Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood #1)

9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Dakota

“I picked up the yarrow flowers for the Blood Replenishing distill,” James said as the door clicked shut behind him.

Dakota glanced up from the poppy oil press just as James set the massive wooden crate onto the prepping table with an oomph , wiping his hands against his black dress pants.

“I would have gone with you,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “I haven’t seen the Fieldhouse yet. I would love to familiarize myself with where all the plants are harvested.”

James gave her a thoughtful look. “I’ll take you the next time I need to go. I met with the governor and picked them up while on that side of town. I try not to battle traffic twice if I don’t have to. How is the poppy oil coming along for our Euphoric distills?”

Dakota's voice was tinged with frustration as she blew out a breath and shook her head. “I don’t know. I did everything right. The oil is the right color and the right scent, but…” She paused to wave at the microscope she had been looking in. “The oil is thinner than it should be.”

James curved around the metal table. “Let me take a look.”

Dakota rolled her chair out of the way for the Alchemist to sneak in and press his eyes against the lens. He focused the dial once and twice before straightening and planting his hands on his hips. “Huh. You’re right. I don’t think I’ve seen it at this consistency before.” At the glum expression on her face, he quickly added, “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve seen every variant of an improperly pressed poppy seed oil you can imagine. And this one is…troubling.”

“So what is it then?” Dakota asked, reaching out to switch the first glass slide with a second one.

Running a hand over his short salt-and-pepper hair, James stared down at the glass beaker of oil Dakota had filled from the pressing station. “Have you ever heard of Arcanum Fade ?”

Dakota shook her head.

“It’s a theory from other alchemists regarding the Banished God’s magic in the battlefield’s soil. Essentially, it states that magic isn’t a vat of unlimited power but that we are soon approaching the bottom of what may be helpful to us. I’ve noticed it in other distills from previous months—even the yarrow flowers this year are more wilted than they usually are.”

“You buy into it then? This Arcanum Fade theory?” Dakota pressed. She tilted her head to watch James lean down to look at the second slide. He reemerged, shaking his head.

“It certainly seems plausible. We’ve had centuries and centuries of harvesting the seeds and growing them in the same soil. Even the cells in our bodies fail to regenerate at some point during the aging process. I think it would be foolish to think it couldn't happen here.”

Dakota bit her lip. “I don’t know, sir. I mean…our distills are—“

“Let me ask you this,” James interrupted. “Three days ago, when you treated that child with the broken arm—what was his weight?”

“Off the top of my head?” Dakota said slowly, tilting her chin back and forth as she thought. “I think around seventy-five pounds.”

“And how much of a Bone Repair distill did you have to use before the process began?”

“Six drops.”

James nodded. “And based on his weight, age, and metabolic function, how much would the alchemists have used in the process say…ten years ago? When you were a Mender?”

Dakota opened her mouth and then closed it. “I mean…maybe two?”

“Exactly. Does that not lend credence to the theory?”

Dakota’s brow furrowed as she tapped a finger against the metallic surface of the table. “I would say plenty of factors could have gone into that. Maybe the rose hips weren’t boiled correctly. Maybe the liquid didn’t condense enough before soaking under the solstice lunar cycle. Maybe—“

“I would be partial to agreeing with you,” James said. He pointed a thumb at the microscope. “But how would you explain that?”

Dakota couldn’t, but the thought that she had done something wrong continued to plague her. “It just seems so far-fetched, sir. We’ve used the soil and these types of plants for a thousand years. Why would they fail now? And how would we even fix it if that were the case?”

James shrugged. “I think that’s an excellent researcher question.” He looked her over for a long moment, his eyes narrowing in thought. “As for your second question…I—well, you’re your father’s daughter. Experimentations happen at the Fieldhouse every day. If you ever wanted to get away from working at the bedside, you have a curious mind. I think you would find a home there.”

“I thought experimenting was illegal,” Dakota repeated for the second time that week. She didn’t believe in coincidences.

James shifted in discomfort. “Yes, well, advancements in the name of science are made daily.” He hauled a smile onto his face that looked brittle and worn down at the edges. “Why don’t you go through the yarrow crate and separate the leaves and stems from the blooms? You’ve started the Blood Replenishing process before, is that correct?”

“Last year, yes. Though, full disclosure, that was my first time.”

“I have complete faith that you’ll pull this one off, too.” He left soon after, gathering his briefcase from under his desk and shouldering through the door with a heavy push.

Sighing as she turned to look at the poppy seed oil, she corked the vial and placed it in the refrigerator to save until the rise of the next full moon. It would need to be boiled down while the glass vat soaked in the lunar light. Gods, she hoped this one would even work. From its thinness, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be strong enough to give even a child a full syringe. That meant blowing through it before they could make another batch.

Dakota headed toward the crate of yarrow flowers and peeled the lid away, revealing the harvested plants within. A spicy and earthy scent filled the air, and she inhaled to calm her thoughts as she began to pick the stems and leaves away from the blooms, separating each onto the preparation table.

In truth, she had been distracted.

She was on edge whenever she walked to her car, half-expecting Callum to be standing there waiting for her again. Then, that fear would inevitably shift to disappointment when he wasn’t. And that disappointment became anger that she shoved behind the steel wall encasing her heart.

He had left her. He had gone to prison. The words he used to dispose of her were still carved in her soul, like ravines that never filled, no matter how much molten lava she poured into them.

No, she didn’t want to think about that.

Ethan's near-constant presence was no additional help. From showing up at her house to drop off files to her father, who could have waited until the next morning, to calling her cell phone the moment she clocked out of her shift, Dakota was having a hard time avoiding him. It didn’t help that her father seemed to encourage his persistence.

Dakota swiped the first bit of stems and leaves into a container before walking toward the door behind the preparation table. She opened it with her hip, and a dry heat blasted her blonde hair over her shoulders. The preparation room, a small space the size of a walk-in closet, was lined with wire shelving units and heating lamps that cast the room in a red-tinged light. The circulatory ducts from above removed all the humidity, keeping the temperature at a desert-like feel and enhancing the dried herbal smell within.

Setting the container on the single square counter, she carefully laid the stems and leaves onto the wire rack. Allowing the plants to dry completely before pressing them was the best way to extract every drop, though it was certainly the most time-consuming.

As she worked, Dakota allowed her mind to wander to Kynetos. They had been taught he was the God of the Body that could feed on energy, siphoning it from others like a leech before using that stolen energy to manipulate matter around him.

Then she thought Ilios, or God of the Mind, who used divination magic to create prophecies and see the future. Then to Nekros, or God of the Soul, who could control and manipulate death. All three of them were exiled from the continent of Montrose by hundreds of miles of runes that encircled the major cities like a prison, yet the plants that soaked up their blood were still the most precious commodities in the country.

So precious, in fact, that the plants were only grown in the most heavily guarded building in the city of Norwich: the Fieldhouse. Guns and endless ammunition, not to mention the inches-thick iron walls, stood between the outside world and the plants. James was lucky enough, or influential enough, to be able to start a distilling program here at the Guildhall.

Dakota grabbed the empty container and reentered the distillery, the air conditioning a beautiful relief. She let the container fall to the metal table, which crashed with a loud thunk against the hollow surface. Her eyes dropped to the blooms she had discarded to the side, and she chewed on her inner cheek. If James were right, and that was a big if, then the distills would become less potent as the months of harvesting went on.

How many years of yarrow flowers did they have left before people would begin to die of blood loss? What about rose hips for Bone Repair—would her patients be subjected to the slow and agonizing healing process that humans were built to endure? Would people addicted to Euphoric require more and more before succumbing to their withdrawals?

She needed to complete her experiment—and fast if a ticking clock now hung over her head. Yarrow blooms? That might work. She had studied their composition and concluded two years ago that they might bring some much-needed replenishing magic to her distill. And she hadn’t been able to get her hands on any before, at least unsupervised.

That still didn’t answer the question: even if she got the recipe right, how was she going to distill the damn thing? She couldn’t do it here and didn’t have the correct distillation equipment at home. Would anyone bother to check her bag to see if she decided to take the blooms? She could be arrested, charged with possession, and locked in prison for the rest of her life. Her father would certainly have a thing or two to say about that.

Dakota blew out a breath and let her hip rest against the edge of the cool metal. James had said it best: advancements in the name of science were made daily.

Glancing toward the door, the hallway on the other side dark and empty, Dakota watched to see if any other alchemists would barge into the distillery for their evening shifts. When no one came, she quickly swept a handful of the blooms into the palm of her hand and dumped them into her canvas work bag.

Dakota pushed her sunglasses on with one hand, fumbling with her phone in the other. Waving to the afternoon shift menders, she walked with a confidence she didn’t feel through the sliding glass doors that led to the employee parking lot.

Hi, thank you so much for reaching out to Lyra Jones. I can’t pick up the phone right now, and I hate calls anyway, so text me!

Scoffing, Dakota pressed the re-dial button and held the phone to her ear. It rang four times before the voicemail message played again. “Come on, Lyra,” she muttered as she navigated the potholes that lined the trek to her car. “Where am I meeting you? ”

Dakota pressed the re-dial button for a third time. If Lyra were sleeping, she would hear her phone chime at some point. If she were fucking Rocco, maybe she would get the hint. This time, the phone clicked on.

“It’s about fucking time,” Dakota said as she unlocked her car and carefully set the yarrow bloom-filled canvas bag into the backseat. “Where am I meeting you? I thought we would try that new martini bar that opened downtown.”

“Da-ko-ta?” Lyra’s voice, broken by a bad connection, sounded through the phone. "Help.”

The pure terror in Lyra’s whisper stopped Dakota dead in her tracks. “Lyra? What’s wrong?”

But Lyra didn’t answer again. A scream pierced through the speaker, and the call went dead.