“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.”
“Mythologists have some of it right,” Soul said, her voice too lyrical and ringing, again giving too much away. She seemed to glide across the room and sat at her accustomed place, her gauzy skirts buoyant on the air, her silver hair lifting and floating. T. Laine was watching her too closely, one of the handheld psy-meters in her hand, reading Soul’s magical signature.
“Fire salamanders came through to this dimension from inside active volcanoes. They were evil, twisted things, shape-shifters who could take on human forms, who could take the place of kings and moguls, and, if they chose, could take to the air, as winged dragons.”
I thought about Jane Yellowrock, the Cherokee skinwalker who could take the shape of animals if she had enough DNA to work with. “They absorb or use the genetics of the beings they want to replace?” I asked. “Including arcenciels?”
“Salamanders,” she said, her lips curling in a snarl, “do not have genetics as humans understand them.”
Which wasn’t an answer. Did that mean that they were like light dragons? Like Soul? But no. The look on her face suggested that they were very different and had indeed been mortal enemies. Her expression said the war had been horrific.
Tandy closed his eyes and I could feel the gentle calm the empath was sending out. As if to encourage what should have been a normal debrief, Occam broke off more shell pieces. I ate another donut and drank coffee. JoJo was updating something on her laptop, oblivious. I’d seen enough of the slimy ugly critters underwater.
Rick watched Soul the way a cat might a snake crawling nearby—cautious, concerned, and warily respectful. “What else can you tell us? Habitat requirements? Life span? Reproduction?”
Soul reached up and pulled down her floating platinum hair, twisting it into its long spiral, her fingers threading through as she coiled it tighter. “They were said to reproduce like lizards, living in harems of four females to each male, with the primary leader being the eldest wife. That female chose the other wives first, and then selected a mate strong enough to protect the harem. They were said to mate within families, with no regard for lineage or blood ties. They did not—do not, as the tales of their demise seem to have been grossly exaggerated—bear live young but lay a clutch of eggs in fresh running water, with the hatchlings unable to breathe air. They live the first five years in the water, tailed, like a tadpole, but with arms and hands with one clawed finger and two clawed opposable thumbs.” Soul looked down at her hands twisting her hair and stopped the motion. “They were—are—amphibians, not reptiles. According to the histories, there was one that lived over five hundred years. But then, the shells were supposed to be beautiful. Much of what I think I know may be wrong.”
“Shakespeare’s historical plays prove that history is written by the victors,” I said. “Churchill said so too.” I pulled my tablet to me and began to add all her comments to my bullet point file. “It’s been six thousand years. Some things might have been forgotten or changed in that time span.”
JoJo said, “I’ll need those histories to update our arcenciel file.”
While we had been speaking, Occam had tapped and removed shards of shell, placing them in a small pile to the side of the sink. The tapping and removal of shell went faster now, bigger pieces set to the side, revealing the creature within.
“Salamander,” Soul whispered, her face blank.
T. Laine cleaned off the break room table and opened out the ad section from the Knoxville News Sentinel across the top, covering the surface. I scooted my chair into a corner just as Occam carried a lump of slimy blue flesh to the table and placed it in the center. “We shoulda thought about scales for weighing it and devices for measurement,” he said.
“All we want is to get a feel for it and then overnight it to PsyCSI in Richmond,” Soul said.
As she spoke, a long line of goo slid across the papers and dripped to the floor.
I had seen enough of the salamander, and I hadn’t slept enough in the last few days. I needed a nap. I made another trip to the locker room for my clean blanket and pillow, found the room with the mattresses, fell on one that looked unused, and was asleep about the same moment I got the pillow in place.
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