And we’d survived it. I could feel myself ready to fall into an exhausted state of relief. It was so tempting to give in, now that the immediate danger was past. But a growing sense of uncertainty told me this wasn’t over yet.
Chapter Four
THE PICK-UP PULLED over by the ruins, and I finally tore my eyes away from the legimals off in the distance. Stepping down from the ruins, a sharp pain flared in my leg. I braced myself against the nearest surface, hissing.
Right. I’d gotten a cut in the previous fall. With the adrenaline of a life and death situation coursing through me, I hadn’t even felt it. But now, a persistent throbbing was settling in.
While I was delayed, Carter rushed on ahead to the vehicle. He climbed into the back, carefully avoiding contact with as much of its outside as possible. That was just a precaution—most of the car had been protected by the biohazard wrap, excepting the wheels and some of the bottom. Luckily for us, the wrap had been developed a few years back to let people drive through toxic areas. But the bottom of the car would have to be decontaminated before it was safe to touch.
With a few halting steps, I managed my way over to the pick-up at a slower pace. Meanwhile, Tony all but shoved Luca out of the driver’s seat. I couldn’t say I disapproved, because I officially never wanted to see Luca drive again.
Carter dug up some spare clothes and a first aid kit. He tore the fabric to make a sling for himself, and handed me some gauze to tie around my cut. Actually making the sling with one arm gave him trouble, though, so Luca had to help him out.
“Everyone okay?” I asked.
“No!” Tony said, opening the door and leaning out just far enough that he could glare at me from an unobstructed view.
I took that to mean that he was physically fine, or I’d be hearing a lot more from him—not that I begrudged him a little emotional turmoil. I turned a questioning gaze on the other two guys.
“We’re fine,” Luca replied, completely ignoring Tony’s reaction.
Carter just nodded. I spared another glance for the basilisk, but it still looked like it was staying put.
We made it.
We could load up into the car and drive home right now, put as much distance between us and this place as possible. Get into the safety zone, where nothing could touch us. Less than half an hour, and we’d be completely safe.
I really, really wished I could let myself do that.
But there was still the wall, which someone had put up. I wanted to hand it off to someone else, someone whose job it was to fix these kinds of things, but that was a fantasy. No one else would handle this. We were outside of the safety zone, and therefore outside of the jurisdiction of Rome. Even if the military police was willing to help, they were unequipped to do so as long as magic was involved. Not to mention the diplomatic nightmare, if this really had anything to do with the legends. If I left now and hoped someone else would take care of it, most likely, everything would be left as is. In this case, “as is” meant that an unknown someone with lots of resources wanted us dead and was willing to act on that desire.
But come on. Wasn’t it bad enough we were going out here and dodging man-eating animals every day? Now someone was actively trying to kill us. I let that thought sink in for a minute.
I could handle the risks inherent in my job. I was trained to handle those risks. Assassination attempts, though, I was not trained to handle and never wanted to be. What I wanted was to run away, and never think about this again.
But someone had to step up, and it really sucked.
It took me a moment to force the words out of my mouth, but I finally did it. “Let’s take a look at that wall,” I said, not sure if I was proud of myself or upset that I was committed now.
All three guys turned to stare at me, which frankly, was a little disconcerting. Tony raised his hand. “Uh, excuse me? Dangerous basilisk, sitting right over there.”
“It should be okay,” Carter said, sounding a lot like his old self. Either he bounced back quickly, or he had some seriously awesome emotional defense mechanisms. “Basilisks aren’t particularly aggressive animals. They don’t move fast, and they don’t have problems finding prey. We could probably get closer with no problem at all.”
Right, trust Carter to suggest getting closer to one legendary animal after almost being eaten by another. I wasn’t sure if his support was helping my argument or hurting it.
“Besides,” I added, deciding that I had to follow up Carter’s assessment with something the other two guys might actually understand. “No one else is going to check this out. We’re outside the safety zone. We need to know as much about what just happened as we can, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Tony curled his lip, unappeased. “What if the people who put up that invisible barrier come back?”
“People?” Carter interjected. “Come back?”
Right. It may have been obvious that legends had to be involved in this, but it wasn’t intuitive. There was no reason for them to break the peace like this. And Carter had never dealt with legends, to my knowledge. Tony had.
“You didn’t think the wall put itself up, did you?” Tony scoffed.
“It could have been a natural phenomenon,” Carter replied, defensively. I didn’t think he believed it either, now that he’d said it out loud.
Tony ignored him and turned back to me. “Every second we stay here is dangerous.”
I raised an eyebrow. “With a basilisk sitting right there? They’d have to be seriously dense to come any closer.” That much was true, at least. It didn’t stop me from wanting to agree with Tony so we could get the hell out of here, but I couldn’t afford that luxury.
And even if he didn’t realize it yet, neither could he. Of the four of us, Luca was the only one who could stop traveling outside the safety zone and lose nothing. For the rest of us, this was life.
Tony didn’t answer for a moment, though his frown did become more pronounced. That was promising. Tony’s emotions were all over the place, but he had a good head on his shoulders, when he bothered to use it—so not often.
“Fine,” he said, reluctantly. “You have a point. But I get to stay in the car.” Even with everything that happened, the familiarity of his statement still teased a smile out of me. Of course he would.
We all got in the back of the car so Tony could drive us closer to the broken section of the wall—the one furthest from the basilisk, because we weren’t that senseless. The animal stayed in the same place, still watching us. Tony readied himself to drive off at a moment’s notice, and Carter settled in to keep an eye on the basilisk. If we needed to get out of there, we’d do it.
A good distance away from the large patch of discolored grass marking the basilisk's path, Tony stopped the vehicle. I started rifling through our stuff, pulling out the biohazard suits. The last thing I wanted was to touch or breathe the basilisk’s venom. I put it on, took a deep breath, and tried not to think too hard about what I was going to do.
My eyes focused on the grass ahead of me, the brown patches shaped slightly like an hourglass. The narrow space was where I expected to find the wall. I aimed myself to the side of that brown patch, towards the odd break in the grass, where the green blades pressed flat against the ground. With my hands out before me, I walked forward, expecting to make contact with a piece of the wall.
After a few seconds of tentatively moving forward, probably looking ridiculous, my hands ran up against the hard press of a solid surface. Great. Off to my left was the patch of dead grass, where the basilisk had dispatched its fumes. I moved towards it, leaving a hand on the wall so I could feel for the break that the legimal had made. Maybe I’d be able to get my hands on some of the material.
A few steps into the patch, my foot caught on something, pitching me forward. I just managed to catch myself against the wall, toes throbbing from the impact. When I looked back for whatever had tripped me, all I saw was scuffled dirt. Maybe it was invisible, and somehow relate
d to the wall? Kneeling down, I groped at the ground with my hands, hoping to make contact with something.
For a long few moments, I waved my arms around like a fool, unsure whether anything was really there. Before my hand brushed up against something rigid. Running my fingers over it, I felt out a large, rectangular-ish shape. The suit softened my sense of its texture, but it was consistent with what I’d felt before—rock solid beneath my touch. Most likely, the wall was made up of larger-than-expected, brick-like components.
Gripping the piece of wall, I tried to pull it up. The force I used wasn’t enough to so much as budge it, I noted with surprise. Bracing myself for another try, prepared for its heaviness this time, I shifted my hold—and felt some sort of indentation along its side, as my palm pressed against it. Something that wasn’t level with the surface of the rest of the brick.
“Luca,” I called, knowing Carter was the better choice but not wanting to bother him with his injured arm. “Get a suit on, grab my writing materials, then get out here.” I was so focused on the job at hand, it didn’t even register until I’d said it that I might have been asking a little too much.
If Luca had any reservations about walking into the contaminated area, though, he hid them well. He climbed in the back where the suits were, without hesitation. I tried not to feel guilty about dragging him out here. He was invested in this, too. All of us were, after we’d been targeted.
A few minutes later, he hopped out of the pick-up, a vision of pure white that almost hurt my eyes. Carter rushed after him to check the suit, making sure it was on properly. Then Luca’s voice called out, “I’m ready,” as he strode forth towards the large brown patch of dead grass and dirt.
He was so totally inexperienced, chimera incident notwithstanding, and look what I was dragging him into. Yeah, okay, I did feel bad.
“You’re going to touch as little as possible,” I warned him. Luca didn’t know the safety protocols, but he’d be fine as long as he listened. I would go overkill with the caution, just to make sure. “Hand me the stuff. Make sure not to touch me.”
I took the pencil and paper from him, crouching to feel for the brick again. Once I found it, I put the paper over the indentation and used the pencil to shade in the area over it—leaving an impression of the image from the brick on the paper, which at first glance, looked a bit like the letter U.
I didn’t get in a second glance before the edge of the paper started disintegrating away in my hands, blackening as it dissolved from the outside in. I fought the instinct to drop it, alarmed at how quickly the material was being eaten away, before my very eyes. The shock only lasted for a second, before the disintegration slowed, but it was enough to leave me shaking.
Taking a deep breath, I assessed what was left of the paper. The damage had mostly stopped short of the image I’d made, only singing the edges. The weird U-shape was still visible. I didn’t have to touch that brick again, which must have been partially covered in basilisk venom...and the venom apparently corroded through paper, which was just peachy.
I hesitated. We could potentially seal the paper inside of something clear and capable of keeping any contaminants in. That had been my original plan. But after watching it erode away from the edges, I didn’t want to keep anything that had contacted basilisk venom around my person.
“Carter,” I called. “You got something that can zoom in on this image from way back there?”
“One sec,” came the response. He dove into the back of the pick-up and came out with a camera, aiming it for the paper that I held out for him. “Got it.”
Great. I dropped the paper and pencil on the ground like they were live wires, and gestured Luca away from the biohazard zone.
I’d gotten what I came for. I had an idea of what the wall was made of, and a clue via that impression on the brick. Hopefully, that’d be enough, because it was all we could do.
And I was so ready to get out of here.
THE BIOHAZARD SUITS could be safely dumped by the wall—the place was already contaminated so it wasn’t like we could make it much worse. Luca got out of his suit quickly and haphazardly. That was okay, since he mostly didn’t touch anything and only needed to avoid contacting the bottom. I was a bit more careful when I removed mine, and the last to join everyone else by our vehicle.
Tony muttered something as I approached, but before I could make it out, Carter leaned forward to stare in the direction we’d arrived from. “What’s that?” he said.
Turning, I watched as a bright red Vespa became visible on the dirt path, coming towards us. A familiar figure rode seated on it—a tall Indian woman with blonde highlights in her hair. Hayley, our remote contact, my best friend.
Who had absolutely no field experience. Outside of the safety zone. Driving that monstrosity.
Was that a shotgun sticking out of the bag strapped behind her? What was with these newbies and unsafe gun practices today?
I knew for a fact that she’d never handled a firearm in her life. Where did she even get it? The holding station let people pick up weapons on their way out of the safety zone, but only the ones they’d left there themselves. It wasn’t a rental shop, it—wait. She knew all my codes in case of an emergency, which meant that had to be my spare. Damn it, Hayley.
She stopped just short of us, getting off the atrocity and approaching with caution. “Are you guys okay?” she asked. “Is that the chimera back there? Is it dead? What happened?”
Oh boy. “What are you doing here, Hayley?” I called back.
“When the audio and video cut out, I got worried that something was wrong.”
So she came to rescue us. Impressive, for someone who’d taken this job on the condition that she would never have to do any field work. I wasn’t sure she could actually help if we did need saving, but at least she cared.
The first thing I did was confiscate her shotgun. When she protested, I pointed out that she could have shot herself if the safety had failed, especially since the thing was pointed at the small of her back the entire time she’d been driving. She argued that it was unloaded, and I asked her how she knew that. Because yeah, I would have kept it unloaded, but what if I’d made a mistake? Or what if someone in the holding station had used it without telling us?
That got her quiet, and I moved to put the gun safely in the back of the pick-up, so it wasn’t pointed at anyone. I caught Luca paying attention to our conversation, which was good, considering how he had been carrying his gun.
“So,” Tony said, tone deceptively mild. “Can we get back to the safety zone, now? Before the basilisk gets bored?”
“Wait, what?” Hayley asked.
Because of course, we were coming off our panic and I’d been losing it about the gun—and we hadn’t mentioned the basilisk yet. Which was bad, since close proximity to a dangerous animal should have been the first thing we pointed out to a new arrival. I pointed towards the creature, off in the distance, still calmly sitting there. Hayley turned towards it with a puzzled frown.
Carter sighed. “How many times do I have to say this? The basilisk will probably leave us alone, now that it’s got another prospective meal.”
“Let’s just go, people,” I said, ready to be anywhere else. “It’s been a long day, and we’ve still got to explain this to Dr. Berti.”
“Hold on,” Hayley said. “I’m not going to push for an explanation as to why there are two new legimals here instead of one, or why the chimera is dead. Not yet. But a chimera’s body is lying right there, and we can’t just leave it.”
“Why not?” Luca asked.
Hayley shot him a horrified look. “What do you mean, why not? When else are we going to get that close to a chimera? We can get tissue samples, and I don’t know, look at tissue-specific expression or something. Chimeras breathe fire, people. Doesn’t anyone want to know why?”
The guys stared at her like she’d proposed we all jump off a cliff. But for a moment, all I could think was how typical it was, that she�
��d gone straight for tissue-specific expression. I mean, really? No mention of anatomy or physiology? She was such a molecular biologist.
“Are you serious?” Carter asked.
She turned a stern gaze on him. “Are you? Do you remember why we’re here, what our entire job is supposed to be about? Are any of you ever going to be able to get tissue samples from a chimera ever again?”
Her arguments would have been much more reasonable if we hadn’t almost died trying to get away from the chimera, and if a basilisk wasn’t hanging about, watching us. As it was, I was exhausted, wrung out, and freaked out. It was hard to work up any intellectual curiosity at this point. I certainly wasn’t going to get back to work, collecting samples. I was going to go home and sleep. Or go to the hospital for some kind of toxicity test and possibly some stitches.
Hayley didn’t get it, because she was the only one of us not to have faced imminent death today. I glanced between the guys, wondering if any of them might dissuade her. Mostly, Carter seemed surprised, Luca confused, and Tony irritated. Okay, me then. I supposed it was appropriate, since I was the only other person with a background in biology.
“The chimera is covered in basilisk venom,” I told her, hoping to scare her off.
She rocked back on her heels, disbelief flashing behind her eyes. “How did that happen?”
“It went through that contaminated area there.” I waved my hand in that general direction.
“And that was how it died?” she asked.
I paused, replaying the events in my head. “No,” I said, somewhat surprised myself. “It went right through and kept going afterward.”
Hayley stilled at the information, her gaze zeroing in on me. I had been so busy focusing on everything else, on the danger, that I hadn’t even realized...
How did I not notice this sooner?
Carter furrowed his brow. “Right. The chimera didn’t disintegrate or whatever after coming into contact with basilisk venom. Weird.”
Terrestrial Magic (Jordan Sanders, #1) Page 5
