by D. N. Hoxa
With a loud sigh, I let go of the worry. Luke was fine. He was okay. I just needed to breathe until the words got stuck to my brain, but as soon as they did, the physical pain returned with a vengeance.
“What the hell is she?” someone from behind us hissed. Ignoring the pain on my neck, I turned my head to look.
The room was much bigger than I’d thought. Behind me, there were two leather couches and a coffee table, all full of people. They were all bloody and wounded because they had all been there in the fight against those devamp servants. I wasn’t sure if all had made it down there, but I saw everyone I already knew—including Lucian, who had no shirt on and a towel around his hips.
Ross, who had his shoulder wrapped up in a piece of fabric and was holding his elbow with his other hand as if his arm was going to fall off any second, slowly dragged his feet toward me. I was sitting in one of four chairs in front of a large screen and seven other smaller ones. I couldn’t even begin to decipher the things shown on them, but I was too exhausted to try all that hard.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“How are you feeling?” Pixie cried. She was holding a bag of ice on the back of her head, but other than that, I could see no other wound on her body. “She almost got us killed!”
“She also saved us,” Aiden said, though he wouldn’t meet my eyes. It only served to make me feel even worse, if that was possible.
“What the hell is she? What she did out there, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lucian said. When he looked at me, like a coward, I moved my eyes to Ross’s face. Not only because he was intimidating with his red eyes full of anger, but because I wanted to know Ross’s answer, too.
What the hell was that, back in the training room? Why didn’t the light ball knock me out like it did the rest of them? What was that red net that had just appeared around it, and most importantly, why had it killed those devamp servants?
But Ross shook his head. “No idea,” he mumbled. “But for now, we’re going to wait for the evac team to come get us so that we can clean ourselves up.”
“Screw that,” Pixie hissed. “I want to know why they were after her. What has she done?” Then, as if she thought better about it, her eyes fell on mine. “What did you do?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” I muttered, but that was a lie. I looked up at Terrin. He knew what I’d done. So did Ross.
I’d killed one of those servants at the club with a broken beer bottle. Which begged the question: how the fuck had I done that? The guy could probably make those light balls, too. Why hadn’t he attacked me then?
But I also knew the answer to that question, too, and it made me flinch. At the club, I’d jumped at the guy’s back and stabbed him in the neck before he even knew what the hell was happening. And Red Tie had seen me, all too clearly. I was willing to bet my life on it that he sent his people after me because of that.
“Bullshit,” Lucian said. “We want answers, Ross.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you want, Luc,” Ross hissed. “Suck it up and keep your questions to yourselves. We’re going to go ahead and do some healing spells on you while we wait. The training halls are going to need a lot of work, and it’s best we don’t waste time.”
He said all that, but all I heard was healing spell. Could that really be true?
“Hey, you’ll be fine,” Terrin said. He must have mistaken the look on my face. The others—except Aiden—kept nagging Ross for answers, and kept calling me all kinds of names, blaming me—rightfully—for almost getting them killed, but to me, that didn’t matter. To me, what mattered was that they were alive, and that I’d kill myself before I let them go through that again. Not to mention Luke was in that building, too.
I didn’t want to accept it just yet, but somewhere deep inside my brain, I was already starting to plan an escape. If the devamps knew where I was, and they’d come after me once, they were going to do it again.
“Just relax. Miles will do a spell on you. He’s the best at it,” Terrin said and he tried to smile but his heart wasn’t into it. How could it be when he was all bloody and almost dead because of me?
“I don’t know if he should,” I mumbled, to distract both him and myself. “I’ve never had anything like it done on me before.”
“That’s okay,” said Terrin. “Healing spells are just acceleration spells in disguise. They just get your cells to heal faster than they normally would.”
“That’s so…weird.” And I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Terrin smiled, this time for real. “There’s a lot you need to learn about our world, but all of it can wait for after you’re feeling okay, at least physically.”
Something occurred to me and made goosebumps break on the skin of my arms. “If you can do healing spells that force cells to heal fast, can you wake Luke up?”
His flinch was enough of an answer, and my heart sank all the way to my heels. “Luke’s isn’t a physical wound, for starters. He’s poisoned by devamp blood. We haven’t come up with a spell that can do something against it. Yet.” But it was obvious he didn’t expect that kind of a spell to ever be created. But what the hell did I know, anyway? I don’t think I’d ever even used the word spell in my whole life before that day.
“Those servants,” I whispered, lowering my voice, though the people behind us had already moved on and were talking about training, while Ross and another guy who I assumed was Miles, did something to them. “They’re after me because of what I did at the club.”
“Yeah…”
“Those people they killed that night. The two mages? Who were they?” I’d never dared to ask before because their bodies covered in blood were still a very fresh memory.
“We don’t know yet. The Order is looking into it, but we’re pretty sure they were involved in something with the devamp. And when people like him want someone dead, they don’t care where they do it.”
His words were a slap to my face. “They’re not going to stop coming after me, are they?”
Terrin looked at his feet. “Probably not.”
“I’m going to leave.” The words tasted like dirt in my mouth. Just the thought of being alone against those things made me want to start bawling like a baby.
“You can’t just leave, Nova. Not now,” he said.
“I can’t stay, either.” He knew it, too.
“We’re going to need some time to figure this out. The Senior Order can’t know you’re here, and we can’t take you anywhere else because of them,” he said with a sigh.
“But if they come back?” I said, because saying when was too hurtful.
“They caught us underprepared today. Stuff like this has never happened in our station, but if they do come back, we’ll be more prepared. Ross has already called for backup.”
“And what did he tell the Senior Order?” He said it himself, they couldn’t know I was there.
“Let’s not worry about that just yet,” he said, then stood up. “Let Miles take care of you.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything else while Miles crouched in front of me. He had a kind face, his brown eyes warm and inviting, but he didn’t look at me—not once. It made me so uncomfortable, I almost asked him to meet my eyes.
Closing my eyes was easier, so that’s what I did. I felt his hands wrap around my right arm because he must’ve figured I could barely move it. Without warning, something that felt like honey began to spread on my skin. I opened my eyes because I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, but Miles was just holding my arm in his hands and looking at it like it was the only thing that mattered in the whole world. The honey was now deep inside my pores, spreading on my flesh and bones, and it was amazing that I couldn’t see it, when I could feel it as clear as day.
A smile took over my face. I couldn’t wait to tell Luke about this. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever experienced, and I never wanted it to stop.
Except…the honey began to burn. Reaching my bones
, I could feel it stop spreading the way it did just half a second ago. The difference was impossible to miss. The burning sensation erased the feeling of pure bliss I’d had before I even thought to blink.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, and tried to pull my arm away. But Miles didn’t let go.
“Just relax,” Terrin said. “Let him do his job. It’ll be over soon.”
“No, something’s not right.” The burning became too much, almost exactly like it had felt when Palmer began to do the fire spirit procedure on me.
A cry escaped my lips. Miles let go of my hand. I’d been pulling so hard that, when he stopped holding me, I fell from the chair to the floor. Tears filled my eyes as I looked at the white ceiling and begged for it to stop.
But it wouldn’t. The burning had spread all the way to my shoulder now, and it felt like it was drilling into my bones, turning them into ash, little by little. Bright stars in front of my eyes. I couldn’t remember to breath as it spread and spread until it reached the base of my neck. Completely paralyzed, I tried to move, to stand up, to run as far and as fast away from this feeling as I could, but somebody was holding me down. They were telling me to stay still but how could I, when my insides were burning?
“Don’t!” Ross shouted when two hands folded above my chest. “Get away from her, Miles.”
“I didn’t do anything!” the man cried, and I believed him. If he did this, how come the feeling was the exact same as the one from the procedure?
Just the thought of turning the whole room into ice made me want to pass out, out of sheer will. All those people…
“Get out,” I whispered, or I thought I did, but I wasn’t sure if they could understand me.
“Maybe her body can’t handle magic?” Terrin said. “Do we have human medicine?”
Silence for a second, or my ears failed me, because the burning was now around my neck, too, acting like a burning hand squeezing me tightly, making it harder for me to breathe by the second.
My eyes turned in their sockets when I was forced to take in short breaths for more than two minutes. If I passed out now, I didn’t think I’d wake up. I didn’t want to let that happen, but my brain was shutting down. The pain was too much, my body completely paralyzed.
But then, something cold and sharp went through my neck. It was like a touch of Heaven. I breathed in and my throat no longer felt swollen, and as my brain refilled with oxygen, I began to feel the rest of my body, too. I still couldn’t move, but the burning was turning back right where it came from. My neck was free of it, and it was going down my shoulder faster.
I tried to open my eyes just to tell Terrin that I was okay, because he kept slapping me and asking me to look at him, which was pretty fucking annoying. But I couldn’t. And when the fire underneath my skin disappeared completely, I was finally able to let go.
Chapter Fourteen
I’d never been hit by a train before, but if I had to guess, I’d say it felt like I was feeling when I woke up: head pounding, chest hurting, limbs completely numb.
Opening my eyes was a bit easier than I expected. A white ceiling greeted me, and when I began to feel my hands, I realized I was lying on something soft. A bed. The bed, the one in the room Terrin took me to after the fire spirit procedure.
“Nova, can you hear me?” Terrin said and his face loomed over me the next second.
“Yeah.” My voice was a scratchy mess. He could tell, too, so that’s why he brought me a glass of water.
Ross was in there, too. So was Palmer, and Naomi Cruz. I hadn’t seen her since she ran out of the interrogation room when Ross first questioned me. Terrin helped me to sit up so I could drink, and when I saw all of them sitting around the bed, looking at me like I was the most curious little thing, I wanted to hide under the blankets.
“What’s wrong?” I asked after I drank the water, my voice much stronger right away.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Ross said. He attempted a smile, but failed half way. I called him on his bullshit by raising my brows. Of course, there was something wrong, otherwise nobody would have been in there, waiting for me to wake up. You’d think stuff like that would make one feel special. You’d be wrong.
“We took the liberty of running some blood tests while you were unconscious,” Palmer said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Good thing I didn’t. “And?”
“The results came back just now,” he said. “And they say you are completely human.”
“Oh.” Well, hadn’t I said that from the very beginning?
“Which is not possible, because more than fifteen people saw you fight against the servants yesterday, and nine people saw you cover an entire room in ice,” Ross said.
I bit my lip and looked at Terrin. What did he think about all of this?
Nothing, apparently, because he wouldn’t even look at me while he stood by my bed.
“Miss Vaughn, I’m sure you can understand that we need to take precautions. It’s why I’m here,” Naomi Cruz said. “And I’m going to ask you what you’re hiding from us.”
My eyes almost popped out of my skull. “I’m not hiding anything from you.”
As if I’d insulted her, Cruz stood up with a sigh, and came to stand right in front of me. I almost leaned away. She looked into my eyes like she was searching for my soul, and when she found it, she asked me again.
“Are you hiding something from us?”
The words hung on the air, too big to fit through my ears for a second. And when they did register in my brain, they didn’t feel like mere words. They felt like an order. An order I could not ignore.
“No,” my mouth said before I even thought of the answer. I couldn’t figure out how, but it was like Dixon had control over my voice cords.
“No?” She looked genuinely surprised.
“What are you doing to me?” I asked when I could convince my mouth to speak for me again.
“You do have very beautiful eyes, Miss Vaughn. I—”
“Naomi!” Ross called, exactly like he had the first time, in the interrogation room. Cruz looked like she’d just woken up for a second.
Then, she looked afraid.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, shaking her head and looking at Ross, who sighed loudly.
“Just…go have a large coffee or something,” he mumbled and looked down at his lap.
Naomi Cruz nodded, obviously completely shocked. “If you’ll excuse me,” she whispered, and without looking at anyone, she walked out the door.
“Can somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?!” I shouted, no longer able to hold it in.
This had gotten way out of hand. Luke was in a coma because he was bitten by a vampire. And not just any vampire, no—a demonic vampire. Because vampires exist. And pixies exist. And mages, who can make balls of light appear in their hands. And big orange foxes that can tear through a man’s throat.
Did they not realize that I’d spent my whole life not knowing any of this was even close to real? I was this close to a nervous breakdown, and I had nothing else left to hold onto, except the need to save Luke.
“We assure you that we would have told you if we knew,” Ross said reluctantly. “But since we don’t, we have two options. One, we come clean with the Senior Order, and let them do their own tests on you, and figure you out.”
“Wait, that means you’d have to tell them that you did the procedure on me without their approval.”
“Correct,” Ross said. He tried to sound like he didn’t care, but he did. Deep down, he did. “But they have resources we don’t. They have the best people on call. If there’s anyone out there who can find out the truth about you, it’s them.”
I didn’t doubt that for a second, except… “They’re going to take me to wherever they see fit without my consent.” They were not going to care that I wanted to be close to Luke, or that I wanted to go after the devamp who’d put him in a coma.
“I’m afraid so,” Ross said. I didn’t need
to think twice.
“Option number two?”
“The only one left,” he said with a shrug. “You stay here until we can figure you out. But in the meantime, you will not be allowed to use magic or anything close to it. You will not be allowed to train.”
“No, no, no. I need to train. You saw how those guys fought, right? I already have only thirty days left to find that devamp.” He couldn’t stop me if he tried.
“With the incidents that happened within a day…I’m sorry, Nova, but I really can’t allow that,” Ross said.
“Unless someone volunteers to train with you,” Terrin added.
“Yeah,” whispered Ross, because he knew that nobody on their right mind was going to want to come even close to me after what had happened.
“I’ll train myself. I can do that, right?” All I needed was a few pointers that Terrin could give me, and I’d do the rest myself. It couldn’t be that hard. And even if it was, it was my only option.
“It’s not going to be the same,” Terrin said, shaking his head.
“But it’s going to be better than what I have now.” And he couldn’t deny that, either, because all I had now was pretty much nothing.
Ross and Palmer stood up the next second. “We’ll let you get a few more hours of rest. The training halls are still being put together. I’ll have a word with Terrin and we’ll figure out how to go about this, but I can’t promise you you’ll like it,” Ross said.
I nodded because there really wasn’t any more I could ask of them. “I’d like to go see Luke. I’ve rested enough.”
Neither of them looked like they agreed with me—I must have looked worse than I thought—but they didn’t argue.
“Sure. Go clean yourself up. I’ll take you there.” Terrin didn’t have to say it twice. Before I could allow myself to think of anything else and end up with my head exploding, I jumped from the bed and locked myself in the bathroom. All I needed to do was hold on until I saw Luke. Coma or no coma, he was going to make everything better by just being close to me.