The woman practically leapt across the threshold and yanked on the sleeve of Saff’s leather jacket. “My son. I know what this is. I’ve seen it before. I…” She stopped and looked at her, really studied Saffyranae’s features, especially her eyes. The woman took a step back and held a chain of worry beads between her hands. “I know what you are.” She turned to Mary and added in broken English. “That one… so much magic.”
Mary nodded. “Ma’am, are you Mrs. Shraklis? We’re looking for Damien. He loaded stock at Annette’s where I worked, and he did odd jobs for Desmond, I think. We think he was exposed to something there.”
Mrs. Shraklis clenched the worry beads so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Both… you both.”
Saff shook her head and held up her rucksack. She continued to address the old woman in her native tongue. “Never. We’re trying to fix what was done to your son, what happened because of the magic stolen from my clan. Please, let us help.”
The older woman glanced at Mary and then scurried back into the room, clearing the way for them at the doorway. “Upstairs,” she said in English. Mary rushed up the stairs first. Saff followed and, as she passed by Mrs. Shraklis, the old woman addressed her once more. “What’s in him is bad, twisted.”
“I know. We’re going to stop this. The stolen magic only belongs in my world. It’s killing both by being here, and I’m doing my best.”
“Dragons are terrifying.”
She grinned, showing her bright, white teeth. “Only to those who have wronged us. We have the cure, and we will save your son. I am sorry for all that has befallen you.”
Saff waited no longer as she followed Mary to the room at the far end of the hallway. The stench of smoke hit her nostrils before she passed the threshold. Damien Shraklis, what was left of him, huddled in a corner of the room. Everything around him was nothing but ash. His mattress was charred to cinders, his furniture kindling, some of it actively being lapped by flames. She stayed still at the corner of the room as her powers would dim the closer she grew to the fire. Passing the back to Mary, Saff gestured to Damien.
“You have to administer the cure this time. I cannot do it.”
“Why? You’re the hero. I’m just the fill-in until we find Minerva for the assist.”
“Flames and ice never mix. The draught’s container is enchanted. He cannot burn it.”
“Can he hurt me?”
She pressed her hand against Mary’s shoulder. “You will be alright. Be fast, but he’s still there. I can sense him beneath the surface.” She turned her attention to the burbling mass of sores and blackened veins before her. “He needs help, and he does not have much time before he is beyond what we can do.”
Mary turned and slid closer to Damien.
He startled, and his hand grazed the remains of the curtains behind him. They ignited immediately, and Saff fell to her knees.
“Mary, I can’t,” she wheezed. “Put it out.”
Mary frowned but lunged for the last scrap of cloth in the room and then rushed toward the curtain. Damien still burbled and creaked on what was left of the floor beneath him but didn’t reach for her. By this point, he’d be deep into hallucinations, unsure of what was even real. Mary patted out the flames, smothering them and then raced back for the vial. It wasn’t a great arrangement, but at least Saff could stand again, although the occasional sparks and flames flickered in Damien’s palms, threatening to leach her powers all over again.
She stood tall and swallowed. “Please, we’re not here to hurt you. We can help.”
Damien skittered back, muscles popping and viscera sloshing as he did. Whatever he managed to grunt out was no language Saff knew. It probably only made sense to his addled mind.
Mary held the vial before her and mimed drinking it. “It saved me. Please take it.”
Saff nodded and, although it was a chore in this shape with fire near, she pushed her thoughts out toward Damien, who’d been so twisted unfairly by the magic no human speech could reach him. To cut through the hallucinations, it had to be mind-to-mind. It is all right. This will cure you.
Damien flicked his head toward her and then at Mary. Reaching out one pulsing hand, he snatched the vial and brought it to a mouth slicked with oozing blackness. Taking a deep draught, he drained the vial and then fell back on the floor. He bucked and writhed as the elixir took effect, the power of it racking over his veins and siphoning off the diseased magic from him. His feet kicked against the carpet beneath him with a dull thud, and his body shrank, the pustules that had been present and filled with inky darkness slurping back into his skin as if they’d never been there.
When he sat up, he looked ordinary again, like any human. His eyes were wild and searching the room, and he was still pale beneath his olive skin tone, but he had nothing left of the magic infecting him.
“Mary?” he asked. “Did Desmond send you? Because if he did, what the fuck is he selling over there?”
Saff strode forward now that the threat of fire was fully banished and helped Damien to his feet. He leaned heavily on her, and the weight of this full-grown man felt imminently lighter than the vials of cure she’d been distributing.
“Do you have the merchandise here?” Mary asked.
“No… I’m not a buyer, Mary. You know that. I was just delivering product for them, like always. Christ.” Damien rubbed his forehead. “How did you… I… It’s fuzzy, but you talked to me. I heard it in my head. I was lost in a nightmare, but I heard you.”
Mary nodded and set her hands on her hips. “She saved you.”
Damien considered that, his eyes studying her own. “You’re a hero.”
Saff smiled, for once understanding why humans faked how they felt. Damien had just been through the deepest hell, and he needed the reassurance. The expression was for his sake, had never been for hers. “Thank you. Everything is going to be all right now.”
If I’m such a hero, why can’t I find Minerva? Why can’t I be her hero?
28
Minerva
Minerva sputtered and leaned back on the pile of towels and ancient, moth-eaten sheets the dick squad had left her to sleep on. The first two days had been hell. They’d started with waterboarding: dunking her head in a cold bucket of water and leaving here there longer and longer until her lungs burned. The so-called specialist (of sadism, apparently) dunked her until she thought she’d die, until visions of her abuela and her extended family flashed before her eyes.
But she hadn’t cracked. Part of her knew that was insane. In the last few weeks, she’d been attacked almost a half dozen times, had her arm slashed so badly only dragon intervention could save it, and been poisoned by a magical plague that literally rotted people from the inside out. She’d only promised to help Saff find information from the Douche about her one egg.
When had she become a martyr?
Except she hadn’t. Not exactly. Not through the bucket two days ago or the damn needles slipped under her fingernails yesterday. She was scared, and she was more than a little bitter that the Dragon Council Grand Poohbahs had talked through her, as if she weren’t there. But she’d bonded somehow to that first egg, felt that little girl’s heart beat in time with her own. It had gutted her to see it grey and dead in the tub. Just as it tore through her to see the pain on her friend’s face as she agonized over the fates of her other fellow dragons and potential shaman siblings.
Minerva wasn’t indifferent to suffering like that; it wasn’t how her grandmother raised her. Nor was it what the Mariposas, those heroines of legend back in the Dominican Republic, would have done. She was named for one of them, and until Saff had whisked into her life, the bravest thing Minerva had ever done was survive on the street and struggle to be true to herself.
Minerva knew she could be selfish. She could be a coward, definitely. Her main Plan B since she’d left home was to cut and run. Scrape and survive. Look out for herself, and no one else. Still, maybe it was her vanity making excuses, but Mine
rva wasn’t just a thief, and she wasn’t so selfish and amoral that the plight of children being bought, sold, and neglected literally to death didn’t move her.
And it all circles back to Saff.
* * *
It shouldn’t have affected her as deeply, the dragon’s judgment of her talent with the five-fingered discount and her casual relationship with the truth. But it did. Now that they’d grown into friends, Minerva desperately wanted to prove herself to the partner who’d repeatedly saved her life. Wearily, she looked down at where her fingers were still swollen and blood crusted around her nailbeds. Would this count enough?
Jeez, where was Saff? Not that Nerv wanted to fall into the habit of being a damsel in distress, but she missed her dragon with the icy bright scales and judgmental looks. Maybe they’d cloaked the derelict old house she was kept in with magic. Maybe Saff was going crazy looking for her. Then again…
Maybe that cranky asshole red dragon had yanked Saff from this assignment.
Minerva hadn’t wanted to think that, not after all they’d been through together, but it was becoming clear that if she wanted out of this situation, she was going to have to deal with it on her own.
Like she always had before.
“You could’ve found a less dramatic way to figure out you’re lonely and want to change,” Minerva muttered to herself. “Mental help is just a phone call away these days.”
Chuck looked at her curiously. Minerva flashed him a cheery smile.
“Just goin’ crazy,” she said.
“Okay. Good?”
Minerva whistled a little. “That might describe my last three weeks. All the crazy shit I’ve been elbows deep in, and I’m not one hundred percent sure it’s all real.”
Chuck surprised her by leaning against the door he was guarding and crossing his arms over his chest. Like Nate, the head guy around here, the one who’d been in the hoodie three days ago, Chuck was ripped. Probably another gym buddy. Had they gotten mixed up with egg dealing after just dealing steroids? How did a group of guys who looked like they might be law school age, at best, get into something this fucked up? His moss green eyes focused on her with surprising intensity and he let out a small sigh.
“That sounds like my life.”
“Are we talking now?” she asked.
“I could go back to stonewalling you.”
“No, if it’s quiet, then I have time to worry, to think about the next session,” she said. Minerva held her hands up for him as if Chuck hadn’t already seen her fingers.
He flinched and let out a low whistle. “I can’t… When that damn specialist comes in, there’s no way I can watch it.”
“Do you want a thank you?”
He raked a hand through blond curls. “I’m not like the others.”
“You’re the one guarding me basically all the time except when Nate takes watch himself or that asshole with the torture kit stops by. You know, my abuela always said that evil could be passive too. She left her home because so many people were looking away, and she couldn’t stay there anymore.”
“But I’m not the one dunking you or…” he flailed at the last part.
“Shoving hot needles up my fingernails?” she reminded him with an edge in her voice. He didn’t get to hide from this when he was the one blocking the doorway.
Chuck looked down at his sneakers. “I didn’t know about that.”
“Don’t get a daily playbook?”
He slid down the door and came to rest with his legs crossed in front of him. “I didn’t ask.”
“If you say you were ‘just taking orders,’ then I have to tell you that it’s the typical bad guy answer number two. Essentially what Nazi soldiers and scientists tended to say to get out of their war crimes trials. Passive evil can still be big ass evil.”
“You don’t know my life story, Minnie.”
“Minerva,” she corrected. “I’m not a mouse.”
“Minerva, you think you’re the only one all this magic crap has touched?”
“So, we’re admitting it is about the eggs?”
“It doesn’t matter what you try and hide, and I mean literally. Today the Specialist is bringing out the magic, the mystical equivalent of truth serum. I overheard Nate talking to The Boss about it upstairs. Everything’s taking too long.”
Minerva stilled, feeling the harsh thumping of her heart and sweat pooling at her temples that had nothing to do with the temperate California weather. “What?”
“You have been knocking things way off schedule for him here or that’s what Nate’s always ranting about. They’re not going to play around with you so, yeah, let’s just be honest. We’re both two average people who got shoved deep into crazy, dragon-caused bullshit.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, and I don’t care about any of this.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, cradling one injured hand in the other. Her right was doing better than her left. The fingers on her left were so sore, she could barely feel anything when she touched their tips. Good thing she wasn’t a southpaw. “It won’t change the fact you’re about to ruin my life, probably get me killed. You know after I have to magically confess all the things, they’re not going to just let me leave, don’t you?”
Chuck looked back down at his hands. “Maybe, you’ll be okay. Nate said…”
“Nate’s the last person I’d trust. Sure, dude, tell me all your sins, confess and be forgiven. I don’t have a habit to wear, but maybe I can improvise.”
“I get it already. I’m scum.”
Minerva stilled. She wasn’t going to start nursing some random bit of whatever that was called, that thing where you sympathized with her captors. Saphold Syndrome? Something like that. But she was curious as hell to know how three frat looking dudes were in the middle of this.
Besides, she of all people should know that everyone had a deeper story. Chuck was going to let her hang, but he was probably not a complete monster, possibly, any more than she was just a thief.
Nate though?
Total American Psycho.
“So how did you get caught up with the Gym Bunny Magic Thug Parade?”
“My dad’s a producer. He used to do well on a TV show back like fifteen years ago, but the show ended, and he had a few flops. He wanted to keep up with the supply he was getting, you know?”
“Supply?”
“Dad had a drug habit, some weird designer shit he was on, and then he owed some very bad people a fuckton of favors.”
Minerva nodded. She bet the cost to have your very own egg was steep, made buying a massive blinged out diamond seem easy in contrast. “He what?”
“He owed money to The Boss, and that guy threatened to send men who make the Specialist seem like a masseuse. Dad bargained, said I could be good muscle since I was a good-sized guy, and that’s how I got here. I don’t want to do this, to stand outside a door and hear you scream, but if I don’t, it’ll be my dad instead.”
“You really love him?” she asked. “He’s using you. He traded your future for his sorry ass.”
The bitterness crept into her voice, most of it had nothing to do with the guy sitting a few feet from her. Parents. It was so messed up. She’d tried to please hers, to be good. Okay, they’d always been so different, and she’d been more like her abuela, but they had still been a family. Then, they’d come home early from a back-to-school thing and found her making out with Talia, her lab partner. Nothing had been fine after that.
If they put pressure on her to make that kind of trade today, she’d tell them both to go to hell. Not that she was ever likely to see them again.
Good.
Chuck finally spoke, and she assumed it had taken him a while to figure out his answer. She was shocked it was a debate at all. “He’s my dad. He’s messed up so much, but he was there for me. It’d affect my mom too and my sister. Shit, my sister has no idea any of this is going on and she’s twelve. If I do what these people want—”
/> “Menace who they want.”
“Yeah, guess you can say it like that.”
“Just did.”
“If I do all that, then my sister stays safe. My mom. Yeah, it sucks for me, but I can do that, I can make those choices.”
She arched an eyebrow at him and held up her left hand. “Even when you can hear someone screaming a floor or two away? Can you make that?”
* * *
Chuck stood and looked toward the door. “I have to.”
Minerva hopped to her feet. “You make this choice. They’re going to kill me. Will you still be telling yourself that when you’re the one throwing my body out or digging a pit?”
The words almost caught in her throat, but she had to keep the focus. Her silver tongue had saved her before and, this time, none of this was a lie. It was the inevitable, the price she’d pay for violating The Big Boss.
He rubbed at the back of his head and eyed the door and then her. “I can’t… I…”
“Can you sleep ever again through the night if you let me die?” Minerva scurried across the room and gripped Chuck’s hand in her right one. “Please, look in my eyes. Tell me you can just look away.” He froze and tried to look away, to focus on the bars on the window, but she wouldn’t let him. Minerva yanked on his hand. “No, you don’t get to condemn me and not even look! Please, help me.”
Chuck pulled away but nodded. “Alright! I can give you a ten-minute head start. I’ll unlock the door, but that’s the best I can do.”
Minerva bit her tongue. The sharpness of the pain kept her from saying something snarky about how generous he was being. Deep down, she still felt Chuck was being chickenshit about so many things, that it was sad to know he’d still be working with these assholes. Then again, she’d never had a sister, so she didn’t know how she’d react if she needed to protect her.
If it was her abuela’s life on the line though, she’d have done anything, too.
He slunk over and unlocked the door. Minerva hesitated for a second and then took a running start at a side wall. She wasn’t exactly a Parkour master, but she could get the leverage she needed. She hit the far wall and deflected with her jump back toward Chuck, got enough air, to be able to hit his chin with her balled fist.
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