Illumination

by M. V. Freeman

  “I have no control. I am no prize.” Which was the truth, Nicki realized with a wash of bitterness of how much she loathed herself.

  “Control is taught.” Lev dismissed her self-hatred with a roll of his shoulders. “You need a job? Why haven’t you gone to the Mages? They take care of their own.”

  With small movements, she brushed the rest of the glass from her arms onto the table. She’d forgotten the little bits of glass were sticky.

  “I don’t want any part of that crowd. Not after what happened at the mall.” Nicki found herself talking to him like he was Mina. “They’re…” She tried to put into words her aversion and horror at the Mages she’d encountered. “Uncompromising. In a bad way. There wasn’t any choice. I was with them or against them.”

  “Remaining neutral isn’t always going to be easy,” Lev told her as he picked up a wicker trash can by the fireplace without her asking and helped her put the bits of glass into it, along with the small silver balls of metal remaining on table. She’d vacuum later. “But, you can get protection.”

  “From who?” She snorted. “Darks? They hate what I am. Elementals feel the same. Or are you suggesting I hire bodyguards? With what? My smile?”

  “Darks take care of anyone who works with them. It’s part of our honor system. You don’t kill or hurt the ones who assist you.” He smiled a bit, a slight lift of the lips, black eyes earnest. “You’re an angry woman. Desperate. I’d like to help. I am beginning to see why Mina likes you and Rachel. You’re both full of vibrant emotion.” His nostrils flared as if he scented something delicious.

  All right, then. This is getting awkward. Nicki pulled back. His gaze dropped, and the moment was gone. She had to remember Lev liked emotions no matter what he said to the contrary. Oh, and let’s not forget the blood.

  “I’m going to put this kit away, and we’ll pretend you didn’t just creep me out,” Nicki said in her bright fake voice she used with customers. She so needed a job.

  “I know of a job you can have right now.”

  Lev watched as she put what was left of the gun cleaning kit together without the bottle and put it back on the shelf. She’d try cleaning her firearm later. She paused at the bookshelf as he said those words I know of a job. Her heart beat a little faster.

  “It is working for a research pharmaceutical company my father owns.” He stood up from the ottoman, and out of an inner breast pocket of his leather jacket, he pulled out a simple white business card with black writing. He held it out to her. “Here is the address. Call this number, use my name, and you’ll get an interview. But I know the job is yours.”

  Nicki turned and pressed her back against the bookshelf, her eyes on his outstretched hand and the white card in his fingers. Hope flared in her chest as if someone lit a candle, a small flame. She tried to snuff it out.

  “But our people are at war.” No matter what she thought, she was still a Mage, and he was a Dark. This business was owned by his kind, and they were still in open conflict.

  “I’m not at war with you.” Lev stood patiently, holding out the card. He gave it a little shake.

  “But you—”

  “Don’t bring that up again. I’m not apologizing. Are you going to take the card or not?” Impatience crept into his voice.

  “Fine.” Nicki leaned forward and snatched the card, careful to avoid his fingers. “I’ll check it out.” She pocketed it. She wasn’t giving up on a traditional job, but this gave her options, and she liked options.

  A moan and a movement on the couch had Nicki and Lev focusing on Rachel as she struggled to sit up. Her hair lay in a fluffy mess about her face and shoulders. Her blue eyes were wild. Lev moved to help her. She batted his hands away, but he ignored it and helped steady her as she sat.

  There was Lev’s answer; the stuff he gave her affected her for about an hour or so. He should be happy.

  For the first time since the mall incident, Nicki felt her mouth curl up in a smile, relieved her friend was awake. “Rae!” She reached out for her, but stopped.

  Still in her scrubs, Rachel fought to stand, her breathing rapid and erratic—panic. “There’s no time,” Rachel cried. “They’ve found out about us.”

  Nicki glared at Lev, who stood next to her friend. “What exactly was in that damn tincture you gave her?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE BODIES WERE DUST.

  The onset of deterioration was rapid and steady. No matter what Poppy did—freeze, put samples in a vacuum container, place in a gel—they continued the steady disintegration. Nothing worked. She took what samples she could, but in the end, all she had left were piles of fine powder.

  There was one exception: teeth. They were the only things that didn’t crumble. These hard pieces of denture came from the four deformed bodies with the gray skin. One set was needle sharp, two serrated, and one jagged in a way reminding her of sharks’ teeth.

  “Do you have anything useful?” John Bradford hadn’t left. Which was unfortunate, because she’d really hoped he’d found someone else to harass.

  Shaking her head, she flipped through her notes on her clipboard, inwardly happy she was no longer in the Tyvek suit from hell. She hated the plastic and body-odor smell and how it made her sweat. She didn’t appreciate the de-con afterward, but at least she could move with freedom. And she did so by taking a step to stand in front of the computer—away from John.

  “Some results will take a few hours, but with all of the subjects becoming dust, it’s going to be difficult.” She kept him in sight out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t trust him around the teeth. Why? Because of his twitchy fingers. His hands flexed involuntarily from some inner direction as he looked at the teeth in the hermetically-sealed glass box. In her experience, this meant one of her students was going to try to pilfer something.

  “What do you have now?” He turned his head, his dull blue eyes flat, his mouth twisted downward. “Teeth, while interesting, don’t help me.”

  Damn, he was impatient.

  “You want results. I get it.” Sarcasm wasn’t going to help her with him, but she was growing tired of his micro-managing and constant harping on results. This wasn’t a fast-food restaurant where everything was done in three minutes or less. “The bodies may be powder, but there are still tests I can perform. It’s not ideal, but it all takes time.” How much more would she have to repeat herself? Science was a craft, logical and methodical, not something to get sloppy about.

  “Which we don’t have, Dr. Delacruz. Didn’t you take a look at the destruction when you came here?” Derision dripped from his tone. He wasn’t a large man, about her height, but lean, hard. Not soft like many politically-appointed men. “So, you will forgive me if I appear overzealous.”

  Now he was being an ass.

  “Fine.” She pulled up some of the preliminary X-rays on the computer. She’d had them done using a variety of spectrum equipment before the bodies destroyed themselves. Oh, how she wished she could publish a paper on this discovery, but she’d signed over any hope of anything remotely career-advancing with the top-secret clearance and non-disclosure she’d agreed to. Damn ethics.

  “Here.” With a few clicks, she displayed the thermal and terahertz scans on the fifty-two-inch monitor the government had commandeered when they’d taken over the university. It was set high up on the wall and placed to give everyone in the lab a good view of the images. When the screen lit up, the other scientists in the room stopped what they were doing to look. “You want results; here are some shots of the bodies.”

  It couldn’t be that easy.

  Poppy forgot about John Bradford and his attitude and instead peered at the data on her clipboard and compared it with the one on the computer. This had to be fatigue; it was faking her out. She put on her reading glasses and leaned forward.

  “What? Tell me,” John Bradford demanded.

  He knew she’d found something. She’d let him sweat for a while. This was her territory.

&n
bsp; “Andy, did you take the same images of the bodies after they turned to dust?” Poppy tried to keep her voice cool and professional.

  The man in question was in the back, setting up another experiment. He looked up at her question and nodded.

  “Under what file?” The one good thing about a computer system, anyone could access the data, you just had to know where the hell it was.

  He rattled off a name, and in moments, she’d brought up the images. She kept these on her desktop screen and compared them to the one on the wall.

  “Explain to me what you’re seeing.” John didn’t ask; he ordered.

  She felt her lips pull into a smile. The thermal shots showed energy signatures significantly different from humans. The three normal-looking bodies all glowed hotter, brighter, and the piles of dust they’d become didn’t change. The ones her brethren dubbed “monsters,” a macabre nickname, were colder than humans by several degrees, and their ashes remained the same temperature. The terahertz picked up on the claws and teeth, bright in the X-ray—natural weapons.

  Poppy crossed her arms and couldn’t help the smug tone in her voice. “What I’m seeing is a possible way to track them,” she announced.

  Xander hated to dream.

  The worst part? Knowing it was a dream, a trick of his subconscious to screw with his head, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. He’d been to therapists, Mage healers, and hypnotists. They taught him to control his dreams—but not this one. It always came under stress. This nightmare always took on a life of its own, bringing him along at a forced march.

  It began like all the ones before it.

  So cold.

  A hard surface.

  An impossibly bright light making him squint.

  When he could focus, it was as if he were looking through an ancient glass. There were no clear edges; everything was soft and blurred. It was this distortion which always alerted him that he dreamed. The rational part of him knew he was really chained in a dank cell, not this vividly lit place.

  He wanted to move. He knew he couldn’t even wriggle a toe, but the need to try was as great as the pressure holding his arms and legs immobile. It was a vise, tight as duct tape. He told his extremities to flex. The tightness increased, and his breath came out in a “whoosh.” He shouldn’t fight this. He knew this. A binding spell.

  Relax.

  Breathing—the need to suck in air—became his focus, and the rigid bindings he couldn’t see eased as he forced his muscles to stop tensing. Oxygen filled his lungs when his body relaxed, providing relief as great as receiving a rush of morphine to kill the pain.

  Instead of the black stone of a dungeon, he lay on a smooth, silver gurney. With the strange omniscient knowledge of dreams, he knew in addition to the binding magic, thick straps reinforced his immobility. His bones ached with a dread as great as the physical pain coursing through him. Something terrible was going to happen; it was as plain as the white of the walls surrounding him.

  The urge to move his head was strong. It was the only part of his body he could stir and the only extremity he didn’t want to shift. Everything inside him screamed to turn his head, to look over to his left. It pummeled him with an incessant need, an enticing promise as a full bottle of liquor is to an alcoholic in the throes of DTs.

  He didn’t want to move his head. He gritted his teeth and told himself to wake up. To remove himself from this damned dream.

  I will not turn my head.

  He wasn’t going to look. No.

  He would control this dream.

  It was as if his head were set on a timer. His head began to roll to the left. He set his jaw, pushed against it. He kept moving.

  He tried to shut his eyes. He wasn’t going to look. But he did. He always did.

  Lying next to him was his mirror image. Familiar blue eyes, the same shock of blond hair and quirk of a sardonic smile—all things he looked at every morning in the mirror. These features aged as he did, growing with him every time he dreamed this hell. He’d seen this mirror image change from boy to man.

  Xander opened his mouth, but no sound came out. There was never any sound in this silent-movie nightmare.

  The other self.

  He knew who this was, but as his mind latched on to the concept, it skittered away, fleeing his conscious like a squirrel escapes the cat. His other self smiled, but the sheen of unshed tears gave it a bittersweet expression. This face had no hidden hardness of scars buried deep like his did. His other self didn’t let his gaze waver, and this understanding shredded Xander.

  Grief bit into him deeper than any cut of his skin, crack of a bone, or burn of a spell. The other self would go away. He knew this, should expect it.

  His instinct kicked in, telling him to save the other self. This time he could do it. But he was trapped, tangled in fetters he couldn’t see. Panic reared up inside him, tangible like a snake uncoiling, but he was the only person bit.

  His other self spoke, but not the words he expected. The voice was light, husky, and sounded like Mina. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  His other self crumbled to dust. Xander awoke, screaming.

  He was unable to stop the hot, salty tears that rolled down chapped cheeks. He’d kept his cool as Cazacul sliced him. But he couldn’t handle this one fucking dream. It unmanned him in ways he never could define. Tears? They were for the weak.

  “Shhh…” Mina’s cool voice rolled over him, a balm as her slender fingers smoothed his brow. “You were dreaming, lost.”

  Moving his head to search for her—his beacon in the storm of his nightmare—Xander barely made out the Darkling in the gloom of his cell. A faint, greenish luminescence emanated from the fungus growing high on the walls, making her pale skin gleam faintly in the darkness. He thought he could see the glitter of her eyes, but she turned, and the moment was gone.

  The Darks had one gift he bitterly wished he could obtain—night vision. He knew Mina could see him. Those chilled fingers brushed over his overheated skin.

  With a soft touch, she wiped away the evidence of his pathetic tears. The urge to wrap her in his arms, feel her body next to his, and cling to her became as important to him as breathing in his nightmare. He shifted, and reality rolled over him, crushing any want or need. His hands were chained in spelled manacles attached to the wall behind him. There was enough room to bend his elbows a fraction. His feet were bound the same way. He lay on bumpy, sharp rock that bit into his flesh and dug into the shallow cuts in the small of his back. On cue, the lacerations began to throb in one painful chorus. But what hurt worse was that he couldn’t touch Mina.

  He groaned.

  “I dream like that too,” she whispered in his ear. She was curled next to him, her body lending heat to the feverish flesh of his torso. Her touch soothed him, and the strange restlessness in his body eased as the last remnants of his dream floated away as feathers in the wind. “There is no escape, so I woke you.”

  And he was grateful.

  Xander tried to open his thick, parched lips to answer and only managed a low croak from his dry throat. Mina shot up, leaving his side. Her absence squeezed his heart in a vise. When had he become so wretched?

  She is a Dark, he told himself. She is my enemy.

  Hadn’t he just spent the last few hours at the tender mercies of the Dark leader? He should feel nothing for one such as her. But, his heart and his body said something different; they recognized Mina as someone he could count on. Someone he cared for.

  He’d lied to himself before.

  “Here.” Strong, capable fingers lifted his head, stretching his shoulder muscles in a painful pinch as a cold rim of a thin tin cup was pressed to his mouth.

  Water dribbled in. It had a sharp metallic flavor. Nothing tasted so sweet, so welcome. He lapped it up. Weakness made him give up after a few sips, but his mouth was no longer sandpaper dry.

  “Thank you.” He didn’t recognize his own voice. It came out scratchy, rough, and faint. When d
id something so small become so significant to him?

  The clink of the cup being set on the stone next to him was loud in his ears, making him tense, but it was Mina curling next to him again that leeched the anxiety out and helped him relax.

  “You’ve always been there for me. This time I am here for you,” she told him, resuming the soft stroke of his forehead and hair. “I’ll keep your dreams at bay.”

  This gentle touch lulled him, taking away the focus of pain on his body. But unease settled into him, a slow realization that she stayed with him, a prisoner in her father’s cavern dungeon.

  “It isn’t safe for you here.” He tried to say the words firmly, but only a whispery sound came out. “Go. I can deal with this.” Even as he said the words, his heart railed against him. No. He didn’t want her to go.

  “Liar.”

  Ah, emotions. Something he’d never be able to hide from a Shadow Nymph like Mina. But he didn’t have to admit to them.

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you here,” he said.

  Her lips brushed his forehead, and his swollen hands clenched in an echo somewhere deep in his chest.

  “Like I’ve ever listened to you before,” she teased. With sure movements, she lifted his head again and gave him more water. This time he took a gulp. The cold liquid traveled down his throat to his stomach in a long icy trail. Delicious.

  “Did you get your answers then?” His voice came out stronger, more a rasp than a shade of a sound. If he couldn’t order her out, he’d try a different tactic. “Did you find out who your parents are?”

  The sharp sound of ripping cloth had him turning his head to find out what she was doing. He could feel the jostle of movement and see the faint glimmer of her skin but that was it. Mina muttered a few words to a spell, one he didn’t quite recognize, probably a Dark-based one. The faint tingle of the power being released rolled across his skin. An initial surge of relief at the mere presence of the energy revitalized a small part of him. He could still sense the magic, but couldn’t use it. Too much blood and his own essence had been drained from him. For a moment, Xander didn’t think Mina would answer.