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It happened so fast.
Those were the words Devon would tell himself later. Those were the words that would haunt him, carry him through the long hours. At the time, it was only sensation. A sudden spinning, a lurch of nausea, a paralyzing crunch. There wasn’t time to do anything. There wasn’t time to react.
It happened so fast...
He raised his head slowly, blinking, as a gust of acrid steam poured over the dash. The image pulsed with every sluggish heartbeat. A dull pain radiated down his arm. He gave it a reflexive touch, unable to find his sleeve, then stared at the wreckage with a total lack of comprehension.
There had been...an accident?
Whatever happened, it was already over.
The car had been crushed to cinders, compacting into a heap of splintered glass. The roof was caving in, but the roof seemed to be the ceiling—which seemed to have become the roof again.
His eyes were losing focus, he blinked a few times more.
He was awakening in two different pieces: the man, and the fox.
By the time one part of him had registered there was something warm dripping down his face, another part had already identified it as blood. The same part had realized it was too quiet.
The same part simultaneously determined...none of the blood was his.
His eyes drew slowly into focus, then flew in sudden panic across the car.
Julian!
Did he say the name out loud? Or was it merely a breathless inhalation, lodging in his throat and choking him? Because this couldn’t actually be happening. This couldn’t actually be real.
Maybe he screamed it. Maybe he couldn’t stop screaming it.
The psychic was limp as a doll, hanging from the straps in the chair beside him. Unlike the fox, who’d been on the opposite side of the car and escaped the worst of the impact, he’d been crushed between the two frames, crushed in a way that some parts of him were no longer visible. Given the paleness of his skin, it was unlikely they were still attached. Never in his life had Devon seen a person that color. Or perhaps it merely seemed that way, beneath the vivid splashes of blood.
He stared for a moment, stunned and uncomprehending.
Then he realized why it was so quiet.
He isn’t breathing.
With a strangled shout, he lunged across the car—tearing straight through the safety belt that attempted to restrain him. A searing pain burned into his chest, but he was already grabbing onto the psychic with both hands—desperate to shake a breath into him, to wrench him from that icy stillness and wrestle him back to life. After only a few seconds, he was forced to lower expectations.
He would settle to wrench Julian from the car itself.
No matter what he tried, the fox was unable to make any headway. Those corroding fingers had wrapped around the psychic’s body, encasing him like a shroud. A frantic tug-of-war ensued: metal versus human flesh. But after only a few more seconds, Devon was forced again to reassess.
The psychic wasn’t breathing, and the clock had already started.
If Devon couldn’t break him from the car, he would break the car into pieces.
Such tiny pieces.
He settled to the task with a fury, digging into the smoldering heap at such reckless speed, it wasn’t long before he’d scraped away all the skin on the backs of his hands. Streams of fresh blood trickled up his wrists, the sleeves of his jacket were soaked. But still, he clawed like some demented creature through the rubble—prying sizzling pieces of the jagged metal away from his friend’s skin.
For a horrible moment, he was afraid it wouldn’t work.
Then all of a sudden, Julian slumped forward.
“It’s okay,” the fox gasped aloud, frightfully aware the psychic couldn’t hear him. “It’s okay—I’ve got you.” He extracted him slowly from the chair, keeping him as level as possible. “Just stay with me, all right? Don’t go anywhere—we’re almost there.”
With painstaking care, he dragged them both from the wreckage and promptly collapsed on the pavement—his own legs crumbling beneath him. The crash had been at a seldom-used stoplight in a forgotten part of town. There was no one in sight. Instead of trying to get up, he rolled Julian onto his back and perched immediately on top, lacing his fingers and beginning chest compressions.
“One...two...three...”
He counted each breathless thrust, trying to remember the rhythm of it, trying to remember the little song that was supposed to help him keep the pace. Over and over he shoved his palms into the psychic’s chest, forcing breaths of air into his lungs, until at last, he felt a small flutter.
It was so faint, he was convinced he must have imagined it—just the barest tremble beneath his numbed fingers. Not until he pressed his ear to the psychic’s bloody shirt, did he finally believe it. His eyes closed in such a wave of relief, for a moment, it drove everything else from his mind.
The moment passed quickly, thanks entirely to his training.
With the grim efficiency of a wartime medic, he climbed gingerly onto the pavement and performed a swift assessment. Multiple contusions, multiple compound fractures. So much blood, he was no longer able to determine the source of it, and a frightening concavity in his friend’s chest.
A mere glance, and it became clear such injuries were beyond him. To be honest, he’d done little more than assure himself all the broken pieces of the psychic were still miraculously attached.
That had been the end of their miracles. They would be needing another, soon enough.
“All right, I’m going to get you to a hospital,” Devon panted, still speaking out loud. “I’m going to get you to a hospital, and everything will be fine. We have to be close to St. Agnus.”
As he’d peeled away pieces of the psychic’s blood-soaked clothing, wincing in fresh horror at every mangled inch, he’d already ruled out the supernatural assistance he longed for instead.
Both Alicia and his wife were away on assignment, both his children were training at the school. There was no one closer. No one but the common world doctors with their scalpels, and timelines, and cutting-edge barbarities. With their grave faces and their ‘disappointing outcomes.’
The very thought of it was enough to steal the fox’s breath.
There’s no time.
“There’s no time for anything else,” he stammered frantically, sliding a hand under Julian’s head and lifting him delicately into the air. It was the most frightening moment yet. There was no help, no resistance. Just a broken collection of ill-fitting parts. “This is our best shot.”
He staggered into the middle of the road, casting a desperate look in every direction. He was lost—stranded in an unfamiliar part of town without a cell phone to guide him. His own had been crushed, and the psychic’s was unrecognizable—little fragments had fallen from his jacket as he’d been lifted from the car. Devon clutched him even tighter, feeling like he’d stumbled into a parallel nightmare dimension—a place with just him and an invisible timer, completely and utterly alone.
For the first time, he noticed the vehicle that had rammed into them.
It was a truck—it used to be a truck. There wasn’t much left of it now. The front portion had been violently compacted, sinking its teeth into the side of their own. It had struck with such speed, the back had lifted slightly off the road. One tire was gone, another was absently spinning.
A body had spilled through the windshield, lying halfway across the dash.
It was a man—it used to be a man. He might have been there for a while; it looked like he’d struggled briefly against the seatbelt. But his body was still now; his eyes wide and unseeing. They’d latched onto the fox with unnerving precision, finding him between strands of blood-matted hair.
Devon jumped ever so slightly, catching his breath.
Perhaps it was the sudden appearance of a body. Perhaps he’d thought the man was still alive. He froze a split second—trapped in the gaze of those lifeless eyes—then he stumbled clumsily in the opposite direction. Julian’s heartbeat was fading. There was a hospital somewhere up ahead.
Devon pulled in a quick breath, and picked a street at random.
He started to run.
* * *
BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...
“Push another two ccs of epinephrine.”
“He’s already reached the limit.”
“Push another two ccs, and start a central line.”
“All right, hands up. He’s got a collapsed airway.”
There was a moment of terrifying silence, punctuated by the almost imperceptible sound of tearing flesh, of gushing blood. Another moment, and there was a collective breath of relief.
“Bag him—let’s get him to the OR.”
Devon was crouched in the hallway outside the ICU, forehead pressed into his knees, legs curled into his chest, fingers clenched around fists of matted, rain-soaked hair.
Most days, he’d be the first to say the fox etched into his arm was a blessing. A supernatural windfall, opening his world in ways he could never have dreamed. But there were other days, when it was objectively a curse. Days when he wanted to scrub the shimmering ink right off his skin.
Since the moment they’d entered the hospital—looking like they’d just fought their way from a graveyard—he’d been able to hear every single word they were saying in the crowded room at the end of the hall. All those things doctors muttered to each other, that would never be said within earshot of the patient. All those casual little asides, that naturally bled in from regular life.
“—probably not going to make it—”
“—True Crime marathon this weekend—”
“—the morgue’s over-crowded—”
“—should have sent the intern for more blood.”
He’d ground his teeth together until his jaw ached, frightened the janitorial staff, counted the specks of dried blood on the tiles. He’d memorized the different voices, stringing together names.
It happened so fast.
He never had time to call Rae. Or for once, it hadn’t been his first thought. He knew she wouldn’t have made it in time, she wasn’t in town and nothing had prepared him for this.
It had happened so fast.
It had been different when he’d first gotten there, before the adrenaline had faded, before his newfound purgatory had settled in. Having sprinted halfway across town—in full view of the London morning traffic—the fox had become nothing more than his own momentum.
It had been nearly impossible to stop.
He had muscled his way through the double-doors, held his own against security. He had crossed the forbidden partition, and had been on the verge of tearing an actual hole in the wall, when he’d heard the unmistakable charge of paddles, and his stomach dropped to the floor.
He had trouble remembering things after that.
The skin on his face went slack and cold. There was a gust of air on his neck, like he’d stepped in front of a window. A shooting pain flew up from his knees, ending somewhere in his teeth, as he dropped without warning to the height of a child. Then everything had gone still.
For the space of a breath, there was nothing.
Then—
Beep...beep...beep...
He’d come back to himself with a gasp, stunned to realize he was on the floor. The medical staff had taken such pity, they’d decided to leave him there. Even the battered security detail had left him in peace. At some point, a kindly nurse had draped a blanket over his arms.
They don’t touch people in blankets, he thought vacantly.
That had been hours ago. Or maybe it just felt like hours. Maybe he’d been sitting in that hallway so long, his brain had made full rotations. It was the only part of him still moving, trapped in an endless loop. Instead of chanting those first words, he’d move onto some others.
Rae can fix it. Rae can go back in time.
By now, he’d said the mantra so many times, it had ceased to hold any meaning. It was nothing but a repetition, a series of tonal shapes. Perhaps he’d said it so many times, because a part of him didn’t fully believe it. They had messed with those forces before, to mixed results.
Alexander Hastings was a living testament.
A boy that had been murdered in cold blood at the hands of his teacher. A teenage orphan that had been taken before his time. There were no ties to connect him to the outside world, no people that might remember him. He would have been entirely forgotten at his passing.
It had ironically made him much easier to save.
Then there had been Selene.
The woman was more than just out of place, she’d been born in a different century. The only reason she’d been dragged into the future was to help save it, but even then, she’d been caught in the hands of time. It had been a car accident. Gone, in the blink of an eye. It had been so unlikely, so meticulously contained, for years after, it had continued to leave the friends unsettled.
Perhaps there were some lines that couldn’t be crossed, some hurts that went beyond their magical ripples. Perhaps when death claimed someone, it was only a matter of time.
Devon let out a shuddering breath, knees pressed into his eyes.
“Rae can fix it,” he whispered to himself. “Rae can go back—”
A man stepped out of the ether, wearing surgical scrubs. “Are you the guy?”
Devon lifted his eyes, freezing perfectly still.
“He’s left-handed,” he blurted without thinking. “I probably should have said that earlier.”
The doctor’s eyes softened, like this was confirmation enough. Instead of waiting for the fox to stand, he sank into a crouch—pulling the cap from his head, and trying to be delicate.
“Your friend made it through surgery,” he began slowly, “that’s a good sign. But he suffered a massive internal hemorrhage, along with more broken bones than I can count. There’s a lesion on his spleen, we’re monitoring closely. We needed to re-inflate one of his lungs during the procedure, and there may be some lingering damage to his kidneys.” He paused for a moment. “He lost a lot of blood at the scene. A lot of blood. If we’re being honest, I’m a little surprised that he made it.”
Devon forced himself to nod, feeling like he’d swallowed a rock.
“May I see him?” he asked hoarsely. “Please?”
Maybe it was his haunted expression. Maybe it was the tagged-on please. But the doctor gentled even further, reaching between them and giving his knee a comforting squeeze.
“They’re wheeling him into recovery. You can see him after that.” His eyes flicked up and down, lingering on the bloody stains and darkening bruises with a hint of concern. “You should probably get checked out yourself. You were in the car with him, weren’t you?”
Devon lifted his eyes a brief moment, then shook his head. “No, I...I was somewhere else.”
* * *
I CANNOT REMEMBER A time...before I was in this room.
Devon sat in perfect silence, staring without blinking at the bed.
He was in the same chair the orderly had placed him several hours earlier—a man with deceptively strong hands, who’d been unimpressed by the fox’s enthusiastic attempt to help. It was one of those stiff hospital chairs. The kind that had been painted a soothing color, but the leather smelled of disinfectant and quickly melded itself to your skin. Devon had chafed against it in the beginning, fidgeting endlessly to get comfortable. Now, his body couldn’t take another form.
He looks so different like that. So fragile.
The nurses had warned him to prepare himself, when they’d rolled Julian into recovery. It looks a lot worse than it is, they’d said. He’d nodded without listening, confident that his decades in the field had effectively prepared him for anything. He’d been entirely, overwhelmingly wrong.
The psychic had been bandaged almost beyond the point of recognition, strung with so many tubes and wires, it looked like they were using him to power the entire floor. His skin was still a chalky white, but the bruises had already started forming. Wild, cinematic bruises. So vibrant and unlikely, it would have made better sense if Julian had been working in the studio and dropped a tin of paints. He was tucked a little ways into the pillows, so they held him upright—tucked because he couldn’t hold himself, tucked in a way that made him look breakable and small.
Devon frowned to himself, aching to rise to his feet and pull him free. It looked too much like the car—those metal fingers, twisting around him. Would he ever see a car the same way?
He pulled in a slow breath, let it out again. This was the only way to pass the time.
It wasn’t the first silent vigil he’d spent at the psychic’s bedside. It wasn’t the tenth. Despite having access to a medical infirmary, despite having married a woman who could mend almost any hurt with a wave of her magical hands, the men had spent a lot of time at hospitals over the years.
There was a bout of malaria that had seized them both on the Ivory Coast. A nasty run-in with a scorpion-shifter that had almost cost Devon his arm. One of the longest stints had been in the mountains of Paraguay—when their extraction helicopter had been blown to bits, and they’d been stranded in the wilderness for five days. The fox had taken a piece of shrapnel in his leg and had been unable to walk. Julian had carried him five hours to a rural veterinary office, then climbed onto the roof to mount a sat-phone receiver. He’d then proceeded to scream at seventeen people on three different continents, getting his friend the best medical care available. He’d also adopted a dog.
Ringo, the Rottweiler.
He’d lived six glorious weeks in England before dying at the age of a thousand in the psychic’s arms. Devon had attended the funeral, laying the piece of shrapnel solemnly on the grave.
There was movement on the monitor, a slight uptick in rhythm. The fox leaned intently forward, every inch of him poised at the ready. It slowed again, and he leaned gradually back.
By now, someone would have contacted Angel.
There was an alert in the PC system, whenever any of their names or known aliases showed up in a governmental database. That included most hospitals. A notice would have been sent to the school, Molly and Luke would be in the process of gathering up the children. The psychic’s wife had just stepped aboard a flight to Kosovo, and was probably racing to get back on the ground.
She isn’t the only one...
Devon’s wife would be on her way as well.
She would need to make several adjustments.
To say the fox had neglected to conceal his ink, while tearing across the streets of London, would be to imply the thought had even occurred to him. His best friend had been draped over his arms, barely breathing. He hadn’t used the sidewalks, he’d used the roads.
He could only imagine the trail of wreckage he’d left behind him. The shattered windshields, the gawking pedestrians—some teenage skateboarder recording the whole thing on his phone. Part of him was surprised the hospital wasn’t already full of governmental agents, beating down the door.
I probably have Philip to thank for that.
He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, his entire body wilting in a single exhaling of breath. It felt like years he’d been awake, and the nightmare was only beginning. It would be in the local news by the evening, get a national stage the following day. The council no longer possessed the set of ink that allowed them to erase such egregious lapses with the flash of a tatù—they would need to create some kind of story. Track down the eyewitnesses and individually alter their minds.
It was every inked kid’s dream—that was the funny thing. To use their ink freely in public. It was a dream some of them had inadvertently fulfilled, the day Vivian Kerrigan and her horsemen of the apocalypse had torn open the London skyline. He’d done worse than that, in less than an hour.
At the time, he’d scarcely noticed. He wasn’t aware of anything, past the ringing in his ears.
“Angel...?”
Devon opened his eyes slowly, as a quiet voice drifted from the bed.
If he didn’t happened to be looking, he wouldn’t have guessed there was any change. The psychic was lying in the exact same position as before. The only thing different was his eyes.
They’d cracked open, just enough to catch the light.
“Hey,” he breathed in reply, easing across the floor to kneel beside him. He was waking up a little, reaching instinctively for the tubes on his face. Devon caught his wrist gently, laying it back on the blankets. “Angel’s on her way, you’ve been sleeping for a while.” He paused a little breathlessly, smoothing the psychic’s dark hair from his forehead with a smile. “Welcome back.”
Julian stared without expression, like parts of his brain were still trying to wake up. Twice, his eyes flicked around the room, lingering on the beeping machinery. Twice, they came up blank.
“...what happened?” he rasped.
Devon knelt as close as he dared, holding onto his uninjured hand.
“There was an accident with the car, but everything’s fine now.” He smoothed the psychic’s hair again, unable to stop. “You’re in a hospital recovery wing, they were able to patch you up.”
Julian absorbed this in silence, looking at the wires strung from his arms.
It was hard to tell how much he was understanding, but if the fox had to guess, he’d say they were still in the early stages. If it wasn’t the almost childlike way his friend was staring, it was the angle of his gaze—focusing on the fox’s mouth, trying to follow along with the conversation.
After only a few seconds, that attention faltered.
“My leg—” he slurred, trying see it.
“It’s broken,” Devon interjected quietly, easing him down, “most things are broken. You lost a lot of blood at the scene, but they gave you a transfusion.”
They had actually given him several. But it was best to ease into things.
Julian looked at him another moment, then his eyes flashed around the room.
He was staying in the present—that was telling. If it wasn’t for the truck that had landed on top of him, if it wasn’t for the small mountain of pharmaceuticals being pumped into his veins, the psychic would have slipped into the future and answered all those questions for himself.
As things stood, he merely blinked at the flashing lights in a daze.
“Why am I here?” he asked weakly, unable to draw a full breath.
Devon pursed his lips, he’d been dreading this part.
Most people would have found the question confusing. The man had scarcely survived a violent car accident. His bones were broken, they’d swapped out his blood. Of course he was lying in a hospital. Why would he be anywhere else? But things didn’t work the same way in the magical community. Even if an agent was on the verge of death, it was highly unlikely their partner would call for an ambulance. Quite the contrary, hospitals could be more hassle than they were worth.
“Jules, they admitted you with the same injuries as a crush victim. There wasn’t time to get you anywhere else. You’re in their system now,” he added slowly, “with those injuries.”
You can’t just leave.
He watched his friend closely, waiting for it to click.
It never did.
“Devon—” The psychic bowed his head suddenly, bracing against a wave of pain. It took a few seconds to catch his breath, then he tried again. “Devon, could you take me home?”
The fox stared back helplessly, gripping his uninjured hand. “It isn’t that simple—”
At that moment, the door burst open and Angela Cross flew inside—looking like she’d run across the city herself. She took a single look at her husband, before finding the man at his side.
Her phone raised in the air between them, still primed with the council’s message.
“There was an accident?” she trilled.
Devon let out a sigh, feeling unbearably tired.
It happened so fast.
