Hellbender - Dana Cameron Page 0,86

to have been a hazardous chemical-waste storage depot. This was a rumor spread by the government, because it was always handy to have a strategically located island off the coast near your major cities. The name may have come from when there were lots of seagulls attracted to the fishing processing or it may have referred to a former owner. Once upon a time that would have been the first thing I looked up. Now there just wasn’t time.

In other words, it was remote, yet close to Boston, New York, and Washington by boat and helicopter and small plane. There would be no problem keeping day sailors and adventurers off the island, because not only would I have navy protection, but marines and coast guard as well. A correctional facility, a slaughtering place, a fort.

Sounded about right for me.

There was a patch of garden land, oddly enough, a relic of its days as a work farm. I can’t imagine how much manure or seaweed had been hauled out there, because there were boundaries still visible and a riot of bird-picked squashes and matted corn stalks. Clearing that out would give me something to do, because basically, I was now a prisoner of my own making, as securely defended from the outside world as they were from me.

I didn’t like it, but I could live with it. I would camp out on the island with my army of honorable werewolves and vampires and dishonorable humans who’d sworn to obey me because their real boss Dmitri was paying them a lot and he was much scarier to them than I was. A handful of them knew better, but for the moment, I was glad to have the air cover of Dmitri’s bad reputation.

True to his word, the senator had found me a cat. I took the carrier to my room at the building at the bottom of the lighthouse and, making sure the space was closed in, let him out. A streak of gray-blue, a flash of coppery, panicked eyes, and the cat found its way under my camp bed.

I didn’t blame him—her? It was an attractive idea to me, too. I needed peace, I needed quiet, and I needed a big dose of inspiration. The assault on Carolina’s to rescue the Family was tomorrow, and I-Day would follow shortly after. There was pressure on all sides, and too many variables. I unpacked a box of books and papers and began to pace.

I had on a table in front of me a pile of, well, scraps. Copies of every written and recorded Fangborn prophecy and prediction going back to the beginning of Fangborn recorded history, and the list of my own information, gathered directly and indirectly from the Makers.

I had one chance to please the Makers, and I had to pick from a long list of potential global catastrophes to do that. Could I use that borrowed artifact to create a vampiric suggestion that would make the entire world forget they’d ever heard anything about the Fangborn? Probably too many factors involved in doing that, never mind the scope of reaching out to six billion minds. I was bound to screw that up. It had to be a smaller population. What about the Order? Could something be done there?

It was remotely possible I could remove all Fangborn powers everywhere. That would be one way of resolving the issue with the Normals. Everyone the same, all over again. But I couldn’t just save the Fangborn from Carolina and then leave them powerless to face the Makers. Or maybe I could download all of my abilities to the Fangborn. That would be another way to resolve things, but I didn’t think that adding a load of superpowers to the mix would help.

No. Too radical, too visible a change. It had to be something no one, or virtually no one, knew about. I knew it had to be something I did to the Fangborn. Something to help, something small. I’d been making the most of small things all my life. Crumbs—of information, of kindness—can take you a very long way if you know what to do with them.

This was worse than the hypothetical question, “If you had five seconds to change the world, what would you do?”

I suddenly hated hypotheticals—the people who asked and answered them were just fooling around, toying with what was now my real responsibility.

I walked over to the window and looked out. Quarrel was there, soaking up the sun and sleeping.