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

A hurricane in my head. A storm of lights and images rushed through my mind. A thriving town whooshed past me, and suddenly, just beyond its limits, the asylum was standing again. I could see patients being wheeled down paths between buildings. A fine place, an upstanding place, the cutting edge of science. I wondered if I’d see a younger version of my mother there  …

There were several stone buildings and a parking lot.
Doctors
and nurses in white coats hurried down the paths between two of the buildings. Children in blue wool uniforms played inside the cha
in-lin
k fence that surrounded what I assumed was the
orphanage
, set apart from the medical buildings.

I could smell the trees blooming, the pollen thick in the air, the fresh-cut grass warm under the sun: spring then replaced the autumn of now. A smell of asphalt and antiseptic, a flood of every sense but sound. It was as if the volume were turned down too low; I couldn’t get close enough to hear what was being said, but had the impression that if I listened hard enough, or people spoke up, I would hear. It was incredibly frustrating, like not being able to scream or run in a dream.

The air settled around me as though an atmospheric low
had blown in. A mid-Atlantic depression—humid, ominous,
dispiriting
—fell upon the place, as much weather and season as emotion. I would have left this place, too. No wonder; the kids were essentially locked up in a cage.

A man in a lab coat with an arm full of files bustled right past me. I tried yelling, then realized he couldn’t hear me and wondered if I wouldn’t be better off trying to hide. But I had no presence here, no more than a ghost. The thick, horn-rimmed glasses; the horrible height and pleats of the waistband and the style of t
he nu
rses’ uniforms; and the round curves of automobiles the size of aircraft carriers told me: this was sometime in the past. Sometime in t
he 1940s.

I “stepped” back, to see how much of the building I could see: as soon as I had the thought to do so, it was as though I were on a camera boom, occupying no body or space, but omniscient. I saw a tower at the back, and wondering how the view was, instantly found myself up there.

If I could have thrown up, the rush of vertigo would have been the cue. Being disembodied seemed to have its benefits.

I tried it a little more, then thought about what I might do here before my time or this vision ran out. The doctor or technician’s bundle of files gave me the prompt.

Let’s see if there’s a record room,
I thought.

I kept my apparitional fingers crossed.

I ended up in a darkened room. I could tell there should be a switch but was powerless to move it. I waited for someone to turn on the lights and even thought,
Lights on!
with no luck. Unless someone came in and turned on the lights and opened the filing cabinet and then opened the files I might be curious about, I was shit out o
f luck.

People then
. Take me to the big office.

There was always a big office.

A jump cut, and I was watching a discussion between two men in a very large office. Heavy oak paneling appeared in a Gothic style probably dated to the asylum’s origins, as did a thick
Chinese
carpet, worn with the footsteps of at least one hundred and fifty years, and no less valuable for that. A young man in a white coat sat behind a much more modern desk, shelves of books and file cabinets on the walls behind and around him. He was nothing special: medium height, a little thick around the middle, thinning hair slicked back with some kind of pomade, glasses. A tie, but no
jacket
under the lab coat. The sign on the door read “Thomas Porter.”

I recognized the tall, lean man sitting in the leather wing chair. It was the hawkish cast of his nose that told me: I was looking at a younger version of Edward Knight. Young, with thick blond hair, Knight was dressed impeccably, casually preppy. He wore a Yale tie, I noticed.

In the present, Edward Knight was a US senator, supposedly a well-preserved seventy-year-old. He was actually much older than that—over two hundred years—and was a vampire. His a
ge brou
ght strength as a vampire, and his long tenure in the
Senate
brought him worldly influence. He was one of the Fangborn who believed we should Identify ourselves to Normal humans. He h
ad als
o
kidnapped
me and my friend Sean, whose death I held him responsible for.

Sean had died in my arms at the battle at Ephesus. The unusual vampirelike ability I had to observe the molecules in blood couldn’t heal him. The proximity sense I had that told of those around me was an oracular trait. Even before Pandora’s Box, I could do things other Fangborn werewolves could do, but none of it was enough to save Sean.

That Sean occasionally spoke to me and seemed to be held captive in my bracelet was another matter. Our conversations were odd, and he refused to answer some of my questions about my ability to hear him. Other times, he was maddeningly like himself, so I’d learned to shut him off, or at least tune him out, when his comments became annoying. No one else could hear him. I missed my friend and mentor badly.

With that, I turned my attention back to Edward Knight, my memories, my hatred, and my fury focused on him. Suddenly, the volume of his conversation cranked up too loud.

“… on the edge of an important breakthrough,” the young man in the white coat was saying. “I need only a little more—”

I worked on keeping the sound at a reasonable level.

“A little more what, Dr. Porter?” Knight said. “More time, more money, and—ah! More subjects, no doubt. I’ve given you
everything
you’ve asked for, and yet you want more. Always more.” He shook his head. “We’re out of time. I need those results now.”

Dr. Porter laced his fingers together. It wasn’t an act of
patience
, but restraint. “I have told you before, I’m twenty, thirty, fifty years ahead of the rest of the world with my techniques. You must be p
atient.”

Knight leaned forward. “You don’t dare to lecture me
about
patience
. I’ve seen empires rise and fall. I’ve watched the world change so swiftly in the past decades, it’s been as though I were standing still, patience on a monument, or worse, sliding backward on ice while being passed by short-lived fools who chased immortality in every false form. I’ve been waiting more than a
century
—
several
times your lifetime—possessed in patience since your great-
great
-grandsire was pissing his nappies, so do not lecture me about
patience
. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

The doctor’s knuckles tightened on his desk, but his voice
remained
steady, his demeanor nothing but placid. A lot of
composure
for a young man. “But the recent discoveries in the caves? I absolutely believe those are vital, the key to what we’ve been looking for. You must—”

Knight’s head was thrown back imperiously. “I must
nothing.
I forbade you to intrude into those holy places, and you ignored me.
I
’m taking steps to rectify that arrogance of yours. Be careful how much more work you make for me by disobeying my few requests.”

The threat disrupted the doctor’s composure. “I am so close to finding everything, everything you want from me. And
you
get caught up on the cheap hook of religion and sentimentality.”

The chilly aspect of Knight’s face made me shiver, put me on my guard, and I was sixty years away from it. “You are stalling, Doctor. I think you already have the answers I want, but are holding out for more of my resources.”

Doctor Porter jumped to his feet. “It’s foolish of you to withhold what I want, when my research can only advance both our causes!”

I flinched as soon as he said it. It was as good as an admission.

Knight reached over and slapped Porter hard in the face. Now, instead of youthfulness and ambition, I saw the viciousness I recognized in the Senator Knight I knew.

Porter stepped back. “What the—?”

Knight began to whisper. I couldn’t make out what he said, so I zoomed in to try to hear.

“—and you will forget I was here, forget our long work in these matters—”

“Don’t you try those vampire tricks with me, Knight!”

Knight looked stunned by the resistance. “What have you done to yourself? How can you—? Against all our agreements, you
endanger
my people to serve yourself! You can’t—”

“I must,” Porter said, pleased with himself. “No one must have so much power to threaten humans!”

Knight shook off his amazement, grabbed the doctor’s wrist, and bit it.

Thomas Porter’s shock and anger evaporated, replaced with a blank look.

He got up, pushed his chair in, and walked to the window. He climbed to the radiator, and without bothering to open the
window
, threw himself against it. It didn’t give immediately, and he
continued
to hurl himself at it, bruising and cutting himself, until the frame collapsed and he finally went through.

He didn’t make a noise as the glass and wood frame broke. There was other no sound until he hit the ground. The screams took a moment, as passers-by below figured out what they saw.

I watched, unable to react. Knight cleaned up the files that were scattered, tucked them under his arm, and left, locking the door behind him.

Chapter Two

The building whipped away into nothingness. I was wrenched back to the present, back into my body, back to a world where I could only find answers the hard way. My stomach lurched as I felt a disconnect between being nowhere and having parts that could feel.

A psychic thud, and more sensations; my face was red-hot from staying still in a patch of sun, sweat pouring down my back, a headache worse than anything I’d experienced as a kid who drank and smoked too much.

I threw up.

I felt better in a moment; I was so close, there
had
to be more. Desperate, I tried to re-establish the connection. I patted the stone, clenched my eyes shut, and concentrated on the last things I’d seen, trying to find my way back.

Something prompted me: I dug my hands into the soil and took a deep breath, trying to tease the different scents apart, find a clue to what had gone before.

Nothing.

The wind shifted, and a terrible feeling overcame me. Having found what I so desperately needed, I had to return to Fangborn business.

I jumped up and ran.

The evil scent I had been tracking reasserted itself. No pang or resistance now, I sensed the Call and, sure I wouldn’t be seen, half-Changed to my wolf-woman form, to make up for lost time.

Even more fleet than before, even quieter, I startled a couple of deer, which leaped into the air and hurtled away. This, I understood. I laughed silently as the three of us raced, until they suddenly altered course ninety degrees and bounded out of sight.

Leaves barely rustled as I ran. The wind was lovely on my face, and the darkening sky with the rising moon comforted me. As I glided on, my sickness vanished, and my senses seemed to return to normal.

An open space ahead. I slowed, and found cover beneath a fallen tree covered with creeping vines. The parasite had won again, wrestling the giant to the ground …

I shook myself. Poetry and imagery weren’t my style.
Focus, Zoe.
What was wrong with me today?

The trees thinned because there was a cellar hole and the remains of a brick chimney. The house was gone, burned not too long ago, charred timbers thrust uncovered into the sky. A few saplings had taken root, and nature was reclaiming the land.

I was homing in on whoever it was.

He was there, sitting by a tree, his eyes closed. A pile of fast-food wrappers by his side, and a scatter of beer cans around him. A stink of urine and feces not far off.

That never happens.

Usually the scent of an evildoer was this strong when they were in the process of their law-breaking, I thought, or when I was about to be attacked. For the scent to be this strong … something else was going on.

The guy wasn’t moving. He’d passed out from the beer.

Fine. My hackles rose, and I growled as I neared him.

He had a black eye that was fresh, bruises on his sunburnt face, and three-days’ growth of beard.

A glint of something metallic in the leafy cover.

Shiny red.

I picked it up: a digital camera. I was new to my werewolf abilities and still suspicious of my Fangborn instinct to eradicate evil. I burned a few precious moments looking at the pictures. Shots of a playground. The time stamps were three days ago, so maybe not too far from here. Too many pictures of children’s faces, and one little girl in particular … pictures of houses nearby, not with people, but first-floor windows and screens left unlatched. Purple panties with blue hearts on one toddler, and there were a few other pictures that were more grotesque. If I hadn’t already had an empty stomach, I would have on seeing them.

I had the right guy, all right.

A blinding pain across the top of my head, and I reeled back, a white light followed by the realization I’d been hit with something
hard
.

I whirled around and ducked back in time to avoid a second swing of the empty whiskey bottle.

I growled, and he finally got a good look at my face.

I had only a moment to register the change on his face from triumph to confusion, to horror, nearly as slick a change as my own earlier transformation had been. I lunged forward and slashed at the hand with the bottle in it while reaching for his face and neck.

A clinking noise, a rustle of leaves—I had no time to consider.

He pulled back, and I only managed to stifle his scream as my claws raked his wrist. I held on to his hand and pulled; the bottle fell to the ground. When he jerked toward me, I punched him with my free hand. There was a good six-inch difference in height between us, so when my left hand connected with his head, I kept the movement going, then grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him down. My knee met his nose, and suddenly there was an eruption of foul-smelling blood simply everywhere.

The more I smelled, the more I knew he had to go. Still … the scent wasn’t quite right.

More rustling, more clinking.

He staggered back, but kept his cool somehow and threw himself at me. I don’t know where he got the guts to do that—perhaps it was instinct, or maybe I was just another nightmare image from his confused brain.

I shoved him away, sliced across his chest; he went down, gasping for air that would do him no good in his tattered lungs. Then I finished the job.

The movies will always have you imagine that any part of the lycanthropic transformation is incredibly painful, part of the curse of being a werewolf. For all my lack of experience, I knew better. The Change was awesome: it feels better than sex, better than drugs, better than a runner’s high. Way I figure it, if nature wants me to turn into a wolf and slaughter bad guys, nature had better make it worth my while. Werewolf heresy, I know, but I hadn’t been raised within Fangborn culture.

I’m usually so focused on getting the job done that I never expect the rush that comes after, and this time was no exception. I managed not to howl as the satisfaction washed over me—
nature
saying, “Good girl, here’s a cookie.” Leery of being seen, even out here, I returned to my human form, knowing I couldn’t waste time; I needed to get back to Adam and the car with my new
information
—

Warning, danger!
Trouble here, trouble brewed especially for me and my kind.

Back at the TRG, Gerry Steuben had told me that tasting the air can be like tasting a gourmet food or a fine wine: worlds can be revealed, if you know how to look for them. I’d had no such training, and I knew that Gerry was really a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but there was no doubt he could track. Even without his skills or experience, I could detect a faint, noxious odor, not quite familiar.

Black hellebore toxins. Not the same as was used by the
senator’s
men, which I remembered with distaste, having encountered it in Turkey, but dangerous all the same.

Someone was out there, someone who knew how to weaken or disable werewolves. Not many people knew that, and those who did were terribly dangerous.

I ran barefoot through the woods, terrified. All my previous
half-lupine grace had been replaced with purely human
blundering
and terror.

The traces of hellebore confused me. It muddled my senses, heightening some and diminishing others, so I didn’t know which to trust. It was like having two televisions on at once, with the
volume
turning up and down on both of them, so you weren’t sure what you were supposed to pay attention to. Something wrong was
ahead of me, but I was thinking too slowly to identify it and
running
too fast to avoid it.

A lash across my face, my neck, my chest, my hands. I felt as though I’d run into an invisible fence, the weave as strong and thin as spider silk.

Another lash, this one like a jellyfish sting across my entire body. A fine metal net, and electrified. Another jolt, worse than the first, transmitted a thousand burning bites across my body.

Someone had cranked up a Taser to Fangborn-strength.

My body gave up, everything but my eyes, a small portion of my brain, and every pain receptor I had. I sagged, hung up on the fence, and finally fell, pulling the netting down on top of me. T
he electrocu
tion seemed to stop, and I only knew that because of the intense relief I experienced at one dimension of agony
receding
. My skin, however, still felt the aftereffects, and my brain did, too. The world faded, and chaotic images taunted me.

Concentration was impossible. Lolling backward, I saw an
upside
-down pair of boots, camo pants, a shotgun barrel. The smell of evil was strong, mixed with the smell of that refined hellebore toxin.

He spat on the ground, pulled vinyl gloves over his hands. As he reached for me, I summoned up everything I had left, everything that was being drained from me, and bit his hand. I drew blood.

His fist connected with my jaw, the shock of its impact stunning, unrelenting.

He dragged me over to a tree, through the carpet of pine
needles
, leaves, and dirt. He slid one side of the cuffs through a loop of chain already around the tree, then locked the other side onto my left wrist. I had a blurry sense of black wavy hair going to gray, and heavy enough bristles to almost count as a beard.

My head was heavy, and swung, muscle-less, into the rough bark. I sank down as far as the length of the chain would let me. It was as if I’d been jabbed with a full-body Novocain, and I knew when I came out of this—if I came out of it—I’d have a scrape down my face and neck.

“One thing about werewolves,” he said as I drifted into unconsciousness, “they always come back to the scene of the crime.”

Sweet nothingness took a sudden turn. A backflip in reality, and I was elsewhere—elsewhen.

Not the asylum this time, but the village—hardly a town—that was outside its periphery. The village could hardly have grown since it was settled, maybe two hundred years ago, to judge by the architecture, all eighteenth-century clapboards and thick-
chimneyed
, symmetrical houses. Swap out the blacksmith for a gas station and update the tavern to a coffee shop catering to the first and third shifts for the factory the next town over, and not much had changed …

I smelled blood, long past dried. A vampirish thought—or a werewolfish hunch—suggested something terrible had happened here, not very long ago. No images, but the sudden urge to flee and hide that didn’t feel like it was entirely my own instinct. I didn’t want to find what I knew would be here.

It hadn’t been a gradual fading, in this town. There was no one left alive, but only as of recently. It had been a swift and brutal end within days or weeks, not over decades. Misery settled down on me heavier and heavier as I gradually returned to the present.

I awoke screaming, as much as from the anguish I’d seen as the pain inflicted on me. I only stopped when my throat threatened to give out.

“Good. You’re up.”

Nightmare Man was still there. I was still chained.

“What … happened?” I croaked. The sun had moved in the sky, and it was darker. I don’t know how long I’d been out. I could see a camper pulled over on the dirt fire road nearby. “What … crime?”

He jutted his chin at the mess of my kill. “Well, that poor bastard for one.” His smirk turned into a frown. It emphasized the lines of his face, craggy, burned by the wind and sun, with heavy brows. “No, that was bait, just to slow you down. Caught him skulking around a school and knew
he
wouldn’t be missed. No, I’m talking about something bigger than that. Werewolves can’t resist revisiting the chaos they create.”

“What?” My brain was full of swamp water.

“This town?” He indicated the trees and ruins and weeds around us.

I would have shaken my head, if I thought it would have stayed attached. I had to conceal I’d just seen the town in an
agony
-fueled vision. “I’ve never been here before.” That was
truthful enough.

“Your people have.
I hold one of you responsible for the actions of all.”

“Huh? I’m very sorry, but if you’re claiming there are actually werewolves … how do you know it wasn’t actually a wolf attack? Why blame me? Why blame anyone?”

“Because wolves don’t attack humans,” he said. “In the past one hundred years, there have been only two recorded cases of wolves allegedly killing humans in the US. There’s rumors of them killing cattle, but even that’s exaggerated. Deer, yes; humans, no.” He spat. “Hell, we need
them
, to keep down the deer
population
and Lyme disease at bay. Werewolves, on the other hand—they’re t
he one
s who’ll tear out a man’s throat. Not wolves. Adult wolves have gold eyes or brown, not blue. Their range of coloring is much more limited than werewolves, whose pelts tend to match t
heir hair
.”