Shadow Mage: (Witchling Wars: Luxra Echelon, Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  “She can’t breathe on her own,” he said.

  One of the other surgeons reached for a knife. I watched as he dug its sharp edge into my neck right over my airway and pushed a tube inside to force my lungs to keep taking in air. The beeping of the machine stopped only to be followed by another one.

  The surgeon swore under his breath. “We’re losing her.”

  I backed away and huddled in a corner, covering my ears and not wanting to hear anymore. I wanted to cry. To scream. To run out of the operating room and never look back. But I couldn’t. My eyes opened and I watched from the side in horror as they did everything they could to revive me.

  Blood poured out of my side. My head was still bleeding. Even if they did manage to revive me the blood loss would be too extreme.

  Was this how dying was for everyone? Did they all step outside their body and watch as the fun continued? Or was I just special? Why did I get front row seats to witness my own death while some lucky bastard out there was having an instant death? I didn’t want to witness this.

  Something blue poured out of my body. Almost as if my bloodstream was oozing out some kind of chemical. Only this chemical didn’t look the least bit normal. It was cobalt blue and let off a sort of shine that reflected from the surgical lights hanging over my body.

  One of the doctors took out a pair of paddles. My heart stopped beating. I was already dead. Locked in some sort of in-between space where I wasn’t in my body but I also didn’t cross over. There was no one there with me to witness my panic or dread as the scene unfolded before me.

  They set the paddles just above my bra. The entire room seemed to shake as the paddles went off, sending volts of electricity directly into my chest. The blue liquid continued to ooze out of my body. Only the dream-like state must have been consuming me in some cosmic way I certainly didn’t understand. It began moving up against gravity. It rolled up my arms like a spider weaving a web over my skin. It crossed over my chest and wrapped around the other arm. Then down my torso and my leg. Finally, it moved over my neck and my head until my entire body was covered in a strange snare of cobalt blue blood saturating my dead body.

  ‘Why aren’t they seeing this?’

  They continued to use the paddles. My body jerked up over the table only to smack back down. I wanted to cry. If I screamed maybe someone would hear me.

  The blue liquid covering my skin glowed. It shined over me and seeped back into my skin until it completely dissolved. Almost as if it had never existed.

  A shadow loomed over the operating room. Only this shadow wasn’t some tall person walking in. It floated from the top-down, moving away from the walls and taking on a form all by itself.

  Was it some sort of entity coming to take my soul away? If so, I could only assume it wanted to take me to hell. It didn’t look friendly. It looked demonic. The form wasn’t entirely clear. I had to squint to see it.

  Another one appeared at the opposite corner of the room, descending down to the floor and standing upright. I wasn’t the only one watching as the doctors worked over me, refusing to stop using the paddles even after it was obvious I was already gone.

  “Stop!” one of the female surgeons shouted over the chaos. “Call it.”

  The surgeon let out a deep breath. His shoulders fell as he stepped away and placed the paddles on a nearby table. I could see it was a lost cause. So could the nurses. Even so, I admired his determination to keep me going.

  “Time of death?” he asked.

  “1:03 am.”

  The surgeon took a step away and pulled his mask off his face. His forehead was dripping with sweat.

  The other doctors slowly stepped away. I must have been the most exciting event to happen to them in some time because they all looked completely frazzled.

  Another shadow loomed over the ceiling and crawled down from the walls. Three forms drifted before me, crossing their arms over their chests without having any clear body parts. I could sense something about them. Something unworldly. They could take forms when they wanted to. They were choosing not to. They wanted to see what was happening. And it wasn’t for good reasons.

  I brushed both my hands through my hair in a panic, setting them on the back of my neck. My heart didn’t beat inside my chest. Nor did I take in a breath. There were no signs of the fear running through me like an unwelcome plague.

  ‘I tried to be a good person. Why would I go to hell? Why are they here to take me?’

  I cocked my head when they didn’t move. They just stayed there, floating over the floor and watching as blood dripped down from my hand dangling off the side of the surgical table.

  They weren’t here to take my soul. They were here to watch. As if my slow descend into death was a spectacle suited for theater.

  My arms fell to my sides.

  The doctors began filing out one by one. The single doctor that stayed behind took out a large white sheet from inside a cabinet to the back. She unfolded it and lay the bottom half over my legs. Then she removed the tube from the front of my neck, revealing the massive hole they created in my throat. She took the time to let her hand rest over my head. Her eyes closed. I could see her lips moving but no words left her mouth. I knew she was saying a prayer for me. At least there was someone there to say something. Anything. Because soon they would all be gone. I would be left alone with my bloody corpse and creepy shadows watching the entire thing.

  I edged around them and stood behind the nurse, wishing I could thank her for such kindness.

  She opened her eyes and moved a piece of my matted hair down behind my ear, taking care to not disturb my body as her finger glided behind my ear and over my neck. She paused. Her hand pushed into my neck, pressing hard as if something was off.

  “Oh my god,” she muttered.

  She took my wrist into her hand and pressed against my skin just above my wrist.

  “Dr. Stewart!” She screamed out the head surgeon’s name and rushed to the doorway. Both her arms gripped onto the door frame as she shouted. “Get in here! She’s back! I don’t know how but she’s back!”

  ‘Oh, holy crap!’

  The doctors sped back inside the room, nearly colliding into each other as they gathered around the table.

  I backed away as if I was actually standing there, getting in their way, and preventing them from doing their work. Dr. Stewart took his hand to my neck as another placed a heart monitor on my finger.

  “She has a pulse!” His voice was full of elation. Joy for a stranger he never knew.

  “That’s not possible! How long was she gone for?”

  “Seven minutes,” Dr. Stewart answered. “She’s been oxygen deprived for too long. There will be brain damage.”

  The wall around me began to move. The top corners fell as though a strong wind was blowing straight into the hospital and tearing it down piece by piece. The panels above me over the ceiling ripped apart. The tiles on the floor broke off and spun about in the air before being cast away. The entire operating room looked like a tornado was ripping through it. Only it didn’t disturb the doctors. It didn’t even move my arm as it hung over the side of the operating table. The only thing that did move was the shadowy beings that ascended over the room and drifted away until they blended with the darkness.

  I couldn’t explain how I knew. I didn’t know what that blue liquid was and I couldn’t imagine why spiritual beings would watch the entire thing with such keen interest. But there was one thing I could make sense of through the storm erupting around me and tearing the operating room to shreds.

  I was coming back.

  I was dead for seven minutes. And somehow, I was going to live to tell the tale.

  The worst part was… I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  Fire filled up my lungs and burned the back of my throat. My chest moved up and down. I could feel my back smack against the soft material underneath me.

  My eyes opened. I saw a curtain flutter as shadows moved behind it. A monitor
was beeping erratically nearby. My skin ached. Especially my right arm where the IV was still digging into my vein, pumping drugs into my system.

  “She can breathe on her own again!” a voice cried out from behind the curtain.

  A large nurse pulled the curtain aside as another nurse came rushing into the room. He removed the tubing from my throat and unlatched whatever device was wrapped around my head to keep it in.

  ‘Wait. I thought the tube was in my neck.’

  I coughed and hacked. The awful metallic taste of blood quickly returned to my mouth.

  “Welcome back,” the doctor said to me. “I’ll call Dr. Stewart. He’ll want to know right away.” The male nurse rushed out of the room as another one stayed by my side and reached for a plastic bottle with a straw sticking out.

  “Don’t try to move,” she said before placing the straw over my lips.

  I took it into my mouth eagerly, sipping water down one gigantic gulp at a time. It felt like pure nectar from the gods poured down the back of my throat.

  “I’m Nurse Ashley.” She moved the straw away once I had enough and placed it back on the small table directly next to my bed.

  The smell of the plastic oxygen mask struck my senses as she flipped the switch on the nearby machine and placed it over my face. I breathed it in deep, despising the smell but knowing I wasn’t going to get out of wearing it.

  Her soft hands stroked my right cheek. “You’re a living miracle, my dear.”

  The sound of shoes smacking against the tiles of the hospital hallway greeted my ears. The man I now recognized as Dr. Stewart rushed into the room with the male nurse. To say his face was lit up in surprise would be an understatement.

  He took a look at my chart then rounded the bed just to stare at me. If I had been standing and walking about the world normally I might have shrunk away. He wasn’t looking at me as if I was a patient on the road to recovery. He was looking at me as if I had grown three heads. His eyes darted from right to left. Almost like he was trying to make sense of something. His hand reached into a breast pocket of his white coat and pulled out a flashlight. He pointed the light directly into my eyes. I tried to blink and look away but I couldn’t. That was when I realized my head was in some sort of neck brace.

  Dr. Stewart placed a hand over the back of his neck and let out a heavy sigh. “I’m removing the brace.”

  The male nurse with flecks of silver in his dark hair gawked at Dr. Stewart. “You can’t!” He argued. “We need to run more tests.”

  “I examined the tests,” Dr. Stewart reassured him.

  “Then you saw that her neck was brok-”

  Dr. Stewart stared daggers at him. The nurse shut his mouth and stepped away. Dr. Stewart reached around my neck and unfastened the velcro attachments. The brace fell away and I could move my head again.

  “Try not to move too fast,” Dr. Stewart said to me as he took out his stethoscope to listen to my chest.

  The male nurse shook his head as Nurse Ashley watched with wide eyes.

  “We need to report this to the board,” she said.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Dr. Stewart insisted, feeling my pulse over my hot and sweaty skin.

  I felt like something deep inside my neck needed to pop. It was stiffer than the worst neck strain I had ever had from sleeping on it funny.

  Dr. Stewart placed a hand beside me on the bed and continued to look down at me with curiosity. Then he shoved both his hands into his pockets.

  “Miss Waggener,” he said my name softly. “I’m Dr. Stewart. I was the leading surgeon in your operation.”

  I glared up at him, not wanting to say anything or reveal that I already knew him. I recognized him the second he walked in. But if I said so, I would get more than just odd glares. I would probably get sent to a psych ward. No one would believe a girl who claimed to watch her own death from outside her body.

  A sharp pain pinched inside my heart. I knew that wasn’t true. It happened. I saw it happen. I could feel the world move around me as I remained separate from it.

  “I’m not sure how but you’ve made the most miraculous recovery I’ve ever seen in all my years of being a surgeon,” he continued. “Either our x-ray machines are faulty or you had a miracle occur. Given there’s no medical explanation for your recovery I’m leaning toward a miracle. And I say that as a practical agnostic, Miss Waggener.”

  I blinked a few times, not sure what he was talking about. My muscles felt like I had been beaten up by the high school cheerleading squad, my head was throbbing, and my skin must have had dozens of cuts descending down my arms and legs.

  The doctor and nurse might have told me not to move but I couldn’t help myself. I reached for my throat, remembering the hole Dr. Stewart cut to shove a tube down my throat and open up my airways. I rubbed my fingers into the spot of the wound. There was only one problem. The wound wasn’t there.

  Dr. Stewart looked at me curiously.

  I shot my arms back down to the bed.

  “Do you need more water?” Nurse Ashley asked me.

  I mouthed no to her, trying to maintain my composure. Unfortunately, that awful heart monitor machine gave me away. My heart beat faster as the realization came to me. My throat healed. The skin stitched back together. There was no opening in my throat. Not even stitches sealing the wound shut. My skin wasn’t even broken.

  The doctor tilted his head to Nurse Ashley and the male nurse beside him, hinting that it was time for them to leave. Dr. Stewart didn’t speak up again until they were out of ear shot.

  “Miss Waggener,” Dr. Stewart said my name. “I’ve seen many patients that heal particularly fast. Everyone is different. But you have managed to recover in three days from injuries that should have taken years to heal. I’m obligated to tell you the extent of the damage and what happened in the operating room.”

  I swallowed and forced myself to listen to his words from start to finish. Some of the injuries I knew about, others I listened to in disbelief. Multiple broken bones, internal bleeding, gashes over the skin, and possible paralysis. My lungs collapsed and my heart stopped beating.

  Dr. Stewart was being generous. I should be dead with all the injuries he listed off.

  Miracle. The word they used was miracle. The male nurse wanted to tell everyone on the board of the hospital what occurred. Probably so they could release some sort of press statement. I could envision the headlines.

  Miracle girl heals from a devastating car wreck in a matter of days!

  I blinked a few times and waited for Dr. Stewart to finish. As he did, he shook his head and drew in his bottom lip more than once.

  My eyes fell away from his. The knowledge that I would eventually be well again was a relief. I wiggled my toes and watched as they moved back and forth. I wasn’t paralyzed. I wouldn’t spend my life in a wheelchair and I might regain some sort of normality. But it came at a price.

  I had to ask. Even though I already knew, I had to ask the inevitable question.

  Dr. Stewart kept talking even though I couldn’t look at him anymore. “We’ve contacted your family back in Texas. We couldn’t reach your parents but we did inform your sister about what happened.”

  “They’re on a cruise to Alaska,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “Yes, that’s what your sister said too. I told her to keep trying to contact them.”

  “Are they all gone?” I asked.

  He didn’t get my meaning at first. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms over his front. He went from the understanding and empathetic procedure of informing me of my injuries and miraculous recovery to the mask doctors wore when things got serious. He flipped it on like a light switch.

  “Your friends from the motorway accident?” he asked me.

  I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. I stared up at the ceiling of the small hospital room. His words seeped into my ears where I knew they would stay, haunting my memories for however long I had to live.


  “I’m sorry, Miss Waggener. You’re the sole survivor of the accident. Your friends were killed on impact.”

  5

  ‘Pick up! Please pick up!’

  The sound of the phone ringing made the plastic base vibrate over my ear. I sat up in the hospital bed, twirling the cord to the phone in my hands as it continued to ring.

  “Hello?” My sister finally picked up the phone.

  I wished I had cleared my throat before calling because a lump formed right as I opened my mouth to speak.

  “Fi… Fiona?”

  “Oh my god! Kayla!” My sister’s voice broke apart the second she realized it was me. “Are you okay? Wait. No. That’s a stupid question. I just… Kayla, are you okay? Are you in pain? I’ve been looking up prices for airline tickets all day. I’m coming right away.”

  I struggled to find the right words. To be honest, there weren’t any right words. Just some that might get the point across.

  “I’m recovering.” I managed to speak through the pressure building in the back of my throat. “And you don’t need to come and get me. I’m coming home.”

  Hot liquid gathered at the inner corners of my eyes. I didn’t think I could cry more than I already had. My body couldn’t produce anymore. I stood corrected as one tear rolled down the left side of my cheek.

  “But I can help you,” she said. “I can pack your things so you don’t have to leave the hospital. I can carry your bags. Anything. Just let me help you.”

  “Did you reach mom and Keith yet?”

  “No.” I heard her sit down roughly over the line. “I’ve tried a million times for days now. They must be in some sort of dead zone up there. I didn’t want to fly out to Scotland without telling them where I had gone first let alone what happened. But I’ll be on the next flight out. I promise.”

  “No. You can book it for me if you want but I can manage the rest. I-”

  I rested the top of the phone on my chin, not sure of what to say or how to even keep the conversation going. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I just wanted to crawl into a corner and let the world fade away. It wasn’t right. How was I supposed to live with this? How was I meant to keep going after being the only survivor of such a thing?