IM03 - Pandora's Box Read Online Free PDF Page A

He collapsed onto the futon. “It is a Pandora’s box.”
    “And we opened it,” I said with a devastated sigh. I dropped my head and focused on the ground, not wanting to look anyone in the eyes. You didn’t need to be a history major to know what Pandora’s box was. Even if this wasn’t the Pandora’s box, calling it one meant we never should’ve opened it.
    “Yes,” Lysander growled. “And you… both of you… let whatever was trapped inside, out.”
    The sudden and overwhelming weight of guilt came crashing down on my shoulders. We’d just loosed some ancient evil that had probably been locked away for thousands of years—setting it free to wreak havoc on our home and city.
    “I’m so sorry. So… so … very sorry.”  I doubted there were enough so’s in the entire world to account for how bad I felt at that moment.
    Fallon echoed my sentiment with her own stream of apologies.
     “Save the apologies for later,” Lysander said sharply. “We need to find out who or what was trapped inside. Who sent it to us? And how, if possible, to put it back inside again.” He let out a very deep sigh. “And we need to do this before the attacks become worse.”
    Fear tightened my chest. “Worse?” I felt each frantic thump of my heart. “You mean this is just the beginning?”
    “If this thing has been locked away for centuries, it might have to build up its strength again,” Lysander said in a carefully controlled tone.
    That spurred me past fear, right into action. We needed answers… fast.
    I grabbed the cardboard box it had been sent in and hunted for any sign of who might have sent it. Just as before, I found nothing—no identifying marks, except for the strange red symbol on the box. No shipping stickers or crossed out addresses either. Whoever sent this must have hand delivered it.
    “Fallon, when did you say you found it?” Rozaline asked.
    “I dunno, it was here when I got back, around seven. But the sun had already set.”
    “Sunset was at five,” I said. In the fall, especially right after daylight savings time, the sun sets very early. “That means it’s possible another vampire left it for us.”
     I hadn’t had much interaction with vampires other than my clan, the Peregrinus. Any others I’d met had been destroyed by the Acta Sanctorum during their raid on Kallisto’s coven. This didn’t feel like the work of the Acta Sanctorum, though. They sent hunters after us. I couldn’t really see them using an unpredictable supernatural force to harm us… unless they knew how to stop it.
    If it was another vampire, then it was one unknown to me. I’d never heard of any other vamps or clans that had issues with us. We kept pretty much to ourselves.
    “Maybe Crystal or Drew saw something?” Fallon said. “They were gone when I got back.”
    “We’ll speak to them as soon as they arrive home,” Rozaline said. “For now, let’s focus on what we know.”
    I held the cardboard box upside down in my hand, still studying the red symbol. “All we have to go on is this. Could it represent another clan?”
    “No, I doubt that,” said Rozaline. “That symbol is ancient Greek. Kallisto’s coven was the last of the ancient ones, and they were destroyed months ago.”
    “This warning carved into the wood,” Lysander mumbled as if speaking to himself. “I know I have seen some of this before, but where?” He left the room, heading for his bookshelf.
    “Fallon. Look up this symbol,” I asked, showing her the bottom of the cardboard box.
    “Ummm… okay. What do we call this? A circle with a horizontal letter I? Ancient Greek, right?” She clicked a few keys and after a few moments thousands of results appeared on the screen.
    “Okay, that’s theta. Letter number eight in the Greek alphabet. In classic Athens, it was an abbreviation for … um… ok, I can’t read that word … In parentheses it says, ‘Thanatos, aka Death. It vaguely resembles a skull and therefore was used as