Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(99)
The words were laced with venom and that brought my head up fast. Mostly because I’d sent in the report that we might have found a salamander egg. “Why not a salamander?” I licked my sugary fingers again.
“I know of a certainty, for three reasons.” She held up one finger. “Their eggs were said to be white, with a pearly iridescence and small brownish spots. This one is dull and gray with white and brown spots.” She uncurled a second finger. “Salamanders were killed off to the last egg, in the year 4000 BCE.” And a third finger. “Because arcenciels killed them.”
I went quite still, only my eyes flitting around the room. Everyone looked as surprised as I felt but for different reasons. The information about an arcenciel/salamander war was not in the databanks. And Soul hadn’t yet released the intel that she wasn’t human to the group at large, so not everyone knew. She was skirting the truth about her species, and releasing that information could change the dynamics within our unit.
Drawing the same conclusions I had, Rick asked softly, “Arcenciels and salamanders? At war?”
Soul dropped her fingers. “It was six thousand years ago. Long before my time,” she said wryly, as if inferring a human age. “There are no arcenciels on Earth who lived then, but the oral accounts and tales persist and the songs continue to be sung. This is not a salamander egg.”
Interspecies war and genocide, I thought. And what was I supposed to do about it? For all of two seconds I considered texting my mentor at Spook School for advice, but the thought died.
“Ingram, is it rotten?” Occam asked me, breaking a silence that was fraught with potential, none of it good.
I frowned, thinking. “Sorta. A little bit. It won’t stink too bad. Not near as bad as the dead fish did.”
Occam held up a bit of grayish shell, pulled from a pocket with finger and thumb. “Shell’s this thick. Maybe use an icepick to chip it open.”
Soul took the shell and worked it in her fingers. “Brittle but stronger and tougher than a chicken egg. More like ostrich egg.”
T. Laine pulled open drawers in the small cabinet, slamming them one by one. She came up with a bottle opener. “This is the only metal thing I see.” She handed it to Occam.
“What?” he asked. “Because I’m a man you expect me to do all the dirty work?”
“Because you handled the shell,” Soul said, “and are familiar with it.”
“And because you got all those big strong man muscles,” T. Laine added, putting her hands over her heart and batting her eyes.
JoJo faked gagging.
T. Laine added, “And because I do not want to get rotten egg all over my nice office clothes.” She exhibited herself by moving a demonstrative hand up and down her form. “You, on the other hand? I don’t care if you stink.”
I could tell by Tandy’s expression that the tension in the room had lessened.
Occam shook his head. “Uh-huh. It’s fine for the dumb cat to get slimed, if Nell’s wrong about the extent of the rot. I’ll remember this.” However, he elbowed the others away from the sink and put the sharp tip of the bottle opener on the shell.
“Wait,” I said. I looked at Soul and asked, “And if it is a salamander?” Because I had seen them underwater. I had a feeling Soul was very, terribly wrong.
Soul glowered at me and said, “Dyson or Jones, record this for the records, please.” But she didn’t answer my question.
JoJo punched and swiped her cell and balanced it on a chair back for stability. She gave the date and time and named all of us in the room.
“Go ahead,” Soul said to Occam.
He brought his palm down on the metal bottle opener three times. It tap-tap-tapped, and the egg cracked. Occam moved the point to the side about four inches and repeated the tapping. This time it took four taps and the cracks both spread but didn’t meet. He repositioned the tip at a triangle point, tapped again, and this time a chip broke free. A sour fishy smell filled the room as Occam pulled the shell shard away. A long line of goo followed the fragment out and dripped down into the sink. The others leaned in. Studied the exposed part of the creature. It was a clawed hand, of sorts, three odd-shaped fingers curled in a tight fist. Mottled gray-brown skin. Spots on the wrist that seemed to grow larger as they rose up the arm.
At the sight of the flesh, Soul stopped dead, a look of dread on her face. For an instant her body seemed to flicker with light. Bells clanged softly, clear and ringing, but the tones dissonant. Then the light and bells stopped, and Soul stood again, but in the hallway. I had seen her shift into her dragon, and the light was all the shades of color, but the off-key tones—that was new. And the expression on her face was new. Fear.
Tandy’s eyes went wide and shocked. He had seen her move and felt her terror. This egg had struck a chord in her and Soul was not as cautious as she should have been.
His eyes on the assistant director, Rick asked quietly, “So, tell me. What is a salamander?” And I realized his voice was soothing and soft, so as not to startle a wild creature. Soul.
Just as quietly, JoJo, reading from her tablet, told us, “Other than the lizard-shaped thing that likes rain and lives near water, reports allude to their ability to turn their bodies so cold they can extinguish fire. They have both medicinal and poisonous properties and excrete toxic, psychologically and physiologically active substances.” Her eyes flicked to Soul and back to her tablet. I was sure she too had seen Soul flicker and reappear in a different place. There was no hiding Soul’s nonhumanness now. “The Talmud says salamanders are creatures born in fire and anyone who is smeared with salamander blood becomes immune to fire. Muhammad said salamanders are ‘mischief doers’ and ‘should be killed.’ Other myths say they are hatched and live in volcanoes.”