Seven Kinds of Hell (13 page)

Even when I saw the other man, and the knife, I didn’t do anything. Didn’t scream, didn’t pull, didn’t put up any kind of struggle.

I wasn’t stunned or shocked or drunk. I knew my life was almost certainly in peril.

And yet, I went with them.

My bad mood had vaporized. I felt completely calm, as if I’d been waiting for this to happen. Despite the reek that filled my nose, worse than the sewer leak last spring, the Beast was whispering to me, telling me to bide my time, wait until we were in the abandoned building, out of sight.

The darkness was almost absolute, but I didn’t need a light to sense the knife just below my chin.

Neither man spoke until we were deep in the shadows.

“We won’t be needing this,” one of them said. I felt my shirt tear.

Now,
the Beast whispered.

The oblivion I’d been seeking all night came as the Beast rushed in: I was suddenly a wolf. If I hadn’t been resisting the rapists, it was because I hadn’t been resisting the Beast.

I snapped my head around, seizing the wrist of the man with the knife. I bit through flesh, snapping fragile bones, feeling blood—dark, coppery, and filthy—rush out as I severed an artery. As his blood hit the floor of that dank basement, I felt a glorious satisfaction: his blood was better outside his veins. The more he bled, the better I felt.

His screams brought me back to myself. No time to waste: I ripped at his throat as he was bent over his mangled hand. I tore it out, feeling the foamy blood wash over my muzzle.

A joy came with the kill that was nearly inexpressible in human terms. It was every note of Beethoven’s symphonies and every word in Shakespeare’s sonnets and more.

Footsteps. The other attacker was backing away, ready to run.

I couldn’t let that happen. He was as wrong as the first, as badly in need of removal as the first. The glory that washed over me only made me stronger and quicker.

He pulled a pistol out from behind his back. I knew (
how did I know?
) that I had just a moment before he pulled the trigger.

Just a moment was enough. Ignoring the gun, I ran forward, and once I was inside his range, I lunged.

He fell back, and I followed him down. I missed grabbing his throat—the quickest and quietest kill—but felt my teeth sink into his eyes and the soft flesh of his face. I tore, and before he could draw breath, I found his neck.

His blood spilling dwarfed even the experience of the first kill. I was rooted to the ground, the Beast exultant within me.

For the first time, I howled my joy.

That alien noise summoned the human in me.

I chased the Beast away and found myself sitting, half-naked, in a dark basement with two mangled corpses. Their blood pooled around us.

I’d killed two men.

I started to shake. I gathered my scattered clothing around me as quickly as I could. I grabbed my shoes and ran like hell.

I’d killed, viciously, happily, willingly. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, I’d do it again.

I ran back to the apartment, showered for an hour. I climbed into bed, next to Will. When he rolled over and put his arms around me, I put my hand over his mouth. The Beast came; I nuzzled his cheek, then quickly, efficiently, tore his throat out—

I woke with a start, the cabin attendant offering me a hot facecloth before breakfast. I scrubbed the tears from my face as I finished the rest of the real memory: hiding more bloody, torn clothing. The trumped-up excuses I fed Will the day after about “going too fast”—anything was better than telling him the truth of what I was, the danger he was in. His anger and disbelief, my own
heartache. Telling myself, over and over, that I’d saved Will’s life by leaving him didn’t make the months that followed any easier. Before that, I had always believed that dying of a broken heart was mere poetry; after, I learned it was entirely possible, because something in me died.

But I had been right, then. I couldn’t expose the man I loved to a side of me that lured men, no matter how evil, to their deaths. And reveled in it.

The Beast had saved me from being raped, and taken my soul in exchange. What does that tell you about God? If it hadn’t been for the material proof of what had happened—more bloody, shredded clothing I couldn’t afford to lose, and the newspaper reports filled with speculation of a rabid pit bull on the loose—I would have been able to pass off the earlier incidents as one of the freaks of psyche.

I still don’t like to think about that night. The blood, the screams…

…the satisfaction.

The Beast had saved me, but a gift that comes with a price isn’t a gift, is it?

When the plane landed, I used Dmitri’s card to get some cash and found a train that would take me into the center of London. When the train lurched into Paddington Station, I put the past behind me.

Didn’t matter what I’d learned from Claudia and Gerry. I was right to leave Will back then, and now I had more pressing matters, no matter what my subconscious wanted. With a sigh, I hoisted my backpack up.

It was time to see if I could get Danny back. I had a plan now, and if it worked, I’d have made up for so much I’d ruined in my life.

If it didn’t, it wouldn’t just be Danny who was dead.

Navigating the maze of the London Tube, I found it a Habitrail of white tile tunnels, odd place names, and echoing orders to “mind the gap.” When I reached the Russell Square stop in Bloomsbury, I emerged, a little dazed by the new sights, the smell of diesel, accents I only recognized from PBS, and traffic that was doing the opposite of what I thought it should be doing. Having very carefully crossed the street to a quieter corner, looking left and right several times before I dared move, I left a message for Dmitri, stating I’d arrived in London and that I would contact Rupert Grayling this evening. I called the University of London Institute of Archaeology and asked the department administrator about Jenny Kelner’s class schedule, which was keeping her busy until the afternoon.

I was left with nothing to do for several hours, my first time out of North America. I oriented myself; Ma and I had moved so often that learning the layout of a new city seemed like second nature to me, and when you added all the time I’d spent reading and drawing maps, it was that much easier. Looking at the tourist map I’d snagged at the airport, I realized I was in the middle of archaeological heaven. I was within a mile of the British Museum.

Walking up the steep white marble steps and stepping between the massive columns of the facade, I was swarmed by tourists and busloads of children. It took a while to get oriented, but I knew exactly what I wanted to see first. In the Egyptian Sculpture gallery,
I approached the Rosetta Stone with something like religious awe. A byword for discovery and communication, the artifact had appeared in almost every class I took my first year of college. The same decree carved into stone three times—in hieroglyphics, the demotic or everyday script, and Greek—allowed the first translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-Francois Champollion, unlocking that world to scholars in the nineteenth century.

My meditation was interrupted when a band of French school kids went tearing through the room. One made a game of slapping the flanks of the stone sphinxes, one after the other, as if he was running bases.

So much for that moment of reverence. I hightailed it away from the throng and spent the rest of my time wallowing in the delight of seeing the artifacts that had filled my textbooks: the gorgeous gold and enamel objects from the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo; the detailed carvings of religious feasts on the Parthenon Marbles; the giant bronze gates and winged lion sculptures in the Assyrian rooms. In each case, I was struck by the long history of research behind all these objects, and felt a little proud that I was a part of that tradition, sharing this knowledge with the world.

I ate lunch in the café, and then stared at the Greek pottery, painted with scenes from the Trojan War. It made me wonder: were these vessels more like the early American pottery with pictures of George Washington, or more like today’s fast-food giveaways decorated with cartoon characters? Commemorative, commercial, some of both?

The French kids came in for lunch, and I began to think about the sphinxes near the Rosetta Stone again as I made an escape. Human faces, animal bodies—it reminded me of the images “Download” had shown me before I’d broken the connection. It reminded me of my Fangborn cousins. If he was to be believed, there was evidence of the Fangborn throughout human history. Maybe not a
one-to-one correspondence, but perhaps, in a few places, at a few times, the Fangborn had made their mark on humanity felt.

It called into question every piece of art, every artifact, every scrap of literature that combined the human and the animal. It all bore study, I realized, a little dazed.

Finally it was time for me to leave. I found my way to the University of London Institute of Archaeology, past the graying stone buildings darkened by the soot of centuries and tiny, dark pubs with curious names. Every step seemed filled with history.

It was just a few blocks’ walk from the museum, and I nearly got run over once by traffic going the wrong way. A burly man with an Australian flag on his jacket grabbed me by the collar and hauled me out of the way of an oncoming car with a “Careful, love!”

I reached the right address and considered going in to meet Jenny. It didn’t seem right to me, to discuss what I needed in such a place. In an enclosed garden across the street, I found a bench with a view of the front door and waited.

It was a quirk, Jenny and me becoming friends. Our interests overlapped somewhat, but visiting postdocs on research grants don’t usually hang with undergraduates. I, of course, was a year or two older than most in my class, and with much more life and work experience, and in the convivial atmosphere of The Pub, we got to be close before she figured out I wasn’t actually the graduate student she believed me to be.

Soon a woman, reed thin with short blonde hair, emerged, walking quickly toward Tavistock Square. I placed my pinkies in my mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The other people in the garden—mostly students—looked up at me, startled. I ignored them and focused on her.

C’mon, Jenny. Turn around.

I got up. She tilted her head—it couldn’t be Zoe, could it?

Jenny looked both ways, then crossed the street to the garden. “Zoe! Is it you?”

I shrugged, smiling, and held out my hand. “Hi, Jenny.”

She laughed and shook her head. “None of that now.” She hugged me. “When did you get here? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be in London?”

“I didn’t know I was coming,” I said. Truthful and surprising—who suddenly runs to Europe anymore?

She stepped back, frowning. “Why? Is something the matter? Why didn’t you come up?”

When I told Jenny what I wanted, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t want to be seen by anyone she knew. And she certainly didn’t want an electronic trail to her phone or computer.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “But let’s get away from here first. Somewhere quiet. I’ll buy you a beer.”

Jenny picked up her briefcase, studying me. “Zoe. You’re in London, when you’ve never had a brass farthing. You’re here, and you didn’t call or text or e-mail me.”

I nodded.

“OK,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Follow me.”

We walked away from the quieter university streets to the bustle and business around Euston Square Station, waited for a Circle Line train, then changed at Moorgate. About twenty minutes later, we emerged at London Bridge, walked down the street crowded with businessmen and tourists in packs. Tiny, almost comical, cars vied with huge black taxis and honest-to-goodness red double-decker buses. We dove across the pedestrian traffic into the crowded, cobbled courtyard of the George and Dragon Inn. I tried to keep myself from gaping; it was like something from a Shakespearian set. In London, I realized, half-timbering in the architecture meant sixteenth or seventeenth century, not 1920s; here “gothic” meant, well, “gothic,” and not some nineteenth-century
revival. Jenny didn’t even seem to notice the age of the place. It just was a good pub to her.

A couple left one of the picnic tables outside the pub building. Jenny snagged it. “I’ll hold the fort against Pictish invaders if you’re buying. I’ll have a bitter,” she said.

I went inside—my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark—bought two pints, and wound my way back over to the table. My friend was resisting the advances of two young men in expensive suits.

“No, you may not join me and my friend. No, we are not interested in going to dinner with you. No, we are not lesbians. Thank you very much. Good afternoon.”

The men turned away reluctantly—they, too, had started their weekend early—and saw me standing there in my jeans, hoodie, and hiking shoes—the only things I had that weren’t packed—holding the two pints. They gave me a frank look, but left.

“What was that?”

“Boys from the City. You were no help.”

“But I brought beer.” I set the glasses down and sat.

“And for that, many things may be excused.” Jenny grabbed a glass, clinked briefly. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

Jenny swallowed nearly half of her pint before she set it down. “Christ, that’s good.” She settled back against the wall and closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth and the sunshine. “Just give me two minutes. This will be my summer holiday. Sun and beer. No students, no husband, no babies. No papers, no looming deadlines. Just two minutes, then we can talk.” She swallowed two more large gulps of her beer, her eyes still closed.

I owed her a moment to collect herself—brace herself—for what I was about to ask.

I went in and fetched two more pints, even though I’d barely touched my own. When I returned, Jenny’s eyes were open, she
was leaning on her elbow, her hand in her hair, a new frown of annoyance knotting her mouth. She was on the phone.

“And how did he get the bean? Never mind. You can still see it? Use a flashlight. Good. Just sit him up, put one finger on his other nostril, and have him blow. Yes, he may figure out how to do that when there is no bean up there, but—it did? Good. What? Yes, he’s done it before. No, I didn’t call you, because if I rang you every time beans went up noses or filled diapers were hidden or fistfuls of curry powder were eaten, you’d never get any work done. No, that was not a pointed remark about your parenting skills, it was a pointed remark about your demeanor. You lack confidence, Lawrence, and it will only get worse when they grow up and sense this. Ruthlessness is what is required. No, I’m not coming home now. Nope, never; I’m never coming home…OK, two hours. I promise. Yes. Yes. I love you, too. Kisses. Bye.”