Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (19 page)

“Why don’t you tell me about them?”

So I did. When we were settled in the kitchen, I told them about the mind-lab, the interactions I’d been having with the
artifacts
I found. I told them about the extended hunting I’d been doing on escaping the TRG, the fact that my ability to sense evil seemed to have expanded before I realized I could sometimes resist the Call to Change altogether. I told them about nearly braining the bartender in New York and then about going too far and hurting Gerry.

I saw only a tightening of Claudia’s lips when she heard I’d wounded her brother.

I told them about being so aggressively attacked by the
mourning
Fangborn on the Viking ship, and then I told them about
Sean’s
voice and his suggestion that I kill Adam Nichols. I told them about the humor I’d experienced in attacking Toshi, which got me a dark look from him. As hard as it was, it was a comfort, too. It was a relief to share these thoughts; I’d been carrying a lot of worry by myself. I’d been without friends too long. I’d learned that I needed them, whatever I might tell myself. Whatever the chance of losing them.

“So now you all know exactly what kind of a freak I really am,” I finished.

“That’s actually pretty cool if you think about it, Zoe,” Toshi said slowly. “These changes in your gifts, you can use—”

“No.” I put my foot down. “Whatever this looks like, it’s not cool! It’s the complete opposite. Whatever is happening to me is overturning every last scrap of order in my life, and I was starting out with shreds to begin with. So yes, I have some weird new
powers
, but they’re what are keeping me alive and endangering me at the same time. Endangering everyone near me.”

With a deep breath, I turned back to Claudia. “So how did you find me?”

“I went looking,” she answered. “I needed to see for myself, so I volunteered, everyone still thinking that I bought the story. I found the trail in Virginia and then heard from Will and Gerry that you were in New York.”

She sighed a little. “That was nasty; it looks like the Order was testing out something on us. We know they’re doing a lot of work on Fangborn body chemistry and have created one that smells to us like evil. It’s not quite right, but it’s close enough to make everyone crazy. And when we went to find it …”

“Let me guess,” I said. “There was a thing that resembled a Changed werewolf.”

She nodded. “This has us rocked. Gerry …”

She didn’t even have to say it. Gerry, with his idealization of the Fangborn, would have been devastated by this news.

“Even once we got to the place and found the one creature, the shifters in the bunch wouldn’t lay off it. Kept circling around and looking for the other bad guys that weren’t there. Whatever they were using lasted about thirty minutes. Plenty of time to wreak some havoc.”

“I know they’re planning something, probably with those
zombie
creatures—I’ve been calling them Fellborn—I think in
Boston
, on October 7.”

“That’s not even a week from now!” Claudia looked about a million years old. “As to how I found you, I’d heard some very crazy stories about time stopping in Istanbul. It occurred to me I’d heard about that before.”

“In Ephesus,” I said.

“Yes and also in New York. You’d never been able to replicate what you’d done in Turkey, Zoe, so I had to wonder if our other runaway—self-imposed exile—mightn’t have been involved.” She glanced at Vee. “You have quite the reputation, you know.”

Vee leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. “Uh-huh.”

“When I heard about it, I couldn’t rule out the idea you both might be near Istanbul. And that’s where I picked up the trail
to her
e.”

“So now what?” I didn’t like to think what the upright Claudia might choose as a solution to my “evil.”

“The other reason I’m here was because I’d heard rumors of more monsters like the one we found in New York.”

We all exchanged a glance. “Yeah, we found them.”

She sat up straighter. “Tell me.”

Danny summarized our trail to the church, and then from there I took it to the basement. Then Toshi picked up. He used the same kind of language to describe the taste of the blood to Claudia that could be used to describe wine or perfumes:
rotten mushroom, tinny, the uric bite of blue cheese.
I began to understand how vampires tasted blood. I seemed to be the only one who
saw
blood as something living, even outside the body, something I kept to myself.

She frowned, shaking her head. “This is bad. I didn’t have the impression they were ready to roll out the Fellborn yet.” She worried her lip. “I agree, New York was a trial run for a bigger attack on the Fangborn. And we have less time than we thought.”

“They’ve already been tested on a large scale.” I told her about the video Buell had shown me. A vicious thought struck me. “And it cleaned up the last of anyone still living who might have memories of the asylum, too.”

“This is much worse than I expected,” Claudia said. “They’re much more advanced than we suspected. The TRG has been working on synthesizing vampire venoms since the Second World War, or thereabouts, with limited success. The Order seems to have had better luck with the genome.”

I thought about what I’d seen in the vision of the asylum. Had someone working with Knight and Dr. Porter been part of the
Order
? I remembered what Adam and Danny had said about the antiquity of the Order, though. “The Order’s been around a long time. Who knows what else they’ve been working on.”

“Well, then I suggest we go and look at the site I’m
investigating
tomorrow. If you’re all willing.”

Everyone stole glances around, nodded.

I cocked my head. “Only if you think you can keep your teeth off me.”

She smiled. “Between the two of us, I think I can manage.”

Uh-huh.
I thought quickly. “Tonight, you can stay here, wit
h us.
”

She smiled again, a little condescendingly. “Zoe, I’m not going to run away—or bring the TRG here. I have a room, I need to change.”

“How about if you stay here, and we go over in the morning, together.”

Claudia raised her eyebrows. “If that’s what it takes for you to trust me.”

Danny made up a makeshift bed in the living room for Claudia. We all said goodnight; Vee went right to sleep, and she didn’t snore at all, which was a blessing.

The next morning, we met at breakfast.

“How are they doing this?” I asked, after I’d had my second cup of coffee. “I mean, the Fellborn. Is it genetics or mutations or what? Gamma rays?”

“Psychological conditioning and drugs,” Toshi guessed.

“Could be some kind of virus they’ve developed,” Danny said. “Or, I’ve been reading about these ants, they get a kind of
fungus
—”

“Ophiocordyceps,”
Vee and Danny said at the same time. They exchanged a delighted look.

“Right,” Danny said. “The fungus takes them over, sort of drives them to a moist place, where it consumes the ant and then tries to reproduce.”

“So, what are they trying to do—infect humans? Or infect captured Fangborn? Either way, it’s not good.” Toshi only pushed around his second egg. We’d all lost our appetites.

I frowned. “These guys seem a little more driven than that. They pretty much homed in on me. They didn’t notice Danny.”

“I’m hoping we can find out exactly how they’re made and what the Order intends them for. It could be they’re attempting to … 
derail
the Fangborn, make them mindless, easier to kill.” Claudia shoved her plate back. “Look, it’s Sunday; that warehouse seems to be used only during the week. I was planning a little break-in party.”

It was absurd to think of Claudia as breaking into some place—she was so strict, morally correct. Then again, a year or so ago, it had been hard to think of Claudia as a vampire, too. Or of myself as a werewolf.

Vee asked, “Wait, do you have a way in, Claudia? Do you have any idea where it is?”

“My information says that it’s a commercial zone near the port of Haydarpaşa. I got a tour of the facilities the other day, looking for office space for a shipping company.”

We stopped by Claudia’s hotel while she changed out of her ninja outfit. Even with one of Vee’s shirts over it, she cut too striking a figure. We were going for as much anonymity as possible. Danny’s place was off Taksim; Claudia’s hotel was near the one I’d checked out of, only in a quieter location. We took Claudia’s car to her hotel and then took the road back toward the airport. Even along a busy, increasingly industrial landscape, there were small green spaces. People made the most of them, families sitting under the trees enjoying picnics, even early in the morning.

Claudia charmed the guards into letting us in. Toshi looked a little sad when she used her vampire persuasion. The facility was largely empty, and she easily found the room with the keys. Offices were at the front, storage areas in back of the building. We jogged single file down the long corridor between secured bays; if I’d had time, I would have winced at how our feet crashed and echoed with every step against the suspended metal flooring along the wall of the installation. But Claudia was right, and the place was empty.

Tension increased as we went deeper into the building. The vampires became restless without noticing it; I sensed a change in their body chemistry. Danny seemed unaffected himself, and Vee looked anxious, but unaware that something was bothering her. I found myself growling.

I signaled the others to pull over. “Okay, what you are picking up? That’s the same thing I tracked down into the grotto. So I’m expecting a whole lot of those Fellborn. Be ready. They might be in cages or cells; they might not be. Fang up, guys.”

Vee gave me a look, virtually mirrored by the one Danny gave me. “Um, sorry.
Gear
up. You seeing anything, Vee?”

She shook her head. “I’m getting nothing specific. Generic bad feeling.”

“Okay, you two hang back. Arm yourselves and be ready for anything, but be careful. We don’t want any attention.”

Vee nodded. Danny checked the magazine of his pistol with an ease and familiarity that unnerved me.

He learned to do that because of me dragging him into this,
I thought.

The door was locked; I tried it and it felt loose, a cheap interior door lock. That didn’t make any sense unless it was camouflage for a more secure door just beyond.

I noticed a red light in the wall as I passed into a wide room.

“Zoe, no!” Claudia and Danny said at once.

Too late. I’d broken a beam. Somewhere up ahead, a door sli
d open.

Chapter Fourteen

The Call to Change set my blood rushing, and I could feel
Claudia
and Toshi Changing as well. We charged ahead to the open sto
rage bay
.

A dozen Fellborn came boiling out of a doorway, snarling, bounding toward us. Two things were in our favor: the Fellborn were drawn to the shapeshifters first. That meant they weren’t interested in Vee and Danny, at least not until those two started shooting. And that was the other thing working for us: the Fellborn didn’t heal like Fangborn. Bullets killed them readily enough, quicker than us. The problem with that was that soon there were so many on me, Toshi, and Claudia that it was too close for Danny and Vee to shoot.

Vee didn’t hesitate and got three fast shots off, knocking one down right away. Danny missed several times, then managed to wing one of the Fellborn. He used the rest of his clip to make it stop moving.

That left four on me, three each on Toshi and Claudia.

I tried what worked for me before, running to meet the first beast. It was as slow as the others in the basement had been and equally as implacable. Two punches, one upstairs, one down, and then I tried to grab it, shove it while it was stunned into the next creature. But it seized hold of my arm, its claws biting deep. I kicked up, then raked down with my claws, trying to keep my balance, trying to keep its jaws away from me.

When the next one came, the lumbering gait didn’t seem to slow it down, but I was able to maneuver myself out of the way. I whipped the one on my arm like we were playing “crack the whip” on the playground. The collision bought me a moment when they tore at each other. I spat; they yelped as the venom ate down through their singeing, curling fur.

Another two gunshots. I managed to give Vee a chance to shoot the third near me. She only wounded it, but that bought me time to snap its neck.

I bit through the neck spinal cord of one fighting its associate. As bad as I remembered the blood tasted, it was better than letting one of them get hold of me again. My right arm was streaming blood through my fur and a torn sleeve. I noticed that Vee and Danny were helping Claudia and Toshi by distracting the ones nearest them, then shooting if they were able to draw them away. A good strategy, but I saw a lot of friendly blood flowing, and Vee was limping.

As I slashed the throat of the third, the last reached me. Black blood was soaking into the patchy fur at its neck; Danny had found another clip. It charged me, head down and teeth bared, its jaws snapping shut on my leg. Its teeth sliced through cloth, fur, flesh, and I screamed. I grabbed its head, my claws extended, and shoved them into its eyes. My claws slid through the jelly, met the bone of its eye socket, but it didn’t let go. We were locked together in pain when I caught a glimpse of something that made me forget those terrible fangs too close to my femoral artery.

Jacob Buell had followed the Fellborn into the warehouse.

My blood ran cold. He was carrying a weapon like his goon in New York: combination Taser and hellebore. He saw me, tilted his head as if to wonder at his luck. He raised the gun up and aimed at me. He took his time, finding satisfaction in the effort.

Struggling to dislodge my attacker, I shouted, “Toshi! It’s
him! Bue
ll!”

Toshi let loose a terrible howl when he saw the man behind his kidnapping and torture. He threw the last Fellborn from him and bounded across the room. He hurled himself at Buell, who turned in time to shoot Toshi instead of me.

“No!” I shouted.

Toshi hit the floor hard and didn’t move.

Danny fired two shots; one of them must have hit Buell, because I saw him flinch and grab his side, darkening with blood. As I dragged my one claw from the Fellborn’s eye to its mouth, hoping to tear the skin and break its hold, Buell backed away, hitting a button before he disappeared into the next room.

“Don’t let him get away, Danny!” I screamed. Finally, the
Fellborn
on me stopped moving.

Danny ran after Buell, but another door opened. I shoved the corpse from me and struggled to stand. “Vee! You got
anything
?”

“I can maybe do a push, a small one—make it count!” Out of ammo and too pressed to reload, she was using a pry bar to beat one of the Fellborn that had been on Toshi.

I felt a weak rush, a boost courtesy of Vee, and tried to heal myself at faster than Fangborn speed. It stopped the bleeding, and I could stand, but the pain was still incredible.

I looked to the other door and one more Fellborn emerged. My ears went back, and the fur on the back of my neck stood up. It was taller and leaner than the others. It moved upright less awkwardly than the others and was faster. The grayish skin was taut and less hairy, and the muzzled face was smaller, less obvious. I could feel it sizing me up; then it made a decision and went for Claudia.

It was planning its attack. Whatever it was, it was an upgrade from the original Fellborn.

It could think. And that was trouble for us.

I hobbled over to help; Toshi wasn’t moving, and Vee had collapsed with exhaustion, blood streaming from her nose and mouth. Claudia turned to the new thing and spat.

The venom slowed it, but not enough to keep it from landing a terrible swipe across her face. Claudia’s hands flew up to her gashed cheek, and the creature took the opportunity to knock h
er ove
r.

It was a calculated attack. Maybe if it was smarter than the others, it could understand me.

I put everything I could into one thought. “Freeze!”

The thing went rigid for a moment, then tried to shake it off. That’s all I needed. I picked up the pry bar Vee had been using and smashed it across the head.

It fell away, dead. Claudia nodded and pulled herself up. Toshi began to stir.

“Oh, god,” he said, clutching his head. “Thanks. I hate that shit. Those fucking guns …”

“I know. Catch your breath, and see if you can help Claudia.”

Toshi went pale when he saw her. “Shit, her face …”

“I know. I’m going after Danny. He ran after Buell.”

Toshi looked stricken. “Get him!”

I found Danny alone, hollow-eyed, and stunned. He was leaning against the wall of a hallway. Beyond him, a door was slightly open. “Danny? Are you hurt?”

“Yes, no … it’s not that.” He looked up, finally recognizing m
e. “Zo
e.”

“Did you catch Buell?”

“No. But I saw the truck he got into. A shipping container truck. Zoe … there were lots of them. But you need to see this.”

“What?”

“I can’t …” He shook his head, his face troubled. “You need to … back there.”

The smell of burning meat and plastic hit me immediately, the heat not too long after that. Danny wouldn’t go back any farther, but I made myself peer through the next door.

An utter ruin confronted me, a room burned to what looked like metal walls. Several bodies were scattered about. Some looked like the Fellborn.

A couple appeared to be human. I sniffed hesitantly.

Two human. Three Fangborn.

Something beyond the obvious troubled me.

“This place was rigged to burn as soon as they were ready to leave,” Danny muttered, almost to himself. “Something fast, very fast and hot, went through here. And there had to be a timer to extinguish it, so it wouldn’t take down the rest of the building, alert the outside before they could get away—”

The Order’s facilities were rigged to be destroyed if necessary, Adam had told me.

“—and we need to find out—” He’d kept talking, almost as if analysis would shield him from the horror we saw.

“I did this,” I interrupted. Aghast at the implications, I started to shake. “When I broke the beam. Danny, oh my—”

“No, it wasn’t you. They were cleaning up.” Danny looked up. “Remember? Buell was on his way out, closing shop.” He spoke more firmly now. “We made it just in time to see him leave. They wouldn’t have been able to move out so quickly; the trucks were packed. And it’s warm in here, not hot, not smoking.”

The only thing his words did was reassure me that I wasn’t completely responsible for the deaths here. “They were doing experiments. Trying to build … those things.” I nodded, and then a terrible thought struck me. “Toshi.”

Danny asked, “What about him?”

“He said his team was in the area—”

The blood rushed out of Danny’s face. “We should …”

I went weak again. “Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s not them …”

Danny didn’t look convinced, though, and neither was I. I shrugged. “I’ll get him.”

“Did you find him?” Toshi asked.

My face told him otherwise. Toshi was slowly recovering from his wounds as I told him what we’d found.

“Your team was spread across Istanbul, right?” I asked, hopeful. “It’s … it’s a really big city. The chance that—”

Toshi shook his head and said nothing. He extended a hand. I helped him up, and we went to the lab. Even before we reached the door, he stiffened. “It’s them,” he whispered, his face going even paler.

Before I could stop him, he broke away from me and rushed in, haltingly. Kneeling by one of the charred bodies, he leaned over and sniffed. His eyes filled with tears; he repeated the process for the next two Fangborn.

With the third body, he lowered his head, his shoulders
heaving
. Then he started over the burn victim. The flesh had burnt back, revealing the anatomy beneath.

“That one is still alive,” I whispered, almost to myself, horrified. “That’s what wasn’t right.”

Toshi flung himself on the survivor, bit hard, trying to save the dying Fangborn.

The survivor barked a harsh order. Toshi stopped, reluctantly, and I understood. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by that which couldn’t be undone. He needed to hear the last words of Buell’s experimental subject.

At first, I thought another alarm sounded in the distance. As it grew louder, I realized Toshi was keening. The noise was not something that should have been coming from a person, it was something that built with his grief, the sound of a soul being shredded.

I rushed to his side, Danny not far behind me. I barely knew Toshi, but I put my arm around him; he held onto my wrist, his fingernails digging into my flesh. It had been horrible to watch my mother slowly die, knowing it was coming. Toshi had a whole family ripped away from him instantly, maybe more—a friend, a lover?

His nails drew blood on my arm. I stared at the blood, feeling myself drawn in, closer and closer, until it felt as though I was swimming through it, and eventually into darkness. I felt no urge to withdraw, but a certain dread of what I’d see.

A cement wall, part of a towering parking lot in the middle of a city in flames. Smoke everywhere, bullets flying, screams. A hail of bullets, and more shouting. Gerry Steuben, his brown hair matted and darkened with blood, one arm amputated, shouted an indistinct order. Panic all around me when the bass thump-thump-thump of a large, black helicopter came into view. Adam shouted, “Grenade! Get down, get down!” and a canister of hellebore-based gas rolled into our midst …

I came back to the here and now, dripping sweat and wondering what I’d just seen. Nobody else seemed to have noticed my absence.

Toshi rocked a while longer, quieting until he simply stared at the ashes of his Family.

“C’mon,” I said, swallowing. “We have to go. We’ll … we’ll get Buell, Toshi. I promise.”

Toshi said nothing but let me lead him away from the wreck of his life.

We drove back to the hotel, stunned, silent, and bleeding. Toshi was spent and Claudia did the best she could, but we were still pretty beat up. Claudia covered up the worst of Danny’s injuries with a long shirt, and Vee draped her scarf loosely around her head and neck. The bloodstains were largely unnoticeable amid the floral pattern. Toshi’s leg was still giving him trouble—that was
obvious
—and he didn’t say anything the whole way back.
Claudia’s
face had stopped bleeding, but there were new ugly scars down her cheek, red and raw. We were healing, but not fast enough to erase the brutality of the attack.

We reached Danny’s rooms. I washed my face, which almost took the last of my energy, but looking around at my friends, I volunteered to go shopping after I changed. None of us wanted to go out in public. I was, to my shame, the least visibly beat up, thanks to Vee’s push, but I felt like I was full of the wet sludge from the bottom of a dumpster.

It was now clear to me that not only did Buell have a lot of those Fellborn and was planning on using them, he had newer, nastier models, too.

We had several theories, all terrifying. One was that he was using them to destroy Fangborn, as they were built with a taste for us. Another was that he was looking for a way to attack the civilian population so that the Fangborn would be blamed for it.

We ate like automatons. There was little discussion; Claudia and Toshi hit the terrace to get what they could of the sun before it went down. I hoped she would find out what he’d been told by the last survivor in the facility. Danny and Vee took showers. I followed.