Catalyst

Chapter Eight

A harsh yellow light pried Phoebe's eyes open and she squinted against the glare, unable to see. Something tickled her neck. Immediately her heart began to race and flashes of tigers with bloody mouths and girls wielding knives spun through her mind. She was sure she had experienced one of the most vivid nightmares she'd ever known, and all she wanted to do was wake up. She tilted her head, trying to take stock of her surroundings, ignoring the tickle at her nape.

She was warm, and something heavy was pressed into her side. A puff of air brushed her lower ear and she fought the urge to squirm.

Eyes adjusted to the light, she could now see she was on the floor, a shaft of sunlight pouring through some ripped curtains and falling directly on her face. Moving her head, she looked left to the source of the tickling and saw James, human and vulnerable without his scales. He was sleeping; his face buried above her shoulder, his breath moving tendrils of her hair. She couldn't see much of his face, but he was bent protectively around her body. His hand and part of his arm were pressed onto her side.

The knife.

She gasped and reached down, her hand pushing James' out of the way, searching for the damage. James jerked awake and his eyes were bright, unfocused, and red.

"Phoebe?" He searched her face, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. He put his hand on her cheek and his fingers were rough and warm and very human. She leaned into the touch without thinking, her own hand still searching her stomach, finding rough fabric and tape.

She tried to sit up, putting her elbows on the floor and lifting her head, but he put a hand on her collarbone.

"No! Wait. Just...wait." She lay back down on the floor and he grasped her searching hand, moving it gently to the floor. He peeled back layers of bandages slick with blood and she heard his sharp intake of breath.

"Is it bad?" she asked, her gaze trained on the ceiling, afraid to see what Miranda had left behind of her body. But then, "I... I don't hurt," she realized.

"It's gone," he whispered. He reached across her body and lifted her arm, ripping away the dressing there with less finesse than the first. She looked at her arm, smeared with blood but completely whole, no cuts, no scars, no strips of flesh or exposed muscle. Nothing.

"It's like it didn't even happen." His voice was quiet, and flat with disbelief.

She couldn't tear her eyes away from the skin of her arm. She remembered the claws, the ribbons they had made of her skin so it felt like they might fall to the floor. The blood. The white pain shooting back and forth between her nerves like lightning.

A broken gasp pushed the nightmarish memories back and she looked up at James. He was still holding her arm, but he was looking at his own hand, which was brown with dried blood. The hand that had been on her side, holding her body together. Had he fallen asleep like that, watching her bleed and trying to stem the flow?

"James?"

His breath caught again and she realized he was crying. He dropped her arm and she could see that his eyes were wet and his body was shaking. She brushed the side of her hand gently over his cheeks, tracked with tears, dried and new.

"Pheebs, you were dead." He closed his eyes in pain, his voice tight and scratched as if with glass. "You stopped breathing. You were choking on blood... and there was nothing..."

Phoebe thought about rising from the floor to hold him, but before she could move James laid down beside her and put his face in the crook of her neck exactly as he had been when she woke up. He pressed her hair into his forehead and took deep breaths, each exhale a little less shaky than the one before.