by Dana Cameron
He started the engine. “We need to leave. Now.”
Another explosion in the compound decided me. I needed to be away from here and take the figurines and my newfound theory with me. I had to keep it out of Knight’s hands—and Dmitri’s.
I got in. We tore out of there, leaving the rumble of another explosion and the sudden, sharp smell of burning building behind.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“You tell me.”
I had to decide whether to trust Adam or not. Again. If he was still working for Knight, it was too elaborate a plot to get from me what I’d willingly give Knight to help Sean and get my file. Adam must really be switching sides.
“Ephesus. There’s a spot on the site. If I can find what I think is there…”
He turned away from the road to stare at me. “We can’t let Knight get it.”
I nodded. “So why the sudden change of heart?”
“Not so sudden. Remember, I was at Delos.”
“Yeah, and I remember you were in Venice, too, busting into my room and waving a gun around, taking my stuff. So break it down for me.”
Adam tapped on the GPS until he found a route he wanted. “We’re going to avoid the main entrance.”
I glared at him. “Ya think? Now talk.”
He cleared his throat and started to drive. “I’ve always wanted to serve my country. Knight was a friend of my father’s. I learned he was Fangborn—and about the existence of the Fangborn—just a year ago. Only a few of his staff know he’s a vampire. I only learned about his other plans more recently.”
I waited. “And?”
“And…I couldn’t get behind them. We…humans…aren’t ready for you guys. You see what we do to each other over the slightest differences in religion or politics? We beat each other up over baseball games. We’ll kill over the wrong-colored bandanna. What would we do faced with the Fangborn? I was only waiting to see how he was going to reveal himself and out you all, and then figure out how to keep him from executing his plans.”
Sounded plausible, even truthful, in parts of it, but there was something about his hesitation and his delivery that didn’t quite convince me. He wasn’t afraid of violence, theft, lying, or other types of lawbreaking. Still, I was committed to trusting him.
But only for the moment.
It was still dark when we got to Ephesus. Dawn was another hour away. Because we were avoiding the main entrances, we ran out of paved road quickly. Between his GPS and the coordinates I’d taken from the report, I knew we had to look for a small cluster of ruins halfway up one of the rolling brown hills. There was an overgrown path, but rocks and loosened soil made the going treacherous, and there were tangles of thorns and thistles that would deter all but the most determined goats.
I could see pretty well, but Adam was stumbling across the uneven terrain even with a flashlight. We got to within a hundred meters of the right area and I turned to him.
“Keep watch for Knight and Dmitri here. Warn me if they show up.” I also wanted a little privacy while I looked for the thing. No sense leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for my enemies.
Plus, I had the sneaking suspicion I’d only find the Box if I was at least half-Changed. I didn’t want Adam seeing that again; it would be like letting him catch me getting out of the bath.
It was incredibly hard to navigate the uneven ground quietly, even with my excellent vision. Loose rock and rubble littered every inch, and I slipped a number of times on goat poop. I discovered an unexpected and weatherworn trench when I stumbled into it. It hadn’t been on the map. Looters had been here since the end of last year’s official excavation. Picking myself up, I found I’d torn my trousers and had a jagged scratch in my leg.
If only I had something to clean it out with. I didn’t know how quickly this would heal while I was in human form. There was no sign of my wounds from the fight while I was still a wolf. Interesting. I found myself wondering about my last tetanus shot, and as soon as I thought of water to clean the scratch, I became aware of how thirsty I was. I hadn’t come to the site prepared.
With a groan, I realized I didn’t even have my trowel. I’d left it in Dmitri’s leg.
I got up, took a deep breath, and pushed on for the “merchants’ houses.”
Secundus had been a merchant.
My heart still pounded, and every noise—rock against rock, the distant crowing of roosters—reminded me that time was short. Only two bare hours until the appointed time. I had to hope I could find the Box before Knight or Dmitri found me.
As the sun rose, I found an elevation marker embedded in concrete and knew I was at the approximate center of the site area. What I prayed was Secundus’s house was about ten meters north. I began to count my paces, praying I wasn’t on a wild goose chase.
Left, right, left, right. Sinister, dexter, sinister, dexter…
I hope Grayling was genuinely on my side when he directed me to the sherd in Paris, I thought. I hope he truly wanted to keep this from Dmitri and wasn’t just flipping me off as he died.
Can’t second guess yourself now, Zoe. It’s all you have. Start with what you know. Work to the unknown from there.
It was hot, even though full daylight was still an hour away. Sweat trickled down my neck and back, and I was so drenched my sleeves made a slapping noise when I moved.
I was there. A series of ruined stone walls indicated the complex I was looking for. Now to find the right house.
Where to start? I had the vague impression of a map I looked at for about ten minutes, a scratch on my leg turning septic by the minute, and a ruined wall.
The wall. Before he was a merchant, Secundus had been a soldier in the Roman legions, seen the world, seen the ruins of cities that had thrived and died long before Rome. He would assume that the walls of the city would be there long after his departure. Ephesus was huge, and although the walls had been largely destroyed, meters and meters of them still stood—
I had to focus on what I had. If I went beyond that, if I tried to figure out all the possibilities, I’d go mad.
Stick with the house. If Grayling screwed you over, you’ll move from here.
Three buildings had sections of walls standing. One was outside the excavation area. Two were inside.
The last of my paces brought me right in front of the one still outside the excavation area. The one I believed to be an original part of Secundus’s house.
The wall was a fixed location, easy to recognize, comparatively durable, easy to find. It was almost everything an archaeologist looked for when establishing a datum point, the point from which an entire site was mapped and organized. I had to hope this was the last link in my chain of evidence.
I had no trowel, no crew, and no time.
Time to put aside the archaeology and invoke the Change.
I arranged the figurines and disk nearby. I took a deep breath, reached out to touch the wall, and tried to assume my wolf-girl form.
It was always a little disorienting, but now I saw the scratch I’d gotten while in human form fade. The wounds from my fight appeared, but they were already starting to close and heal.
If I thought that I’d experience phenomena like those I had in Claros, however, I was sadly mistaken. Nothing but dead stone and increasingly light skies, and me futilely patting a stubbornly ordinary stone wall.
What if I was in the wrong area? What if it had already been stolen? What if by coming here I had just killed Sean? What if—?
Hold on, Zoe. Nothing’s less attractive than a panicking werewolf.
The figurines had elicited the response in Claros, I told myself. No reason to think, once I had all four together, they’d do anything else.
You’re still an archaeologist, even if you’ve got fangs and claws. Use that.
I took a deep breath and stared at the wall. Nothing unusual about it, what was left of it. Plain plaster, because the painting had long ago been weathered away. There was one patch, smoother and whiter than the rest, tho
ugh. Almost exactly where I was staring, about four and a half feet above the ground. About as high as a short man could comfortably carve while standing.
Before I could think about it, and maybe stop myself, I reached out and scratched at it with my sharp claws.
It was fragile and fell away in fragments. My distress in having so carelessly destroyed something two thousand years old set my cheeks burning.
Until I saw what was under the plaster.
There was a crude rendering of a phallus scratched into the rock, along with a deeper inscription. The inscription was a series of letters and Roman numerals—or more letters.
…LEG VI VICTRIX.
The victorious Sixth Legion. If you knew some of the standard abbreviations, it was easy enough to fill in the rest. Secundus had marked the wall with his brother’s old legionary designation. I didn’t know how Tertius had found his way to Vindolanda—his legion would have been stationed in York—but it didn’t matter. His brother had left him a clue here.
And the carved image of the phallus? That was just for good luck. The walls and roads of the empire from Scotland to North Africa to Turkey were covered in them. Gerry would have been scandalized.
This particular bit of graffiti was marking something. Had been concealed to smooth the surface under a painted wall, and now it pointed the way to something else.
The sun was rising. I had an hour, maybe, to use whatever I found to barter for Sean and the file. Or would I have to sacrifice them to keep Knight from unleashing the power of Pandora’s Box on the world?
I needed to find the object before I could make the decision.
The raking light of the sun made the letters stand out as if they’d been waiting for my approach. I reached out and felt the carving in the stone, which was different from the others in the wall.
I longed for my trowel, but made do with a flat stone and my claws. I chipped away at the mortar, which flaked away at the surfaces but was harder to remove the deeper I went. I worked diligently, my patience rewarded when I realized the stone was moving. It wasn’t nearly as thick as the surrounding ones. It was like a veneer, a false wall concealing a space where the original stone had been.
I realized that I was doing the very thing I hated most in the world after bullies: destroying a piece of the past, something meant to be shared with everyone.
Jenny, my friend, forgive me. Sean’s future and my past are on the line. Maybe the rest of the world, too. I can’t let the others find Pandora’s Box first.
It struck me: Secundus had wanted someone to find this object eventually. He wouldn’t have left the clues he had, or sent the letter to his brother, otherwise.
It was enough of a rationalization. I didn’t need much at this point. Too much was at stake and the only way I could hope to affect any of it was to be the one who found the Box.
All archaeology is destruction, I thought as I worked, trying to ignore the blood welling from the cuts on my clawed fingers. As we dig, we destroy context. But we do it so that we can get the information, more important than the artifacts themselves, no matter how fascinating they might be. I tried to convince myself that’s what I was doing now.
The front fell away. There was a space behind it. Too valuable to leave in the ground, too dangerous to be trusted to another man or even to the priests guarding the temple strongbox, Secundus had hidden his treasure within the walls of his own house.
Not caring about scorpions or spiders or snakes, I thrust my hand in and felt a piece of ceramic, heard the familiar clink of pottery on pottery. Very carefully I pulled out the object. It rattled, and I could see what I had: two bowls, one turned over on top of the other, both of the same fine red earthenware as the sherd from Paris. They’d been put together to protect something else. Removing the top bowl, I saw a leather-wrapped parcel in the bottom of the other.
The leather was brittle, and it took me a moment to realize that it was coated with something metallic. Shiny flakes disintegrated as I pulled the bundle free.
I brushed the rest of the metallic substance from the surface. A wax-coated thong tied the top of the leather sack shut, and carefully I worked at the knots.
The leather fell apart quickly. It would, being clawed at, even if it hadn’t been two thousand years old.
Inside the leather was a vessel similar to the one in the picture I’d seen in Jenny’s office. If everyone who’d been after the figurines was correct, I’d just discovered Pandora’s Box.
Chapter 29
A shout from down the hill. “Zoe, we got company! Whatever you’re doing, make it fast!”
The sun was up, and I was out of time. I could see two truck-loads of men coming from the same direction we had. Knight.
I turned my attention back to my find. The small vessel in the leather wrappings looked like something you’d see in the museum from anywhere in the Mediterranean world: flared mouth, narrow neck, bulbous body, flat base. Although there was an unusual flange around the middle, indented in four places, it was different from the picture Jenny had shown me. More ordinary looking, but odder, too.
It wasn’t made of clay. It was metal. It shone dull silver in the creeping morning light.
Just as Secundus had written to his brother. An “unbreakable” vessel, as the text of Hesiod suggested.
The indentations, shaped like footprints, gave me an idea. I had to see if the figurines could be fitted onto the flange around the waist of the vessel. I had to know this was what Knight had sent me after.
There must have been some core of magnetic metal worked into the clay of the first figurine, the one I’d taken from the museum. I had no sooner placed it near the flange then it was pulled into place, upright, standing on the flange. The dull beige of the clay blushed, and, as if it was being suffused with life, the traces of pigments darkened. My female figurine now had dark hair and light blue robes.
A shot whizzed over my head. Knight’s men were firing at me. Or maybe at Adam, who was returning fire from behind a pillar somewhere below me. I heard shouts in response; they might want me gone, but they didn’t want the Box damaged.
I grabbed the next figurine, the one in the shape of Athena. It bounced back from the lip, like two magnets of equivalent charges resisting each other.
“Zoe Miller!” It was Knight’s voice, electronically amplified, echoing through the hills. “You are not, under any circumstances, to handle the Box. It requires controlled, laboratory conditions—”
Knight was hardly “controlled conditions” as far as I was concerned. As if in agreement, the gold disk—the Beacon—began to glow.
“Sean’s here with me. He wants to see you.”
Even the power of Knight’s suggestion, even the offer of talking to Sean couldn’t move me. I was enthralled, captivated, enslaved by the vessel and its artifacts.
A bit more fumbling; I was moving too slowly. Suddenly the vessel turned itself around, and the second figurine snapped into its correct place.
Holy shit. Pandora’s Box was taking matters into its own hands.
Athena’s helm was gold, and the snaky head of Medusa on her shield was black and green, her serpents coiling and darting. I could have sworn I saw gray eyes, too.
More gunfire erupted, this time from above me on the slope.
Dmitri’s men had arrived. I was barely paying attention, but it was as though my proximity sense had graduated to high-definition. I could see the men and their movements with crystal clarity, but had no will to do anything but focus on the Box.
The third figurine I snatched up was the one I’d retrieved from Claros. The queenly figure with the elaborate headdress was pulled out of my hand into its place. As the paint returned, I could see her golden hair, and there were tiny snakes wound around her arms, reminding me of the statue of the priestess from Crete.
The vessel was whirling faster now, as if it was building itself. Sparks were flying out from it.
Not sparks. Tiny lightning.
The Box
was choosing me over Knight, I knew. Just as the Beacon had, back in Venice.
The last figurine was the broken one, the one I’d pieced together from the fragment my mother had taken from my father and the piece I’d torn from Dmitri’s neck.
I could smell faint traces of hellebore cocktail. The men downslope were readying their guns. One had Changed into a wolf and was attempting to sneak up the slope far to my left. A familiar snake was slowly slithering into a helicopter that had landed at the top of the hill. Its markings—how could I see its markings in this poor light, from behind a wall?—were green and black.
Ariana. How had she found me?
Knight’s voice was eerily omnipresent, disembodied, calling over the scuffles breaking out. “Stop now, Zoe. I’ll make you rich if you stop now. You’ll end up killing everyone here if you continue—”
A shout and a scuffle below. The shout was familiar: Sean was tearing up the hill. Adam fired over him, just enough to keep anyone from following Sean.
Rock clattering on rock, a miniature landslide. Dmitri was descending the slope above me. Coming for me.
“I think you all want to stop shooting,” I shouted. It was my voice, and yet how was it carrying over all the other noises so easily? “I think hitting this thing with bullets would be very, very bad. Remember what supposedly happened last time this thing was opened? I’d back off, if I were you!”
“That’s mine!” Knight screamed. “You have no right, stray!”
“No stopping it now. It’s going to—”
I fit the last, broken key onto the vessel. It made full contact, and a band of the lightning built up around the figurines. The face of the last one was chipped off, but I now had the impression of a wolf’s muzzle and pointed ears; an Egyptian kilt was wrapped around its waist. The area around the missing hand caused the band to be incomplete, and there were weird jumps and flashes of light. Arcs of electricity.
The vessel spun free of my hand, defying gravity. I no longer perceived only shapes of the humans and Fangborn around me; I sensed the connections between them. I could see Dmitri, because I had bitten him, knew his blood, I could understand his orders in Russian—since when do I speak Russian?—to the man next to him, who was a distant relation…