Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2)

  By Dana Cameron

  Fangborn

  Seven Kinds of Hell

  Pack of Strays

  “The Serpent’s Tale” (short story)

  Emma Fielding Mysteries

  Site Unseen

  Grave Consequences

  Past Malice

  A Fugitive Truth

  More Bitter Than Death

  Ashes and Bones

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Dana Cameron

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by 47North, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477819777

  ISBN-10: 1477819770

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  Illustrated by Chris McGrath

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954686

  For Toni L. P. Kelner and Charlaine Harris: Amazing writers and wonderful friends

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  After I’d opened Pandora’s Box, my life was the best it had ever been.

  All the stories tell us. I should have known it wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last.

  A loner most of my life, while on the hunt for Pandora’s Box, I’d been reunited with my boyfriend, Will; discovered my true nature; and cobbled together a kind of family with other Fangborn and my cousin-by-affection, Danny. When I opened the Box, I felt my days on my own were finally over. But there’s some truth to every myth, and shortly after that, I lost it all.

  Stands to reason: You need to have something before you can lose it.

  But as we pulled down a quiet exit off Route 1 in New Jersey, trading malls for fields and trees, Adam Nichols was quiet, and that wasn’t good. A big, blond guy with scary, light blue eyes, Adam’s nose had a good shape but was flawed, as if it had been broken and badly reset. His size and muscles intimidated me; I was a foot smaller, maybe ten years younger, and probably at least seventy-five pounds lighter, so even his silence seemed like a threat.

  A small, dark-haired, green-eyed young woman traveling with a guy so big and blond, we looked like we might not even be of the same species. I still thought of myself as human.

  His quiet made me anxious, and that in turn made me resentful, which was worse, because he was kinda growing on me.

  Maybe he was uneasy about traveling with a werewolf.

  I was getting used to the idea that there were such things as werewolves, and that I was one. I’d learned that I was Fangborn, and they—we—are dedicated to secretly protecting humanity and eradicating evil. Werewolves were built to track and tear, as vampires were built to heal and conceal, and oracles—well, oracles were strangely and variously psychic. It was good to know I wasn’t crazy, but I was a stray, and unlike those raised in Fangborn culture, I still struggled with the ethics of the judgment and removal of the truly evil. Especially when removal means killing.

  Maybe Adam was worried about having helped me escape a government laboratory. Maybe it was that he had, until two weeks ago, worked for another part of that same government and had robbed or threatened me on several occasions. Guilt can be funny, so who knew?

  At first, I thought the Theodore Roundtree Group, or TRG, was the best thing going. A secret section of the government meant to act as a liaison between Normal humans and Fangborn, they said they would continue my Fangborn training with my friends and pay for my archaeological studies. Someplace to belong, at long last.

  What really happened: they separated me from Will, Danny, and siblings Gerry and Claudia Steuben at a facility in rural Virginia. I booked it when the TRG took a few more liberties with my person and my rights. Ever since I’d opened the Box, I’d had a jeweled bracelet mystically embedded in the flesh of my right wrist that seemed to enhance and add to my werewolf abilities and allow me to access other abilities I shouldn’t have at all. It was a lovely thing, despite its weirdness: it appeared to be made of flat gemstones in every color from garnet to opal to black diamond, linked with gold and platinum wire. I could just make out the tissue and veins of my arm through the more transparent stones. The TRG decided that they needed to know more about this strange bracelet and its powers—my powers—and they drugged me and locked me up.

  In an odd family coincidence, my mother, my only known relative, had also escaped from an asylum decades ago when she didn’t like the look of the treatment some of the other kids were getting. I’d learned that someone, perhaps even the TRG itself, had been responsible for that asylum and it was somewhere near, north of the TRG’s Virginia headquarters. I suppose it made sense, if it was the TRG, to keep their experiments where they could keep an eye on them.

  I knew now that someone had already messed with Ma’s brain, her memories, in an attempt to hide her identity from her while retaining all the inclinations and powers of her Fangborn heritage. According to the file Adam had stolen, my mother was older than she believed, had been born in 1949. It was the long lifespan of the Fangborn, a secret kept from her, that let her believe she was in her mid-forties and not her mid-sixties. She believed she was as ordinary as the next guy.

  That was true as long as the next guy was a vampire. Or a werewolf. Or an oracle.

  I wasn’t 100 percent certain that the drugs they’d given her—trying to suppress her memories of what she was, of who her family was, of being Fangborn—hadn’t been responsible for her brain cancer. If I found out who did that to her, I’d probably destroy them.

  So, to recount: no more friends, no family, no job, no nothing. Having escaped the TRG, I had several goals: I was going to track down Will, Danny, and the Stuebens and find that asylum, hoping it would give me answers about myself. But even I, the original bad luck charm, was having a hard time being optimistic when being a killer was the only thing I had going for me, and now Adam, my last tie with my “old” life of a month or two, was mad at me to boot.

  Adam and I had gotten to know each other pretty well in the past few days—you can’t help that on a road trip. He’d done a lot of traveling and told great stories about his adventures. I think he was impressed by the fact that I’d read even more sci fi than he had. We agreed on the Red Sox, me because of growing up around Boston and Adam because he had a near encyclopedic knowledge of players, games, and stats. I never did convince him on Deadmau5, but he gave it a shot. After a few pro forma protests, I learned that I could look forward to listening to Telemann and Bach when it was his turn to pick the music. When he did laugh, which wasn’t all that often, it was surprisingly unreserved. We had a r
hythm down to our traveling, and it suited both of us.

  We were becoming friends.

  To prove it, I picked the fight he didn’t want to have. “Hey, Nichols, if you’re sick of talking to me, you can stop, and I’ll leave right now. I didn’t ask you to pick me up two weeks ago, or in Greece, or in Turkey, either.”

  He frowned. “There’s nothing wrong. We’re pulling off to get coffee, like you asked. I’m just concentrating.”

  He wasn’t exactly lying, but … “Adam, what is it?

  “Zoe, I’ve already said.” He shrugged. “We were almost caught yesterday. And these little forays of yours are slowing us down. You just don’t want to acknowledge that.”

  No, I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Yesterday had been my third kill in two weeks. I’d been told that the Fangborn are always right and are always on the side of right, and that very single one of my targets—last week, the week before, all the ones before that—had deserved it.

  I also didn’t want to admit that I was getting better at it, and just how good it felt killing bad guys, the ones who get off on cruelty, hurting and killing others. Even when I sensed utterly the person under my fangs had earned it, even when I had proof, the Fangborn assertions of infallibility seemed a little … convenient.

  “I can’t help it. You know that. I smell evil, I have to go after it.” But it had never been so many, so intense before. Even with werewolf strength and stamina, I was exhausted. I had never been able to sense evil from as far away as I could now. From what I knew about the Fangborn, our range was limited to what we could scent in the immediate area. I was being called to chase evil from two miles or more. That was unusual for any werewolf.

  Maybe it was a result of my mother’s tampered chemistry giving me a few abilities that other werewolves didn’t have, like a proximity sense and an uncanny affinity for blood. I was pretty sure the bracelet was also increasing those powers and adding new ones.

  “I know this isn’t an ideal situation,” I said. “If I—”

  I broke off, gagging. The reek of true evil is stomach turning, like a dead rat rotting in a wall. If I’d tried to resist it, I would have become even more ill. “Stop the car!”

  “Zoe, again?”

  “Now!”

  No time for talk. Adam knew what to do. As he pulled over, the Call to track that evil hit me hard and fast. I unbuckled myself and threw myself from the car while it was still rolling. I stumbled, once, twice, found my footing, and bolted, following the trail through the parking lot. I vaulted over a six-foot fence and into the wooded line that separated the strip mall from the surrounding woods and fields.

  When you’re down and feeling low, violent activity helps. Actual violence itself seems to help my attitude to no end. This felt like true purpose and righteousness, and after the oppressive atmosphere in the car, it felt awesome—and that was too weak a word. What does it feel like, to be an avenging angel? A superhero? I’ll tell you, it’s worth the secret identity, and very nearly the loneliness. All doubt, all fear, fled. I had worried, ever so briefly, that I was making up reasons to hunt so much lately, but that’s not what the Fangborn do. Despite everything, I had this joy, this sureness.

  To be good at something, and to grow in your mastery of it, is a gift. I literally took it and ran with it.

  I hadn’t Changed yet, but eventually I had to slow to let my nose catch up. There were almost too many trails. Whoever I was tracking had spent a lot of time in this area over the past few days.

  But with so many filthy odors present, my nose, even in human form, was easily able to find the latest, the strongest scent and follow it. That trail was so obvious, even a Normal could have scented it, if she’d cared to.

  For me, it was like a well-lit highway.

  I was getting close, so I slowed and stopped, summoning the half-Change. The good news was that in these woods, no one could see me. Superheroes and villains share more in common than any of us would like to admit.

  The Change came quickly, without most of the concentration and finger crossing I’d needed in the past. A rush of adrenaline, a shiver of ecstasy, a flood of endorphins, and suddenly I was a bipedal wolf-girl in cargo shorts and layered strappy tanks. I could have Changed fully, and taken a wolf form, but the half-Change allowed me to use most of my powers, kept me upright with my hands free, and left my clothing intact.

  I kicked off my shoes and ran. Late afternoon, still late summer light. Hours before dark, not that it mattered with my wolfy eyes and nose. Joyfully bloodlusty, I hardly noticed as the brambles grabbed at my clothes, scratching my arms and neck. I turned a corner, nearly there, and—

  I lost the scent.

  No, that’s not right. Suddenly, I wanted, with all my heart, to veer off to the west, follow a path that I didn’t understand—

  No, that’s impossible—Fangborn werewolves and vampires are driven to follow the trail of evil. There’s no way I could be resisting the Call that would lead to the Change.

  I wanted to follow that other, invisible path with all my being.

  I tried it. I tried turning away.

  A slight rush, a little dizziness, but no cramps, no nausea. I should be bent over, nearly immobile with illness, trying to turn away from the Call to fight evil.

  I moved toward my unseen, unknown other objective. I could still smell evil, but I was moving away from it.

  Again, impossible.

  I vaulted a tangle of briers and what looked like ropes of poison ivy, landing smoothly on the other side.

  I stopped dead.

  I’d found it. After looking, mostly going on guesswork and instinct for two weeks, somehow it had found me.

  After sixty or seventy years, the site of the asylum was wooded now, but after a little impatient searching, I found the foundations, themselves collapsed and sprouting trees and sticker bushes. Almost as if nature were conspiring to hide what had gone on here.

  There were no recent smells of humans—or Fangborn, either. Deer, a couple of rabbits, left scents that tickled my nose.

  Somehow, I’d found it. After days of running down leads in Virginia and Maryland, we were now outside of Princeton, New Jersey. I was pretty sure whoever had kept Ma and how many others here—experimenting on them, trying to create Fangborn who didn’t know they were vampires, or werewolves, or oracles—were tied to the TRG.

  I Changed back to my skinself, hunkered down, and picked up a fragment of brick. A couple of months ago, I had been trying to build up my résumé as an archaeologist. Those skills would serve me now, but unless I planned on digging up the whole place, I wasn’t going to get easy answers.

  This was a place so important to me, it had drawn me away from the trail of evil. Which can’t happen.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bad photocopy of a photocopy of a picture that was old when it was copied. I tried to get a sense of the landscape that had changed over many decades. A slight depression in the ground told me where a large building had been. Archaeology trains you to make the most of a clue.

  There.

  A piece of square granite told me I had a cornerstone or piece of a lintel. A sharp edge, tool marks still visible on the corner where it had been shaped, helped me orient myself further. Out of habit, I reached down to touch it.

  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 chain-link 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 th
e 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 the nurses’ uniforms; and the round curves of automobiles the size of aircraft carriers told me: this was sometime in the past. Sometime in the 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 of luck.