Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2) (21 page)

Label it, catalog it, analyze it with the other artifacts, write it up, put it into storage.

I picked one cupboard at random. Inside, I found a collection of things already there—most of the Viking ship, gold from the disc I’d found in
Venice
, one of the figurines from Pandora’s Box. Some dust that I assumed had been in the water in the spring. Satisfied that’s where the mosaic tiles belonged, I made a quick list and shut the door. Found a piece of masking tape and wrote “Heal Me” on it. Slapped it onto the door with the makeshift inventory until I could find better, more attractive labels and a more complete cataloging system.

For the first time inside the lab, the bracelet went crazy, colors flashing so fast, they seemed to blur white. A thrill ran up my arm, across my shoulders, a result of Claudia’s ministrations, or—

The thought came even faster than the feeling:
Oh. I get it. No, it’s me, what I made. When I find more, they’ll all go
together
—they’ll be more powerful—I’ll learn how to access the power
directly
 …

No time for a pat on my own back. I concentrated on what I was trying to do, to make myself seem less foul, less wrong. I found a broom I didn’t expect to see, in a corner that hadn’t been around before. Saw some bits of schmutz on the ground—dust, dirt, a few twigs, a bread twist tie, random shit that collects on floors—and a trash can on the other side of the room.

“Really?” I said aloud. The noise of my own voice echoing in the lab surprised me. “Am I that literal?”

“Zoe,” Sean said, suddenly appearing. “It’s your metaphor. You don’t have time for elegance— just do it!”

I shook my head but started sweeping. It didn’t take long, but suddenly, a ray of sunshine broke through the window in the lab—since when did I have a window? I felt better.

Far away, at Danny’s, on my bed, Claudia eased up as she became calmer, too.

I was different, but not changed. More like my attitude had improved or something.

Claudia’s response had changed, too. She ran her hand up my right arm, her biting became less analytical and a whole lot more … She moaned, and I felt myself becoming aroused—

Whoa, Zoe, gotta pull back a little,
I thought dizzily.
Must have gone too far and turned on the vampire charm as well as the self-modification.
I returned to the lab, and without thinking, ran over to a window by the desk. Pulled down a shade, and suddenly the light dimmed.

Back in the here and now, Claudia hesitated, shook herself a little, and dialed back from “erotic” to “clinical.”

She sat back suddenly, disengaged, and delicately licked a tiny droplet of blood from her fangs. They retracted, and she Changed back to skinself. “Zoe, what are you doing?” She jumped up, started pacing. “You did something, in the middle of—how did you—?”

“Are you sure? Are you certain it was me?” Suddenly I was giddy with anxiety. What had I done to myself, to Claudia? “I had no business tampering—”

But it’s all the business I had, right now
, I thought.

“Knock it off—” Shock made her unexpectedly brusque. She shook her head. “You changed your
self
. You changed … 
something
fundamental in you. And then … you altered how I could perceive it, you went from three to eleven then back down t
o fiv
e …”

I nodded as she paced. It didn’t matter how I’d done it; I’d kept her from attacking me. I’d kept myself alive. I may have permanently changed how other Fangborn would respond to me, and I was still pretty sure I was still one of the good guys. I’d made a choice; I didn’t know if it was the right one.

Claudia flustered and freaked out was a disconcerting sight. “You can’t—no one can do that. Certainly,
you
shouldn’t be able to. That’s … not possible,” she insisted.

Under other circumstances, it might have been funny to see her sputter, confront a fact, and not be able to digest it. Now it scared the shit out of me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve done the impossible. So … what happens now?”

It wasn’t an idle question. Claudia had no evidence that what I did wasn’t part of the evil that might be overtaking me. Doing something no one should be able to do wasn’t the best way to
convince
either of us, that I was still just Zoe.

“Okay. Okay.” She sat down and reached over and pulled my blanket over her, and crossed her arms under it, suddenly shivering. “Tell me what we should … tell me what you want to have happen.”

“I’d like to wake up in bed, with this a dream, but apart from that? I want to find the other artifacts, to keep them out of the hands of the Order. I want to stop whatever the Order is planning with the Fellborn, and then I’d like to find a way to keep the
Fangborn
from imploding into the public awareness. Because we need more time to make ourselves public.” I turned away. “If I can keep any of that from happening, I’ll be—”

A ripple up my spine, Sean’s whisper in my ear, and if I’d been half-Changed, my ears would have gone back. “Claudia, please take your hands out from under the blanket. Slowly.”

She looked at me, the first time I’d seen true fright in her eyes. She took her hands out. One of them held a gun we’d taken off a guard at the warehouse, which she’d brought into my room, hidden under Fergus’s shirt.

“If you’re gonna shoot me, just do it now,” I said. “We can’t go around and around like this. Either you believe me and accept the impossible, or you shoot me.”

A squeak of a floorboard. Claudia twisted suddenly, away from me. A flying blur, and she stumbled back, bleeding from the face.

An instant too late, I understood what was going on. “Vee! Don’t do it! She’s not going to—!”

A sandy-haired man had Vee in a headlock. “Uh—Fergus? No!” I jumped off my bed.

There was too much violence about to happen. Fergus was a big guy, and Vee was outraged, no telling what she would do. Claudia was shaken—Vee had thrown a phone book at her forehead.

We were an unstable triangle, one bad decision away from a blood bath.

“Vee, it’s okay!” I repeated. “Fergus, take it easy! Put her down!”

“You okay, Claudia?” Fergus held the struggling Vee with difficulty. Her feet left the floor and flailed.

“Let me go!” she shouted.

“I’m okay.” Claudia closed her eyes, ran her finger along the cut on her head. The wound stopped bleeding, and absently, she licked her finger. “Fergus, I’m okay,” she repeated, more strongly this time. “Vee—chill!”

Vee calmed down, but not happily. “Claudia! You don’t want to go there with me! Fucking vampires. Don’t make me do what you know I can do!”

“What’s going on?” Toshi asked at the doorway. He rubbed his eyes, looking haggard.

“Jesus—where’s Danny?” That’s all we needed, for Danny to walk in and see Claudia drawing down on me, Fergus, wearing nothing but pajama bottoms, holding Vee under his arm.

“He’s asleep—in his room,” Vee said through her teeth.

“Okay. I’m trying to think of a way to—”

“No, it’s alright,” Claudia said suddenly. She looked at the blood on her finger, sniffed, tasted gingerly. She nodded. “Zoe’s right. Whatever she did, it wasn’t to
me
.”

“What?” Fergus looked ready to tear the skin off someone and tightened his hold on Vee. “Vee didn’t—”

“Fergus, let Vee go! Whatever
Zoe
did, she did it only to herself. My blood is the same as ever.”

A slight lessening of the tension. “How do you know she didn’t …?” Fergus said. His concern for Claudia was balancing the urge to violence. He set Vee down.

Vee shoved him backward. “Don’t even know me, and you’re manhandling me …” she said. He held up his hands, showing surrender. She stomped into the kitchen, and I heard the refrigerator open and the rattle of the ice tray. I heard murmured voices, then an incensed “What?” Danny appeared in the doorway, all sleep banished, looking fit to kill someone.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked me. He turned to
Fergus
. “Who are you, and why are you in my house?”

“Danny, it’s okay,” I said hurriedly. “I promise you. He’s a friend, right?” I looked at Fergus. “Right?”

Danny gave Fergus a look that would have turned a lesser man to stone. “Friends don’t grab—”

Fergus took a deep breath, trying to keep his temper. “Claudia, you’d better start explaining how you know
… 
Zoe … didn’t … alter your perception.”

“Please.” Claudia’s disdain was huge. “I know myself. Zoe’s doing something vastly complicated, but she’s not doing it so well she could conceal tampering with my blood, my insides. She’s a kid playing with an atom bomb.
Nothing
she does with it is going to be subtle.”

“Hey!” Despite the fact that she essentially agreed with my thoughts of just a moment ago, I still resented it.

“Sorry, Zoe.” She smiled and the tension in the room
evaporated
.
“Whatever the bracelet and artifacts are doing to Zoe, changing how we perceive her, it’s internal. She tweaked something inside her, so we don’t react the same way.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” Toshi said.

“No more than accumulating these tiles, not so far. Does that make her evil?”

“I don’t know if evil’s the right word,” I said. “What if I’m part of a larger subset? One we don’t understand?”

“I’m not sure that makes it any better,” Toshi said.

Danny shook his head. “I don’t know how we’d describe you, Zo. What counts as evil?”

Claudia’s face had frozen. Blank, as if rote reciting, she said, “We hunt killers and rapists, who hunt weaker humans. It’s strong versus weak all the way down the chain.”

“So Zoe hunts Fangborn, is what you’re saying,” Fergus said. He had less of a brogue now that he was calm.

“No,” she said quickly. “No, Zoe is
capable
of hunting and … killing us. Or at least, so strong that
we
perceive her as a genuine threat.”

“All this talk of hunting, of evil …” I looked at Claudia. “Forgive me, but I still have my doubts about the infallibility of the Fangborn. I mean, maybe it’s just because I lack the culture, and—I’m sorry again, but I’m gonna say it—the
faith
you all have. I’ve always been worried that we … I … don’t have the right to do what Fangborn do.”

“I’m not sure how to reassure you beyond what you already know and have experienced with us,” Claudia said slowly. “We’ve talked before. All of us go through a period of questioning.”

If Claudia had said, “We all go through a phase,” I might have slugged her. That response had nothing to do with Fangborn
violence
.

“All I can tell you is that I’ve done as much research as a nonspecialist can do and have talked with those who’ve investigated this. We haven’t found anything in our past to contradict what I’m telling you. So we need you, Zoe, to keep doing what you’re doing and keep digging into our history. Maybe you’ll either find out you’re wrong, or you’ll …”—she shrugged—“be the first in
millennia
to find the evidence. Until then, I’m hoping you’ll keep fighting for what we all stand for.”

I glanced at Toshi, who was staring at me. “You know that back in Eyup, I never meant to—”

“Exactly!” Claudia pointed at me. “That’s the difference; Zoe is capable, in theory if not entirely in practice, of seeking out and destroying Fangborn. But she doesn’t. She
chooses
not to. And that’s significant.”

“It means she’s not some weird variety of evil, probably,” V
ee sai
d.

“No,” Claudia said.

“So what does that make her?” Toshi said.

“Will you please stop talking about me like I’m not here,” I said loudly. “I don’t like all of this.”

“She’s Zoe, okay?” Danny stood up. Damned if my cousin wasn’t about to turn to force on my behalf. I stood up, too, just in case. Take all the shots at me you like, dissect my character, and call me a beast—I’d done it all myself before. You don’t go near Danny.

“She’s Fangborn, of course,” Claudia said. “With
additional
 … features, and that makes her …”

“Different?” Toshi offered.

“Special?” Danny asked.

“A freak?” Vee asked.

I shot Vee a look. “A predator.”

Claudia nodded solemnly.

It had been a long day. We were all a mess, and I needed some time alone to sort this out, maybe even sleep a little. Without much discussion, we adjourned for the night, agreeing to meet at breakfast before starting out.