by Dana Cameron
Except Claudia had no idea where we were.
I summoned up every bit of concentration I had and suggested, as strongly as I could: “Sean, tell me what’s happened to you. Tell me who’s been talking to you.”
“What the hell is your problem, Zoe?” He looked away, confused and angry. “What are you going on about? Why don’t you just stay here, let someone else do the worrying?”
Something was wrong. And this wasn’t the very public place to try and sort it out.
Someone had got to Sean. Hard, and probably vampirically. I remember wondering why he’d slept so long in Berlin, and now I knew, with an absolute certainty.
A vampire had tampered with Sean. Maybe it was someone working with Adam Nichols and Senator Knight, maybe it was my Fangborn cousins from Boston, but whoever it was wanted Sean to hamper me now, to get the figurines.
I reached down and tightened the straps on my backpack, tucked in my shirt, straightened myself. I took a deep breath. “Never mind, Sean. I’m beat and my brain’s scrambled.”
I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He blushed, raised his hand to the spot, and stared at me.
I felt my eyes fill up and saw the heart of Venice blur behind my tears.
I jumped to the railing of the vaporetto. Screams and curses followed me as I leaped from the boat.
Chapter 18
I landed on the delivery boat at the edge of the canal, stepping over the carefully piled crates of fruit and onto the sidewalk. I ran back the way we’d come until I reached the piazza, where I made for a Blue Line boat to take me to the airport.
When I settled in, I said to myself, Don’t even think about crying.
I had no figurines and no way to ransom Danny. Even if I did get them to Dmitri, if Adam was right, they wouldn’t get him what he wanted.
I knew from what Gerry had told me about the Fangborn who’d escaped Dmitri that no one, least of all me or Danny, wanted him disappointed.
Once at Marco Polo airport, I bought a ticket to Athens and got in line. A slow, bunching caterpillar of tourists shuffled before me.
It was possible Dmitri wouldn’t even make it to Delos. In fact, I had to assume Adam Nichols or those Italian vamps or who knows who else would be waiting for me there, despite his precautions.
Sean was bugged—vampirically tampered with, spooked, call it what you will. His insistence on following me so persistently was just odd. Now I knew: he wasn’t traveling under his own steam, and I didn’t know who had sent him.
I had nothing, not even company now.
And then I realized I had a new disaster.
I had to find a way to get an ancient gold tablet the size of a stack of York Peppermint Patties through customs.
I racked my brain. Despite what I’d seen in the piazza, Italian customs had a reputation for being lax and susceptible to a pretty face. I suspected I was red and sweating and far from my prettiest, but I unbuttoned another button of my shirt and worked on my posture.
Then again, remembering the TCP in San Marco…they could also be fierce. Italians guarded their antiquities jealously.
Was it actually illegal to bring gold out of Italy? Would they even think it was as ancient as I did? It wasn’t as if I’d robbed a site—and yes, I was rationalizing—as the building was not more than eighteenth century, maybe, at the most. I tried to tell myself that was nothing really in European terms, but I felt guilty all the same.
Hell, I didn’t even know what it was. They might sell them in the souvenir shop for the Festa Santa Fangbornia.
By the time it was my turn, I’d stashed it down the bottom of my bag and was mentally flipping a coin. Heads, it was a story about transporting something for a relative. Tails, it was something I found in a flea market.
I am so totally screwed.
When it was my turn, I smiled briefly, handed over my ticket and passport, and went through the metal detector. So far, so good. The inspectors looked bored as they glanced at the screen, and with some relief, I saw my bag coming toward me.
The belt stopped. Went into reverse.
They were pointing at something on their screen, speaking so low I couldn’t hear them.
I began to concentrate. Maybe werewolves had a little suggestive push in their words. Maybe I could just brazen it out. I practiced saying in my head, “What? I’m sure this isn’t illegal. You don’t want to make me late for my plane.”
One of them clicked on his keyboard, frowning.
The phone rang behind them.
“Si?” One inspector answered. “Si. Si. No. Si. Ciao.”
The belt began to roll again, and I made myself wait until my bag actually pulled up to me before I grabbed it. Made myself walk, not too quickly—I didn’t have anything to act guilty about. But not too slowly, either—I had a plane to catch.
It’s a lot of work, being a criminal.
I wasn’t happy until I was at my gate, and I didn’t really breathe again until I was on board and in my seat, the plane taking off.
I fell asleep about two minutes later and didn’t wake up until we landed in Frankfurt. I had to dash to make my connection, but with two more connections in about eight hours, I was in Mykonos.
At my last layover, I had done some research, and after orienting myself, I trudged toward a hotel I’d picked at random. I checked in and collapsed.
I woke up, ravenously hungry. I had no idea what time it was, only that I was in Mykonos, the easiest way to get to Delos. I’d remembered eating something at the Venice airport and a cup of coffee and a package of cookies somewhere else, but I think I’d slept through whatever meals had been served.
I went downstairs and had breakfast. OK, maybe three breakfasts; I wasn’t worried about dieting and was determined to make the most of Dmitri’s credit card until it got refused. Besides that card, I had a bag full of dirty clothes, a little cash, and a couple of cell phones. I had no idea where Claudia and Gerry were, or if they’d survived the fight in Berlin, and I didn’t dare call them for fear of leading the wrong people to me.
I didn’t dare think about Will and how I’d betrayed him, leaving him in the lurch in Berlin. I didn’t dare think about Sean and what he’d confessed in Venice.
So I did what I could. I went upstairs, because it was still early, and rinsed out my other shirt and underwear. My room looked as if it was bedecked for a parade, but smelled a whole lot better. Out my window, it looked like a postcard: white-washed houses and shops along a seawall, bashed by a ridiculously blue sea.
I went out to the harbor, where the water was calmer, to ask about launches to the tiny island of Delos. There were only three a day, all leaving in the morning, all returning in the early afternoon.
Problem was there were none on Monday. Tomorrow, the day when I was supposed to meet Dmitri, was Monday.
I arranged to go on the tour of Delos at noon. I hoped, by going early, I would discover a way to get back on my own later.
But what if Dmitri hadn’t escaped Adam during the fight in Berlin? What did I do about Danny then? I hadn’t seen a picture of him in some time…
I put that aside and got on the boat.
The trip took longer than the promised thirty minutes. Any thoughts I might have had about whether wolves could swim to the island were banished. The chop was huge, and several of the other tourists looked positively green. Located at the southwestern tip of Mykonos, Delos was a tiny island, long north to south and narrow east to west.
We motored all the way around the northern coast of Delos to the landing on the western side of the island. Most of the major excavations and monuments were clustered on this side, which I knew from the tourist map I’d been given.
Several other groups got out about the same time, but no one I recognized, and no one who might have been a contact from Dmitri.
I only paid half my attention to the guide, who explained that the island was sacred to Apollo and Artemis as the holy twins’ birthplace. We tramped over the uneven
paths on the rocky island, the astonishing quality of light suitable to the birthplace of a sun god. I was entranced by the ruins of an island city that had been the religious, trading, and political center of the Greek world. The “Lion Terrace,” with its guardian beasts, was particularly evocative, and I was not surprised to find out that one of the original lions was now in Venice. The other ruins—the theater, the gymnasium, the opulent houses, the shops, the sacred ways—gave a sense of how big, how important the place must have been.
I had to watch where I was going. Walking around, gape-mouthed and wide-eyed, I’d end up with a broken leg in a drainage ditch. There were ancient pitfalls here.
I spent my time observing, seeing whether there was any way I could sneak away from the group. The guide, however, kept a strict count of her charges, and I had no doubt if she came up short, someone would come looking for me.
You don’t mess with a site as holy, as revered as this and expect to get away with it easily.
I’d have to come back on my own, somehow. At least now I had a sense of where to look and what to expect.
I tried once again to slip away from the tour when we were taking a break at the museum and gift shop. Nothing makes a tourist scatter and swarm and lose his mind faster than the idea that someone will get the better souvenir.
The guide was on me as I tried to sneak around the back of the museum.
She smiled the whole time I explained I was looking for the bathroom and pointed out the door, clearly marked with the universally recognizable signage. She also waited for me, chatting the whole time I was in the stall, not giving me a chance to check out the window. There was no way to sneak off from the tour and camp out for the night.
I was practically jumping out of my skin. I couldn’t settle down, but I had to accept the fact: unless I heard from Dmitri soon, I was going to have to steal a boat and get over here on my own steam. I didn’t know how to sail; I could barely swim.
On the way back, I watched the other tourists cling to the sides of the motor. The seas were rough, even on a nice day, and the waves seemed huge to me.
That got me thinking about Dmitri and how he was likely to react when he discovered I no longer had the figurines. I thought about the pictures of the tortured Fangborn from Gerry’s files and didn’t like the probable outcome.
But I knew Danny was alive as of yesterday, and where there’s life, there’s hope. I thought all the way back to the harbor of Mykonos, then spent a few hours shopping. It took me a while to find what I was looking for, in the configuration I needed. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped Dmitri wouldn’t see this large cash advance until it was too late.
I sat in my room, staring at my recent acquisitions, thinking how pathetic they were, until I received a text from Dmitri with instructions. I was to meet Nikolas at the marina at three tomorrow morning. He would take me to Delos. It was a relief that problem had been solved for me.
My relief vanished when I saw the latest picture of Danny. I gritted my teeth as I surveyed it. He looked dopey, out of it, and had a bruise and scrape up one cheek. It seemed that Dmitri had taken out his own mistreatment on my cousin. I shut the file and looked at the time: eight o’clock. Only seven hours, then Dmitri would pay for all of this. I don’t know how he escaped from Adam, but he wouldn’t get away from me.
The phone rang again, this time with a different ringtone. The screen said, “Accept video call?”
I pressed the button.
It was Dmitri, sitting in the shadows. “You got the last photo?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then you will have a baseline.”
The phone’s camera swiveled away. I saw Danny, tied to a chair, a dirty rag stuffed in his mouth. Another man was looking toward where Dmitri was. He nodded to something off camera, then punched Danny in the face. Blood spurted from his nose and he strained at the ropes around him, his screams muffled by the rag.
Stunned, I screamed into the phone, “Stop it! Why are you doing this? I have what you want, and I’m going to meet you!”
At my voice, Danny lifted his head up. The man punched him again, and I saw a cut open up over his eye. Danny’s head sagged.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it!”
The camera moved, an image of a room blurred, and it was back on Dmitri. “When I find the man who sold me out to Senator Knight, I’ll kill him. But I do not forget that you could have given me the figurines in Berlin. Instead, you threatened to smash them. You lost me time, so I take something from Danny.”
“I…I—”
“One more time, so you do not forget.” He didn’t bother to turn the camera back on Danny, just watched my face as I listened to his screams.
He broke the connection.
I put the phone down, then rushed to the bathroom. I made it to the toilet just before I threw up.
There was a knock at the door, someone asking if I was all right.
“The television…I’m sorry. I…I hit the wrong button.”
I didn’t understand the reply, but whoever it was went away. I sat on the cool, gritty tiles of the bathroom floor, shaking.
Much later, I couldn’t stand the confines of my room any longer. The night air helped, a little. I went to the first restaurant I found and sat with a glass of wine—a couple, actually—until just after two in the morning. Anything beat sitting in my room and worrying, waiting for the appointed hour when I would have to successfully break into a holy landmark to rescue Danny.
I was just thinking I should pay my bill and let the staff go home when I saw the couple walking along the rock-bounded promenade.
She was stumbling, and he was laughing as he held her up. She didn’t look too good and the salt spray made her appear even more bedraggled.
Honeymooners who’d overdone the partying, I thought as I signed the check. One last meal on Dmitri—
My stomach lurched.
Maybe wine hadn’t been such a good idea. I stood up, grabbed my bag, and stumbled away. I’m sure I looked drunk myself, but not on two glasses of white wine—it took a lot more than that. I turned to go back to my room and doubled over. Cramps like I’d never felt before, which seemed to get worse as I moved away. Another three steps, and I could barely move.
I hadn’t felt this bad since—
—since the night outside the movie theater.
Oh no. Not now. I couldn’t, I didn’t have time, I had to go to the marina. Danny—
As soon as I had the thought, I felt better. Even just looking at the couple as they vanished into the distance, I felt better—and worse. A smell filled my nose so bad that I looked around for the dumpster that must be nearby.
No. I didn’t have time—Danny’s life depended on me being at the harbor in an hour.
The effort it took me to keep going was immense. The pain intensified, and I fell to my knees.
Something bad was going to happen, and I had to try to stop it. Maybe I could stop it and still get back in time to put my plan—
Plans didn’t matter. The Beast simply wasn’t going to let me turn away from this.
I turned, hitched up my bag, and ran after the retreating couple.
I felt better almost instantly. I felt better than I had since Germany. Stronger. Righter.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be to find them. The streets were a maze, narrow, curving. With so many whitewashed shops selling the same scarves, jewelry, and pottery, they all looked the same.
It was the smell that led me to him.
The closer I got, the stronger it became. And the worse it became; if I thought it was an open dumpster by the restaurant, it seemed more like a toxic waste site by the time I found the trail down the darker alleys off the main shopping district. It was as if the stench was hanging in the air, leaving a trail for me to follow. It was so distinct it may as well have been painted on the ground in luminescent green paint.
I was running now, so fast the shops and apartments were a blur of blue-wh
ite in the night.
I barreled into an alley that seemed to almost glow with the smell.
The Beast came. I gave in to it, and Changed.
There were none of the tentative prickles I’d felt in the Tiergarten. This was a rush of…everything. Furious glee, joyful rage. Boots gone; no problem. Clothes shredded and tangled; whatever. Killing this monster was worth it. An overwhelming, orgasmic flood only sharpened perception. I barely gave a thought to my backpack and its golden contents as I slid out of it.
The woman was unconscious. The drugs had kicked in—I could smell them now. Awareness grew, but the surroundings faded as I homed in on what was important.
Ending the monster.
He looked up, didn’t drop the knife. The woman’s blood was a narrow border on its edge. The sight of the blood dripping from the blade dazzled and focused me.
I growled. He smiled.
“Brother wolf, welcome!” he said. “I am happy to share my prey with you.”
Psychotic, stupid, and an asshole. Couldn’t even tell I was a girl-wolf.
I leaped at him, landed heavily. Heard his discomfort with satisfaction.
We bit at nearly the same time. His knife nicked my left paw. I grabbed his shoulder, felt the vise of my teeth crunch through skin, down to bone.
He dropped the knife then. Screeched, twisted, shoved.
Physics is physics. He was huge, I was the same mass I’d always been. I lost my grip, but tore off a large piece of flesh as I rolled away.
Another tingle and sizzle. Oh no, I can’t Change back now, please, God…
He was scrambling up. I hunched up, launched myself, no thought of my wound, no thought but keeping him here, away from the Normals, the innocents. No thought but killing him.
The sizzle came again, but I didn’t turn human. It was familiar, but it only intensified my Beastliness. I slammed into him, my heart joyful—
—as something—a freight train?—nailed me from the other side.
Cobblestones and gravel, over and over, as I tumbled away from the would-be killer. I rolled to my feet, shook my head, and got ready to—