Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,13
distinct shapes of the pieces of armor themselves, and rose, sorting themselves out in anatomical order. The parts didn’t match—the Incan helmet of wood and copper had no business hovering above the Mycenaean Dendra plate armor—but they created a nearly humanoid form.
They hovered briefly, and I had no sooner wondered what I should do next when all of the weapons flew into the katana I held, each slamming into the next—curvy bladed Indonesian kris, an improvised fauchard made of a scythe, an assegai with a long, leaf-shaped blade—until they formed a giant two-handed broadsword of green and violet flame in my hand. Each blow was like it had been made by a supernatural adversary, and I struggled to hold the changing weapon.
Before, when I’d assimilated artifacts, I’d been at least in decent shape. Mostly. Now I was pretty sure I had even less power than before, and was on the ragged edge of exhaustion, physically, and . . . magically. I wasn’t sure I was going to survive this . . .
The green ghost of fiery, mismatched armor turned to me. The incandescence was blinding. I held up the flaming sword and braced for the inevitable. Pain and death.
I really hope this isn’t the guardian of this collection, I thought. Because if it challenges me, I’m in big troub—
The buzzing increased, filling my head. A vision . . .
I moved toward the armored ghost, arms outstretched as if to embrace my own end . . .
No, not my end. There were craftsmen and technicians laboring over their wares. I needed to embrace the result of their skill, their ability to imbue the artifacts with power . . .
The ghostly artifacts winked out of existence and popped up less than a meter away from me. Somehow I managed to stand, found the strength to hold my arms out. I closed my eyes, not at all certain it was a good idea . . .
I felt the barrage of energy as the armor touched me, pressed itself onto every part of me, and . . . didn’t stop. The armor melted into me, and it felt as though the energy was racing around inside my body, weaving bone and blood together with something else. Maybe this was what it was like to be electrocuted, I thought raggedly, or to be on acid while someone stuck knitting needles into random sections of your brain. This was what other people imagined it was to turn into a werewolf—a curse of bone stretching and crunching, muscles straining beyond human endurance, and the systematic ripping away of your humanity. The dizziness of reaching through time and space through Pandora’s Box was a pony ride compared to this roller coaster. Just when I thought it could go on no longer, it found a way to get worse.
No, the ecstatic reward of the Change was the utter opposite of this.
But why were the artifacts still coming to me if I was depleted?
The armor had vanished, and I wondered if I was now burning with the pale green flame. I opened my eyes and saw the mystically born sword, still glowing violet in my hand. Then that slid out of my fist and up my arm and, like the armor, became a part of me.
I may have passed out, because I hardly noticed when it stopped, hardly noticed that I’d fallen down again. The only signal I had was that I could feel my heart racing so fast, it felt as if someone had set a drum machine for the bass drum at two hundred and forty beats per minute. When I registered the cool of the straw tatami floor under my cheek—how was it not burned?—I began to wonder if I’d become enmeshed with it, an integral part of the house. Then I felt my breath moving between my lips, which brought an unpleasant taste of rusty iron and bitter greens.
Buell struggled to his feet. Maybe it was some kind of “die in your boots” mentality, but he just stood there unsteadily, wobbling, not quite sure what to do with himself. His blank look told me he’d run out of mind to boggle. Outside, the battle was slowing down, as the Fangborn took the opportunity to disarm the Order soldiers who were staring at the spectacle of me melding with the hoard of arms and armor.
I was at least as beat up as Buell was, but I was still a werewolf and I was owed pain. I knew