Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,12

center of the wall.

That’s what brought me here, I thought, these objects. Like the vision of the powerful Fangborn artifacts that had almost physically driven me to seek them out in Denmark and Turkey, these weapons had drawn me not only to this hall but away from the Battle of Boston. My oracle friend Vee Brooks had given my own power a boost, and my inexperienced attempt to stop time had supplied the energy while the artifacts provided the target, taking me away from where I was needed.

This time, however, there had been no visions, no terrible pain to make me desperate to find the artifacts. There had been . . . nothing. Were the artifacts now able to simply pull me to them, even from across the world?

A shout from outside woke me. The katana I’d been attracted to glowed violet, and I felt a hum through the air as I raced toward it. But something was badly wrong. My proximity sense flared a warning.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” A hateful drawl broke the silence.

I turned, growling before I saw him. Jacob Buell, his craggy face drawn with exhaustion, was limping and reaching for a pistol. His wavy hair was plastered flat, black with sweat and rain, and he still had burn marks on his hands and neck from where I’d hit him with an acid venom attack in Boston earlier this very strange day. Whereas I’d had the chance to shower, heal, and eat, I could see a long series of bruises and cuts ran up his face, and his head was hastily shaved and stitched, probably from where I’d bashed him into the floor before our sudden and instantaneous trip across the globe. If he still had a few burns on him, from the explosion he caused that destroyed the Museum of Salem, that was fine with me.

But there was not nearly enough damage. He was still upright.

“You can’t go anywhere without taking me with you, can you, stray?” He limped a few steps closer, his bad left leg still fucked up from a rough landing in the alley, the gun pointed at me. “Why did you send me here?”

As I lunged for him, I realized that before I fainted in the alley, I had teleported him here trying to defend myself. That was what had knocked me out. But that wasn’t uppermost on my mind.

Nothing else mattered, not the kidnapped Cousin, not the battle in Boston, not the rest of the world. Only Jacob Buell mattered. I wanted him to feel a little of the torture he’d put me through. I wanted him to know it was coming from me.

I landed on top of him as he pulled the trigger. I felt bullets slam into me and didn’t care. I’d pay for it later, gladly, so long as I killed him first. When my knees hit his shoulders, he went over backward; I knew that unless I tore out his heart, now, forever, I was going to get shot again, at close range to way too many organs.

I felt more blows to my gut and dying suddenly seemed all too likely. I still wasn’t healing fast enough and heard humming as a strange dizziness overtook me. It was as though I was losing control of my senses and my body. Why go for his heart, when his throat was right there?

Definitely dying, I thought bleakly. But not before I take him on this one last journey with me—

I shook my head, trying to quell the buzzing. I finally managed to stop digging through his rib cage—it felt almost as though I wasn’t a werewolf at all, that I was a girl with a plastic ice cream spoon, trying to make a dent in Buell. With an effort, I raised my claw back, ready to tear his face off.

My hand brushed the table with the katana. The sword shifted slightly toward me and I grabbed it.

The long chamber’s shojis and exterior walls vanished in a bank of flame that was gone almost as soon as it appeared, leaving the beams and posts untouched. We now could see everyone in the courtyard, and they us. Each of the other weapons and pieces of armor on the tables was glowing pale green, brighter and brighter, until each burst into a ghostly flame. Even while I felt life’s blood leaving my body too fast, even while Jacob Buell was in my grasp, I could only stare.

The flames took on the