by D. N. Hoxa
My ears were full of the sound of my heavy breathing.
My hand covered my mouth when my lips stretched into a smile.
It worked. Holy cow, it worked!
Just as the thought filled up my head and heart, everything came back to me again, full force.
The people continued to walk. The cars continued to drive.
And my parent’s blue Mercedes went right through me.
Too shocked to even scream, I turned around and watched the horror happen right in front of my eyes, my mouth wide open. The blue Mercedes was hit by a white car, just slightly at the back. My father lost control of the wheel. The car turned toward the abandoned ice cream truck at the corner of the street. Another car on the other side of the road. My father had nowhere else to turn.
He crashed against the truck.
I’d read the story so many times in the old newspapers I found online, but nothing I’d imagined came even close to the real thing. The way the car’s wheels screeched. The sound it made when it hit the truck. The screams of the people around as they rushed to it.
The feeling in my chest.
I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save my parents. They crashed into the truck, just like the first time. They both broke their necks on impact. Time of death: 22:13.
Something exploded in my chest when I caught sight of a digital clock mounted on top of a store door to my left. 22:13. My parents’ deaths never broke me because I didn’t remember them. I didn’t remember their faces, their scent, their smiles. But now that I saw the accident happen and I could do nothing to stop it, every part of me shattered.
A scream tore from my throat.
With it, bright green flames swallowed everything around me whole, almost completely at once. I only had two seconds to watch everything burn, the buildings, the people, the cars…
My eyes popped open and I was in front of the conductors again.
***
“Thank you for your time, Miss Vaughn. Please wait here until Mr. Ross comes for you,” Cecilia Chambers said after a while.
At the same time, all three of them put their papers back into the folders, then stood up. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same because I was still shaking from the horrifying place I’d just been forced to imagine.
“Is it…is it over? Did I pass?” I asked halfheartedly. I’d never been in a stranger position in my whole life and I’d been hoping that they’d clarify everything in the end, like the fact that I could remember whatever Penelope Dixon had done to me, or at least why I wasn’t angry about all I’d seen. Why I was okay with what had happened, even though I knew I shouldn’t have been.
Instead, without even looking at me or acknowledging that I’d spoken, they walked out the door in perfect rhythm.
I had a bad feeling about this. Of course, I did! Those people kept drawing Xs all over the papers. Xs meant wrong where I came from, and I was pretty sure they meant the same everywhere else. Luke’s face came in front of my eyes. What if I couldn’t save him like I couldn’t save my parents?
No, I wouldn’t be a pessimist about this. I couldn’t have saved my parents. Whatever Dixon did to me, it was just an illusion. My parents died nineteen years ago. Nothing was ever going to bring them back to me.
But Luke wasn’t an illusion. He needed me. I was going to do everything in my power to bring him back, even if it meant lying, or cheating, or stealing to do it.
When the door opened again and Ross came in, pale as a ghost, I already expected it. The sight of him still knocked the air out of my lungs, though. He looked even more tired now than he had before.
Not a second later, Officer Terrin walked into the room, too.
“What happened?” I asked them. I didn’t want to know what happened, but I had no choice.
Ross took in a deep breath and shook his head. Putting his hands inside his pockets, he shrugged and met my eyes. “You failed.”
Hello nightmare, my old friend.
Those words were directed to me many times before. I continuously failed at math, and failing meant feeling my uncle’s wrath at home, all day and all night long. I’d gone through hell in high school because of that, and I’d learned every formula in existence by memory just to pass the damn tests. When I graduated, I thought I’d never have to deal with you failed again, but there it was, looking right at my face, that nasty feeling. And it still hurt just as much as when I was a teenager.
“First of all, your tests are really shitty tests! I mean, what the hell is the name of my imaginary friend going to tell you?!” How could a question like that determine anything about anything? “And making me see the place where my parents died? Really?”
“Miss Vaughn, Scientia is designed to tell us everything we need to know about an impari,” Terrin said.
“I’m afraid your Scientia told us that you’re not,” Ross added.
“I’m not?” I asked, confused as fuck. “I’m not what?”
“An impari,” Terrin said. “A mage. You’re not who we thought you were.”
With my mouth open, I slowly rose to my feet. Up until I saw Luke in that room, I’d told them repeatedly that taking me there had been a mistake. That I wasn’t what they thought, but they’d insisted that I was.
Now, they were telling me that I wasn’t anymore?
“I do not accept this,” I hissed. “You are the one who brought me here, showed me all of these things. All I wanted was to leave, but you kept me here against my will because you were sure that I was a fucking mage!”
“Miss Vaughn, please lower your voice,” Ross said while I yelled at Terrin, but Terrin nodded at him as if to say it’s okay, let her shout.
“I won’t accept this, Terrin! Luke is in there, slowly dying, and if I don’t get to the man who did this to him, he’s never coming back.” Just the thought of not being able to do anything to help him made me want to claw my own eyes out.
“I’m really sorry, Miss Vaughn. We’re still not sure how you saw the devamp at the club, or how you could kill a servant, but all of this was a mistake. You are not a mage. I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to join the team and hunt the devamp,” Ross said.
A sound that was a cross between laughing and crying out loud escaped my lips. “Like hell! I’m going to join the team. You said I could join the team! You said it yourself!” No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. After everything I’d seen, after everything I knew, they couldn’t just send me back home, could they?
“Because I thought you were a mage,” Ross said, looking down at his feet.
“Then I am a mage! I’m a mage. I’m the magest mage you’ve ever seen!” I was losing it, and fast. No longer able to keep control of my body, I stepped in front of Ross and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Please, you have to help me. If I don’t find that man, I’ll be…” I’ll be all alone. Without Luke. Couldn’t they see that I had no idea how to live like that?
But Ross pushed my hands off his shoulders and stepped back. “I’m sorry, Nova. There’s nothing we can do.”
Just like when Luke hit the ground at the club and I thought he was dead, the whole world disappeared from around me. My legs gave and I fell back—right on the armchair. I couldn’t tell you if I was breathing, or even if my heart was beating. If the blood was coursing through my veins.
All I could see, hear or think, was darkness.
Luke was alive, but I wasn’t going to be able to save him. He was going to die because of me.
My whole body was numb as my brain tried in vain to come up with options. It did come up with one, which was to go after Red Tie on my own, but I also knew that that would mean dying.
But, if I couldn’t save Luke, would I even want to live?
“Absolutely not,” Ross said and called my mind back to the present. It took a few blinks for my surroundings to begin to make sense to me again. Ross was still standing in front of me together with Terrin. “Out of the question!” Ross continued, because Terrin was looking at him l
ike he wanted something from him.
“Think about it, Ross. It could work,” he said, but Ross shook his head again.
“Too dangerous. No way can I allow it. No way.” With his hands on his hips, he began to walk toward the table and back.
I was already standing, looking at them like they had the key to life.
“What could work?” I asked Terrin.
“Nothing!” Ross called, and his friend smiled uncomfortably.
“Terrin, tell me what could work.” I stepped in front of him and leaned closer and closer to his face until he met my eyes.
“It’s nothing,” he whispered. “Just this stupid thought I had.”
“Tell me about it,” I demanded. “You have to. I’m here because of you. You owe it to me.” And if that didn’t work, I’d say whatever I could think of just to get him to talk to me.
With a loud sigh, Terrin rubbed his face raw, then made a mess out of his hair. “There is a procedure—”
“Stop it, Terrin,” Ross hissed.
“I want to know what could work!”
“No, you don’t, Miss Vaughn. Because this won’t work. Can’t work. It’s a stupid idea. Please, consider we never mentioned it.” He must have been fucking with me because I’m pretty sure the whole world could smell the desperation leaking out of my pores.
“If it won’t work and it can’t work, why not tell me? I’m just curious,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm. If I was in control of my body and voice, maybe he’d change his mind.
“Just let me tell her, Ross. I brought her here,” Terrin said.
“Goddamn it, boy!” the man hissed the next second, and it sounded to me like he gave the green light.
Terrin thought so, too. That’s why he grinned.
“There is a procedure that can make minor changes to your DNA,” Terrin said. “Salamanders are the only impari than can be made because we’ve cracked their genetic code and figured out how to manipulate it.”
“What the hell is a salamander?!” I asked, maybe a little louder than I would have liked.
“A fire spirit,” Terrin said, as if surprised that I hadn’t known. “A fire elemental. A person who can manipulate fire.”
The man with the fire on his arms was all over my thoughts in a second. So that’s what he was! A salamander.
“Okay,” I breathed. If I, Nova Vaughn, could do just half of what that man had done, I was going to conquer the goddamn world!
Just kidding.
Maybe.
But the point was, I could go after Red Tie. I could catch him easily, if I could manipulate fire.
Holy shit, I was seriously believing that I would be able manipulate fire!
“What Terrin hasn’t told you is that ninety-five percent of the people who go through the procedure, die,” Ross hissed. “A lot of good men and women have lost their lives this way, Miss Vaughn. The procedure is a dangerous physical and magical transformation of your body and mind. Only twelve people in the whole world have been able to make it out alive, and I can tell you here and now with absolute certainty: you are going to die.”
Wow, thanks, Ross.
“Do it.”
The way I figured, if I somehow, by some miracle, pulled something like that off and survived the procedure, I’d be able to bring Luke back.
If I didn’t…well, I wouldn’t have to wait long for Luke to join me.
Yes, those thoughts were horrifying, but the alternative was worse. A life lived with guilt instead of Luke was not one I wanted.
“Miss Vaughn, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. You’re human. You’re weak. Mages, pixies, even shifters have gone through the procedure and died within the first few minutes. You won’t last one.”
“If I do die, then I’ll be out of your hair for good. If I don’t, though, I’ll be able to help you and your team in the search for devamps.” It wasn’t lost on me that just a couple of hours ago, I’d been a hundred percent sure everybody in there had lost their minds, and now I was talking about this like it was no big deal. But adapting was my thing. Whatever life threw at me, I took it, spun it around and made it mine. I’d treat this no differently, never mind that it was magic, fire holding people and demonic vampires we were talking about.
Ross closed his eyes and took a step back. Terrin put a finger to his lips as if to tell me to keep quiet. Ross was thinking about it.
I was more than happy to bite my tongue for a minute, and even if Ross didn’t want to let me do this, I thought I knew exactly how to change his mind.
The man finally opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, Miss Vaughn. I can’t allow this to happen.”
With a sigh, I surrendered to the bad side. I’m not proud of what I did next, but I was backed against the wall here. Letting this go meant letting Luke go, and I’d never, ever do that.
“I know where he is.” The words left my lips even before I thought about what I was doing twice.
“What?” they both asked at the same time.
“The devamp that put Luke in a coma. I know where he is. I heard them speaking.” Could they tell this was a lie?
Their eyes met and visible shivers washed down both their backs.
This time, when they looked at me, there was no doubt left in either of their eyes.
Ross was going to let me become a salamander—or die.
Chapter Seven
I thought I’d be happy. I thought I’d jump from joy, but no.
There was something in my head, this little voice telling me to start running and never look back, and it demanded to be heard—so much so that, by the time I followed Ross and Terrin out of the room, that voice was all I could hear. Taking in deep breaths wasn’t working and trying to shut it out only made me focus on it more.
Shivers washed down my back as they took me back to the hallway, through a door and another, and stopped in front of an elevator. I couldn’t tell where we were or where I’d been before. Every part of my body was numb.
“Are you okay?” Terrin asked. He seemed to sense my discomfort.
“Fine,” I mumbled. Telling them that I needed a second could result in Ross changing his mind about letting me do this, so I kept my mouth shut. It didn’t matter what my instincts were telling me. What mattered was that I got Luke back.
“We’re going down to Legal first,” Terrin continued when the elevator arrived and we hopped in. “After all the paperwork is done, we’ll continue to the lab.”
“When did you eat last?” Ross asked.
“What?” What did that matter?
“When was the last time you ate? Patients can’t eat anything at least six hours before the procedure.”
Oh. “I ate at about nine pm, last night.” Luke and I stopped for pizza before going to work at the club, where we only were able to get the damned jobs with fake IDs. God, how I wished that I’d known all of this then. I’d have never let him go. I’d have locked him in the trunk of our car if I had to, then drove him all the way to Vegas. If I’d known…
“We need to run some tests on you before we get started,” he continued.
“Do we have time for tests?” I asked because Luke was in that room in a coma, and the later I became able to actually kill Red Tie, the slimmer his chances of waking up again.
“Tests are important,” said Ross.
“Why? What will you be looking for?”
“We’ll be looking to see how many chances you have of making it out alive,” he mumbled.
“So, let’s skip them. Even if the tests say I have less than one percent of making it, I’ll still do it. We’re wasting time already.” And the sooner I got this over with, the sooner that ugly voice in my head would shut the hell up.
“We can’t just skip them. I also need some time to file a request for the procedure and get the confirmation.”
“I thought you said you called the shots.” Just the thought of someone like Penelope Dixon or Cecilia Chambers coming to talk to me again made me w
ant to throw up.
The elevator doors opened and I expected to see another white hallway or corridor in front of us, but I was dead wrong.
The room was wide and very bright. To the right of the elevator was a wall made of glass. Through it, I could see them, the people I’d seen from the bridge when I first got there, only then, I hadn’t even noticed the other four people because I’d been focusing on the shirtless man with the fire on his arms.
Was he a salamander, too?
My stomach rolled as I searched his body, but he wasn’t burning now. He was talking to a woman, whose back was turned to me, and to another man, skinny and tall with ash blonde hair tied up in a man bun on top of his head.
“Who are—” but I was cut off.
“Terrin’ll take you to Legal while I put in the request. I’ll send them your info in a second. Come by my office when you’re done,” Ross said, and nodded at Terrin, who, without waiting for my approval, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me forward.
The other side of the room we were in, the one I hadn’t even noticed until now, was made of three doors. The first one said Legal, the second Research, and the third had no sign. That’s where Ross went. In between the glass and the offices was a long corridor and from where I was standing, I couldn’t see the end of it at all.
Without knocking, Terrin opened the door to the legal office. It was the most normal looking room I’d seen in this place. It had two desks across from each other, and a man and a woman sat behind them. A flat screen TV was mounted on the beige walls across from the door. The carpet was a warm brown and there were flowers all over the corners of the room. Classical music came from the speakers of the man’s computer, the volume low enough to calm you down immediately. No windows in there, either, which made me wonder if we were underground.
Behind them, there were huge shelves full of thick, white folders.
“Morning,” Terrin mumbled and kicked the door closed behind him.
“Officer Terrin,” the woman said with a nod, and when she saw me, she looked a bit surprised.
She was younger than the man by at least ten years, her red lips a stark contrast against her pale hair, white shirt and black skirt. The man on the other side wore black from head to toe—even his tie was black—and the dark circles under his eyes actually suited him.