Hellbender (The Fangborn Series Book 3)

by Dana Cameron

  That got his attention. Dr. Osborne’s head snapped up, his eyes locking on mine. He reached for his tea and found it, unerringly. “Oh yes?”

  “I need to do it on command.”

  “It seems you are already capable of that.”

  “No, it’s always been . . . in self-defense,” I said. “Or in a state of high emotion. And it was never . . . against an inanimate object, a target. I need the ability to be available to me, all the time. Any ideas how I can do that?” I nodded to the screen. “Any way to make it permanent?”

  “Do you want a detonation or a deflagration?”

  When I said nothing, he asked, “Do you know what an explosion is?”

  “Um, let’s say I don’t know anything apart from the boom.”

  “Right.” He clapped his hands together, getting into lecturing mode. “An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner.” His eyes lit up with the words extreme manner. “What it looks like you’re doing when you blast something is moving energy from one place and transferring it rapidly to another. Where it doesn’t belong.”

  “Okay. I need powerful and I need showy this time. Does that help?” There was a buzzing in my ears and a kind of static rolling before my eyes. I was really tired . . .

  He nodded. “Sure, got it. So what you seem to be doing now . . .” He gestured to the screens, which brought up a configuration of artifacts I’d never seen before. “This is like software. You want to make it hardware. A permanent and integral part of the machine, always on deck, right?”

  I didn’t like the word “machine,” but let him go with the analogy. He was excited, on a roll, and started pacing.

  “I think a lot of these materials you picked up in Japan? Much like the sort of thing I was investigating. My current hypothesis is that many of these artifacts have the switches, if you will, to allow you to create your own artifacts. Particularly ones related to defense and offense.”

  “I can do that now.” The buzzing and static and sparks were worse now, and they were starting to scare me because they looked like letters and numbers. I swatted in front of my eyes, in case they were actually in the air of the lab.

  “But now you can do that permanently, with these new artifacts.” He went to the bench, typed rapidly, and in the air between us, a schematic appeared with the parts list. I saw the Owo lidded bowl, which had been in the Museum of Salem. There were a few more additions, including the katana and other weapons from Kanazawa, and one of the figurines from Pandora’s Box.

  The gnat-like letters and numbers resolved themselves into focused legibility, and I understood they were the storage numbers of the artifacts I’d need to do this. Nifty. I apparently no longer required blood to create something.

  I said, “Registration numbers and schematic on-screen only.” Much better; the air cleared as the registration numbers fled to the screen alongside Geoffrey’s schematic.

  “What I need you to do now is imagine something that will do what you want it to do. An embodiment of your idea of what makes an explosion.”

  I was trying to think of something along the lines of Wile E. Coyote’s dynamite and detonator plunger, but what appeared ended up looking like a blaster, the sort of thing you’d see in a 1940s space opera. Big, bulbous, and mean looking, it nonetheless had the pleasing color and curved lines of a Jeff Koons sculpture.

  The artifact numbers settled brightly on the schematic between Geoffrey and me. They began to slot into equations that meant nothing to me but had set Geoffrey cackling.

  No longer was I in the artifact-harboring game. It now seemed that I was in the artifact-creating game. I was reminded of something Quarrel had said, that the dragons, while largely inactive, were able to accumulate the tools, as they called them, by pondering the jewels they already had and through conversation with the Makers. Apparently, that’s what I was doing.

  Sure enough, a band of stones in red and dark yellow, hexagonal in shape, had settled into my bracelet. I held it up to admire it. Not bad for my first try.

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said. I’d done all I could. I’d be able to rest now, maybe—no, certainly. I felt a terrible fatigue come over me.

  “Whoa, what is that?” I sat down in a hurry.

  “Hmmm. Lot of energy goes into making something like that, Zoe,” Geoffrey said finally. “Probably a lot expended when you use it, too. So be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “Just two things, Zoe.” Geoffrey was rotating the image of the blaster, tweaking the design ever so slightly.

  “Yes?”

  “There are three artifacts here that don’t conform to the others. One is Porter’s gold ring and one is the scarab-chip hybrid. They are similar.”

  “Yes, right, they came from the Order laboratories.”

  “Yeah, but the sword you took from Kanazawa? That’s different from all the artifacts and it’s not from the Order. It’s something else altogether. Almost as if it has a different wave function from the Fangborn artifacts.”

  I thought about it; both my father and I had felt an affinity for the object. “Is it a Normal artifact?”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “No. I get the impression that its particle spin is the opposite to those.”

  I had no idea what kind of equipment might be able to tell him that, or what it meant, but I got it: these three were different. “Another puzzle. Okay, good to know. The second thing?”

  “If I can, I’d really love to see the explosion.” There was a wistful look in his eyes.

  “You sound like a kid, Geoffrey.” I laughed, for what felt like the first time in forever.

  “Why else do you think I went into physics?”

  In my room, I tossed and turned for too long. It was so frustrating: Just as I was making headway in finding out how to manage my new abilities, just when I thought I might be getting an advantage, the broadcast from the Administrator had disrupted the chaos that was the Fangborn headquarters. That intrusion had outraged me, and I was mad at Will for making demands that I couldn’t meet at the moment.

  Finally, I fell asleep, wondering what Adam was doing.

  Chapter Twelve

  After about five hours of sleep, I turned on the news. The lead story was still about the disaster downtown—how a movie shoot had triggered a massive electrical failure and how that shoot had been catastrophically scheduled to coincide during a civil-defense drill. The questions about the possibility of an earth tremor, the problems with the destroyed sewers. The area was still closed off until the situation was deemed safe. There were pieces on the families who had been evacuated from their homes, and everyone, from the guy on the corner to the president of the United States, wanted answers.

  I had hoped to have a quiet meal, but the dining room was filled with people who were working while they were eating. About a dozen were working on a plan to find the missing Bostonians, and the rest were working on I-Day preparations. Within a week, the Normal world would know about us. With any luck, it would be on our terms, because I hated to think how Carolina and her organization would be spinning this.

  Many of the Family, including most of the oracles, were ignoring me. At least three oracles around the world had been killed when the Administrator’s message came through. Some Family went out of their way to say hello. Adam came and sat with me, drinking a cup of coffee and saying little. Will sat on my other side, making falsely cheery conversation.

  It was kind of them to be sticking up for me, but I was, literally, caught between the two of them. I went back to my room.

  Having no outlet for all my nervous energy for another hour or so before the demonstration, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I left my door ajar so anyone who needed me could find me. I pulled out my phone, plugged in my earbuds, and flicked through my playlists.

  It had been an even longer time since I’d added music, so what I ended up with was a playlist that Will had made for me in an attempt to get me to go running
with him. That hadn’t worked, but I still loved the music, stuff he’d picked for my taste, not his.

  I hit “Play.” And began to dance.

  It wasn’t graceful—I knew better than to look at the mirror and ruin my good time. My imagination was better anyway, enhancing the experience beyond the physical expression of inward enjoyment and making me into an EDM goddess.

  I heard a dissonant noise somewhere in the distance. It took exactly the amount of time for me to register that it was a knock on the open door to my room—about three beats too long—and for me to open my eyes.

  Toshi Yamazaki-Campbell stood there, eyes slightly widened in surprise. I hadn’t seen him since he killed Sebastian Porter. Ours had been a relationship filled with conflict and opposing ideas, but I counted him a friend. If there had been a trace of humor anywhere on his face, I would have immediately barked at him or found some other way to cover my graceless vulnerability. Instead, he came over, gave me a brief hug, and gestured, “Okay for me to?”

  When I nodded, he took one of the buds from my ear and placed it in his own. An expression of satisfaction eased the lines around his eyes, and he tilted his head, showing off his amazing cheekbones and trendy, razor-cut hair, and he began to sway. Then, he took my hand, and we danced together. He was much better than I was but didn’t frown or smirk or anything, just tried to work with me. His medium height didn’t pose too much of a challenge for my short stature. It was fun, and unexpected. Toshi and I had fought each other, fought alongside each other, and our short acquaintance had been made complicated with politics and battles. This was a nice, new twist.

  It had been a year, several years, since I’d danced with anyone. A surprise to find how much I missed it.

  We were laughing, in the middle of executing a particularly pelvic swirl, when the door opened again. It was Gerry.

  This time, I did stop. I didn’t have any more earbuds to share, and I didn’t think of him as being into electronica.

  He was clearly confused, and as he tried to frame a question—probably about the approaching deadline and our seeming frivolity—Toshi spoke up.

  “War dance, bro.” He returned my earbud, we air-kissed twice, and he pretend-flipped long, flowing hair as he marched past Gerry.

  “Ten minutes, Zoe,” was all Gerry said, still not quite sure what he’d seen. “I’ll see you at the truck downstairs.”

  Whatever break I might have taken from worrying about what I was about to do, it was worth it. A good lesson, one I hoped I’d be alive to use again, I thought. It was a short drive, and then a flight to a military base somewhere off the East Coast and to the south.

  I didn’t get nervous until I began to walk from the Jeep to the runway on the island. That’s when the shakes and chills started, despite the warm, humid air. I was able to keep two things in mind, and those kept my head up and my nerves mostly hidden. One was that I knew I could do what I had to do next. And one was the sheer enthusiasm with which I wanted to answer these attacks on my Family, Fangborn and human. I remembered, how long ago it seemed, what the idea of Senator Knight’s involvement in Sean’s death did to me, the anger it brought, and how Dmitri Parshin’s abuse of Danny was still so close to the surface. What had spurred me on in those cases was now a thousand, ten thousand times greater, because my concerns had spread that much further, thanks to the Makers, thanks to Carolina, and thanks to I-Day. Oddly, however, since meeting Dr. Osborne, I felt like I had a problem suitable to my skills and a mastery of those skills sufficient to deal with this specific problem.

  As reassuring as that all was, it didn’t completely banish the nerves I had thinking about what I was about to do. It was cataclysmically dangerous and literally could blow up in our faces.

  Still, it was better than nothing, and I hadn’t felt like the odds were this good in some time.

  I passed a Cousin in an airman’s uniform; she spoke into a mouthpiece. “Two minutes to Lightning Rod.”

  So that’s what they’d decided on, I thought. It bordered hideously on the “too apt,” and I looked around for something to focus on so I wouldn’t remember that it was me drawing all that firepower. Ahead of me, several hundred yards out on the water, was the target, a truncated pyramid bobbing on the waves. No comfort there . . .

  There. Amid about two hundred VIPs in the hastily assembled stadium seating. I recognized a number of faces from the news. There were uniforms from all the armed services, sporting more fruit salad than a hotel brunch buffet. I thought I recognized the vice president but wasn’t sure. There were too many guys in dark suits, wearing dark glasses and speaking to no one.

  There was Senator Knight. Odd that we were on the same side now. I needed his authority and influence. He needed my power.

  He caught my eye and I gestured.

  “Zoe,” he said when I met him at the fence.

  “Call me ‘stray,’ ” I said. “It sounds more familiar on your lips. More honest, too. Plus, it makes me angry.”

  “Would that help?”

  “I’m thinking it will.”

  The aquiline nose had never seemed so daunting; the hardness of his eyes was ancient. “Well, then, little stray, you’d better put on a show good enough not only to impress everyone here, from the lowliest of the enlisted to the Joint Chiefs, but me, as well. I am your toughest critic. I won’t be undercut because some uncultured, unschooled orphan can’t keep her promises or spins grandiose tales for some spectacularly sad reason. There are oracles who died with your name the last thing in their ears, and I’m sure we’ll find more. Go ahead, I dare you to let them, the Family, and me down.”

  If he’d shown me the faintest amount of compassion, it wouldn’t have worked. But as I met his gaze, I saw disappointment and disgust, the regret that it wasn’t his power, that I’d beaten him to opening Pandora’s Box, that I, a stray, had outwitted him. Had more power than he.

  Perfect. I wanted to slap him stupid.

  “Get going,” he snapped.

  “Jawohl, Senator, sir.” I turned on my heel and muttered “asshole,” knowing full well his sharp vampire ears would hear me.

  I walked to the end of the runway, looked out over the water, and took a deep breath. The target was the size of a four-story building, afloat on an old barge, and made of cement blocks and mortar.

  I raised my hand and noticed that while the shiny metallic blaster wasn’t to be seen, there were those new stones in the bracelet on my left wrist: fiery yellow topaz and dark ruby. I had a thought and lowered my hand again.

  The ensign ran over to me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Uh . . . it’s gonna make a mess.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean, if I pulverize it, it’s going to scatter a lot of cement, and probably a lot of barge, in the ocean. Is there some way to clean it up?” I glanced at her name patch. “Ensign Hart?”

  She spoke into a radio and then nodded. “Booms. They have booms underneath to collect whatever rubble you leave.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” I said. Then, “Ha! Booms.”

  “Yes?”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, that’s just me being . . . It’s about to get very loud. I’d put the ear protection on if I were you, and let everyone else know to do that, too.”

  She nodded and then cocked her head and pulled another pair of headphones from the back of her belt. Ensign Hart handed them to me.

  Good point. I might be able to bring the house down, but I didn’t particularly want to go deaf doing it. “Thanks.”

  She nodded again and backed away, chattering into the radio.

  I’d spent my short career learning how to put things back together, or cleaning them very carefully. This was the very opposite, again, of what I’d been trained to do. I couldn’t think about that now. I had a target to blow up and folks to impress with how dangerous a situation we were all in.

  I picked the place that Ensign Hart told me to aim for, the point at which t
he rest of the structure would collapse. And then I made a pistol shape with my hand, pointed it at the center of the structure, and said a little prayer.

  I bent my thumb and whispered, “Bang.”

  I was afraid there would be nothing, because I didn’t hear anything at first. Then a flash of light, brilliant, blinding. Then a push from the shockwave, hot and hard. Then came the noise, like nothing I’d ever encountered outside the movies. Death Star meets John McClane, and yippee-ki-yay.

  The target wasn’t there anymore. A cloud of dust and seawater hung on the balmy air.

  There was silence from the seabirds, silence from the audience. The waves continued on, a little more rapidly against the shore.

  That was over, at least. I sighed with relief, trying to be discreet about it; the fatigue from my effort had been far greater than I expected, and I hoped I wouldn’t stumble when I tried to walk. Now all I had to do was—

  “Zoe, we are here! Hellbender, the Makers will speak with you!”

  If I hadn’t had the opportunity to see up close how folks responded to the appearance of Quarrel during the Battle of Boston, I had now a front seat as Quarrel, Naserian, and Yuan stunned the Fangborn and Normal VIPs. Screams, gasps, and a chorus of “holy shit” came from the audience, as the black, red, and green dragons materialized in front of them. I heard thuds as two people fainted and fell over. I heard sidearms being unholstered and cocked. One gentleman jumped from the top of the seating in his haste to escape the dragons. I heard his screams after he landed, breaking his leg. There was a tangle of dignitaries as they tried to get off the bleachers. There was a much smaller knot of brave souls who quietly ran to see the dragons close up. The Fangborn in the audience were no less stunned.

  These guys had actually asked to see the dragons and really weren’t expecting me to produce. In truth, I don’t know if Quarrel would have come if I called for him, but as it was, he’d saved my bacon. The dragons seemed to enjoy the attention and warm sun.

  In other ways, it wasn’t funny at all, a preview of the reactions we could expect on I-Day.