IM03 - Pandora's Box (17 page)

“I certainly hope you’re right, Lysander. Our outlook is extremely bleak. For now, we have to make sure our clan is safe. I’ll be waiting for Drew’s next call. With any luck he might have some good news too.”

“What of my writings? Will he try to salvage them before he leaves?” Lysander suddenly sounded like a boy who lost his puppy. “There is so much knowledge in there. I’d hate to lose it all again.”

“We can’t risk their lives for material possessions. They’re only staying long enough to take care of that body and then leaving.” Nicholas sounded genuinely sorry to be saying that to Lysander. He understood, as I did, how important it was for Lysander to chronicle his history. Each vampire must find their
thing
to help them cope with immortality. For the Peregrinus, it was travel and exploration; for Lysander, it was writing and history. I’d yet to find mine—but then, I was still pretty young. I had lots of time to figure it out.

Lysander sank down to the floor holding his head in his hands. “Not again,” he mumbled.

I knelt down and pulled him into a hug. Losing his writing was like losing his children. I had no words of comfort though. The only thing I could offer him was a shoulder to cry on.

Fallon didn’t come home—if you could call our hotel room that—that evening. By mid-afternoon she was still missing, and wasn’t answering her cell phone either. I felt a bit like a jealous girlfriend for the multitude of messages I left on her phone.

“Fallon, hey, just checking to see when you might be heading back. Call me.”

“Fallon, I still haven’t heard from you. It’s getting a little late.”

 “Seriously, Fallon, enough partying, time to come back.”

“Okay, Fallon. I’m getting worried now. Call me!”

“I’m really hoping you’re not dead in some cold dark alley…”

Okay, the last one might have been a bit melodramatic, but given the crew she was hanging with, it wasn’t that far-fetched.
I should have never let her run off with strange werewolves.

In a way, this was poetic justice for the worrying she did about me when I disappeared. In my defense, though, I was supposed to be dead to the mortal world, so it wasn’t like I could just pick up a phone and check in. She was more than capable of picking up a phone, and the fact she hadn’t was making me stir crazy. With the midday sun high in the sky, I was a sitting duck. 

I hated waiting. Patience was never my virtue. I wore a track into the carpet while Nicholas and Lysander took their rest. I should’ve been doing that too. I was getting close to three days with no sleep. Even as a vampire, I still usually got in a good eight hours a day of rest. What else would I do when trapped inside? I had never tested whether or not I really needed it though. It was more or less habit.

I had noticed my hunger rising a little earlier. Perhaps that was the compromise. No matter what happened with Fallon or our dealings with the wolves, I was going to have to hunt tonight.

When the phone finally did ring, I practically flew across the room to answer it. Fallon’s voice was barely audible amid the screams and cheers of about a thousand or more other people.

“Where the hell are you?” I yelled, waking Nicholas and Lysander at the same time.

They both shot up in bed, wide-eyed and on red alert as if a bomb had just gone off.

“Aiden is so amazing,” Fallon said, and I could actually hear the smile in her voice. “We were out all night.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster.

“We’re at a Sox game right now. He has seats right behind the...”

Another cheer tore through the stands, drowning out Fallon’s voice.

“Great, glad you’re having a good time and all, when are you coming back?”

“Aiden put in a good word with his dad and got you a meeting tonight. I’m going to hang with them till then. We’ll all meet up at the bar and the guys will take us to the pack.”

“Wow, good work!” I was both shocked and impressed. After the revelation about the missing box, and Lysander saying we’d need the wolves help more than ever, this came as some much needed good news. “What time do we meet you?”

The background noise was a constant, but I could hear Aiden’s deep bass voice mixed with Fallon’s mumbles. “Aiden says games don’t work on a schedule. Could be three hours, could be five, and it would be sacrilegious to leave early while the Sox are in the playoffs.  Let’s plan to meet at ten to be safe.”

“Sacrilegious to leave a game early,” I scoffed. “Are you turning into one of those sports chicks?”

“Aiden says this could be historic. They haven’t won a World Series in over eighty years or something like that.”

“Really, does Aiden say that?” I hope she caught my sarcasm. Not that I would begrudge my best friend a boyfriend, but she had only just met the guy and every other word out of her mouth was already his name. It was both annoying and cute. For a second I wondered if I was the same way with Lysander.

“Whatever, Lyss. I’m having fun. Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Be good,” I said with as perky a tone as I could.

“You too.”

I hung up the phone and found Lysander looking at me with a curious grin. There was no privacy where vampires were concerned. Our hearing is usually really good so I knew he’d heard the entire conversation.

“Your friend continues to prove herself helpful to us,” he said.

“Aren’t you glad I brought her into the clan?” I teased. It had been a fight to get Lysander to accept Fallon. He was dead set on vampires and humans always being apart. He’d even tried to turn her, against her will, as his way of making things right. I stuck my neck out pretty far to make sure she remained human.

“You’re very cute when you are being pompous,” he said. The corners of his mouth twitched as if he were struggling to keep a straight face, and then the smile erupted, spreading his lips wide, displaying his perky set of fangs.

“Hey, it’s not often I get the upper hand,” I lifted my head proudly. “I have to take it when I can.”

In a move that both shocked and excited me, Lysander grabbed and pulled me down with him onto the bed. I fell on top of him, but quickly regained my haughty position, letting out a “Hmph” as I straddled his waist.

The smile never left his face. In fact, I could have sworn it grew wider. “You certainly do have the upper hand. Why don’t you take advantage of it?”

Nicholas grunted, probably to remind us he was still there, watching our flirty little display.

I let out a defeated sigh. “Sorry, forgot you were there.”

Nicholas shrugged, sat up in his own bed, and turned on the TV, instantly finding the local news.

Lysander leaned in for a quick kiss. “I promise, we will have time alone again, once we have dealt with our issues.”

I nodded and reluctantly slid off the bed.

“We should probably hunt before we meet with the wolves,” Nicholas said, not taking his eyes from the TV screen.

“Agreed,” said Lysander. “As soon as the sun sets, we will head out. Zuri mentioned college campuses and tourist spots were off limits.”

“Did she mention any bad neighborhoods or places we should go?” Nicholas asked.

“No, but in a city this size we shouldn’t have too much trouble. We just need to be quick about it.”

I knew what that meant: being quick meant not being picky, and when it comes to finding criminals, picky is usually best. Most are drugged or drunk, and their inebriation often transferred to their blood. It was one way a vampire could get high, I suppose, but it wasn’t really preferable when you were trying to make good impressions. Being quick also meant, at least for me, attracting prey by wandering the streets looking… appetizing.

When Lysander first turned me, it was the only way I knew to hunt. Not exactly fair—more like entrapment—but it served its purpose. I got a meal and removed an obvious criminal from the streets. It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for someone who attempts to rape or mug you.

I sighed and headed to my duffel bag to see if I had anything that might put my assets on display for the hunt.

Freshly fed, showered, and dressed, we headed out to meet with Fallon and the wolves. I decided to take along Fallon’s laptop and packed it into a book bag. Since we didn’t have the actual box, I hoped that the pictures Fallon had taken of it might be some help. We needed all the help we could at this point.

By the time we arrived, it was standing room only in the bar. I struggled for a few moments to spot Fallon amid the crowd and thick hazy smoke, but when I did, I couldn’t help but laugh. She was decked out in Sox gear from head to toe: red team jersey over a white thermal shirt, a dusty blue hat with the Sox logo on it, white wrist guards, and even Red Sox flip flops. Her usual hobo purse had disappeared too, replaced by a Red Sox tote bag hanging from her shoulder.

She looked like the team’s mascot—and I’d never known her to be a sports fan. Oddly enough, though, she didn’t stand out in the crowd. Team spirit was obviously a huge thing in Boston. There were quite a few Sox fans in full team gear—drunk, cheering, and patting each other on the backs. You’d have thought they’d just played and won a game.

“Did you buy every Red Sox thing you could find?” I asked—more like yelled—as we approached her. The bar was packed and very noisy. “I wasn’t going to wear my clothes two days in a row,” Fallon answered back. “Besides, there was this huge store right outside of the ball park. They even sold underwear.”

I shook my head and bit my lip to avoid bursting into a fit of laughter. I had no doubt she had bought, and was wearing, the underwear.

The crowd momentarily hushed while the TV recounted the score from the recent Sox vs. Yankees game, and then erupted into even louder screams and cheers.

“I thought I’d look a bit out of place, you know—overkill.” She giggled as she pulled a cigarette out of her pack. “But these fans are hardcore. Actually, I felt a little
under
dressed for the occasion.”

Aiden pulled out a lighter and lit Fallon’s cigarette. “This is the playoffs, babe. Now’s the time when the true fans show their spirit. The Sox need all the help they can get. God love them, but they always choke right at the end.”

“Curse of the Bambino,” Brady supplied as he appeared behind us, beer in hand and sporting a vintage gray Red Sox team jersey. “But we beat them Yanks tonight!” He looked toward Lysander, who was standing behind me. “You were around for that, weren’t you, old man? The start of the curse?”

“No. Sorry. I had left Boston by that time,” Lysander responded, though not very loudly.

“Too bad,” Brady said, his deep voice easily carrying over the crowd. The way he said it, though, made it sound to me like Lysander not being around for the baseball curse was another nail in his proverbial coffin. I had the sneaking suspicion that Brady really didn’t like us. “Well, enough small talk. Let’s get a move on. Connor will be waiting.” He pounded down the last few gulps of his beer and set it on the bar.

 We loaded into a roomy SUV, Aiden and Brady taking the front seats, Fallon and I taking the middle, and Nicholas and Lysander in the back.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We have some land out by Ipswich,” Aiden answered. “Lots of wooded area out there. It’s where the pack gathers for meetings and our monthly hunt. Connor is there setting up for the special ceremonies.”

“Ah, the full moon.” Brady rubbed his hands together and I could see a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “My favorite time of the month.”

“Thought you could change whenever,” Fallon said.

“We can, babe, but the pack hunt is like a giant party. It’s our way of keeping together even though we are spread out so far.”

“And how far does your territory extend?” Lysander asked.

“Our pack in centered here in Boston, but we have members as far as Providence to the south and Manchester to the north.”

“That’s a fairly wide range,” Lysander said, sounding very surprised.

“That’s modern living for you,” Aiden said matter-of-factly. “There aren’t many natural woods left to mask us when we change and hunt. Most people live here in the Boston area, but we have to live too, and jobs often take members farther away from home than they’d like.”

“Obviously, not everyone is going to show up, but there should still be a good crowd,” Brady said. “Especially this time.”

“What’s so special about this time?” Nicholas asked with a surprisingly curious tone.

“October is recruitment month. Connor thought it was only natural, given the nature of the month.” Aiden laughed. “What’s a Halloween without werewolves?”

“Recruitment month? You actively recruit new members?” Now it was Lysander’s turn to sound curious.

“Usually lovers and children of half-were couples. We aren’t talking outsiders and strangers,” Brady said sharply.

“No offense meant. I just wondered because of the high mortality rate,” Lysander said.

“Children of half-were couples fare far better than humans, but yeah, it’s still a coin flip,” Aiden said with a heavy sigh. “It’s their choice to turn. We don’t force them. The alternative, especially for wolves and half-wolves, is to watch your children and lovers grow old and die while you live on. We don’t force anyone to make the choice. Many choose it with the hopes of having a long life with their love ones.”