by Dana Cameron
I thought about what Gerry and Claudia predicted would happen. I thought about how I knew humans behaved in the face of change or difference. I didn’t think it would be nearly as smooth a transition as he thought, and with all the effort I could muster, I spoke. “We don’t even know what is in the Box, if we find it. The Tapestry document says whoever found the Beacon would unchain the Fangborn. That could mean Identifying us to Normals, but it could mean our DNA will unspool or something. It could mean I will be the one, because I found the Beacon. You don’t know how this will play out.”
Senator Knight smiled briefly and stood up. “I believe my intent is what will be channeled. You have tonight to pick the places to search. Neither one of us wants Parshin to win this prize. All of us—not just Sean—would stand to lose a great deal.”
He seemed reasonable, even in his threats. Then I thought about what he intended, and knew I couldn’t allow it to happen.
I was desperate, eager to throw any impediment at his plan. “You don’t understand. I am the world’s unluckiest person, and as for archaeology, my ‘career’ hasn’t even been in existence long enough for me to have developed a nose. I’ve never even—”
Knight tsked. “Everything you’ve done so far has led you to this point. You’ve gotten as close as anyone ever has to solving the riddle of the figurines and gathering the keys. You stumbled, somehow, upon the Beacon. I would call that very lucky indeed. You’re the girl for the job, my little stray.”
The pejorative bit hard when he used it. The differences between us couldn’t have been more pronounced, and decidedly in his favor. I felt small and weak in every way.
He flipped through to another file, glanced at the top sheet, then at me. He closed it. “I’m not unfair. I will also add a carrot to my sticks. I have information here, about you. About your mother’s people and their…situation. I bet you have any number of questions about your past, about why your mother was on the run from such an early age? If you are very quick in finding the Box, I shall reward you with this.”
He put his hand gently on the coffee-stained and dog-eared file; I couldn’t help but hope he was telling the truth. I desperately wanted that information. I tore my eyes away from the file and tried to defy him, just a little bit.
“You’re lying. I’m nobody, you’ve said so yourself. Why would you have any information on my mother? Gerr—someone told me there were whole communities, scattered and hidden.”
He nodded. “That is correct. At the beginning of the last century, there were groups who removed themselves from the world, some for religious reasons, some because they feared Normals and their narrow-minded ways. Seeing how they treat their own kind, for the slightest of differences, was a powerful inducement to hide. But with the upheaval of the modern wars, on the home front and overseas, and with advances of communication, many of these groups were exposed. While some families were reincorporated into nests and packs, some orphans and strays were made a part of a powerful set of experiments in the attempt to enhance our powers, for the good of humanity and Fangborn alike. There was a war on, after all.”
I didn’t like the sound of the word “experiment” one bit.
“Your mother was orphaned as a baby and was brought to one of these homes, not knowing who or what she really was. Part of the group she was in was an experiment in ‘suggesting’ they were no different from humans, a way to blend them back into Normal society with the idea they would use their powers for good, then forget about them.” He shook his head. “As you can imagine, it was a dismal failure, but it was a small sacrifice for the greater good.”
I couldn’t help myself. “You know, a lot of people around that time split up families and tried to reengineer people, ‘for the greater good.’”
“Hindsight makes it so very easy, doesn’t it, Zoe? You’re what, twenty-five? Adrift in the world, wandering through life—how could you have any concept of what we Fangborn have been through?” He got up and paced, showing the first trace of anger. “Your mother was just a child. We were fighting for our lives, for everyone’s lives. You have no idea.”
He took his seat, again composed. “Your mother ran off, never knowing or understanding her oracular powers. We tracked her down, very near the end; the nurse at the hospital where your mother died alerted us and I sent Family for you. But this is all good for you, Zoe.”
“Yeah? How?” I didn’t like him talking about my mother.
“I can tell you about your mother’s Family. I can help you learn about your father’s Family, too. The past is so important to Normals. It’s more important to the Fangborn, because we are gifted with a purpose. Perhaps that is why your study of the past is so important to you. Poor stray, how alone you must have felt.”
He meant it; he believed he was being sympathetic. But if I could have killed him then and there, I would have.
“I can make you a part of our Family,” he said. “But first I need that one, last artifact.”
He straightened the files, put them into a drawer, locked his desk, pocketed the key. “I suggest you get a good night’s sleep after you consider where to start tomorrow. You’ll have about six hours to do a great service for your people. And you’ll learn about your past. If not?” He shrugged. “Sean’s fate also depends on your actions.”
I knew he meant it.
I was escorted to a small office, bare save for a cot, a table and lamp, and a stack of books and references to the archaeology of the coast. Maps, paper, a ruler, and calculator were there, as well as the figurines and the contents of my backpack. I sank down, staring at the figurines dejectedly.
If the senator hadn’t missed the point, I didn’t think my luck had improved recently. If it had, I’d be anywhere but here.
I stared at the row of figurines and the gold disk. They weren’t glowing now, which surprised me, but after all, they’d found each other. Why go through the effort?
I glanced at the map and compared it to the crude yet elegant version on the Venetian disk. It was remarkably accurate, given the lack of satellites and computational equipment. The ancients certainly knew something about sailing and the stars.
But why was the compass rose located beneath Claros? That didn’t make sense, to crowd it so close to the geographical information of the map.
Until I glanced at the modern map, which had been marked in the same place, with a less conspicuous mark.
My hand flew to my mouth. Shocking, how dense I’d been.
It wasn’t a compass rose. It was the location of Secundus’s treasure, possibly Pandora’s Box. In Ephesus. It was a big X, right on the damned map. Big mark equals big importance, right?
Nice going, Zoe. It’s only one of the most significant sites in the entire world. And you missed it.
Hey, I wasn’t looking for it. It wasn’t marked as a city on the map; I thought it was just about the figurines and their home oracles. I was just trying to get an artifact for a crazy Russian and not get killed. And, oh, by the way, coming to grips with the idea of being a werewolf for real, hello? Little bit preoccupied.
As Will had mentioned just a couple of nights ago, I’d never been, but you can’t study archaeology and not know about Ephesus. Ephesus is not only important on many historical levels, being nearly three thousand years old, it is huge. It had once been home to 250,000 people, second only to Alexandria in the classical world. Only 15 percent of it had been excavated.
Somewhere on this massive, carefully guarded site was Pandora’s Box. All I had to do was find it.
If the senator hadn’t been able to find it with his resources, how could I? He was Fangborn, he could wander around with the figurines as easily as I could, and they’d probably just as easily work for him if they were going to. But I had claimed the Beacon, or it had claimed me, and that seemed to be important somehow.
There was no way either of us could cover the entire site before the site opened tomorrow morning. We couldn’t cover it in a month just wandering around.
>
What the hell was I going to do? How could I narrow it down?
I got up and paced. I couldn’t even go through all the documentation Knight had left for me. Giant, thick volumes, some in English, some in Turkish, some in French, some in German. I glanced at the clock. No way I could read all this in the next five hours.
I sat back down again, determined not to let the impossible stop me. I put the books in Turkish aside; I couldn’t read those at all. My “museum and menu” German wouldn’t get me far with the detailed and jargon-filled reports, but maybe I could do something with cognates. Same for the French.
I opened the English reports and employed my best all-nighter-hadn’t-read-the-book-yet strategies, skimming tables of contents, chapter introductions, conclusions, and indexes. I spent a lot of time on the pictures. Great thing about pictures, you don’t need to speak the language to understand them. Worth more than a thousand words to me now.
No references to the style of pottery like the ones Jenny had shown me. Nothing referring to Secundus or Pandora, or even Vindolanda. In desperation, I looked up “oracle” and “temple,” but found too much and nothing that would help me.
Resolutely I picked up the German and Turkish texts and started flipping through the photographs.
My heart almost stopped. It was nothing I should have noticed—in fact, if it had been a better photograph, no one should ever have seen the tiny sequence of numbers and letters. Provenience markings on small, intact objects were usually concealed by the photographer, and sherds were generally marked with their minute numbers and letters in such a way that they would not show when they were mended into larger, reconstructed vessels.
The provenience numbers on one of the vessels looked strangely familiar. They were nearly identical to those I’d seen on the insignificant little sherd of Samian ware from the apartment in Paris.
Chapter 28
I rummaged through my bag until I found the spice jar. It looked like part of my “medical kit” and had been ignored by Knight’s guards, who had been focusing on the figurines and the disk. I fumbled with the top, and the plastic bag dropped to the floor. I pulled it out and reexamined it.
The numbers were organized in the same fashion. I maneuvered the lighted magnifying glass around and examined the sherd again. The numbers were clearer now, and I realized what I’d originally thought was a “9” was a European-style “7,” with a bar through it.
I tore through the site report, trying to find a description of the way they’d designated the excavated areas, how they correlated the artifacts to the area and level they’d taken it from.
There.
Outside, a distant rumble. I wondered briefly whether this wasn’t one of Turkey’s famous earthquakes.
No time for geology. I pulled the site map out of the pocket in the back of the report and spread it out across the table.
More rumblings, closer, louder now. That was not an earthquake. But until I knew what was going on, I had to focus.
Flipping back and forth between the book and the map, I managed to find the approximate location of the context in which my sherd had been found. It was well away from the main part of the exposed, touristy part of the site, and also away from more recently excavated areas, on the hilly periphery.
I studied the sherd and pinpointed what I thought was the context: the ruin of a small house on the edge of a recent excavation area, described as “merchants’ homes.” I tried to narrow it down more, but the door slammed open.
It was Adam Nichols.
He had a gun. He was spattered with a fine tracery of blood, which looked like a jeweled net on the skin of his face and hands.
I licked my lips, swallowed, and looked away. Werewolf or no, I had to get over this obsession with blood. It was creepy. A little vampiric.
“We need to get out of here. Dmitri’s men are storming the compound, looking for you and—” He moved toward the table with the figurines on them. “These.”
He reached out for the figurines. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d ducked in front of him, sweeping them up together. If anyone was going to hang onto these, it was me. I grabbed the map, the disk, then scattered the books. I didn’t want to leave any clues.
He didn’t say anything, just handed me my backpack, and I shoved the figurines, map, and disk in.
“Why are you helping me? Knight is gonna know for sure…what are you getting out of this?”
He opened the door a crack, looked up and down the hallway. “Let’s get out of here first. Unless you want to be here when Dmitri breaks in? My men almost failed to repel him at Claros, and he’s followed them back here. With reinforcements.”
I ran. I got too far ahead of Adam, distracted by too many thoughts. When I turned the corner, I practically ran into a knot of five heavily armed men. I thrashed about, trying to Change, but one of them had one of those damn poison-spraying guns and got off a blast. My head was turned away, but the vapor hung on the air and slowed me.
Adam joined us, just in time to punch the guy going for his radio.
One grabbed my backpack while another handcuffed me. I shook my head, slowed by the mist of the hellebore cocktail, and tried to bite the hand closest to me.
Howls and a jerk back. I looked up, just in time to see the fist coming. I was able to move only enough to keep from getting punched square on the jaw.
I caught it on the temple instead, which made the world crazy until I got slammed from the other side, too. There was nothing but wall over there, and I was bouncing off it and onto the floor—
Can’t respond if you don’t see it coming. Can’t anticipate, can’t fight back like you have to, and if you’re gonna survive…
Goddamned bully. Bastardnogoodmotherfu—Focus, Zoe!
Trowel bite!
Grrrrrr. The small noise in my throat was the opening bar to every song on the playlist you use to get moving at the gym. I shook with the deliciousness of it. The growl grew.
For the first time possibly ever, I was pleased with my small stature. A dainty wolf, I slid my paws out of the cuffs with no problem. Ditto my jeans. It wasn’t even a hitch in my progression from that one step to the leap that took me toward the neck of Knight’s man, who was staring at me with the most idiotic look on his face. He shoved me aside, stumbled back, one step, two, and turned to run.
Adam got him. But there were plenty of armed men left. I was a little woozy from the poison, but I caused enough of a melee that Adam could pick off the biggest problems first.
The five who’d run into us were down, but there was another, just beyond that door, my proximity sense told me. I could smell the evil coming off him in waves.
I lunged at the door, which opened from the other side.
I landed on top of him, heavily. I don’t know if it was the actual sight or smell of him, but the same compulsion I’d felt in Mykonos overcame me. Rotting fish, formaldehyde, and pig shit. This guy smelled like hell. I might have whimpered.
There was something else, though. Somewhere beneath all that foulness, I could smell blood, old and drying. I looked over in the corner and saw the corpse of a young woman chained to the wall. Bite wounds and claw marks covered her body.
Horrified, I didn’t see it coming when he punched me in the muzzle. My head snapped back; he stumbled. I knew, as if I was reading his mind, that it wasn’t just my death he was interested in. The young woman hadn’t died quickly.
I launched myself at him without thinking. He was sated, overfull, too slow and too clumsy, and I had just a fleeting glimpse of some truly unorthodox dentistry covered in blood when my jaws closed around his throat.
I felt his neck snap, the sound like a boot crunching through a windblown branch. There was no room for me to chide myself—who’s the bully now, Zoe?—just a feeling of righteous wrath so complete, it made me stronger, smarter, more focused.
The rush was like nothing I’d ever experienced. The taste of his blood was an encyclopedia. I knew the taste of
the woman from his throat. I understood that he was the most evil thing I’d ever encountered. But he didn’t taste…human.
He was Fangborn.
But Gerry had said there weren’t any evil Fangborn.
I must be getting a better grip on my powers, I thought. Of course, there’s no one brand of evil. It’s complex, it’s variable.
Drunk, I threw my head back and howled.
“Time to celebrate later,” Adam said, pushing his way into the room. He froze when he saw the two corpses, his face gray at the horror of it. Even a Normal could sense the evil here, and Adam made a living from violence.
He swallowed and handed me my pants as he glanced back down the hall. “We gotta jam.”
I got Human in a hurry, dressed, grabbed my bag, and ran.
Not too far ahead of Adam, though. He was good in a fight.
We ran into one more guard running over as a door to the outside closed behind him. He glanced at me, looked to Adam.
“Sir! Parshin’s men have breached—”
Adam stepped in and busted his head with the butt of his rifle. We ran outside and I looked around, trying to get a bead on where we were.
Adam jogged toward a jeep and motioned for me to get in.
I stopped. “Wait! Sean! We can’t leave him!”
“We can’t let Dmitri or Knight have those things. This is our one chance to keep them—and you—out of their hands.”
Why did I get the impression Adam was good at making rationalization sound like purest reason?
He shook his head. “I am totally compromised. I have to leave. You coming?”
I opened the door but cast a glance back at the compound. “But Sean!”
Adam gave me a venomous look and took a deep breath. “Knight won’t do anything with him,” he said, trying hard to sound patient. It was almost convincing. “He thinks if he controls Sean, he can control you, so he won’t hurt him unless you’re there to see it.”