Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,62

ate ravenously, very glad the kitchens were used to Fangborn irregular hours and large servings. I heard a loud exclamation of “Oh, hey!” from the doorway and saw Danny and Vee, holding hands.

Danny, a Normal, was the one constant I’d had from childhood, and his friendship meant everything to me. When I’d last seen him at the Battle of Boston, he’d been badly injured, bleeding from a serious gut wound. I’d healed him remotely, hoping that it would work.

To see him now, you’d never know he’d ever had a scratch—even his glasses were intact. He was only a few inches taller than me, maybe five eight, and ten pounds lighter than me, too, and everything about his paleness and dark curling hair screamed “geek!” But in the past few months, Danny had come into himself even more than when he’d left school and found his niche in the tech world. Working with the Fangborn challenged his quick mind, and his talent with languages had proved invaluable with a global, polyglot Family.

They rushed over and Danny threw himself at me; Vee gave me a cautious hug.

“Sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m just worried . . . Last time we met, you ended up in Japan by mistake.”

I nodded. “Not you. I mean, I think part of that was your extra energy, but mostly it was me just not knowing what I was doing. I’m going to proceed under the assumption that whatever happens, I’ll be able to find my way back again.” I held up my new backpack and my new resolution to have my stuff with me at all times.

She nodded. Danny grabbed my hand again.

“You . . . you . . . teleported! What did it feel like?” Danny could barely contain himself. “What did you see?”

“It hurt like I was in a full-body fryolator, and I didn’t see anything. If I can avoid doing it again, I most certainly will.”

Danny was crestfallen. “Well, that’s not very—”

“Dan, let’s get Zoe a drink,” Vee said impatiently, “and if she wants to talk, she can.”

“I love that idea so very hard right now,” I said, busing my tray. “Is there a place where a girl could get a very large vodka?”

There was a TV lounge nearby with no TV, and Vee hit someone up for a bottle. After my first large gulp, I stared with something like reverence at the tumbler I had. “Dear sweet baby Jesus, this is bliss. Hey, either of you run into Max yet? You know, the guy who looks like a Fellborn but is actually really decent?”

“Oh, yeah, I saw him when I was entering him into our system,” Danny said. “They’ve eased up on him. He’s wearing fatigues, cadging smokes, and I believe I saw him badgering Lisa Tarkka about maybe changing him back, if possible.”

“What’s your take on her?” I asked Vee.

“Enh. She seems competent. I can’t get a read on her, though. I was disappointed not to find you a Family member who could help. The ideal candidate would have been Geoffrey Osborne, who was totally brilliant and a bit crazy.”

When she said the name Geoffrey, I felt my heart stop.

Vee sipped her beer and continued. “But he died in an Order attack a few months ago. They raided his lab and took the materials he was working on, notes, everything.”

“Ah.” A thought struck me. “Aren’t there other physicists we could ask? In the Family, I mean?”

She snorted. “Oh, sure, teaching high school, working for the gas company, whatever. Do you know how rare it is to get a theoretical physicist doing advanced work in a Normal population?” Vee shook her head. “It’s pretty unusual to begin with. We were lucky he was an oracle, because he didn’t feel the Call and couldn’t Change. He could focus on work. The Order didn’t care that he wasn’t a fighter, only that he was Fangborn.”

I told them about his presence in my lab. Their faces grew increasingly worried. “Weird shit, huh?”

“Uh, yeah.” Danny said, “Zoe, do me a favor? Don’t trust him too much. He might be some kind of Order construct.”

“A little elaborate for them, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, I’ll be careful, sure. But they’re crude. They’re still getting the Fellborn . . . right.”

“Please . . . don’t trust him too much,” Danny insisted.

“Okay.” I changed the subject. “You guys, do we have any idea how we work? The Fangborn I mean, sorry Danny. It’s just that we look an