Seven Kinds of Hell (20 page)

He nodded and got up unsteadily. “Thanks. I’m sorry. I just…I’m just wiped out.”

I suddenly realized: Sean was the only one among us who wasn’t Fangborn, who’d be feeling the travel and lack of sleep even more than us. “No problem, Sean.”

“Zoe, a quick word?” he said.

“Sure.” I got up and we stepped off to the side.

“I’m worried about you,” he whispered. “I mean, I thought you’d just go to London, and we’d be back inside the week.”

“I know. I appreciate your help—I never would have made my flight if you hadn’t stepped in and caused that ruckus in Boston.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You should go home. You don’t need to keep on.”

He exhaled, frustrated. “No, that’s not what I meant. Can’t you leave this up to the Steubens? Or go to the police?”

“Sean, I can’t. Dmitri warned me against it. Honestly, you should—”

“I’m not leaving, Zoe. Just…I’ll catch you later, OK?”

I watched Sean leave. Gerry stood, having paid the bill. “Let’s walk.”

Clearly something was up; they wanted to talk without possibility of being overheard, even by Sean. After a few minutes, we found ourselves on the edge of a large green space in the center of the city, ringed by wooded areas. I had the impression it went on for miles.

Gerry looked around, then ducked down a secluded pathway, surrounded by trees. I followed suit and began to get very worried. It was as much a feeling as a sensation. I was keenly aware of where people were around us, as if all my senses were kicking into hyperdrive to reassure me I was safe.

I also realized it was a little like the feeling I had in Salem, right before the other Fangborn appeared at the cemetery, and again in Cambridge. Now that I was paying attention, that feeling of awareness seemed to get stronger. More accessible.

We came to a clearing, and Claudia nodded to Gerry. “I’ve got the perimeter.” She took off.

OK, now this was just plain odd. I wasn’t sure how I liked being left alone with Gerry, in the middle of nowhere.

“Calm down,” he said. “Danny’s safe, as far as we know, and we have a few hours until the meeting. It’s the only chance we have to give you a crash course in being Fangborn. Teach you some of what you should have learned as a kid.”

“Here? Out in the open?”

He nodded. “It’s risky, and it’s public. But it’s quiet here. The park won’t fill up until lunchtime. And some folks say being out in the open, near nature, helps them focus on the Change.”

“What is this, some kind of induction ceremony? Solemn oaths and burnt sacrifices?” Sure, I was nervous. This was only
one
aspect of my life right now that terrified me.

Gerry shook his head. “We can fill you in on the cultural aspects later. I’ll even buy you a cake that says, ‘
Mazel tov!
Today you are a werewolf!’ That is, if we all survive this. But for now, we just need to get you to Change at will.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve never been able to control keeping it away or summoning the Bea—it when I needed it.”

“When you’ve been a stray…not raised within a pack, you don’t get the training. So I’m not surprised you think this, but yes, you can Change at will. You must unlearn, young Skywalker.”

I backed off a step or two, mostly from the idea. A fern curled up from the leaf duff; I decided to be fascinated by it for a while.

I shook my head again. “I can’t…no, I don’t want to. I’ve worked very hard to keep the Beast contained. For a while I thought I was just insane. Then I worried that I was worse, some kind of serial killer. It’s too much to take, on top of everything else.”

“
Beast
is a nice word for
monster.
” Gerry very gently put his hands on my shoulders, touched his forehead to mine. “You’re not a monster. It’s only your other self, as much a part of you as dark hair or green eyes. You don’t have to be afraid of it—
it’s
you. And the Change…don’t tell Claudia I said this, because it’s not dogma—”

I was nervous and creeped out, so I giggled. “You said ‘dogma.’”

Gerry shook his head, not taking his hands from my shoulders. “Nothing funny here. Like I said, it’s my own personal opinion that the Change makes us like angels. With it, we fight evil, we protect humanity. This is a good thing.”

He was serious. He seemed incredibly naive to me, and what he was saying was a little too much like what my mother had told me about my father’s people, all these years: above the law, vigilantes, a gang. I still didn’t like the idea.

I thought Claudia was the psychic one, but Gerry maybe had a touch of that, too. “This will increase our chances of getting Danny back,” he said.

OK. Sold. I nodded.

“You trust me?”

I shrugged.

He cocked his head, then kicked off his shoes. “Fair enough. Without the cultural background, without even the most basic exercises in focus and control, it’s like getting someone…ah, to dance
Swan Lake
by telling them the steps, and without any music.”

“
Swan Lake?
”

“I’d usually go with a mixed-martial-arts reference, but you’re a girl.”

“Fuck you.”

He gave me a big smile. “For now, just…watch and be aware of what your senses tell you when I go.”

Then he Changed.

It was like the feeling while I waited in the café this morning, times twenty. Somewhere wrapped up in the astonishment was the urge to laugh. A wolf can only look so fierce with an Oxford cloth shirt and jeans hanging off him.

He Changed back. Gerry was so good at shifting around in his clothes quickly you’d never have noticed anything was amiss.

I chewed on my bottom lip. “What about…those half-wolfmen? Can you do that? Could I do that?” Maybe being only half a Beast was a good start for me.

“Sure, but we’re going to focus on this for now. Get the basics down first, then the flashier stuff. Remember how it felt when I Changed. Give it a shot.”

I tried, but no luck. “Uh, what do you tell the kids you’re training? The ones who have problems?”

Gerry opened his mouth, then closed it. “Uhhh, they’re younger than you are by, like, ten years or more. By the time most Fangborn kids can Change, at puberty, it’s all they want to do. And I never came across any who were kept in the dark about how to Change and what they really were, like you were.” He thought about it. “With the kids I’ve taught, they have the ability; I need to get them to trust me, then we do a lot of exercises, learn to meditate a little, focus on my voice, that sort of thing.”

“Well, what do parents tell their kids when they’re little? Where’s the first place you start when you’re training them to get control of the powers they’ll eventually have?”

He shrugged and started in a voice made for nursery rhymes, “
First
the wolf in you runs around and makes sure it’s safe.
Then
the vampire in you chases away all the bad thoughts.
Then
the oracle in you tells you to get ready for an adventure.
Then
you
go
!”

I looked at him. “Yeah, that’s not going to work.”

“Told you. There are little gestures to help them remember each of the steps”—he mimed making wolf ears, vampire claws, and someone looking far away—“and help them not be afraid. I didn’t think you’d get much out of those either.”

“Maybe I’m really different. I keep telling you, it’s danger, a threat to my life that does it. Or the moon. Most of the time, anyway.”

Claudia stepped back into the clearing, nodding to Gerry.

“It’s not the moon. We haven’t got time to start grounding you in meditation, the first part of the whole training program, but relax, try to summon the feelings you have when you’ve Changed before—sensations, emotions, whatever.”

“Um, usually anger.”

“Go with that.”

I tried it again, and this time, I felt the slightest tickle, but it was so far away, it vanished as soon as I identified it.

Gerry shook his head. “You’re trying too hard. Bugging your eyes out, clenching your stomach, holding your breath. You look like you’re trying to hold back a fart.”

I had been holding my breath; I exhaled with a nervous laugh. “Look, usually this just comes rushing over me. Overwhelming me. Nothing active on my part.”

“Stop thinking of your furself as separate from you. That way you’re not using up all your focus and energy to prevent it. This is what they start us off with at the academy.”

He began to recite: “
Breathe. You can’t do anything if you can’t breathe.

“Wiggle your toes. If you can’t wiggle your toes, the rest of you is probably too tense.

“Smell. What is nearby? Danger? Even if you can’t smell it, are you afraid?

“Move. If you don’t see or smell anything, start to cast over the rest of the area.
”

He shrugged. “Then you focus on the wolf.”

I relaxed as he said, with no luck. I thought a moment. “You do it again.” I recalled I’d felt the Beast come on me easily at home, in the presence of other Fangborn.

He did, almost as soon as I asked. It was beyond weird, watching it, but it wasn’t as scary as it felt when the Beast took over me. Gerry was probably right, it was just training and getting used to it. He looked good as a wolf. He looked…not tame.
Benevolent,
that was the word. Even after seeing him do something I thought of as my own personal sin, I wasn’t afraid.

Yet I was always afraid when I felt the Beast come upon me.

I tried again, using that little frisson of his Change to sort of pull me along. It was a bit like riding a bike in the draft of someone else who acted as a windbreak. I tried to put aside resistance, tried not to think the rush was bad or evil. I just let go—

It worked. I’d turned into a wolf, nearly on my own. No moon in sight, no danger—

Something was wrong.

During the moment of disorientation as I Changed, a familiar smell, a long-lost smell, wafted into a wolf’s nose, then registered in a much slower human brain.

Danger…

My ears back, I turned around.

He’s here, he’s here…

There was Will, not twenty feet away from me, his mouth agape.

I had Changed into a wolf in front of the one man I swore would never see this side of me.

Habit and emotion won out.

I tore out of there like my tail was on fire.

He’d seen me. He’d seen me. He’d seen me—

That phrase drove me on, running in a blind panic.

The man I loved, who I hated for getting so close to me, who I swore to protect, just saw me Change into a monster. How did he get here? How did he find me? Why is he here?

The Tiergarten takes up nearly a square mile in the center of Berlin. There are acres of woods around wide, grassy lawns, but a city is no place for a dog without a leash. I imagined it wouldn’t be long until law-abiding citizens took notice and did something about it. Then they’d discover I was a wolf, not a dog, and then, perhaps, a girl, not a wolf.

I needed a plan. Something besides running.

I galloped into another wooded area and hid for a moment, catching my breath. I surveyed the fields, now full of mothers and children playing in the sun. A few sunbathers lounged as business folk packed up their lunches and returned to work.

I didn’t have long; no doubt Gerry could track me if he wanted, and God knew what Claudia could do. Fly, maybe—isn’t that what vampires did?

Remembering the city map I’d read earlier, I watched the picnickers. Even though I’d attacked humans before, that had been to protect myself or someone else. I’d never felt as predatory as I did now, spying and calculating. It was all a matter of one strike, pure physics, acceleration, direction, and mass. And…conscience.

One young woman in a bathing suit finished applying sunblock and then settled herself gingerly on her blanket. In a moment, she’d be asleep.

I tried not to think too much about it as I ran toward her.

My timing was a little off and my luck a little bad. As I snatched up her tote bag and booked it, she shifted, readjusting herself on the blanket. I stepped on her hand, and she startled, screaming incoherently.

What’s German for “Holy shit, a big dog in a T-shirt and panties just stole my bag!”? If I kept this up, I might have to learn.

I booked it for the woods, then doubled back in the opposite direction under cover, angling toward a U-bahn station.

I tried to Change back; it took a minute because adrenaline and embarrassment were strong inducements to stay wolfy. I tried to remember what Gerry said, tried to remember that I had to Change back if I were going to figure out this whole mess and save Danny. Wiggling my claws? No problem. With something like a cross between soda bubbles up my nose and a burp, I Changed back.

I rifled through the girl’s bag, pulled on her wrap skirt and sandals, and straightened out my hair. While trying not to think about what had just happened.

I’d turned without a threat to my life. Without the moon. Without a criminal nearby.

Will had found me. Had seen me as a wolf. Why was he here?

I’d just ripped off some poor woman.