Page 11 of Feral

Goose flesh rose on my arms, my instincts telling me that this was something a bit more dangerous than the other things we’d looked at this morning.

“Have the tank of solution ready,” I said to him, not taking my eyes off the metal box.

Reggie scrambled to get the small tank of neutralizing solution we kept handy and rolled it over. I pried the top of the metal box off with slow precision. It didn’t look like an artifact itself, but I’d been doing this long enough to know that looks can be quite deceiving.

When the lid slipped off, that feeling of danger increased, causing my stomach to lurch. Inside, the packing material was old and smelled faintly of mold. Nestled within was a small disk made out of quartz, perfectly round.

Even with my gloves on I could feel the vibration of power emanating from it. Heat suffused my core and I had to bite back a moan.

“Hand me the spray,” I said, wincing at how breathy my voice had become.

Reggie fumbled with it and stepped away. I assumed he was as affected as I was and I didn’t want to embarrass the poor man, so I purposely did not look his way. With great care, I sprayed the neutralizer on the disc, coating it thoroughly.

The arousal left me, though I still trembled from the force of it.

“What is that?” Reggie asked after a moment.

Now that I could think clearly, I carefully lifted the disk out and brought it under the magnifying lamp.

Through the pinkish solution I saw carefully inscribed symbols; bull horns with what could’ve been the sun behind them at the top. At the bottom, the head of what could’ve been a cow with a crescent moon behind it.

“This might be Druid iconography,” I murmured. “…possibly from a fertility ritual…maybe the great union…”

“There’s more in the box,” Reggie said.

I carefully set the disk down and went back to the box. Sure enough, there were two talismans hanging from beautiful silver chains.

One of the talismans had the horns and sun, the other the cow and crescent moon. On the back were more symbols that I didn’t recognize. I had come across a few artifacts from the Druid faith but none from their sex magic. My heart picked up and a flush of excitement rose to my cheeks. It wasn’t arousal of the body. No this time, it was my mind that was excited.

Here before me was a mystery, a chance to discover something no one in the archive had.

“I need to go to my office,” I said, more to myself. “I should have some resources to decipher this.”

“Should I bring the artifacts?”

My eyes took in the delicate art work along the edge of the disk, wishing I could run my bare finger along it. Would it be raised, or depressed like a carving?

“Daphne?”

“What would they have used to carve this?” I said to myself.

One of Reggie’s hands clasped my shoulder and I realized that he’d been talking.

“Hmm?”

“The artifacts?”

“Oh! Oh yes, well the ones we’ve neutralized you can bring down our warehouse. I’ll meet you there.”

I carefully packed the artifacts back into the box and tucked it under my arm.

“Are you sure about that thing?” Reggie asked as I walked into the passenger elevator.

“Of course, it’s been neutralized.”

He raised an eyebrow and handed me the spray bottle.

“Just in case.”

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