Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,108

Fangborn in the government had been working on. After that, Senator Knight was going to hold a press conference on Capitol Hill to discuss the presence of the Fangborn and the secret treaty status we’d all been living under since the Fangborn had been in America. He’d explain that the Battle of Boston was just the latest example of the Fangborn fighting for us all against unknown foes called Order and Fellborn.

Until then, the news outlets were going crazy with the footage of the fire at billionaire Carolina Perez-Smith’s country retreat. She too had been attacked by the Fellborn, and had been rescued by Fangborn-American citizens. It was the first time there was good footage, shot by reliable sources, of the Fangborn performing heroic actions. It was pretty nifty to see a vampire carrying out Carolina on his shoulder and a werewolf braving the flames to rescue a kid. No need to mention that the kid was also a Fangborn and was only there because Carolina had kidnapped him in the first place.

Carolina was on our side. For now. She and Senator Knight were working together to craft our story, one that would leave out the Order’s experiments. Someone else would get pinned with the kidnappings; her business acumen, paired with the change of heart I’d inflicted on her, would ensure that. She’d play the concerned citizen, grateful for what the Fangborn had done for her and working to see how our presence could benefit the country.

I didn’t like it and thought she and the Senator were a match made in hell. But it was I-Day, today, and things were going to be tough. I’d live with that pair if we had her influence on our side.

I wondered if I could restore the Fellborn—and Max—using the ring as I had on Carolina. I would be very happy to be able to make that visible contribution.

It had been a very busy day, I decided, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. It wasn’t every day a girl got to sever connections with a controlling nonhuman entity and throw the world into upheaval by helping to out her entire Family.

I flicked on the news, still too tired to move much. Soon the world would be seeing vintage tape prepared by the TRG to showcase the Fangborn. There was the World War II newsreel about the new allies in the war against Hitler, showing werewolves doing boot-camp stuff, medic-trained vampires, oracles translating and looking into crystal balls. There was the 1960s advertisement talking about everyone working for a better world, getting in touch with that beyond you, and expanding the mind. Then there was the 1980s Cold War propaganda bragging about the arsenal of missiles and Fangborn allies we had on our side to stop communism, working shoulder pad to shoulder pad.

I worried about what other historical images might also repeat themselves: the Salem witchcraft trials, the Japanese internment camps in the ’40s. Protests for civil rights turned to riots all through the ’60s, ’70s—hell, even today. After all, how do you identify a threat, an enemy, when he looks just like you? Humanity did not have a great track record when dealing with those who were different, or even suspected of being different.

There would be public violence in some cities and vigils in others. There would be some suicides and there were some folks who thought we were on the verge of some kind of golden age. There would be arguments about traitors and vigilantism and about the nature of humanity.

I understood all of these responses. I had to worry about becoming a dragon myself now that I was no longer under the control of the bracelet, no longer driven to find other artifacts that might be out there. I wanted them, but I could find them in my own time. There was a lot to do, and on top of it all, I also had to worry about Family like the Adirondack Free Pack thinking I was some kind of prophet. Or a demon.

All that could wait. I needed a shower. I owed myself a good cry.

I got up from the table, stiffly, looked out the window. Adam was moving toward the house. He paused, and when I nodded, he came in. I hobbled to him, leaned against him. Let him kiss the top of my head.

“Zoe,” he said.

But something was tickling my brain; I had the urge, as I had at the Battle of Boston, to reach out, to see