Hellbender (The Fangborn Series Book 3)

by Dana Cameron

  “Zoe’s right,” Claudia said, with a disapproving look at me that suggested she didn’t think I should be talking about punching people in the head or funerals.

  I shrugged. “So we have no desire to try and jolly you up about your brother’s death. We desperately need all the help we can get.”

  “No problem,” Gerry agreed. “We’ll get you a room; it’s getting crowded here, but when we are set up on Flock Island, it’ll be easier. Dan, Will and Adam will be here in a moment. Can you give us five minutes on how the provisioning of the island is going?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Everyone looked at me as if I was supposed to do something. “Uh, thanks for stopping by, folks.” Apparently, I was running this meeting, and since we were finished, I was the one to dismiss it. It was another new experience, almost as unsettling to have people looking to me for guidance and authority as to deal with dragons.

  “Hey, Danny? Got a quick minute?” I said as everyone was leaving.

  He stopped and turned. “Yeah, Zo.” Vee stood by as well.

  I was shivering as I thought about what was coming. I took their hands and pulled them close so we wouldn’t be overheard. “Do me a favor. Go. Run, now. Danny, take Vee and run as far away from me as you can.”

  “Take Vee? I don’t think anyone’s taking me anywhere,” she said.

  “Zoe, what the fuck?” Danny’s indignation was enormous. “No.”

  I spoke quickly, before I lost my nerve. “Look, at this point, I’m responsible for the death of a lot of people—Ash, Fatima, and oracles I’ve never met being the latest. That number will go up, significantly, in the next couple of days, unless I can find a foolproof plan and execute it exactly right. The chances of those two events happening are microscopically small, minute to the point of utter improbability.”

  Danny looked like he was going to correct me on my logic, but shut his mouth when I held up my hand.

  “It doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to say is that I feel unbelievably horrible about all of this, but on top of it all, Sean died in my arms. Danny—Dan, I mean, that’s what you’re going by now, right? Everything’s changing . . . I’m the last person who should be making these decisions. It wasn’t so long ago, a lot of people didn’t think I was capable of making decisions for my own life; you know that better than anyone—”

  I choked up then, and shook my head, tears filling my eyes. “Forgive me if I tell you I don’t think I could live if I added you guys to the body count, too.”

  Danny didn’t seem fazed, however. By my tears or my problems. Neither did Vee, who looked at me like I was crazy. He just shrugged. “You’re the only one who can make them, Zoe, so it’s no use pretending you can’t or you shouldn’t. It’s not something that’s going away.”

  I wiped at my eyes angrily. “Yeah, thanks a pant-load.”

  “You know it’s true. You just gotta take it one apocalypse at a time, Zoe.”

  Apocalypse was a good word. “I just wish . . . it wasn’t me. Wasn’t now. Wasn’t near you guys.”

  “Zoe, there is nowhere to run away to that will get us away from this,” Vee said. “You know that.”

  “You’re right,” I said, embarrassed now. “I’m sorry, I just . . . I’m sorry.”

  It was at that moment that Adam and Will walked in, and stopped when they saw I’d been crying. “Do I want to know what you all are talking about?” Adam asked.

  “Almost certainly not,” I said. “Adam, Will, I would like you both to go away from me, leave me to the mishegas that is my life, and live until well in your nineties, happy and safe. Will you both do that for me?”

  “Um, no,” Will said. “And never ask again, please.”

  Adam shook his head. “What is this about? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Without you,” Will added, as if it was some kind of competition. The tension between them was palpable. They were cooperating, because they had to, but that was it. “Why do you ask now?”

  I shook my head. “It’s just the short version of the conversation.”

  That sealed it for me. If they weren’t going, I had to be the best I could possibly be, and then a whole lot better. As Geoffrey had told me, I had to act like I owned the place.

  We spent the afternoon loading up truck after truck with materials from the Boston house to bring to the wharf, and from there, to be shipped to Flock Island. It was amazing what Fangborn habits combined with military procedure could effect. The place wouldn’t have permanent buildings for some time, so there’d be tents and temporary structures. There was a kind of contest between the groups working on opposite sides of the island to see who could get more done faster. The Fangborn had centuries of practice in establishing hideouts and bolt-holes; the military had almost as much time to perfect the quick establishment of a base with housing and communications.

  A box full of books fell, spilling and splaying all over the street. I looked up—more thuds and crashes. The Fangborn carrying them had all gone stock-still, frozen in their tracks, their faces blank.

  Their mouths opened, but nothing came out.

  Suddenly I dropped the box of blankets I’d been carrying. I had to cover my ears, but it was reflex, because I heard the cries of thousands of Fangborn souls coming from within me.

  When I felt a tug, I knew that I was being summoned by the Makers. I gave into the impulse to follow, as I had before with the dragons, and found myself back at the Castle.

  It was like being called into the principal’s office times a hundred thousand. I remembered one or two trips home in the back of a police car causing less concern than this, and because I was out of my head with fear both those times, I was now recalling them fondly.

  This wasn’t good, but . . . it was familiar. If I hadn’t gotten into trouble as a kid, I wouldn’t know what I know about getting into trouble. Meaning, yes, there might be bad things about to go down, but at least I knew from experience that the anticipation wouldn’t kill me. My fear was unpleasant but manageable.

  Still didn’t mean I wanted to be here. The outer office was a hubbub of assistants trying to clean up and repair the damage that had been done by the dragons. Several of them were limping, and I saw black eyes and broken arms.

  In the inner sanctum, the Administrator was not pleased. “The incident with the elder beings,” the Administrator said. “The ones you call dragons. Most regrettable.”

  “Yes.” I decided I wasn’t going to say anything more than politeness dictated.

  “A great deal of damage done, resources expended, and, well, general unpleasantness.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s shown me several things, however.”

  “Yes?”

  “Clearly, those dragons were acting on their own. They were not part of any . . . plan of yours.”

  Like I was incapable of a plan, I thought. I was planning the same thing; it was just that the dragons were far more direct. But now, anything that might have stuck to me, artifact-wise, would be blamed on them.

  He turned, distracted, and hit a few keys on a computer keyboard. “You also got them under control, if in a rather . . . self-interested manner.”

  “Yes. They won’t be any more trouble. You have my word.”

  “So it is also apparent that while you were not in control of them, you are now.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then you’ll be held responsible for them from now on.”

  “I understand. But I must ask you . . . The way you called me? It has a terrible effect on my kind. My kin. Some have been killed or injured when you . . . possess their minds so.”

  “But it got you here?” The Administrator was annoyed; the dragons’ rampage had caused an upset and he craved order. “It reinforces the idea that they must look to you and obey you. It is a lesson to you as well, not to be distracted by their petty business. You answer to us.”

  “Yes, but perhaps you could—”

  “We shall do what is nec
essary. That’s all.”

  Back in my here and now, the sidewalk outside the Boston safe house was a mirror image of the outer office at the meta-Castle: It looked like moving day gone wrong. Boxes were scattered where they’d been dropped, causing a snarl in the traffic and a mess on the sidewalk. Family members were dazed, a few sitting down on the ground, trying to figure out what had just happened. This time it was everyone: oracles, vampires, werewolves.

  The Normals going about their business in that part of the city had no idea what was going on. Adam, Danny, and Will had been the only ones in our crew left unaffected, wondering what the hell had just happened to the Fangborn around them.

  As they recovered, I yanked Gerry aside and told him what had happened. He told Claudia, and she organized the vampires to tell any onlookers that they’d felt a tremor in the ground, a minor earthquake that had caused the mess. When I asked Jason what he’d picked up from the other oracles, he said there had been casualties. More had been hurt or killed, distracted or dismayed by the Makers’ call.

  That did it. I headed to Flock Island with the latest shipment. My team said they’d join me later, but for now, I needed to be alone to think the unthinkable.

  Whatever else happened, I had to make sure that disruption didn’t happen again, especially with I-Day around the corner. We couldn’t have anything that would make that worse than it was going to be already. I can’t have the Makers yanking the leash of the Family.

  Flock Island had been my first choice. It was off the coast of Massachusetts, just beyond sight of the Graves Light. Its use by Europeans had started in the seventeenth century; through the centuries its use had changed. It had been a fishing station, a fort, a whale-processing station, a prison. In the twentieth century, it housed a lighthouse, a fort in both World Wars, and a boy’s work camp. Then it was abandoned and avoided because it was also rumored to have been a hazardous chemical-waste storage depot. This was a rumor spread by the government, because it was always handy to have a strategically located island off the coast near your major cities. The name may have come from when there were lots of seagulls attracted to the fishing processing or it may have referred to a former owner. Once upon a time that would have been the first thing I looked up. Now there just wasn’t time.

  In other words, it was remote, yet close to Boston, New York, and Washington by boat and helicopter and small plane. There would be no problem keeping day sailors and adventurers off the island, because not only would I have navy protection, but marines and coast guard as well. A correctional facility, a slaughtering place, a fort.

  Sounded about right for me.

  There was a patch of garden land, oddly enough, a relic of its days as a work farm. I can’t imagine how much manure or seaweed had been hauled out there, because there were boundaries still visible and a riot of bird-picked squashes and matted corn stalks. Clearing that out would give me something to do, because basically, I was now a prisoner of my own making, as securely defended from the outside world as they were from me.

  I didn’t like it, but I could live with it. I would camp out on the island with my army of honorable werewolves and vampires and dishonorable humans who’d sworn to obey me because their real boss Dmitri was paying them a lot and he was much scarier to them than I was. A handful of them knew better, but for the moment, I was glad to have the air cover of Dmitri’s bad reputation.

  True to his word, the senator had found me a cat. I took the carrier to my room at the building at the bottom of the lighthouse and, making sure the space was closed in, let him out. A streak of gray-blue, a flash of coppery, panicked eyes, and the cat found its way under my camp bed.

  I didn’t blame him—her? It was an attractive idea to me, too. I needed peace, I needed quiet, and I needed a big dose of inspiration. The assault on Carolina’s to rescue the Family was tomorrow, and I-Day would follow shortly after. There was pressure on all sides, and too many variables. I unpacked a box of books and papers and began to pace.

  I had on a table in front of me a pile of, well, scraps. Copies of every written and recorded Fangborn prophecy and prediction going back to the beginning of Fangborn recorded history, and the list of my own information, gathered directly and indirectly from the Makers.

  I had one chance to please the Makers, and I had to pick from a long list of potential global catastrophes to do that. Could I use that borrowed artifact to create a vampiric suggestion that would make the entire world forget they’d ever heard anything about the Fangborn? Probably too many factors involved in doing that, never mind the scope of reaching out to six billion minds. I was bound to screw that up. It had to be a smaller population. What about the Order? Could something be done there?

  It was remotely possible I could remove all Fangborn powers everywhere. That would be one way of resolving the issue with the Normals. Everyone the same, all over again. But I couldn’t just save the Fangborn from Carolina and then leave them powerless to face the Makers. Or maybe I could download all of my abilities to the Fangborn. That would be another way to resolve things, but I didn’t think that adding a load of superpowers to the mix would help.

  No. Too radical, too visible a change. It had to be something no one, or virtually no one, knew about. I knew it had to be something I did to the Fangborn. Something to help, something small. I’d been making the most of small things all my life. Crumbs—of information, of kindness—can take you a very long way if you know what to do with them.

  This was worse than the hypothetical question, “If you had five seconds to change the world, what would you do?”

  I suddenly hated hypotheticals—the people who asked and answered them were just fooling around, toying with what was now my real responsibility.

  I walked over to the window and looked out. Quarrel was there, soaking up the sun and sleeping. I could see wisps of steam—I hoped it was steam, and not acid vapor—rising from his mouth, which I supposed meant he was snoring. Naserian was helping out, rooting out a bunch of stones and moving them. We would have to bring over heavy equipment to do more of the construction, but for now, Naserian was happy to assist, or so she said. Until I could find them a place of their own—I was officially responsible for them now—I’d have to let them do pretty much what they wanted to keep from getting bored. A bored dragon was a dangerous dragon.

  Seeing the copy of the Orleans tapestry prophecy, the one I’d learned about in Venice that said whoever claimed the golden disc hidden there would “unchain” the Fangborn, got me thinking about the nature of prophecies. Everyone always described oracles as tricky: They gave predictions that were either unintelligible or so vague as to be generalities. No one in any book I’d ever read ever had any luck with prophecies, either. Just thinking about examples of unhappy prophecies didn’t give me much more confidence or more of a clue. Predictions are usually described as obscure, almost legalistic, so that they were riddles. A play of words, a loophole, and the fabric of prophecy was undone.

  I figured that something, some bit of memory or information, had been passed down through the ages, and been transformed into a prophecy. I had to consider whether it was a garbled message from the Makers. Someone was trying to tell me something, and I had to figure out what it was.

  I had choices. I could “fix” the Fangborn, make them over into what the Makers intended. I could make them into something else. I could subjugate the human race, which is what I assumed the Administrator meant by “my people.” I couldn’t do nothing.

  What about the Makers? Could I banish them from our collective psychic and/or physical presence? Right. That would be like trying to push a grizzly bear out of your way—not realistic and truly unwise. Should I attack them, maybe bite them so hard they would think twice about coming back to haunt us? I had no idea about the scope of their power; what they’d shown me should be warning enough.

  It was a horrible idea—the repercussions would be ghastly—but I could not scratch it off my too-short list.

  I prepar
ed for my meeting with the Adirondack Free Pack.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Our goal was to request the Free Pack’s permission to enter their territory when we attacked Carolina’s compound and to ask for their help in the assault. I wasn’t convinced we’d get either, from what I’d learned from Gerry. They were so conservative that they were actually in favor of taking over custodianship of humanity.

  They requested three of us in the envoy: vampire, werewolf, and oracle. Senator Knight was the vampire—the Pack knew and respected him. They would have been very pleased if he’d been the one to open Pandora’s Box. They had asked for me personally, Knight said, because they were curious about me. The oracle, it was decided, would be Jason, the plan being for the raven Jill to observe Carolina’s property while we were so close by. It was fitting: In many cultural traditions, ravens and crows lead wolves to prey. We had maps, and we had intelligence—the senator’s informant on the inside—but no one would ever suspect Jill was working for us.

  We took a small plane to the nearest airport, then coptered from there. I was getting used to traveling in helicopters and it was a wonderful way to get a close bird’s-eye view of the world. But the noise . . . It would always remind me of Fatima’s murder by the Order. We set Jill loose, Jason giving her specific directions, he claimed, and promised to meet her back at the landing site shortly.

  We hiked in through the woods, coming to a clearing. A number of roughly organized structures, in no way uniform, were clustered around a central open area. We were greeted by a number of Family, who were eager to meet Senator Knight but eyed me and Jason Jordan with suspicion.

  A tall werewolf stepped forward. “I’m Eli Passey, and I speak for the Adirondack Pack.” Blond hair and blue eyes and his flannel shirt and jeans were normal enough, but Passey was a scary-looking bastard, whip thin with the kind of muscles that come from hard use and aren’t just for show. He must have been hurt badly as a child, as a human, before he could Change, because he had a long white scar that ran from his left temple to his jaw line and down to his neck. A scar that size meant that the wound should have taken off the side of his head; only being a werewolf had saved his life. Maybe that counted for his behavior now, the Fangborn-first chauvinism and the clannishness that went beyond Family ties.