Only Ashes Remain Read online

  Except this time, instead of telling her his email, he whispered, “I’m going to make you scream.”

  Then he kissed her.

  * * *

  Nita bolted upright with a shriek, and her phone fell off her bed and clattered to the ground. Her face was sticky with sweat and her heart beat a staccato rhythm in her chest. Her body felt flushed with heat, almost feverish, and her skin was clammy. She swallowed, her throat dry, and put her hands to her lips where the dream Kovit had kissed her. Her mouth tingled at the touch.

  What.

  The.

  Fuck.

  Eventually, Nita lay back down, but it took a long time for her to fall asleep again.

  Three

  THE NEXT MORNING, Nita woke slowly, lying in her bed for several minutes, drifting in and out of dreams before she decided it was time to start the body modifications she’d been planning.

  When Nita had arrived at INHUP, she’d decided she was going to be proactive instead of reactive when it came to the black market. They wanted to kidnap and cut her up because she had the ability to manipulate her own body.

  So she had decided she was going to use that same power to prevent them from ever capturing her again.

  Her whole life, she’d been cautious with her ability. She’d had a series of bad hospital experiences because she’d screwed around with things better left alone and didn’t know how to fix them. Since then, she’d taken things slow, made copious observations, and hadn’t done anything too drastic.

  The time for caution was over. She needed to use all the tools available to her if she was going to survive.

  She’d been weak from overusing her power when she first arrived, so she hadn’t done much complicated stuff. But now that she was recovered, the sky was the limit.

  First, she completely stopped the production of myostatin in her body, a chemical that inhibited muscle growth. Next, she began modifying herself from the skeleton out. Bones, then muscles, ligaments, and tendons. She wasn’t changing her skin, because she hadn’t yet figured out how to toughen it without creating saggy joint jowls, like a rhinoceros.

  She’d sink like a stone in water, but that was a small price to pay for the benefits of tougher bones and stronger muscles.

  It was a long, laborious process, and she turned off her pain receptors for it. Nita decided to start from the bottom and go up, worried if she started at the top and reinforced her skull, her head would be too heavy for her neck.

  She got up to her hips before she decided she was too tired to continue. She couldn’t shake the sensation that her legs were wearing huge, heavy boots, even though she had the muscles to cope.

  She rolled over, picked up her phone, and checked her messages.

  Sure enough, there was one from her mother.

  I’ll pick you up in Toronto—T.

  That was it.

  Nita’s chest felt hollow, like she was a dissected cadaver, her organs long since ripped out and sold.

  It’s not safe to send information over the internet. Especially with you in INHUP, she told herself, but that didn’t make her feel any better. Her mother hadn’t even said something simple like “I’m so glad you’re okay” or “I missed you.”

  Nita lowered her eyes. If her mother wasn’t hurt, dead, kidnapped, or otherwise restricted—if she could answer emails overnight and meet Nita in Toronto—why hadn’t she rescued Nita from Death Market?

  Nita let out a breath and got out of bed. There was no use speculating now. She’d have to ask her mother when she saw her.

  As she dressed, the floripondio flower fell from her pocket onto the tiled floor. Nita knelt down to pick it up. She twirled in in her hands. Consuming a few petals of this would be enough to kill someone.

  Someone like Fabricio.

  She hesitated, looking at the flower. Did she really want to do that? Did she really want to kill him?

  Nita had done terrible things. She’d murdered her captor, she’d burned a market full of people alive.

  She’d do it again.

  If she were back in the market, back in her cage, if she had a chance to do everything over, she didn’t think she’d do anything differently. She would still kill her captor. She would still ask Kovit to torture a man to steal his money. She would still burn everyone in the market alive. She wouldn’t enjoy it, but she’d do it. She would do anything and everything necessary to protect herself and stay alive.

  So did she want to kill Fabricio? The boy who’d betrayed her and left her to that horror?

  Yes. She did.

  But did it make sense to kill him? His death would raise suspicions. She could be caught.

  Yet leaving him alive was a far more dangerous prospect. He knew who she was, who her mother was. If he ratted her out, Nita could be arrested. And once she was in prison, well, anything could happen. She was money waiting to be made for the right murderer. Even the guards would be tempted by the amount of money the black market would offer for her body parts.

  If she ratted on Fabricio . . . what? He was the son of a powerful man running a legal firm. Sure, everyone knew his father was neck deep in the black market, but they couldn’t prove it. And they certainly couldn’t prove anything about Fabricio. And even though he’d sold Nita, her evidence would never be enough to convict him.

  The only danger to Fabricio was if a corrupt INHUP agent tried to use him for blackmail like her mother had. Or, if Fabricio was to be believed, being shipped home. She didn’t know why he was so afraid of returning, or what terrible secrets he was hiding, but whatever they were, she couldn’t trust they were enough to keep his mouth shut.

  No, Nita needed to eliminate this threat before he changed his mind and betrayed her again.

  She took a Kleenex and laid it flat on the counter. She crumpled the flower petals, shredding them into thin strips, holding them over the air conditioner until they dried out, then crumbled them into a fine powder. They looked a little like pink tea mix.

  She carefully wrapped the flower dust in her Kleenex and tucked it in her pocket.

  Giving herself a firm nod in the mirror, she left her room and went to see Quispe.

  Outside of the refugee wing, the INHUP building was bustling. Men and women in button-up white shirts and slacks strode with purpose, briefcases in hand. Nita waited with a group of other people at the elevator. When it came, it was already overcrowded, and the idea of being crushed against so many bodies made her cringe. She imagined the stench of body odor from dozens of people, the press of skin against skin, someone’s hand caught in an uncomfortable position that they’d say was accidental but was probably on purpose.

  She took the stairs.

  On the third floor, she clanged out of the stairwell and into a hallway with gray tiles and beige-yellow walls. Cubicle style desks were scattered around the room just like a regular office building.

  Framed photos of famous INHUP agents covered the walls. There was Nadezhda Novikova, founder of INHUP and killer of the Russian vampire Bessanov. Bessanov had supposedly wiped out entire military platoons single-handedly, but in the end he’d been taken down by a sixteen-year-old girl out for vengeance.

  Nita may not have liked INHUP, but she’d always been impressed by its founder.

  The pictures continued along the wall, starting out black-and-white and eventually gaining color. Smiling and stern men and women of the past stared out at her. Some of the labels had explanations of who they were: head of the first INHUP office in South America, in Montevideo, Uruguay; the agent who foiled a major unnatural trafficking ring and saved nearly ten thousand unnatural children; the investigator who captured a famous serial killer hunting in northern Brazil.

  Nita actually had heard of that one. Everyone had thought the killer was an unnatural because the faces of the victims had been eaten, so INHUP got involved, but it turned out he was a human after all.

  Most people forgot that last part.

  Nita stopped in front of Quispe’s small office, t
ucked in the corner away from the cubicles.

  When Nita first arrived, she’d checked for Quispe’s name on the list of corrupt INHUP agents she’d stolen from Reyes. She hadn’t found it. It didn’t mean Quispe wasn’t corrupt, but it made Nita relax all the same.

  Quispe looked up when Nita entered. “Yes?”

  Nita cleared her throat. “I got an email from my aunt. She’s going to pick me up from the office in Toronto.”

  Nita and her mother had a signal system. The T at the end of her message stood for Theresa—Nita’s nonexistent aunt Theresa. Nita had an entire backstory for her fake aunt memorized, and her mother had the forged documents to back it up. It was one of their many aliases.

  Quispe lowered her laptop screen so it dimmed. “That’s great.”

  Nita swallowed the lump of fear in her chest. “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to avail yourself of some of INHUP’s protective services? That video of you . . .”

  That fucking video.

  Reyes took a video of Nita demonstrating her healing abilities and posted it to all the wrong circles online. It meant everyone who wanted to hunt Nita knew her face. And unlike the rest of her body, that wasn’t something she knew how to permanently modify.

  It destroyed all Nita’s chances of living her life without looking over her shoulder every five minutes.

  Nita shook her head and lied, “I’ll be fine.”

  “All right.” Quispe didn’t sound like she believed Nita, but she let it go. “The flight leaves tomorrow. Be ready to leave for the airport at three A.M.”

  “Three A.M.?” Nita’s eyes bugged out.

  “The flight is at six.” Quispe sighed. “I know. We can sleep on the flight.”

  “We?”

  “I’ll be escorting you to Toronto and handing you off to the agents there.”

  “I see.” No unsupervised time, then.

  “Make sure you go to bed early tonight.” Quispe rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

  Quispe went back to work and Nita smiled. “Of course.”

  She left the office and made her way back to the stairwell. Several floors down, her phone buzzed.

  She had a message from Kovit.

  Her fingers swiped across the screen, fast and sure.

  I’m okay.

  Nita closed her eyes, and let herself sink in the stairwell with relief. She hadn’t realized how worried she’d been about his bullet wound. The risk of infection was so high, given the dirt and river water that had gotten in it, and the hours of dehydration rowing their tiny boat back to civilization.

  I’m in Detroit, visiting a friend.

  Nita frowned at that. She wasn’t sure if he meant an actual friend, a former colleague that he couldn’t talk about because he was worried their communication was being monitored, or someone else entirely.

  Then she realized: Detroit was only a few hours’ drive from Toronto, wasn’t it?

  Something squiggly wriggled in her stomach. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  How are you?

  How was Nita? A mess. Her father was dead, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to see her mother, and the video of her was still all over the internet, making her more recognizable to all the wrong people by the minute.

  She closed her eyes and remembered that moment on the river, both of them covered in blood, where Kovit had asked her to come with him. But she’d gone to INHUP because she wanted a ticket to North America, she wanted to see her father. She didn’t want the anonymity Kovit did.

  And she didn’t want to spend her life pretending the screams of the people he tortured didn’t bother her. Because she was frightened that she wouldn’t need to pretend for long. It was already almost truth.

  Even though she’d made the right decision at the time—Kovit didn’t have enough money to fly both of them away and get medical help—a part of her regretted it.

  Before she could stop herself, she responded, I’m okay. Flying to Toronto tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you soon?

  She pressed Send and shoved the phone in her pocket before she could regret anything.

  She let out a long breath, then felt for the Kleenex-wrapped poison in her pocket.

  If her plane was tomorrow morning, she had work to do.

  Because she wasn’t leaving INHUP without killing Fabricio.

  Four

  THE SMALL DINING ROOM had been mostly empty the three days Nita had been in INHUP, despite the fact that there were at least a dozen other refugees here. There were a table and chairs and a small kitchen including a fridge stocked with prepared meals. But tonight was different. Fabricio sat at the table, eating a piece of toast with manjar on it. An empty frozen dinner tray sat beside him.

  He looked up when she came in, and his shoulders tensed. “Buenas noches.”

  “Buenas.” Nita replied. She should have given him a smile, or asked a pointless question like “did you have a good day?” or “are you enjoying your toast?” but she wasn’t a good actor, and it just seemed like a waste of energy.

  He gave her a soft smile. “How did you sleep?”

  A short smile did curl her mouth then. Pointless question, check.

  “Good, thanks.” Nita walked past him to get a frozen dinner. She unboxed it and shoved it in the microwave.

  Nita programmed the timer, and the microwave hummed to life. She watched the food heat. Her father once told her not to stare at the microwave while it heated things, but Nita figured she could just heal her eyes if anything went wrong. Her heart tightened a little at the memory.

  “I hear you’re leaving soon.” Fabricio’s voice was soft. “Are you going into the UPP?”

  “The what?” Nita turned around to look at him.

  His blue-gray eyes were steady. “The Unnatural Protection Program.”

  Nita shuddered. “No.”

  His eyebrows tugged together. “Why not? They can give you a whole new life.”

  “I’m good. I can take care of myself.” And they’d probably disapprove of her penchant for dissecting dead bodies. Nita’s fingers tingled, aching for a scalpel.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Nita shrugged. “They’re flying me home, aren’t they?”

  “I guess.”

  The timer dinged, and Nita took her dinner out and put it on the table across from Fabricio. “I’m getting a drink, you want something while I’m up?”

  He considered. “Can you grab me an orange juice?”

  “Sure.”

  Nita retrieved the bottles from the fridge. She took them to the counter and cracked the lids on both of them.

  “Where will you go now?” asked Nita, turning to look at Fabricio and hiding her arm from him as it dipped into her pocket for the poison. “Will you join the UPP?”

  Fabricio shook his head. “They’re going to get me a new identity, and I’ll just . . . start a new life somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Argentina?”

  “No.” Something haunted passed across his features. “Not Argentina.”

  Behind Fabricio, the door to the kitchen opened and someone walked in. He turned around to look, and Nita seized her chance, sprinkling the powdered flower into his orange juice, twisting her body to block the security camera’s view.

  She stared at the poisoned juice for a moment, watching the small powdered petals float into it and mix with the pulp. The bright orange hid any trace of the pink flowers.

  She swallowed, throat dry. Was she really sure she wanted to do this?

  Heart slamming in her chest, Nita turned to face him, holding a bottle in each hand. The bottles were slippery in her sweaty palms. How easy it would be to drop one, letting the poison spill out and away across the floor.

  Her fingers loosened slightly, and the bottle slid.

  Then Fabricio was there, taking it from her before it could fall to the ground. For a moment,
their fingers almost touched and Nita could feel the warmth of his body. The life of it.

  She thought of how Mirella’s blood had spilled across the docks when she was shot, her pink hair spread around her, mixing with the blood. She thought of her own bloody handprints on the glass of her cage, watching as the same man who shot Mirella ate Nita’s toe.

  She wiggled her foot. The toe still felt like it was there sometimes, a phantom feeling. But it was gone forever, just like her trust in Fabricio. Her hesitation was just as phantom as the feeling of the toe—it was a remnant of the girl who saved a boy she didn’t know from monsters, not realizing the boy himself was a monster who’d turn on her at the first opportunity.

  She knew what she had to do.

  Her jaw tightened, her rage at Fabricio’s betrayal rekindling, and she let him take the bottle.

  He took a sip and frowned, licking his lips.

  Nita had forgotten it might taste funny. She cleared her throat and tried to distract him. “So why don’t you want to go back to Argentina?”

  Fabricio shrugged and looked away. “Just not interested in following the family business.”

  Then he took a long, deep drink of his juice.

  Nita’s smile widened. Gotcha.

  “There’s more to Argentina than just your family business.” Nita smiled, trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible. “As far as I know, they only have an office in Buenos Aires, no? Argentina is more than just one city.”

  He took another awkward sip, clearly trying to avoid having to answer. “I just don’t want to go back.”

  He continued awkwardly drinking to avoid conversation while Nita ate. His eyes were on something in his memory, far away, as he drank. Whatever it was he was thinking about, it was clearly something he didn’t like.

  When she finished her meal, she rose and stretched. “I’m going back to my room now.”

  He blinked at her and held his head. The empty bottle slid from his fingers and clattered on the table. “Yeah, I think I will too. I feel tired.”

  He rose, slightly wobbly, and accompanied her down the hall. Nita snuck glances at him as they walked. His pupils began to dilate, and his breathing changed rhythm.