No Sanctuary

by Z. J. Cannon

  My hearing snapped on all at once. The buzzing drone of fluorescent lights filled my ears. Then footsteps, and a dull scraping sound, like a body being dragged across the floor. I didn’t know how I was so familiar with what that sounded like. Or why I had the sudden and complete conviction that the body was mine.

  But I couldn’t tell which parts of me, if any, were touching the floor. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t even be sure I had a body at all.

  “I told you I wanted this subtle,” a voice snapped.

  Synapses fired, trying to respond to a threat I didn’t understand. That voice meant danger. It meant I couldn’t let myself look vulnerable.

  I tried to move. But all I felt in response to my efforts was an intense heaviness, like gravity had grown ten times as strong. It was an improvement over a second ago, when I hadn’t been able to feel anything at all. Or maybe not. Feeling meant I had a body. Bodies could be hurt. Bodies could die. And my body was much too close to the owner of that dangerous voice.

  Another voice swept over me, calming my fevered thoughts. “Still not feeling well? It’s all right. It will pass.” The woman wasn’t speaking English. I didn’t know what she was speaking. But I remembered the shape of the words, as clearly as I remembered that she was my mother.

  Her hand came down on my forehead, pleasantly cool. Her low voice crooned a wordless song.

  And then her voice was gone, and the other one—the dangerous one—was back. “My shipment is gone, and with it, the considerable amount of money I invested in this venture. And now the police have a crime to investigate. You could at least have left his body, and given them someone to blame this on. But no, now they’ll be looking for answers.”

  Another voice, full of nerves, answered. “Even dead, I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t come after us. I told you, he’s some kind of demon. We need to cut off its head or something. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about demons.” On the last word, his voice broke, spiraling toward hysteria.

  “There’s one bit of wisdom in that babble of yours,” said JD—that was the name that went with the voice, I knew that now, although I still didn’t know what those two letters meant. Something about a creature with one eye. “We’re certainly going to have to be thorough in disposing of his body now that you’ve brought it here. So much for throwing the police off the scent. When we’re done with him, I’ll need to decide whether it’s worth keeping you around, as well. You’re as much of a liability as he is—more so, since you still have breath in your lungs to talk.”

  “I’ll fix this.” The nervous voice sounded even more nervous now. “I can call up my great-aunt. She’s the most superstitious person I know. Crosses herself whenever she sees a black cat.”

  “You’re not calling anyone.” JD’s voice was ice. “And I don’t want to hear another word about demons. Take the body downstairs. Give it an acid bath. I don’t want anything left that could be identified.”

  “I’m telling you, there’s something not right about him. Look at his ears!”

  My sense of touch switched on all at once, forcibly slamming me back into my body. Underneath me, I felt cold tile. My hand pulsed with a throbbing pain so big I was surprised my skull hadn’t burst with the effort to contain it. And underneath all that, soft as a whisper, a hand pushed back my hair, exposing a single ear to the air.

  My stomach clenched, reminding me that the rest of my body still existed, even if it was hard to think beyond the imminent explosion in my head. A human seeing my ears—that was bad. I remembered that much. I just didn’t remember why.

  And I still couldn’t breathe.

  My hair fell back into place. “I don’t need to look at his ears, or any other part of him. He’s dead. That’s all that matters. Now get rid of him. I want to put this error in judgment behind me as quickly as possible.”

  Quick on the heels of the knowledge that I had a stomach came the reminder that I also had lungs. Once again, my brain started screaming for air. I could feel my chest now; I just couldn’t make it move.

  I was slipping under the water again. Watching the light disappear.

  My neurons fired at random. A slideshow of memories passed across my vision.

  My mother again, humming her lullaby.

  A little girl aiming a gun at my face.

  A different girl, older, sitting cross-legged in front of a laptop. Her fingernails were painted with smiley faces.

  Then I was on a different floor, this one made of rough wood. I was staring up at a woman with flame-red hair and pointed ears like mine. “You came back,” she said, staring down at me like I was a pet who had mastered a difficult trick. “You didn’t warn me you could do that.”

  “I might have, if you had told me you were planning on killing me.” I didn’t feel my lips move, but I knew the voice was mine. But it didn’t seem to match the situation. Instead of angry or afraid, I sounded almost… was I flirting with that woman? The one I had just accused of killing me? I frowned.

  “Did he just… move?” the nervous voice asked, back in the present.

  “If your superstitions have rendered you incapable of performing this simple task, let me know, and I’ll happily take care of it myself.” Despite his words, JD sounded anything but happy.

  “No, I’ve got it,” the nervous voice assured him. “It was just my imagination.” My body—I still couldn’t quite think of it as me—started scraping along the floor again.

  My brain kept cycling through the same memories, faster and faster. I had done this before. I knew it, even if I couldn’t remember it. It happened after every brain injury, as my neural connections regrew.

  But why did my brain need to regrow in the first place? What had happened?

  The sound of a gunshot, cut off halfway as my hearing blinked out. A bullet flying straight at me.

  The girl had killed me. The girl I had been trying to protect.

  That was the way it always happened.

  And with that, I knew who I was.

  I sucked in air.

  The owner of the nervous voice gasped. “Did you see that? You must have seen that.”

  I felt my eyes open. But all I saw was blackness. My optic nerve must not have reconnected to the rest of my brain yet. My lungs started burning again, and I realized I hadn’t taken a second breath. I could move the muscles now, but the reflex wasn’t back yet. I forced air in and out with a manual breath, then another.

  My stomach lurched as my body suddenly tilted down. My head lost contact with the floor, then slammed back down again hard—which did nothing to help with the pain. I was surprised my skull didn’t burst right then and there. I grunted.

  “Just my imagination,” the nervous voice muttered. “Just my imagination.”

  My lungs weren’t burning anymore. I was finally breathing on my own. Good—that freed me up to attempt to regain control of my body. I tried to tense my muscles. Nothing happened. My head thunked down again.

  This time, my grunt was more like a moan. I had to get control of my limbs before that horrible motion started up again, or else maybe my head really would burst. I reached my consciousness out toward my muscles again—and my hands clenched into fists.

  My legs kicked out. My arms flailed. The nervous voice let out an undignified shriek.

  The sound made me involuntarily clap my newly-awakened hands to my ears. It also jump-started the last connection between my eyes and my brain. My vision clicked on like a light switch. I was lying on a set of concrete stairs, staring up at a diagonal ceiling. In front of me, I saw one of the lackeys who had accompanied me to the port. He was the owner of the nervous voice. And it looked like he had been dragging me down to the basement, on JD’s orders.

  What was it JD had said? An acid bath?

  Finding out whether I could come back from having my entire body dissolved would be an interesting experiment. An experiment I had no interest in conducting. I tried to marshal my scrambled synapses enough to get to my feet.
I managed to pull my legs in closer to my chest, sending myself down another step in the process. Which, of course, made my head thunk down again. I had forgotten to regain control of my neck muscles. This time, when the back of my head made contact with the concrete, I nearly screamed.

  Now I remembered the reason I avoided head injuries at all costs. Coming back from drowning or burning was bad enough. Feeling my own neurons regrow one by one, all the while trapped in a half-conscious brain that barely understood what was happening… that was a whole different circle of hell.

  “Enough,” snapped a voice from above me. “If you can’t control your childish fears enough to do what needs to be done—” JD’s voice abruptly cut off.

  Finally, I scrambled to my feet. My legs wobbled under me like I was a baby deer. My head lolled to one side. Belatedly, I remembered I could control my own neck, and straightened it. I blinked, and blinked again, until my vision righted itself.

  JD was standing at the top of the stairs, staring down at me with a wide-eyed look that completely undid the impression of utter control he had tried to project during our conversation. Below me was one of the lackeys, with an identical expression on his face—and under it, I thought, a tiny bit of vindictive triumph. Well, it did serve JD right, after how certain he had been that the lackey was just being a superstitious idiot.

  I could have told them I had more reason to be afraid than either of them. There were two of them, and only one of me. A single bullet could put me right back in the state I had arrived here in. And a quick glance told me they were both carrying guns, while I had no way to—

  I stopped midthought as a familiar heat spilled out from my core and raced through my veins. Because that thought wasn’t entirely accurate, was it? I did have a way to defend myself.

  But of course, my magic was as off-balance as the rest of me. Not to mention, I had just used up a good portion of my magical energy coming back to life. My body’s healing power didn’t come from nowhere. Chances were I still had enough to deal with two humans, though. As long as I could reorient myself enough for my magic to figure out what to do.

  Magical heat bled out through my fingertips. A subtle gust of wind rustled my clothes and shook my hair. Of course it was wind. Even now, in this state, the one thing I couldn’t forget was Hawthorne.

  The wind picked up speed. It spun in a tight circle around me. But it didn’t spread out, didn’t go anywhere near JD or the lackey.

  The lackey reached for his gun. “Do you see?” he shrieked. He wasn’t bothering to try to impress JD anymore. “Do you see what he is?”

  When I looked over my shoulder. JD already had his gun out, pointed straight at me. His eyes were still wide, but his hands were steady. “It doesn’t matter what he is. We’re armed. He’s not. And that thing has already died once tonight.”

  I willed my magic out, trying to push the power up the stairs to tear the gun from JD’s hands. But in my current state, I had forgotten something crucial—that trying to control my power only ever sent it further out of my control. It spun faster and faster, until it lifted me off the ground.

  “So you can fly,” said JD. “Impressive. It’s too bad you couldn’t do the one thing I asked.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 19

  The wind caught the bullet and spun it away. It ricocheted off the walls and landed with a click at the bottom of the stairs.

  My magic jerked and stuttered. The wind stuttered along with it. I landed hard on the stairs, and barely kept my balance. The wind started to sweep out toward JD, then pulled back.

  I cursed. Of all the things to take forever to come back online after my death, it had to be my magic this time. Anything else would have been better. I could have dealt with not being able to see, or hear, or move, as long as I had my magic to protect me. As it was, this was going to be my second-shortest interval between deaths in seven hundred years.

  JD fired again. This time, the bullet left his gun just as my magic paused again. It tore into my thigh and out the other side, narrowly missing the bone. I bellowed and jerked forward. I tried to catch myself, but lost my footing, and tumbled headfirst down the stairs.

  My magic, confused as it was, didn’t catch me the way it easily could have. Instead, the wind helped gravity along by slamming into my back at the exact wrong moment. I skipped three steps, and landed on the next facefirst. I slid the rest of the way down, my leg on fire, my face nothing but pain. I couldn’t breathe through my nose anymore. I was pretty sure it was broken.

  I supposed I should count myself lucky that I hadn’t snapped my neck in the fall. On the other hand, if I had, it would have spared me the pain of the slide, not to mention the indignity of landing in a heap at the nervous lackey’s feet. I tried to get to my feet, but my sense of smell had just come online, treating me to the sharp, musty odor of stale basement. That part of my brain was doing so much work, rebuilding one connection after another at lightning speed, that I lost the ability to move my legs again.

  Have I mentioned I hate brain injuries?

  The wind could easily have lifted me to my feet. Instead, it tore a long strip off my shirt and sent it fluttering away into the dark basement.

  JD followed me down the stairs, footsteps slow and heavy. When I looked up, he had his gun aimed at my head, but he didn’t fire again. It looked like he wanted to make absolutely certain he didn’t miss this time.

  His hesitation would have been a golden opportunity for me, if only I could have remembered how to use my limbs. As if the mere thought had been enough, my left leg came to life. But my right wouldn’t follow. When I tried to put my weight on it, a bright scream of pain shot through my entire body. An actual scream tore from my mouth half a second later.

  Right. The brain injury wasn’t the only reason I couldn’t get to my feet.

  The lackey was busy propelling himself as fast as he could back into the darkness while still sitting. It looked like he had forgotten how to stand, too. And that he was armed.

  But that didn’t matter. JD had found more than enough courage for both of them. He stepped down onto the basement floor, and wrinkled his nose as the toe of his well-shined shoes landed in a puddle of my blood. He crouched down beside me and placed the barrel of his gun up against my temple.

  Two gunshots to the head in one day. Wasn’t I lucky? I let out a quiet chuckle, garbled by my broken nose. What else could I do? The sudden return of my sense of smell had disrupted my magic as well as my ability to stand—either that, or my power had simply given up. The wind wasn’t even ruffling my hair anymore.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the gunshot. I wondered if I would hear it.

  A gust of wind burst up and out. The gun flew out of JD’s hands. He landed hard on the floor in a sitting position. The lackey skidded another couple of feet back—not under his own power this time. He hit a wall with a thud and a cry of pain. I didn’t hear him get back up again. I was pretty sure he was still breathing, but I didn’t spend too much attention trying to verify it. I had a more urgent threat to attend to.

  JD scrambled for the gun. Before his hand could close around it, the wind bent his arm back at an unnatural angle. The bone cracked. He screamed, high and shrill.

  At the sound of that scream, my magic froze.

  It wasn’t just that the wind stopped moving. The heat in my veins froze. The liquid fire hardened into what felt like sharp crystals piercing my veins in a hundred places. I had to look down at my body, and verify my skin wasn’t turning purple all over with internal bleeding, to convince myself it was an illusion.

  But my magic stopping—that was no illusion.

  JD and I looked at each other. Even as he cradled his wounded arm to his chest, a little of the fear left his eyes.

  I looked from him to the gun, trying to spur my magic back into action. Danger, I told the deeper part of myself—that was the closest I could get to directing my magic without it rebelling on me. Human. Threat.

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nbsp; But those words sent me straight back to Hawthorne. Back to the moment when I had sent my magic loose in the middle of downtown, knowing what it would do to every human nearby. Those had been the only thoughts in my mind back then. Humans. Threats. In that moment, every human on the planet had felt like a threat.

  This wasn’t Hawthorne. And JD wasn’t some innocent human minding his own business in an apartment building my magic was about to bring down around him. I flexed my right leg, just to force another burst of pain up through it. Just to remind myself what JD had done to me.

  The wind still didn’t come back to life. JD’s other hand started inching toward his gun.

  I wasn’t the only one he had hurt, I reminded myself. I closed my eyes and pictured the shipping container. The children inside. That had happened on his orders. As strongly as I could, I called up the memories of their cries.

  My clothes fluttered against my skin. When I opened my eyes, JD’s clothes were rippling too. The wind spun around him, and bent his fingers back just enough to serve as a warning when he reached for the gun.

  The fear in his eyes switched back on, just like that.

  “I don’t know what you are, but we can make a deal.” His voice stayed steady, but I could hear the effort it took.

  I opened my mouth—but no words came out. I realized I didn’t know what I was about to say. Half of me was poised to growl, No deals for child-sellers, and wait for my magic to rip him apart. But the other half… the other half was ready to say, Set up that meeting with Ellison, and we’ll talk.

  I couldn’t trust myself to force down my moral qualms and make the necessary compromises. I couldn’t trust myself not to.

  My magic thrashed through the room, unbalanced, unfocused. The wind screamed. In the distance, something fell with a metallic crash.

  JD jerked. His hand jumped back to his lap. “You came to me for a reason.” His voice wasn’t steady anymore. “I have something you want. You won’t get it if you hurt me.”