Heir of Ashes (The Roxanne Fosch Files #1)

Chapter 8

We rented a room at the hotel, but we both knew we couldn’t linger. I made the most of it and headed to the bathroom first. The thought of one drop of warm water on my blisters sent goosebumps rippling across my body, so I cleaned myself with a warm sponge. Eyeing my bloodstained, rumpled clothes, I wished I had gone to the boutique first and bought myself some new ones. Sighing, I put them back on and unlocked the door.

When I emerged from the bathroom, my eyes zeroed in on a small CVS plastic bag dangling from Logan’s index finger.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, motioning for me to sit beside him on the bed.

I looked at the plastic bag warily. I was always suspicious when drugs and strangers were involved, but I relented after searching the bag and finding no needles. He examined the blisters and charred skin, then began expertly cleaning my hand as if he’d done it many times before.

“How fast do you heal?” he asked.

“Faster than normal.”

It seemed to be the right answer because he began peeling away the burnt skin with tweezers I hadn’t seen in the bag, revealing angry, dark pink skin underneath. I shifted every time a small piece came off but didn’t complain. Then Logan applied an ointment that cooled the burning skin and relieved the ache. After it dried, he used another kind of ointment, this one bright yellow. Once he was done, he wrapped my hand with gauze, bent sideways, and pulled something from under the bed … and dropped my duffel bag in front of me.

“Oh,” was all I could say. I opened it and saw that he had tucked my purse inside. Beneath the purse, a baby-blue color caught my attention. My Prada jacket!

“Oh, thank you,” I said earnestly. I extracted clean clothes from inside the duffel—jeans, underwear, a gray shirt—and hurried back to the bathroom to change.

***

The sun was setting when we left the town, both of us clean and full. I admired the sunset in the desert. It was so different from the sunset in the city, where it only served to emphasize the passing of time, the demarcation between night and day. Here in the desert, it was the subject of poetry, the way the sky exploded with colors atop an endless sea of brownish-yellow. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

“Tell me what kind of things they’re doing to my friend,” Logan said after we had been driving for a while in comfortable silence.

I thought about his question for a minute, debating an answer that wouldn’t be too revealing, but kept hitting the same blank wall. “It really depends on his circumstances,” I said lamely.

His eyes narrowed at the road, and his lips compressed. He was genuinely concerned, and I sighed, for the first time feeling compelled to answer.

“There was this time, during my earliest days in the PSS, when they wanted to know my limits,” I began. “It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were labeled as experiment days. Dr. Maxwell waited for me in Building C with another scientist, as he did every first Tuesday of the month. The scientist, usually one newly employed in one of the PSS bases around the world, would visit for a lecture, a brief preview of the subject they’d be experimenting on, and later, if they were lucky, would witness something extraordinary. Except this time, instead of being in a lab, they were waiting by the pool.”

I remembered being roused earlier than usual, then escorted by a guard to the back entrance of the building, where we could access the swimming pool without needing to navigate through the administrative cubicle maze inside. Dr. Maxwell stood by the door, arguing vehemently with Dr. Dean, Chief Director of the PSS, about something being too risky. The new scientist just stood by with pursed lips and listened. I could tell just by watching that whatever was about to happen, I would suffer for it.

“You’ll do as I say, and I say the weights are to be used,” Dr. Dean had said.

“Sir, if it doesn’t work, the result might be fatal,” Dr. Maxwell had argued.

In the end, Dr. Dean got his way, just like every other time. They tied some specially-made heavy dumbbell weights to my ankles. They were so heavy that I had to be dragged to the pool.

“I protested,” I murmured. “I begged them not to do it, but they wouldn’t listen. They said fear and the need for survival would trigger my other nature, and they wanted to know if I could breathe underwater or, at the very least, get free of the weights.”

I remembered being pushed into the pool and sinking to the bottom, about fifteen feet down. “I tried to remove the weights, but thick metal bands firmly secured them around each ankle. I broke my nails; I panicked and wasted precious oxygen twice as fast from the exertion. I remembered when my vision blurred, dimmed, and then went black.”

We were idling at the shoulder of the road. The only sounds were our slow breaths and the running engine. I’d been so engrossed in my past, I hadn’t noticed that we weren’t moving.

Logan was staring at me, his expression appalled. “What happened then?”

“I drowned,” I said flatly. “When they realized I couldn’t breathe underwater, the guard dove in to get me, but the weights were too heavy. It took him a while to remove them, and by then my lungs were full of water. They did some CPR and Dr. Maxwell wouldn’t give up until I was breathing again. Then I spent a couple of hours in the infirmary.”

Logan’s eyes darkened, now the gray of heavy clouds. His anger warmed me, and I had to remind myself his reaction stemmed from the knowledge that his friend could be suffering something similar at the hands of the Scientists.

“Is that what they do when one doesn’t behave?”

Surprised, I shook my head. “No. I was cooperating by then.”

His gaze flicked up to a spot just above my forehead before he looked away, frowning. My heart skipped a beat. Did he just try to read my aura? According to Dr. Maxwell’s journal, werewolves couldn’t see auras. Could they ?

“Why did they think you could breathe underwater? Are you a sea creature?” he demanded, still frowning.

Was I? Not if I couldn’t breathe underwater. “Who knows the minds of mad scientists?”

Logan debated with himself for a moment before asking, “And when you didn’t behave, what did they do to you?”

I glanced around the desert, thinking. Remembering. “The first few weeks, I gave them hell, fighting every step of the way. I punched, kicked, bit, spat. And when I resisted, experiment days happened three, sometimes four times a week. Then I started behaving, attempting escape only when I saw an opportunity.” Thinking about it now, I wondered if those opportunities had been deliberately staged to justify more experiments.

I wished someone had been as concerned for me as Logan was for his friend. What kind of friendship caused such loyalty, such unwavering devotion? We locked gazes, Logan with simmering anger in his eyes, me with envy and hurt in my heart—even a drop of resentment. My expression was neutral, the mask I’d worn for half my life in place, concealing the raging emotions tangled beneath. Logan looked away first, but the hard set of his jaw made it clear he was far from calm.

I had rattled him.

“This Dr. Maxwell, he seemed to be on your side, the way he stood by arguing with the director, and the way he persisted at the end?”

I let out a harsh, bitter laugh, tinged with hysteria. “Dr. Maxwell just didn’t want his experiments to be over. He’s cautious, he’s smart, but he’s not sympathetic, and he’s not above inflicting pain if he sees a reward at the end.”

I thought about all the times Dr. Maxwell had brought me snacks, new magazines, talked to me about the world beyond the PSS. There were moments when I’d believed he wanted to help, but after the wolf incident, I knew better. He was a scientist above all else, and he’d thought gaining my trust would lead to better, more satisfying outcomes. Like I said, I was young and desperately needed sympathy. Dr. Maxwell had known that and, in the name of his project, had exploited that angle, bribing me to help advance his research.

No, Dr. Maxwell had never cared about me as a person but as a project, a special guinea pig.

“What if my friend could give them hell, but instead of kicking and spitting, he actually manages to injure or even kill some of them?”

I doubted he could, but I considered his question carefully. I remembered the first time I managed to injure one of the Scientists by kicking and dislocating his kneecap. They had shot me full of tranquilizers, then proceeded with their test by injecting some sort of hallucinogenic spell into my IV while I was still unconscious.

“First of all, you should keep in mind the PSS has this thing they call the blocking bracelet, which they use on preternaturals to prevent them from tapping into that something that makes them other. But let’s say your friend manages to get to one or maybe two guards. If he’s that dangerous, they’ll just tighten security, give him a mild sedative—enough to keep him aware but not able to do much harm—then they’ll surround him with more scientists to watch the phenomenon. If he’s smart, he would rather they experiment while he’s lucid.” If I had thought Logan’s anger was overwhelming before, it all but suffocated me now.

“Is that what they did to you?” he asked in a low tone.

I remembered waking up after I had attacked the guest scientist. After I broke his kneecap, one of the guards shot me with a tranquilizer. It was one of those rare experiments where I didn’t need to be conscious while they prepared me.

I had woken in my room—the old one I had occupied in my early days at the PSS. It was a simple room with a narrow bed, a small bathroom, and sometimes a chair.

That day, my mother had occupied the straight-backed chair beside me. I’d been so glad to see her, I flung myself out of bed into her lap and cried my heart out.

I could smell the jasmine scent of her lotion, the cinnamon scent of her hair. She held me close, telling me everything would be all right. Then, three guards had barged into the room. Two had grabbed me while the other went for my mother. I was shackled and manacled with a special metal used for preternaturals and dragged to a small empty room in Building C—a room I had never been taken to before. It was a bare, sterile room with only a two-way mirror. I knew instinctively that they were going to do something to me, punish me for misbehaving—so I was ready to plead and beg for them not to let my mother watch. But instead of taking her to the room where she could see me become a monster, they threw her into the room with me. I was horrified by the idea of attacking my mother, but they had something completely different in mind.

The speakers crackled to life, and Dr. Maxwell’s voice sliced through the silence. “Subject UX01-484, I want you to listen carefully.” He waited for my attention to focus on the mirror where I knew he was watching.

“This room will start filling with fast-acting, enhanced radiation. We have reason to believe you can form an air shield around you and your mother. Once the radiation starts leaking and you’re exposed, if you don’t form the shield within two minutes, your mother will die. You have enough immunity to live three minutes longer than her.”

The words hit me like a blow, leaving me stunned, my throat constricting with terror. “P-please don’t do this. At least let her go,” I choked.

My mother huddled in the corner, loose strands of her honey-blonde hair around her face, her black eyes huge and frightened, her skin ghostly white, and she was shaking and shivering. It was an image that brought me nightmares for many years.

“Those are my orders. I have no choice. I’m sorry.”

“If you’re wrong and I die, then you won’t be able to experiment anymore,” I spat furiously. Tears tracked down my cheeks, and my body quaked with fear.

“I’m sorry. I have orders to follow,” he repeated before falling silent, as if debating what to say next. “They believe if you can’t do this, then you’re not what they thought you were.”

I huffed a dry laugh. “Then I die, and you get to pick another victim to torture.”

“Subject UX01-484!” boomed another voice from the speakers. “This is Dr. Michael Dean. If you can’t meet our expectations, there’s no reason to waste funds and resources on you. You are nothing but expendable.” He clicked off, and I heard hissing from all four sides of the room. Gas seeped from small holes in the corners, and my mother came closer. Did radiation have an odor? Texture or color? I thought frantically about what I could possibly do. I imagined the air shield they wanted me to form. I even closed my eyes to concentrate harder, but nothing happened. Desperate, I imagined me and my mother inside a bubble and tried to project it … and nothing. Either I wasn’t concentrating enough, or Dr. Dean was about to be proven wrong. An arm’s length away, my mother sat, sobbing, telling me she was sorry over and over.

I crouched and held her close. We rocked back and forth together, and I kept trying to do something, to form that damn shield. For the first time since the day I had been brought to the PSS fifteen months earlier, I prayed they were right about me.

The gas reached us, and it had no odor at all, but my mother and I choked all the same. I guessed it was the principle of breathing radiation and the knowledge that it was lethal. I tried to count the seconds, but I couldn’t get past one-two-three before my thoughts jammed. My mind screamed that this was wrong, that this couldn’t be happening to me.

My mother choked, and her skin began reddening, breaking out in splotches. She cried out, and her gums were bleeding, red covering her teeth. I screamed at the mirror as a trickle of blood ran down her nose. I pressed her face into my chest, trying to shield her, to avoid watching her die. But I felt it—the moment she stopped shaking, her life slipping away.

I didn’t let her go.

Children shouldn’t watch their parents die. It just shouldn’t happen. My only solace was that I would be dying too. The PSS had killed my mother to test a reaction from me, and all I could manage was rage—burning, volcanic rage.

I wanted to kill Dr. Dean with my bare hands. No, I wanted to mutilate his body with my newfound talons. The beginning of a familiar stir grew inside me, and I knew I wasn’t far from snapping. If I gave in to it, they would get a reaction from me. Maybe not what they had wanted and expected me to do, but one nonetheless, and then my mother would have died for nothing. My hands blurred and formed talons, and for the first time since I’d arrived in the PSS, my teeth shifted and elongated, rearranging inside my mouth. I clenched my jaw and tried to fight any changes, but my anger was a living thing, relentless and consuming. All I wanted was to kill someone—preferably Dr. Dean—and feast on his blood. To pull off his head with my bare hands and dance around his still-twitching body. I lowered my head to my mother’s limp shoulder and shook with rage and grief. All the while, I rocked left and right.

They shouldn’t have killed anyone in an experiment. My fury swelled inside me, reaching depths I never thought possible. Something was happening to me, something more than talons and teeth—something other. Foreign, even to me.

My mother lay limp in my arms, and all I could do was rock her from side to side. Was this punishment because I had injured one of their precious scientists? My mother shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have been able to visit. Didn’t Dr. Maxwell tell me no visits, no matter what, were allowed?

My mother wasn’t supposed to be there …

My arms, still around my mother’s prone body, reddened, then blurred and wavered like a mirage, and suddenly I knew, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. I wasn’t afraid because I wasn’t dying. My mother wasn’t there. She wasn’t allowed to be there. I pushed back on my anger, gaining an inch. I realized what was happening to me seconds before the PSS had successfully provoked a reaction from me. I concentrated on the rapid beating of my heart, slowing my breaths. My teeth reverted to normal, my talons returned to fingers. The tremors that shook my body subsided moments after that.

My mother wasn’t there. I wasn’t dying.

I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and concentrated. My rage dissipated slowly, and my breathing returned to a normal rhythm. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself alone in the room, my arms around myself as I rocked, facing the two-way mirror.

My nightmare was over. I had broken through the illusion spell they’d injected into me after they’d tranquilized me. Despite the many nightmares that sprouted from that day, I had won that round. They never found out how close they came to succeeding. I had managed to control my rage, my beast, and they had no satisfactory results. After that test, I had explored the slumbering otherness deep inside my soul, but I didn’t know what it could do until the mage attacked me the day after I had escaped.