have trucks for at home: vegetable deliveries, post, police, construction.

  There were twists, there were turns, and we had to backtrack a couple of times, but strolling along the confusing, narrow streets and canals was the most relaxing thing I’d done in I didn’t know how long. The smell of stale water and the sight of stray cats nibbling on the fish bones left for them was a relief after the bustle of Berlin and so many airports. Even Sean seemed a little more like his old self after a good night’s sleep.

  By the time we got to the Museo Archeologico, St. Mark’s Square was filling up with tourists and those who would make money from them. Though I couldn’t for the life of me understand why visitors would pay to feed the pigeons and, worse, to have someone photograph them with pigeons on their heads, I shrugged. It paid someone’s rent.

  The museum was still closed, so we strolled back into the square. It was odd, being someplace I’d only ever seen through movies—you don’t expect it to be real. But the brick campanile tower, the pink-and-white lacy marble confection of the Doge’s palace, and the imposing dome of the basilica of San Marco were real enough, as were the ranks of motorboats bobbing at the bank of the Grand Canal. It was almost impossible to imagine that real people lived and worked here.

  Winged lions guarded the city from the tops of pillars and on towers, and made me wonder if the symbol of the city had roots in an antique Fangborn past. The more I looked, the more I thought I saw evidence of the Fangborn in every piece of art and sculpture. I wondered how effective the Fangborn veil of secrecy was; I felt I was seeing them everywhere.

  But Sean didn’t seem to be enjoying Venice the same way and was by turns out of it or uneasy. Which was fair enough; jet lag and an unexpected trip would have been enough, but the reasons for both were pretty screwed up. He had no real reason to be here; for me, the sights provided an opportunity to forget Dmitri for a moment. By rights Sean should have been back in Boston, no part of this.

  Inside San Marco, the basilica was dark and cool. The glittering mosaics that covered the ceiling kept us staring up until our necks hurt. I felt as if I was at the crossroads of the East and West, with the influence of Asia and Europe blending, and Sean and I whispered furiously, comparing what we saw with what we knew from classes. We both were agog; having been convinced that we knew the cultures, we knew the art, surely the real thing would disappoint? It did not. In the Doge’s palace, which had housed courts and prisons as well as the Doge, we saw ornate reception halls, walls and ceilings covered in masterpieces of art and gilding. Even with all that splendor and history, I couldn’t quite stop giggling at the ornate silliness of the Doge’s hat, with a knob standing up in back. It was funny to see Sean, who usually put such a premium on maintaining an unimpressed attitude, with his mouth hanging wide open. For a little while, sharing that enthusiasm was like old times.

  The museum was just opening as we arrived. Nervously I asked at the desk to speak to Dr. Cavalli. The guard eyeballed me, made a hushed call, and gestured to a bench.

  “I didn’t know you speak Italian,” Sean said as we sat.

  Wait till you hear me howl, I felt like saying. “Mama Luongo. She taught me when she babysat.”

  A woman approached, looking harried. In fact, I’d noticed most of the Venetians I’d seen seemed perpetually harried, but maybe it was just a cultural perception.

  I greeted her in Italian.

  She conducted her half of the conversation in reasonable English.

  “I am so sorry to say to you. Dr. Cavalli is dead, several weeks ago.”

  My heart sank. I’d wasted valuable time when I could have been hightailing it to Delos. “Dead? Was it…an accident?”

  Her face softened. “No, no, he was very old. A little sick, then at home, in bed. I would wish the same for myself.” The harried look returned. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I wanted to ask him about a pottery figurine. Greek.”

  “Ah, well, Greek writers, Greek religion, that was his specialty. Myself, I know nothing, nothing about them. Etruscans for me. I am sorry I give you bad news.”

  She seemed so adamant, I couldn’t press the issue. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Prego. Ciao.”

  I left, nodding to Sean, who’d been studying the map I’d left with him.

  “No luck. Il professore died. Couple weeks ago.” The bright sun greeted us outside and I admitted to myself that I was lost. “Maybe Dmitri meant to send me to where Dr. Cavalli excavated, on Delos?”

  “Seems kind of an obscure thing to say to someone while you’re getting your ass handed to you,” Sean said. “‘Ouch!’ or ‘Get your ass to Delos!’ would have been more efficient. Instead, he yells in Latin? Screwy. Are you sure you got the Latin right?”

  “I think so. And I think he was just trying to keep what he wanted me to do secret,” I said. “Keep it from the other folks there?”

  “It was a little too cryptic if you didn’t get it either,” Sean pointed out. “Maybe you’re overcomplicating it. Maybe you misunderstood and you’re meant to stay in Venice.”

  “How am I overcomplicating? I’m on an international trek to rescue my cousin, being chased and beat up by bad guys from many nations. How could I possibly make it more overcomplicated?”

  “Well, maybe what he meant was this.” He pointed at the map. There was the Via Cavalli, very close by. “Maybe it wasn’t a person. Maybe that’s, like, a common name or something, and there’s something you should see here.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, right, but remember, Dmitri didn’t tell me to go to Venice. Let me see.” I stared at it, then handed the map back to him. A tickle at the base of my skull prompted me to agree—the Beast, or Fangborn instinct, was urging me on. Holy shit. It couldn’t really be what I was looking for? “OK, whatever. Might as well check it out, since it’s so close.”

  I would have apologized for snapping at Sean if he hadn’t been so obnoxiously pleased with himself, pointing out his excellent eye, his awareness of detail, and how he’d probably saved the day all the way to the Via Cavalli. In fact, he took it so far, I was starting not to enjoy the few more blocks of Venice I was going to be allowed before catching the flight to Athens.

  “Yes, yes, you rule and I drool. I get it already, Sean. Enough, OK?”

  “I’m just saying.” He shut up, but still radiated insufferable self-justification all the way there.

  When we reached Via Cavalli, however, I could see nothing obviously helpful.

  “What are we looking for?”

  That was a good question. Antiquities? Werewolves? Pandora’s Box? Venice was pretty, ancient, and a cult
ural nexus, but it wasn’t offering me any answers. “Dmitri is interested in antiquities relating to…Greek religious artifacts,” I said, carefully vague. “He seems obsessed with acquiring them.” Because he mistakenly believes they will help him become a werewolf, if Will and the Steubens were to be believed.

  “Antiquities have a habit of moving around the world and Venice was always an important market.” I glanced at the row of houses, the edge of the canal one last time. Nothing.

  “Zoe, even if you find this thing…Dmitri may just kill you once you give it to him, right?”

  With everything that had occurred in the last few days, I’d become inured to the idea. I didn’t want to bring up that I was trying to keep Sean out of danger, too. “That’s why you’re here, right, boy-o? To protect my delicate pink self?”

  “Oh.” Pondering that, Sean was quiet. “We could wait for reinforcements. The Steubens?”

  “They might be in jail, too, for all I know.”

  We looked as closely as we could without actually climbing inside someone’s house. We took a break, found a place for espresso and drank without talking. Something of the Beast pushed me, so we returned just before dusk for one last look, not very hopeful.

  I combed the street side again, trying to think of what Dmitri might have wanted me to see here. There was nothing. This was a meaningless detour, confusion on my part, a delusion to make sense of what I’d been told about the Fangborn. I sat down on the stone bench in the sun, checking the flights to Athens on my phone. There were a couple, none of them nonstop, but I was still on schedule to get to Delos in time.

  I wasn’t ready to give up yet. The Beast was telling me to wait, and I was learning to listen.

  I sagged a little, let the sun soak in. Felt the grooves in the warm, rough stone beneath my fingers.

  Grooves?

  I stood up so quickly, I caught Sean—who’d been leaning over me—under the chin with the top of my head. Mutual “ows” and glares ensued, and when my eyes stopped watering, I pointed.

  The stone bench was carved with ancient images. I held my hand up to shade my eyes and strained to make sense of the lines.

  What I’d at first thought were grooves were the serpent swirls of a caduceus, the staff of Hermes. Snakes.

  “Looks Greek to me,” Sean said. I felt no urge to explain about the possible Fangborn meaning of snake symbolism.

  Antiquities move around. They get reused, reincorporated, reinstated, recycled. What had once been a stone marker for some ancient city was now a bench in a quiet Venetian neighborhood.

  A bench fixed to a house. The buzzing in my ears and prickling at the base of my neck got louder, then died away altogether. My hearing sharpened, as did my sight, but it was neither of them that made me look up. It was more as if someone had taken hold of the back of my head and suddenly jerked it, so I couldn’t possibly miss what was now in front of me.

  Terra-cotta tiles covered the rooftops, some of which were so close they were practically touching. But the tiles weren’t the only objects up there. While two of the roofs from separate buildings touched or overlapped, there was one corner where the roofs actually commingled in a design. It surely was no standard form of architecture, but a kind of whimsy, perhaps incorporated when one owner held both houses. Instead of the usual half cylinders, alternating to provide drainage, or the chimney covers, these were unusually ornate corner pieces. They looked ancient; any glaze that had been on them had been worn away over centuries, and as I stared, I realized they had been shaped at one time.

  If I squinted really hard, they looked like the heads of snakes. Almost the same configuration as the top of the caduceus, staring at each other. With a significant difference.

  There was some kind of clay pot suspended between them.

  Anyone else looking up might have only seen a flourish with a knob, a finial, a decoration. Suddenly, to me, it was fraught with meaning.

  I knew I needed to get at whatever was in that pot.

  “Sean!”

  I jerked my head toward the pot, and he understood right away. He sighed but looked around for observers. Seeing none, he laced his fingers together.

  I stepped into the cradle of his hands, and we nodded together in time: one, two—

  On three, Sean heaved me up, and I stretched as far as I could to reach the window ledge on the second floor. I couldn’t quite reach it, until Sean pushed me up farther. After some precarious scrabbling, I grabbed the sill. I found a toehold between aging brick and somehow pulled myself up.

  “Nice going! Now get it and get down!” Sean hissed from below.

  Easier said than done. I squatted in the window, hanging on to the inside of the frame with my left hand while I carefully reached with my right hand.

  Three inches too short.

  I tried to stand, half-hunched, and reached out.

  My fingers brushed the pot. It swung back and forth, and now I could tell it was only attached to the terra-cotta decoration by a thin and rusted wire.

  Another inch and I could unhook it.

  I stretched with everything I had. Maybe a little more; I felt the Beast growing restless inside me.

  Another stretch, and I felt my hand…lengthen. Fingers grew clawlike, bones shifted. I panicked and made another desperate grab at the vessel.

  I snagged one of the little handles. The wire snapped and I had the pot. I’d also managed to pull off the corner of one of the terra-cotta decorations.

  I lost my balance, nearly toppled over. I held onto the window frame with all my might and righted myself.

  The terra-cotta embellishment continued to fall as I watched helplessly.

  Craa-aack. Sharp and final, it hit the pavement. The noise echoed through the fading sunlight.

  No time to see if anyone heard. I jumped down from the window.

  Sean had the sense to not try and catch me.

  I landed hard, but rolled, the pot tucked under my arm like a football.

  No one else was on the street. No one else had heard.

  My epically shitty luck was changing.

  I dusted myself off, let Sean help me up. We began walking quickly down the street, back toward Piazza San Marco.

  That’s when the shout came up.

  Two figures from the opposite end of the street were standing under the roofline. They gestured, shouted again, then began to run toward us.

  We took off.

  Chapter 17

  When twilight falls in Venice, the whole city seems to fall into a mystical slumber. The crowds disappear, the fog rolls in over the canals, muffling sounds, and the lack of motor traffic is ever more noticeable. It’s eerie, it’s evocative, and I hoped it would help Sean and me escape.

  The thing was, the prickling at the base of my skull made me more and more certain our pursuers were also Fangborn.

  I didn’t know—or care—what their politics were. I didn’t want more new friends and family. I had stolen something they wanted back, and I couldn’t let them have it. Maybe it was something Dmitri had sent me for, maybe it was just dumb luck I saw someone’s antique bird feeder on their roof and thought it was an important artifact. Didn’t matter. I didn’t have time for the luxury of curiosity.

  We hid in an alleyway near a shop closed up for the night. I realized it was a shop where they made the straw wrappings for Chianti bottles.

  “The guy. On the backpacking-in-Europe show.” Sean was wheezing from exertion, and even I was out of breath. “He never hung out. In alleys as nasty as this. The guy on the survival show might have, though.”

  “This is off the beaten path. A true Venetian experience.” I started giggling, until a noise in the middle-distance caught my ear. “We’ve got to get going, if you can.”

  He nodded, and we were off again.

  An hour or two later, I felt an…absence, as if our pursuers were no longer there. It occurred to me that they had been distracted from us by…what had Gerry called it? The call to Change. Perhaps
they’d left off chasing us because something worse, something evil, had come along.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of some evil in the world actually helping me. First in the cemetery in Cambridge, and now.

  I was determined not to think about it. “I think we’ve lost them. Let’s head back to the hotel.”

  Sean nodded, winded, and we trudged back. He must have been tired because he didn’t even ask about the clay vessel. It was unlike him, but it saved me thinking up another story when he just went to his room. I heard a soft thud behind the closed door; I knew he’d just collapsed onto his bed.

  As soon as I got to my room, however, I knew I had to examine the pot. It might be nothing, but maybe it would be my ace in the hole in getting out of this alive.

  Besides that, I sensed the pot and its contents were hugely…Fangborn. My automatic recognition of it, the way it warmed as I touched it—this was powerful stuff.

  My heart fell as I looked inside my bag.

  The vessel was ancient, all right. No magic here. It had crumbled to dust.

  I upended my bag in hopes of finding a larger piece.

  A puff of reddish smoke came down from my backpack. Despairing, I pulled apart my clothes and carefully shook out each bit. Not only was everything I owned coated in fine red dust, but the pot was completely destroyed. I was at a loss to say how it had survived up there long enough for me to pull it down but then had disintegrated in our dash from the house.

  I frowned. It had seemed sturdy enough during my fall and chase…

  Then I saw the disk lying under a notebook, almost blending with the yellow bedspread. I picked it up; it was surprisingly heavy.

  A sharp pain in my finger made me cry out, and I saw a drop of blood on the gold surface. There must be a burr on the metal, I thought, but as I gingerly pulled the disk closer to look for it, a light so bright filled my mind I could no longer see my hand or the disk.

  Images followed the light, so many and so fast I couldn’t pick any single one out.