Hellbender (The Fangborn Series Book 3) (2 page)

It was close enough to winning for me. I almost wept with gratitude. I stuffed the bills into my pocket before the ATM reconsidered and took them back.

I had cash, though I didn’t know how much. Time to find a place to stay, for I didn’t know how long, and food.

I pulled up my hood again, took a deep, ragged breath, and prepared to go out into the dark and pelting rain. To where, I didn’t know—

I saw the sign and did a double take. Then a triple take.

I had to be dreaming. Or hallucinating.

I pinched myself. Ow—still awake, still here. Cautiously, I moved forward. The sign didn’t change; it didn’t appear to be a vision, which was a real possibility with me.

There were two people waiting in the center of the hallway leading out from under the massive roof. A young kid, maybe as old as eighteen, who looked like an American or European. With him was an older woman, Japanese. They held a sign.

The sign said, “Zoe Miller, Boston, USA.”

Chapter Two

“I’m Zoe Miller,” I said. My voice trembled, my throat sore. “Um, are you looking for me?”

The young man inclined his head to the very old woman, but his lips didn’t seem to move. She burst out in laughter. “No, we’re waiting for the
other
Zoe Miller,” the kid said. He looked uncomfortable. “That’s what she told me to say.”

She hadn’t spoken, not so far as I could see, but she was smiling; she’d made a joke. I noticed they were holding hands. Oracles, I guessed. Some oracles need physical contact to work their talents.

I didn’t even have the energy to be pissed off at them for making fun of me. “I’m Zoe, and if you could give me some help, I would really, really appreciate it.” I was too tired and too scared to worry that I might be kidnapped. Who knew I’d be here, after all? And they didn’t look like kidnappers anyway.

The old woman nodded, serious now, and after glancing at the boy, he nodded. “Humor may help our situation, but now is not the time. My apologies. I am Akemi Okamura.” Both bowed deeply from the waist.

“I’m Ash Dickson,” the kid said. “We’re Family. If you come with us, we can get you food, a place to rest.” Then he added in an aside, “You should call her Okamura-san. Because she’s so old and worthy of respect.”

“Okay. Thank you, Ash and Okamura-san.” I sagged with relief. It was more than I could have wished for. “But . . . but first, is it really still October seventh?”

“Yes.”

“So . . . what time does that make it in Boston? United States, the East Coast?”

Ash took out his phone, pulled up an app, and confirmed that I’d been correct.

The blood rushed from my face. There was still time! “I . . . I have to get back
immediately.
Do you know what is happening there?”

They both nodded. “We do,” Ash said. “The fight is ongoing. We are in contact with Family there. We hope to hear more soon.”

I shook my head. “I was
just
there and I need to get back there
now
.”

“The only way to get back ‘now’ is to go the same way you came,” Ash said. He continued hastily, probably seeing the anger I didn’t bother to conceal from my features. “Okamura-san . . . I . . . we are serious. Unless you can teleport back—”

I spread my hands. “I . . . I have no idea how I—”

“Unless you can teleport back, you’re stuck traveling the way the rest of us do. And that’s going to take some doing,” he said. “But for now, we both think it would be good to come with us.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, a little too forcefully. We were starting to draw attention from the passers-by. “It’s imperative I get home; I might be able to . . .” It suddenly occurred to me: Even if I could go back, what could I do? I felt nothing of the bracelet’s power now. The Makers had stripped it from me, along with nearly all of the jewels I’d so painfully found and accumulated over the past months.

“You’re tired, you’re hungry, and you’re scared. We can help. Come, now, it’s not far.”

It was eerie, hearing the cadence and rhythm of Ash’s voice change as he switched from his own voice to communicating what Okamura-san silently conveyed to him. I nodded. “Okay, yes, you’re right. Thank you.”

We went around to the parking lot, and a car was waiting for us.

“Where are we going?” I asked as Okamura-san began to drive.

“Not very far. Just across town,” Ash said. “We’ll see my sisters there. Here.”

He handed me a small lacquer box and a paper-wrapped set of chopsticks. I removed the top and found unidentifiable foods inside—amid the green wet stuff, the pinkish wet stuff, white stuff, and the lumpy brown stuff, the only thing I recognized was what I assumed was raw fish and rice. Didn’t matter, though. It was all very pretty and beautifully arranged, but I demolished it, eating with a scary need. I didn’t raise my head until I knew I’d eaten everything edible in the box and a few things that maybe were meant to be decorative only.

Remembering my manners way too late, I closed up the box and said, “Thank you. Um—”

The old woman laughed, and Ash said, “There’ll be more at home. We want to get a vampire to look at you before you eat too much.”

“Thank you,” I repeated gratefully. Just taking the edge off my terrible hunger reminded me just how much more I wanted to eat, but it helped. I sagged into the car’s seat, feeling so tired and sore I couldn’t make one thought connect to another. I settled for simple questions.

“Where am I? How did I get here?”

“Kanazawa is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture,” Ash said. “I don’t know how you got here.”

“I mean, like, are we near Tokyo?”

“No, we’re on the Japan Sea. The west coast, say, just opposite Tokyo. Very rainy, known for its seafood, to which I am allergic, and for its well-preserved samurai districts—”

I bit back my impatience; local commerce was all very good, but . . . “Yes, but . . . why would I be
here
? And, more importantly, how did
you
know I’d be here?”

“Rose saw you. She’s been really antsy lately, so when she got a bead on it, we were all too ready to get on a series of planes and travel for about twenty-four hours. Why here, I’m not certain, but Okamura-san tells me there is a tradition of strange happenings, in addition to shapeshifting
yōkai
and
kami
, associated with this place.”

“Wait—what? Who’s Rose?”

“Rose is my sister, and so is Ivy. We’re the Dickson triplets—you’ve probably heard of us. We’re from Milwaukee originally, but we’re going to college in San Francisco.”

Which told me exactly nothing. But by this point, I’d run out of coherent thoughts and found myself dozing. I hadn’t realized how much of the trip I’d missed until the car jerked to a stop, waking me up.

I followed Ash and Okamura-san into the house, feeling more disoriented with every step. The past—well, I’d say it had been only four or five hours since I woke up in the States this morning—had been filled with fighting and death.

Another woman, younger than Okamura-san and dressed in a business suit, came to meet us at the doorway. She bowed, greeting me, and I managed to do something similar, I hoped polite, back. I moved to step in, and Ash said, “Shoes! Anywhere you see a change in the floor—going up or going down, but especially outdoors to indoors? That means you need special shoes. Or no shoes. You need to keep clean areas, uh, uncontaminated with shoes.”

I followed his suit, exchanging my boots—laces knotted and broken, scuffed and scarred—for a pair of slippers that were lined up outside the door. They were just a hair too small for me. Ash’s feet were laughably too large for his slippers.

Then the new woman got a good look at me and led me down a hallway, talking the entire time. Clearly, she was going to sort me out. Fine with me.

She pointed to a small room, and there were some clothes, neatly folded, on a futon on the floor. She said a few more words in Japanese and then cocked her head. “
Nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà ma?
”

I shook my head when I realized she was asking if I spoke Chinese. “No, sorry.
Parla Italiano?
”

She shook her head. “
Govorite po-russki?
”

Where was Danny and his gift for languages when I needed him? “I’m sorry, no.
Sprechen sie Deutsch? Parlez-vous Francais?
”

Another shake of the head, and she held up a hand, bidding me wait. She called down the hallway, and Okamura-san and Ash came back.

Eventually, by talking to Okamura-san, who communicated silently with Ash, I found out that the woman’s name was Kazumi-san and the room was mine. I should shower, dress, and there’d be a visit from a vampire to try to heal me before a late dinner if that was okay with me.

I nodded. As long as someone had a coherent plan that involved those things, I was good with it.

It took me a minute to figure out the shower knobs and the bottles I found there; I just used all the bottles of stuff on the caddy until I was clean. At the moment, I didn’t care if I was washing with moisturizer or shampooing with body wash. I looked and smelled a whole lot better than I had.

There was still no trace of the constellation of jewels that had occasionally covered my body like flexible armor. They gave me powers that usually only vampires and oracles had, like the ability to nudge someone to do something or a kind of proximity sense. The jewels also provided me with painful visions that drove me to find more artifacts; if that was gone, I sure wouldn’t miss it. The artifacts I found, ancient items that imparted Fangborn abilities, morphed into what looked like jewels and precious metals and became part of my body. While the bracelet, embedded in my wrist when I opened Pandora’s Box, had once been several inches of gleaming, flat gemstones in every hue, it was now dull, lifeless. But it showed no sign that it was going to come away from my arm, and I could still barely make out the tracery of my veins beneath the clouded translucent stones. No more jewelry and armor had to mean that I’d lost whatever crazy powers I’d once had. I wasn’t even certain still if I could Change, make the basic transformation from woman to wolf, which had become one of the principal joys in my life. I was healing, but so slowly I didn’t dare try anything until I’d at least rested and eaten.

My new powers leaving me at exactly the time I needed them most was awful, but I could live with that for now. I hadn’t mastered them, they were hugely and finally unreliable, and they still scared me silly. The emptiness I felt, however, at perhaps never being able to Change to either of my wolf forms again threatened to crush me. That ability to Change had given me answers about my history, a Family, and a sense of belonging for the first time in my life. It had also given me physical strength, and because of that, I dared to do more, be more myself. I couldn’t bear to think that loss would be permanent and kept pushing it from my mind. I’d deal with the more immediate issues, then . . . then we’d see.

With a sigh, I found a towel and dried off. The clothes that were left for me were a T-shirt and sweats, socks with a separate compartment for my big toe, and the slippers. There was also a range of underthings in different sizes. I assumed there were a lot of guests who showed up here needing clean clothes in a hurry, the life of the Fangborn in the quest to fight evil.

A knock at the door; Okamura-san came in. She led me down the hall to a small room, where I saw a shrine. Several sticks of incense burned before it, and a middle-aged man, his head bowed, stood in front of it. He rang a little bell, made two bows, clapped, and bowed again, before he turned and gestured to me.

He bowed. “Hello, Zoe. I’m Kenichiro Mitani. Please call me Ken.” He spoke English with an Australian accent; the way he said Ken was particularly striking. “I’ll be looking after you if you don’t mind. Please just wave the smoke over wherever you would like healed,” he said. Then with a smile he said, “Or if you think you need more beauty, or more brains, wave some over your head.”

At this point, I figured I needed to be smoked whole like a kipper if it was going to have any effect at all on me, purification- or healing-wise. But I waved smoke over my head, my wounded leg, and then, thinking of my friends at home, my weary heart.

I took a deep breath. My nose twitched, and I tried not to sneeze. The incense made my eyes water.

“If you would, perhaps start with a small prayer, or a moment of reflection?”

I bowed my head and thought,
Please get me out of this mess and back home.

When I’d finished, he said, “Thank you. Now, may I?”

I nodded. Ken-san the vampire sniffed delicately, walking around me, and I was glad for his sake that I’d had a shower. He took my pulse and asked me where it hurt.

“Everywhere. But mostly, it’s my right leg. I’m not healing as quickly as I should.” The place where Buell had stabbed me still bothered me, having taken the better part of an hour to close up. Slow healing was disastrous for a werewolf used to fighting.

He nodded. “Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah. Last time a vampire bit me, she said my blood tasted funny.” I told him about how my friend Claudia Steuben had determined that while my blood was odd, I wasn’t evil. The word she used was
“predator
.” I mentioned the bracelet and jewels, how I got them and how they had just vanished. “So, given that I unexpectedly found myself across the world an instant after I tried to stop time briefly, and may have had communication with a seriously powerful set of beings, you may want to brace yourself. Or avoid biting me altogether.”

He smiled in a way that said he could handle it, that I was probably exaggerating, and then looked puzzled. “Beings? Do you know what they are?”

I shook my head. “I call them the Makers, because that’s what Quarrel—he’s a dragon—calls them. I assume they made him or made us Fangborn.”

It took Ken-san a long time to speak. “
And . . .
you’re in contact with a dragon?”

“Yep. Like I said: You may not want to bite me.”

I shrugged and held out my wrist. “I’m just sayin’. God only knows what’s happening inside me now. I might be radioactive or toxic or something. Your call.”

Ken-san paused then. I wasn’t joking. If I’d traveled through space and/or time, I might well have a new biology that would be dangerous to him. He took my wrist, though, and after a final, appreciative sniff, Changed.

Even now that I was used to seeing a man undergoing the half-Change into a bipedal snakelike creature, it still fascinated me. Kenichiro’s dark hair shifted from brown to reddish, and his skin transmuted to scales of coral pink and yellow, with flecks of blue. His nose receded into his face and became a snout with small nostrils; his eyes grew wider and darker. The fangs were the weirdest, I think, watching his jaw change to accommodate them. I could feel the tug of his Change, like bubbles under my skin, and resisted my urge to follow suit. Soon, I promised myself.