Hidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

Finally, the clock wound down and she wandered up the hall to where she would spend the next nine hours, minus two coffee breaks and a lunch break. Lucky, lucky her.

  Except she was lucky, wasn’t she? If she didn’t have this job and the ability to float between the clinic and the lab, how many opportunities would have passed her by? And if she hadn’t had those opportunities, then Brock would have gotten rid of her a long time before. So maybe she’d lay off the complaining—at least until Brock made good on his promise to get her out of here.

  It had been days since Michael had died and Quinn still wasn’t showing any signs of being sick. Sure, he had all but shut down emotionally—which was a plus, as she figured it was only a matter of time before he offed himself.

  But Brock didn’t want to wait for him to commit suicide, especially not if it meant his little virus wasn’t as foolproof as he’d thought. These new batches were supposed to mutate—infect one person and then anyone with similar DNA would be susceptible to the virus. It was a genius idea, especially considering how hard it was to get close to Dylan and his sentries. They were too strong, too aware, too fucking paranoid to ever let someone sneak up on them and inject them. But most of their family members weren’t.

  Look at Marta, Dylan’s sister. It had been pathetically easy to inject her and the virus had done its job very nicely. Her funeral pyre had barely been cold when her daughter got sick. Sure, Dylan hadn’t contracted the virus as they’d planned, which was a total bummer. Brock had been furious; he had taken the virus back to his scientists so they could be certain all the kinks had been worked out.

  But they’d been wrong, obviously, as Quinn was showing no signs of getting ill. It was freaking out Brock—and his little scientist dudes. Making them think that they weren’t as smart as they thought they were, that the virus wasn’t as all-consuming as it should be. She was determined to prove that the plan would still work, and she knew just how to do it.

  Once at her station, she triple checked the list of appointments for the day, as if she didn’t have the damn register memorized. But still, better to be safe…and yes, there he was, fourth on the list. Brian Alexander. Ten a.m. She could hardly wait.

  The first hour passed a little slowly, though she knew it would pick up later in the day. She rushed through the first few people who ended up in her chair, wanting to make sure she was free when Brian walked in. If she wasn’t, if she missed this opportunity, it would be another two weeks before she got the chance again. This would make Brock very unhappy, and after his last temper tantrum, she was going to try very, very hard to keep him in a good mood.

  She was just finishing up with her latest walk-in when Brian showed up, all smiles and upbeat attitude. His brown hair was a little long, a little shaggy, and his blue eyes gleamed brightly, despite the fact that he’d been sick for the last year with one of the few diseases natural to dragon shifters. It was in remission, but the clan doctors had him coming in for twice-monthly blood tests.

  “Hey you,” she said with a grin, as she finished the paperwork on the previous patient. “Come on over here and tell me what you’ve been up to these last couple of weeks.”

  He smiled at her. “Not a lot. Just finishing up a big project at work and hanging with the family. The baby took her first steps the other day—do you want to see her latest picture?”

  No. She recoiled at the thought, horrified at the idea of looking into his daughter’s face. Brian didn’t notice her reaction; he pulled out his wallet and opened it up to a photo of a beautiful baby with big blue eyes, a wide, toothless smile and chubby pink cheeks. Her golden blond ringlets were pulled up with heart-shaped barrettes, and she was wearing a turquoise-and-yellow sun suit that left her plump legs bare.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?” he asked.

  “Definitely,” she answered, trying to pull her gaze away from the picture. But she was spellbound by it, hypnotized by the sight of the pretty little girl on wobbly legs. “How old is she now?” The question spilled from her before she could stop it.

  “Ten months. Melinda is already planning her first birthday party. It’s crazy how fast they grow up. Jake is already seven.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said, as she signed her initials on the bottom of his slip, then pulled out the five test tubes she needed for his blood. “That does seem awfully quick. It seems like it wasn’t very long ago that he was tottering down the halls here in search of the candy machine.”

  “No joke.” He sighed. “And then they grow up.”

  “That they do.” She reached for the elastic band she needed to wrap around his upper bicep. “Which arm are we doing today?”

  “The left, I think. It hasn’t seen half the action the right has lately.”

  “The left it is.” She secured the band. “Pump your fist a few times for me.”

  “You’re such a slave driver,” he answered, but did as she told him.

  “Someone has to be.” She cleaned his arm with alcohol, then picked up the needle and test tube. At the same time, she palmed the syringe she’d been carrying around for nearly a week for just this purpose.

  After surreptitiously popping the cap off, she turned to him. “You might want to look away this time. We don’t want you passing out or anything.”

  “That happened one time, while I was in treatment, and you’ve never let me live it down.”

  “Yeah, well, a girl’s got to get her fun somewhere.”

  “I personally think you’re a closet sadist,” he teased, but at the last minute he looked away, just as she’d known he would.

  And then she was doing it, sliding the needle to take blood from his vein at the exact same time she slid the syringe’s needle into his arm about two centimeters away. Sometimes it was really nice to be a dragon. The big hands so often paid off.

  “Ouch!” He jumped, and she angled her body so that she blocked his view of his arm as she slowly lowered the plunger on the syringe. “That hurts more than usual—are you sure you got the vein?”

  “I did. See?” She held up the first test tube so he could see that it was filling with blood. “Sorry, I used a bigger gauge this time. There’s more blood to take because it’s your six-month checkup, so I thought it might speed the process along. Next time I’ll use the smaller needle.”

  She finished administering the shot and pulled the needle out quickly, dropping it into the trash can by the side of her workstation. There was no way she was risking leaving the thing in the Sharps disposal case for them to find later. She’d just have to remember to take the trash out during her first break.

  “It’s no problem. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  She switched test tubes, continuing to banter with him as she did. A cold drop of sweat rolled slowly down her back, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was relieved it was done—or because she couldn’t believe she’d gotten away with it again.

  In the end, it didn’t really matter. Brian was infected. The rest was only a matter of time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jasmine stared down at the latest viral sample—the one taken from the most recent victim—with something very akin to awe. It was a little thing, as all viruses were, but amazingly wily and sophisticated. Certainly, it was more sophisticated than anything else she’d seen, and that was saying something, as she’d spent nearly every waking moment of the last ten years studying blood-borne viruses and bacteria.

  This one was something special. If it wasn’t causing so much damage, she’d have to admire it—and the people who created it. And it had very definitely been created. Phoebe and Quinn were dead right about that. Nowhere in nature, or the CDC’s research banks, which she had spent most of the night combing, did anything exist with this genetic makeup or combination of symptoms. It was impossible to imagine that the structure of the virus could even cause the range of symptoms that it did, but somehow its engineer had packed everything he could into the thing.

  Neural damage combined with liquefaction of organs.
/>   Sky-high temperatures with rapid decay of lower extremity flesh.

  Brain damage with quick, severe bleed-outs.

  It was the stuff sci-fi horror movies were made of, and yet here it was right in front of her. A biological weapon so deadly, so devastating, that it made her uneasy just to be looking at it.

  It was just one more oddity in the weirdness that had suddenly taken over her life. Her best friend was a dragon. Her lover—or soon-to-be ex-lover, as she was still furious with Quinn—was a dragon. Why should one little virus, even one that could do all this, make her nervous? Especially now that she was pretty much living in the middle of an entire coven of dragons?

  She paused for a moment, turned the word over in her mind. Was coven the right word, or did that apply only to witches? What did one call a community of dragons? Was there even a name for it?

  “Crazy, isn’t it?”

  Phoebe’s voice came from right over her shoulder, so close that it made Jasmine jump, yanking her attention from her random musings back to the work in the laboratory.

  “What’s crazy?” she asked.

  “That such an innocuous looking virus could cause such damage—and so quickly.”

  “I was just thinking that. I was really surprised when I was looking through the slides yesterday. I was expecting something more complex than this typical icosahedron structure. Especially considering the damage it wreaks.”

  “I know.” Phoebe scooted a rolling stool next to Jasmine and traced her finger over a few of the straight sides of the nearly-spherical-shaped virus reflected on the computer screen. “I’m still not sure how they managed to engineer it this way, so that all the different strains managed to fit inside these twenty sharp-edged sides. Especially since this thing is so much smaller than the typical HIV virus, but much more potent and fast acting.”

  “Yet it reproduces like HIV.” Jasmine clicked a few keys and pulled up Quinn’s exhaustive lab notes.

  “It does. Its reproduction is atypical, which is just one of the major problems we have. We have to immunize against it because it’s a virus, but we have to do that while dealing with the fact that instead of creating RNA, it actually creates DNA and maps that DNA to the host cells.”

  “DNA immunization is pretty cutting edge, but it has been done.”

  “Yeah,” Phoebe said, “in a laboratory, not in real-life situations on any kind of reasonable scale. But that’s not the only problem—this thing has so many different strains, and those strains mutate so fast, it’s impossible to get a handle on it for long. We can trigger an immune system response to the foreign DNA—for a short time—but once the virus mutates, that reaction is almost useless.

  “Plus this damn thing actually alters its host’s DNA within hours of infection, so that even if you can get the immune system to fight it, it’s actually killing off the host at the same time it kills off the virus.”

  “This isn’t the first virus in history to do that, Phoebe. We’ve managed to at least partially immunize against some of them.”

  “That’s what I thought. I told Dylan weeks ago, when I first realized what was going on, that I could tear this thing apart, get inside it, and do exactly that. But I forgot that we’re not dealing with human DNA, and dragon DNA doesn’t do well with any kind of alteration.”

  Jasmine looked sharply toward her friend. “You know this for a fact?”

  “Quinn does. There’s a whole section in his notes on it. This isn’t the first time that someone’s thought about it.” She scrolled through Quinn’s notes until she got to a section title, Deviations to DNA. “Dragon doctors started messing with genetic engineering about the same time human doctors did—but the results are much more frightening for us.”

  “‘Us’ meaning dragons?”

  “Yeah.” Phoebe flushed. “Sorry. I know it’s weird for you.”

  “Not really,” Jasmine lied. “I just wanted to be sure I understood what you were saying.”

  “I think that’s why this disease spreads so quickly. Once dragon DNA is severely altered, dragons lose the power to cloak themselves within a couple of weeks. Their ability to shift quickly becomes unpredictable or nonexistent and their control over the elements—over fire—is destroyed. Those that don’t burn to death are locked inside human bodies with no way out, and the beast goes insane. Annihilates itself and its human side in the process.”

  Jasmine recoiled in horror, especially as she imagined her friend or Quinn suffering the symptoms Phoebe had just described. Even worse, the doctor in her was devastated by the loss of the best shot they had at defeating the disease.

  She didn’t voice her thoughts to Phoebe—they’d been friends long enough that she didn’t have to—and they worked in silence for more than an hour, the quiet broken only when Jasmine paused to ask the other doctor a question about something that she’d read in Quinn’s notes. When she finally got to the end of the third section of notes, she pushed away from the desk and rubbed her eyes wearily.

  “I know it’s a lot of information to take in at once. I’m sorry about that.” Phoebe was watching her with concerned eyes. “I haven’t even asked how you’re doing.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re limping and favoring both your left side and your right arm.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “You were blown up! That’s a pretty huge deal in my mind.”

  “Well, I survived.” Jasmine shifted uncomfortably, wondered how she could move the conversation back to the virus. She hated talking about her injuries, and she sure as hell didn’t want to do it here, in the middle of Quinn’s lab. Maybe it was stupid, but after their argument the night before, the last thing she wanted was for him to know just how badly she’d been hurting. “I’m just a little tired.”

  “Well, then, it’s break time,” Phoebe said decisively, glancing at her watch. “Come on, it’s almost two. I’ll treat you to a late lunch.”

  “I had a carton of yogurt from the fridge in the break room a couple of hours ago. I’m good for a little longer.” But she stood up and stretched anyway.

  “Getting stiff?”

  She gritted her teeth, told herself not to snap. Phoebe was just being a good friend, she reminded herself. It wasn’t her friend’s fault that her concern felt as heavy and smothering as a wool blanket in the middle of the desert in July.

  “No more than usual.”

  “Still, it will probably do you good to relax a little. You should—”

  “It will do me good to work.” She didn’t snap, but the words came out a lot more clipped and abrupt than usual.

  Phoebe didn’t say anything for a minute, and Jasmine felt like a total jerk. Just because she couldn’t stand sympathy was no reason to take it out on her friend. She opened her mouth to apologize, when Phoebe laughed.

  “I’m sorry. I’m hovering when I swore I wouldn’t. But new habits are hard to break.”

  Jasmine raised an eyebrow. “You make a habit of hovering around Dylan these days, huh?”

  “I do. I swear that man is always injured. And if it’s not him, then it’s one of his sentries. These dragons are powerful and have extreme longevity, but they’re nowhere near as careful as they should be. They think they’re invincible when they’re clearly not. They can get hurt as easily as anyone else—more so, because they’re always fighting.” She shook her head. “Dylan’s one of the worst, but Quinn and Logan aren’t much better.”

  Jasmine’s entire body tightened at the mention of the other doctor. “Quinn?” she asked as casually as she could manage. “I thought he was the clan’s healer?”

  “Oh, he is. But he’s also usually right in the middle of the fight. I swear, that man’s been injured five or six times just since I’ve been here.”

  “He has? He certainly doesn’t look it.” She hadn’t seen any evidence of new injuries the one night she’d spent in his bed—in fact, she’d only seen a couple of scars on him at all, and they had look
ed decades old. But she couldn’t exactly say that to Phoebe, not without admitting what the two of them had been up to.

  “They never do. They heal super fast and only scar if it’s a pretty big injury, or if Quinn can’t get to them in time to do his thing.” She wiggled her fingers like a magician.

  Jasmine opened her mouth to ask exactly what Quinn’s thing was—she’d been looking for just such an opportunity since she’d seen him heal Tyler the day before. But she hesitated, not wanting to sound like an idiot. She didn’t know what to ask, or how to put her questions into words. For a woman who prided herself on both her directness and her eloquence, it was a strange feeling—one she didn’t care for at all.

  At a loss for words, Jasmine did the only thing she could reasonably do under the circumstances; she dove back into Quinn’s notes like they were the most interesting things she’d ever seen.

  To a certain extent, they were. She was fascinated by this virus, even as she was repulsed by it. She felt the same way toward Ebola, only magnified about a hundred times. Especially since she knew how Ebola was transmitted—and how to prevent it. While the vaccine for the virus was still in test trials, good hygiene and medical practices usually kept it from spreading. But with this thing…She shook her head. Nothing seemed to work with this virus, including top-of-the-line medical care and prevention.

  In some cases they had clear injection sites or documentation that someone had been infected during a fight with the Wyvernmoons. But in still others, no matter how hard Phoebe and Quinn worked to trace it, they couldn’t find the point of origin for the virus. Was it from close contact, as they were often in close proximity to other victims? But then, why didn’t all the dragons close to the infected dragons contract the disease?

  She went round and round in her head, trying to find an answer, but it eluded her. After reexamining a number of cases where the infection route was ambiguous, she was more certain than ever that those victims had also been deliberately infected. But no injection site wound had been found, and from what she could tell, they had been meticulous in searching for it. Still, it had to happen somehow…