Wisteria Wyverns (Wisteria Witches Mysteries Book 5)

by Angela Pepper

  Pain shot through me as black spots appeared on the top of my hand. The spots grew from my hand, extending out as spikes. The tiny seed cupped within my palms had expanded rapidly and magically, sprouting out through the flesh and bones of my hands. Now both of my hands were locked together, and in searing pain.

  The blue jay on my shoulder screamed, “Zara, careful!”

  It was a bit late for that.

  Chapter 29

  Dr. Ankh seemed more interested in the gnome’s deadly gadget than in helping me.

  I stood in the bath tub in my mother’s suite, where I’d been told to stay so I didn’t get my blood on anything else. Truth be told, the spikes had stopped most of the bleeding, and I hadn’t started gushing until the doctor had helped remove the device from my hands. The bleeding stopped after a few minutes of applied pressure, but the holes remained. I could hold up my hands and look through my pierced hands. I peered through a large hole in my palm at the doctor, who was poking at the star-shaped device on the bathroom counter, and then at my mother, who stood at the doorway with one hand pinching her nose.

  “So much blood,” my mother said, her voice muffled due to her pinched nose. She asked the doctor, “Will my daughter need a transfusion?”

  “She will heal on her own,” the doctor answered without looking up.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said bravely. I made two fists and then opened my hands. “See? The holes are shrinking. I’ll be as good as new in no time. All I need is fluids. Do you have any soda left in the minibar? I’ll take pomegranate if it’s available.”

  “The minibar is empty,” my mother said. “Thanks to you.”

  I smacked my lips and looked pathetic. “Can you get me some from the gift shop? Please? Remember how you used to give me warm ginger ale and soda crackers when I was sick? If you could do that for me now, it would make me feel so much better. Please, Mom?” I grinned. “Mommy?”

  Zirconia Riddle did not like being called Mommy and would do anything to make it stop.

  She dropped her hand away from her nose. “Sure,” she said flatly. “And did you want anything else from the gift shop?”

  “A book of crossword puzzles?”

  “Honestly, Zara, sometimes I can’t tell when you’re joking.”

  “Me neither,” I said, which was the truth.

  After she left, I gave my hands one more rinse under the running faucet, and then stepped out of the tub. The clothes Charlize had sent me were ruined, stained with blood. That was two outfits ruined in two days.

  After the device had shot its spikes into my hands, it had only taken me a minute to get inside the castle—thanks, telekinesis!—and up to the suite. As luck would have it, there’d been a doctor in the house. Dr. Aliyah Ankh had been there visiting with—or checking up on—her patient. Back in the garden, I hadn’t bothered to chase after the gnome, for two reasons. First of all, he’d stomped his foot three times and vanished in a puff of smoke, and I had no way of knowing where his magical smoke tunnel led. And secondly, what would I have done if I had caught him? Bash him over the head with my spiky hands until his eyeballs popped out? The thought had occurred to me.

  The rage and irritation I had been feeling were now redirected at Dr. Ankh. She was still focused on the spiky thing. What kind of a doctor was so coldly unconcerned with a bleeding human? The type who worked at the Department of Water and Magic, apparently.

  “You’re welcome for the new toy,” I said with an icy tone. “Though maybe it should remain my property, and not the department’s. I am the one who nearly got killed by it.”

  She replied lightly, “You were in no real harm.”

  “The giant, gaping holes in my hands might say otherwise.” I held up both hands in demonstration, but then quickly dropped them again. The holes had already closed up. “Never mind,” I said. “I guess I won’t get to do any cool party tricks after all. Spoiler alert, I was going to feed myself pretzel sticks through the holes.”

  The doctor’s lavender eyes flicked up to mine as her large lips curled with amusement. “You should relax for the remainder of the day.”

  “Good advice, doc. What if I need some extra help getting relaxed? Can you get me a prescription for the good stuff?”

  “What would you like?”

  “How about whatever you were giving Josephine Pressman? Just give me whatever was in the mystery pills. The ones that didn’t match the shape of the pills they were supposed to be.”

  All signs of amusement drained off her face. “You know about that.”

  “She wasn’t taking the pills, by the way. She was onto you.” I started stripping off my wet, blood-stained clothes. That’s right. I’m getting changed right in front of you, like an old person at a community center pool. I’m a crazy no-nonsense witch, and I do what I want, where I want! Or maybe I’m just light-headed from all the plasma loss. Who can say? It’s still intimidating though, right?

  The doctor turned away from my nudity. “The pills were simply a placebo,” she said. “They weren’t even vitamins. Just cellulose.”

  “Figured as much.” I hadn’t guessed the pills were placebo at all, but my interaction with Griebel had put me in the mood to pretend I knew everything. “The real treatment was the mind-wiping amber rock, wasn’t it?”

  “That was for her own good. So she didn’t have to suffer.”

  “For her own good. Sure it was.” I dropped my clothes to the floor with a wet slap before reaching for a towel. “I believe they used to shove ice picks into people’s frontal lobes for their own good, too. So those patients didn’t have to suffer from their afflictions.”

  “We did what we could. Treatment options in those days were limited.”

  “Are you serious? Dr. Ankh, how old are you?”

  She turned back to look at me again. “When I said we, I meant the medical establishment. Not me, personally.”

  A likely story.

  I was tucking in the top of my towel when my mother returned. She didn’t have the pomegranate soda I requested. She did, however, have a tall, dark-haired man with her. I rechecked the tuck of my towel and reached for a robe as well. Of course, reaching for the robe made the towel come undone. I used magic to get myself covered up before everyone saw everything. By the look on the man’s face, I hadn’t been quick enough.

  “I ran into your friend Chet,” my mother said to me. “I mean, he says he’s Chet, but how can we be sure?”

  Chet continued to look horrified about seeing a couple of my freckles in the areas where freckles were sparse. It was him, all right.

  “Zara, it’s me,” he said. “Your neighbor.”

  The two of them crowded into the small bathroom.

  “Welcome,” I said with a wave. “I think we could get a few more people in here if we tried. We should call up Knox and Rob, tell them to bring some dates.”

  My mother asked, “Who?”

  “Two other guys who also work at the department,” I explained.

  She blinked at me. “Zara, I’d like to meet more of your friends. I want to be part of your life.”

  “Uh, sure.” I rechecked the closing of my robe.

  Chet looked at my mother, then at Dr. Ankh, who was back to poking the spiky thing, then at me.

  He said, “You shouldn’t have questioned the gnome without backup.” Apparently, someone had filled him in on the afternoon’s excitement.

  My mother cut in. “She had me. I was there as her backup.” She waved a dainty hand and explained to Chet, “I was there via remote, with one of my trained blue jays.”

  He replied, “A tiny bird? That’s not anywhere near adequate backup.” He gave me a stern look. “You could have been killed, and right out in the open, in broad daylight.”

  “You sound more upset about the witness,” I said.

  “You were careless,” he replied.

  My mother let out a low whistle and asked me, “Is he always so bossy like this?”

  “Yes.”


  She looked him up and down. “I like his twin better.”

  Chet clenched his jaw. “That thing is not my twin.”

  She asked, “Then what is he?”

  I chimed in, “Yeah, Chet. If Archer Caine is not your long-lost identical twin, then what is he?”

  Dr. Ankh answered, “He’s a parasitic twin.”

  We all whipped our heads to look at the doctor.

  “You heard me,” she said confidently. “He’s a parasitic twin, and we have evidence.”

  “No way,” I said. “A parasitic twin is, by definition, attached to the host. And I don’t see any Archer-sized lumps sticking out of Chet. If that lookalike were a parasite, he’d be missing major functions. He sure wouldn’t be joining people for lunch.”

  Dr. Ankh dropped a towel over the spiky thing, turned around completely, and fixed her gaze on Chet. “Moore, when was the last time you had a full physical?”

  He puffed out his chest. “I’m in excellent shape.”

  “Take off your clothes and prove it,” she said.

  I looked past him, at my mother. “We should give these two some privacy.”

  She pouted. “But it just got good.” She gripped the doorway, prepared to battle anyone who tried to physically remove her. Fair enough. It was her bathroom. We would all stay and watch Chet get a physical exam.

  He continued to clench his jaw. “I’m not taking off my clothes.”

  “Because you already know,” Dr. Ankh said, her lavender eyes widening. “You know it’s true.”

  My mother and I exchanged a look. This was getting good.

  Dr. Ankh picked up the gnome’s spiky ball, safely contained in a fluffy towel, and nodded for us to follow her out of the bathroom and over to the seating area. My mother and I sat on the sofa while the doctor took the chair. Chet paced around the sofa, refusing to sit.

  The doctor opened her medical bag and took out a metallic cube the size of a Rubik’s cube. She set it on the credenza at the side of the room and then took a seat on the chair across from us. Chet continued to pace.

  “That’s a projector,” Chet said to us. To the doctor, he said, “It’s not cleared for use outside of the lab.”

  She had a handheld device, bigger than a phone, and was looking at the screen. “One minute and I will present my evidence regarding the parasitic twin.”

  My mother leaned forward, resting her chin on her palms girlishly. “Aliyah, what is a parasitic twin?”

  The doctor looked up at her. “You know how everyone has a dark side? The parasitic twin is theorized to be your dark side, come to life.”

  I sensed an opportunity to cut the tension in the room. “Then you must be wrong, because Chet Moore doesn’t have a dark side. Unless you count hiding zucchini inside innocent chocolate cake.”

  Nobody reacted to my joke.

  Dr. Ankh watched Chet as he paced the room behind the sofa. “He did make short work of my predecessor, Dr. Bhamidipati.” She looked directly at me. “I believe everyone called him Dr. Bob.”

  She was right. Chet had torn Dr. Bob to shreds. Feathered shreds. Chet Moore did have a dark side.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He was protecting me. And his fiancée.”

  “He had full backup in the room, and he made the kill.” She looked down at her phone screen again. “As a matter of fact, I have the footage.”

  Behind me, Chet growled. “There is no footage,” he said.

  “That’s what they told you,” she said. “Or at least that’s what your friend who tried to erase the files told you.”

  Chet fell quiet. Eerily quiet. He was as still as a statue.

  “Relax,” Dr. Ankh said. “This is good news.”

  Nobody moved or spoke. I was barely breathing.

  Dr. Ankh went on. “Chet Moore, you are not responsible for whatever your parasitic twin is doing or has done. Don’t you see? This exonerates you.”

  There was a whirring sound in the hush of the room. All of us turned to see a blue rectangle the dimensions of a wide-screen television on the wall, being projected from the little box.

  We watched as the blue became the interior of a room, as seen from the ceiling. The resolution and crispness of the image was so perfect, it was though a portal had opened up and we were seeing into another reality.

  “And here comes Zara,” Dr. Ankh said.

  My head felt dizzy as I watched myself enter from a door at the corner of the room. The recording was so crisp, I could almost smell the cleaning products and dust in the hospital room.

  And then the action started.

  Chapter 30

  The time stamp on the security footage read 11:59 p.m. when Dr. Bhamidipati, also known as Dr. Bob, arrived and took a leisurely stroll around the foot of a comatose patient’s bed. The young woman lay motionless yet radiant, still beautiful despite the abuse she’d suffered.

  The third person in the underground hospital ward was me, seated next to the bed with a strange crown on my head. I also had, in a plastic bag, a rather convincing fake bloody eyeball. I was dressed in black leather and ready for battle.

  Dr. Bob and I started our showdown with verbal sparring. The security footage Dr. Ankh was playing for us also had sound, and it filled the room. I listened with everyone else, surprised by how much less dramatic the whole thing seemed on the recording. But then, it wasn’t a Hollywood movie with multiple closeups and special effects. It was just me, trying to bluff the evil doctor into admitting to his evil plans. Which he did. After some prodding with my balls of lightning, some gunplay, and finally a cheap yet effective use of my telekinesis. Basically, I was the puppet master using a comatose woman’s body as my puppet. It did serve its intended purpose as a distraction, but that didn’t make the visual of the woman’s hands lifting under the hospital sheet any less eerie.

  At that point in the footage, Dr. Ankh hit the pause button. “The first time I saw this, I thought the patient truly was waking up.”

  My mother said, “When Zarabella sets her mind to a task, she’s excellent.”

  Chet grunted. He was still pacing the room like a caged wolf. “Keep going,” he said.

  The department’s new doctor resumed playback, and we watched as her predecessor made a deadly mistake. When Chet came through the door, along with his backup of Rob and Knox, the doctor shifted into his giant bird form. The bird tore into the air, its enormous wings creating a windstorm inside the room. He smacked noisily against the ceiling, and his enormous wingspan in front of the ceiling’s security camera blocked part of the view of the room.

  I didn’t need to see what happened to feel the horror. I’d gotten the doctor’s gun, and I fired at the bird as it attacked me. It was self-defense, and I shouldn’t have felt guilty, but I still jerked in pain at the sound of each shot.

  My mother elbowed me and whispered for me to pay attention.

  I opened my eyes wider and watched as the surveillance footage showed me something I hadn’t seen that night.

  “This is slowed down,” Dr. Ankh said. “One third speed. Should I go slower?”

  I waved for her to not touch a thing, and I shifted forward on my seat. Then I got to my feet and walked over to the wall, careful not to break the projection beam coming from the cube.

  “Back it up to before the wolf jumps,” I said, and the doctor did.

  We all watched in silence.

  Chet, who had shifted into wolf form seconds earlier, jumped at the giant bird who was bearing down on me. As he soared through the air, he split into two. It had seemed at first to be a trick of the light, a shadow, but there was nothing for the shadow to be reflecting on. There were two wolves. Chet and his parasitic twin. Working together, the two wolves tore apart the bird like it was a toy.

  I couldn’t trust my memory of that chaotic night, but seeing the crisp image on the screen was believing. Instead of two monsters tangling in a mess of fur and feathers, teeth and talons, there were three. No wonder Chessa’s bare legs had tak
en some deep scratches that night.

  And, in reviewing the footage and watching for glimpses of myself, it was no wonder I hadn’t witnessed the wolf splitting in two. I’d had my hand over my eyes for the gory climax of the battle. I hadn’t truly looked again until the noises had stopped. By then, Knox and Rob had the bird and the two wolves surrounded. Except there was only one wolf, and a shadow that might have been a wolf but was only a shadow now.

  In the castle suite, as well as in the surveillance video, everyone was so silent that I heard the soft thwack of the handgun hitting my ankle on its way to clatter on the floor.

  The light in the room brightened, and that was when Chessa really did wake up. I watched with a clenched jaw as she, the victim, actually offered me comfort. And then, finally, I let out a laugh of relief when Rob complained about the unfairness of getting hit by a stray bullet despite being the smallest member of the team.

  We watched the footage a dozen times. After turning into wolf form, he became two wolves, tore the bird apart, and then, while some stray feathers blocked the view from the camera, he must have turned back into a single being.

  “I didn’t feel any of that happen,” Chet said from where he was pacing a hole in the floor. “If this were real, and I split in two, I would have felt something.” He directed an expression of disgust at the doctor and then the silver cube. “This is fake.”

  “You can ask your friends,” Dr. Ankh said. “Your associate in the data department retrieved and verified the footage herself.”

  Chet shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”

  “The science is all theoretical, at least until we can do testing, but it does add up,” Dr. Ankh said. “That night, you were surging with natural chemicals. You experienced heightened emotions, not to mention adrenaline, over protecting the love of your life. You would have done anything to save Chessa. In fact, you loved her so much, you tore yourself in two.”

  He looked down at the floor. “But I didn’t stay split in two,” he said. “Only one of me walked out.”