Fire And Ash

by Nia Davenport

  I don’t have any right to take that from her. So I don’t tell her about me or that I know about her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chicken Noodle Soup

  I hear heavy footsteps, I hear a voice, I hear shouting. I bury my head beneath the blanket. The shouting is coming from the same source that it usually does. My parents. They are fighting again. The footsteps thud down the stairs. A door slams and tires screech out of the driveway. Lighter footsteps pad down the stairs sometime later. They wake me up and I want to go to my mother now that we are alone again. Kiss the sadness off her face that I know will be there, just like I’ll do with Dad when he comes home again before the sun rises. I love both of my parents and I don’t blame either of them for their constant fighting. Even at six I understand that they are different people, moving in different directions, with different desires. Mom is not a hunter. She knew the life she was signing up for when she married Dad, but she can no longer bear the weight of it. She hasn’t been able to for two years now. Not since my cousins’ mother, her closest friend, was killed on a hunt in the park. She doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Dad or to me someday. But Dad has sworn a duty and Mom doesn’t understand why he feels so compelled to uphold it. She often yells at him that if he loves us he will leave. Dad yells back that he can’t. I wait for the footsteps to come back up the stairs. When they never do, I assume that she is sitting in the leather recliner, staring bleakly into nothingness with swollen, puffy eyes. I go in search of her and the recliner is empty. Our back door sits ajar. Our back door is never ajar. It and the front door and the basement door are always triple bolted. Especially at night when only her and I are inside. Something crawls over me warning me against going into the backyard. It whispers to go back upstairs and get back into bed. I ignore it because I know my mother is beyond that door and go outside anyway. I see something. Something that I know I shouldn’t be seeing. But my brain can’t make sense of the image. It’s fuzzy and shrouded in darkness. Then the darkness envelopes the entire scene and everything starts over from the beginning. I hear footsteps, I hear a voice, I hear shouting.

  The nightmare that is really a memory plays on a continuous loop until I finally wake up in a cold sweat, shaking with terror and gasping for air exactly how I would do in the months following Mom’s death. I haven’t woken up like this after the dream since I was six. But just like then I open my eyes to the feeling that I am being suffocated. I shoot up in the bed clawing at invisible hands. My lungs are on fire and my throat feels as if someone is crushing my windpipe from the outside in. I fight past the agony, dragging in one deep breath and then another.

  Calm down, I tell myself. You were only dreaming. You weren’t really experiencing it again. Don’t let it get to you like this.

  “To be afraid is to be weak, to be weak is to be dead. Jacobs are not weak. Jacobs are strong. It is in our DNA to be.” I use my grandfather’s words to fight back the gut wrenching emotion that is beginning to take root.

  My mind dredges up the rest of the memory. The part that comes after the darkness. The part I never dream about. I am thankful that I do not dream this part. That I do not see my mother’s lifeless body periodically when I close my eyes.

  I open my eyes a moment after the darkness claimed me. I realize I must have fainted upon seeing Mom sprawled across the grass. I automatically know she is dead. I don’t know how I know but I do. I don’t cry, I don’t scream, I don’t fall apart. Even at six I know that death is a part of our life. If hearing Granddad say it wasn’t enough, I saw it with Cousin Linda, Sean and Gerard’s mom, and Becca’s uncle who was their father. I also know I should go inside and bolt the doors. It’s not safe to be out at night. But I don’t. I crawl to Mom and sit down beside her. Lay my head on her chest, and avoid looking at the awkward angle that her neck is bent at. I close my eyes and wait for someone to come home. I won’t leave her out here alone. While I am waiting I pretend that everything is normal. We’re not lying outside on a cold ground. We are inside, where it is warm. She is in the recliner and I am sleeping on her lap. I open my eyes to Granddad. He is the first to find us. “Stand up,” he commands. When I do he instructs me to look down at my mom. He speaks to me as I do. “A phoenix is the reason you look upon what you see. For every human life they take, they add an additional one to theirs. They aspire to have what they were never meant to. And they do it at the expense of us. They prey upon humans and we evolved to prey upon them. We are the balance. We are humanity’s shield against it’s only predator. We are born as hunters and we die as hunters. It is a vow you will one day take. You will live by it, you will die by it, and this is why.”

  I numbly get out of bed needing to move. I dress in black cargo pants and a long sleeve henley that is the same color. I lace up combat grade boots and grab the silver knives Aunt Farrah gave me off my dresser as I leave the room. I need to do something. Grandma will have a fit if she finds out, but everyone has been back in Highland Village for the past week since the amber alert about the young boy went out so they will never know. Derek may claim that he and his mom don’t, but there are phoenix out there that kill humans. They take our lives to add to theirs.

  I leave my house and drive towards Red Creek. If I am lucky tonight, I will come across one of those phoenix that do and I will make sure one less human doesn’t end up like Mom.

  I know the western side of Red Creek State Park as thoroughly as I know my own name. I’ve undergone countless training exercises in its wooded areas surrounding Laurel. Some with Becca, some with Dad and even more alone with Granddad. I’ve been in Red Creek too many times at night to be scared of the natural and non-natural things that roam it.

  I pick up a trail of two sets of prints about half a mile from where I parked. I follow it east for three miles, keeping my senses open for any peculiar sights or sounds. One set of prints diverges from the other. I choose to continue to follow the larger of the two. Better to scout out and eliminate the potentially larger threat first.

  When I hear leaves crunching beneath booted feet in the distance I release the safety from the crossbow I took from the armory. It’s a more practical weapon than my knives for hitting moving targets at a distance. I step into the clearing the noise is coming from and level my bow at the person I see standing over the missing boy’s body as it is encased in flames.

  “I warned you,” I tell Derek. Without waiting for a response I pull the trigger and shoot.

  His left hand shoots out, catching the cross bolt mere centimeters before it would have embedded in his chest.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” He growls as he snaps it in two. “You almost pierced my heart.”

  “That was the idea. You’re a killer like the rest of them.”

  He watches me not my bow as he stands. His eyes lock with mine and refuse to release them.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he says strained. “I’m tracking the phoenix who did.”

  “Ha! And I’m supposed to believe that why? You’re one of them.”

  A muscle ticks in Derek’s jaw at my accusation.“I am nothing like the phoenix that killed him. I told you I don’t kill people for selfish gain.”

  I don’t miss the unspoken admission in what he says. “But you do kill people,” I accuse.

  “When the lives of the people I care about are threatened and I have to.”

  Derek rushes towards me and I fire another cross bolt without thinking. It buries itself in his side but he keeps coming. He rushes past me and collides with someone just as they’re emerging from the clearing. His snaps their neck and they drop to the ground.

  “A phoenix,” he says as he pulls a long lethally sharp sword free from his back. The sword slices through the phoenix’ neck as if it is butter.

  He doesn’t have time to say anything else and I don’t have time to ask questions. One second it is just me and him and in the very next we are surrounded by four more.

  Where did they come from? It’s like they
appeared out of thin air.

  Two of them go for Derek and two start towards me. I shoot a cross bolt at the first. My aim is dead on and it buries itself in her chest. She drops while the second one keeps coming. He is too close for the crossbow to be an effective weapon against her. I drop it and pull the silver knives Aunt Farrah gave me free from their place at my waist.

  I thrust, he dances to the left and I nick his side. He swings his arm out and hits me square in the chest.

  In my peripheral I see Derek and the two he is engaging at the same time moving in a blur of deadly moves that are too quick for my divided attention to track.

  I sweep my right leg out and take the phoenix’s legs out from under him before he has time to react. He shoots a hand out and yanks me to the ground with him. He uses his larger mass to roll us so he lands on top of me. His hands close over my throat trying to crush it. I don’t allow instinct to make me drop the one knife I held on to when I fell and claw at his hands with both of mine. Instead I let him continue to cut off my air supply as I bring the knife up behind him and slam it into his back. When I pull it free and slam it again his hands release my neck. I throw him off of me and jam the knife past flesh and breastbone and tissue and straight into his heart.

  “I assume you want that back so grab it and let’s go,” Derek says from beside me.

  No sooner than I dislodge it from his heart Derek cuts of his head like he did to the other three of the other four lying dead around us.

  Voices and footsteps sound in the distance.

  Derek grabs my arm and pulls me in the opposite direction of the clearing and across the park. As we run, footsteps thud behind us.

  When we get to his car he yells at me to get in as he scrambles into the driver’s side. He throws the Mustang into gear, its tires screech against the pavement and then there is a loud boom and my entire body shakes from the force of an impact. The car goes sliding across the pavement and we hit a tree. The force of the collision reverberates through the car and everything inside it. My head slams hard against glass.

  Darkness hovers at the edge of my mind but I fight to remain conscious.

  Derek jumps out of the car and I hear movement that sounds like fighting.

  I try to turn my head to see what is going on but the movement makes my vision go blurry. I blink once and then twice trying to clear it but I can’t. Everything looks fuzzy and the grunts that I hear sound extremely far away now. I hear Derek faintly shouting my name. Asking me if I am okay. I try to answer but I can’t. Pain explodes inside my skull and then I can no longer hold back the darkness. It completely pulls me under.

  ******

  I open my eyes to Derek and Cassie looking down at me.

  “Go tell Mom to tell the doctor she’s awake,” Derek instructs her.

  She says okay but hesitates, like she doesn’t want to leave. Finally she does.

  “We were coming back from Lookout Point and a car ran us off the road,” Derek whispers to me hurriedly right before a man in a white lab coat walks in.

  His appearance makes me finally look at my surroundings. There is an IV bag to my left with a tube traveling from it to the needle in my left hand. To my right is a machine that beeps intermittently and all around me are glass walls. An old box television is mounted in the corner and in the one opposite to it sits an uncomfortable looking vinyl chair.

  I’m in a hospital, I think. Then the state park, Derek, the burning body, the phoenix, the fight and the crash come flooding back to me. The thought of everything makes adrenaline flood my system all over again.

  “Are you alright Miss Jacobs?” The doctor asks. He is alarmed that the beeps coming out of the machine at my bedside are becoming more insistent.

  I take a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. “I’m okay,” I croak out. My mouth feels as dry as cotton. “Just shaken up from the…accident.” My eyes travel to Derek when I say it.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yes,” I answer him. “We were driving back from Lookout Point and a car ran us off the road. I hit my head against the window I think.”

  Mrs. Jensen walks into the room as he asks about my parents.

  “Ash is staying with us,” she smoothly answers for me. “I am responsible for her while her parents are out of town.”

  I wonder at the lie then figure Derek was forced to tell her about me and she prefers to keep my actual family out of things.

  The doctor uses a flash light to check my pupils and asks me to tell him my full name, address, and date of birth. Once he is convinced I have nothing more major than a minor concussion he tells Mrs. Jensen that they can keep me for observation overnight or he can release me into her care.

  She leaves the decision up to me and I tell the doctor that I want to leave.

  The sun is coming up by the time I am finally released.

  “Derek told Cassie and I about you at the hospital.” Mrs. Jensen glances at me in the rearview mirror as she drives.

  “Oh,” I say.

  I look at Cassie at the same time she turns her head to look at me from the other side of the backseat. “Derek explained everything and the vow he forced you to make and the reason he was able to force it,” she says.

  “I understand if you’re mad at me, and if you don’t want to be friends anymore,” I tell her. I won’t like it. But I really will understand.

  She frowns at me. “We’ve been friends so far. It would be stupid to stop now just because of what my family is and what yours is. You are the first real friend I’ve had. Ever. I’m not giving that up. And my mother as a hunter so you can’t all be that bad.”

  She nudges me with her shoulder and I smile. She smiles too.

  “You two sound like such girls,” Derek says in disgust from the front seat.

  We both shoot him a scowl and tell him to shut up at the same time.

  “Does your family know where you were?” Mrs. Jensen asks as we near Laurel Springs’ city limits.

  I tell her they don’t because they are not home. When I tell her they have been consumed with the abductions from Highland Village, a look crosses her face that I don’t miss.

  “Is that why you were in Red Creek last night?”

  “Yes. No. They won’t let me help but I decided to go to the park on my own.”

  She gives me a stern look that would give Grandma’s a run for its money. “Stay away from Red Creek Ash. Especially by yourself.”

  “Derek was there?” I realize how whiny it comes across when he snorts.

  “Derek is special,” Mrs. Jensen tells me calmly. “And not in the obnoxious, arrogant way my son likes to pretend he is. Derek is actually special. He isn’t the average phoenix. His father trained him to hunt and kill those of us who…still like to prey on humans.”

  That explains why he was in the woods tonight. If he was with the other Phoenix, he wouldn’t have killed them, and from the way I saw him move when he fought them, he could have killed me as easily as he killed them. Not just tonight. At anytime. And yet, he hasn’t.

  Why? I wonder.

  Because maybe what he says is really true. Maybe he and his family just want to live their lives and be left alone, I answer myself back.

  “And anyway it is over now,” Mrs. Jensen’s voice breaks through me talking to myself. “Derek got the last of the group of phoenix that were behind the abductions last night. There should be no one else going missing.”

  ******

  Mrs. Jensen insists that I spend the remainder of the day at their house. When I tell her that I feel okay, only a slight headache remains, she insists that I stay anyway just to be safe and confines me to the bed in their guest room.

  “You almost put an cross bolt in my chest and you get the royal treatment,” Derek grumbles as he hands me the third meal today that his mother has made him bring me.

  I taste the homemade chicken noodle soup and almost groan. I’ve never had soup that didn’t come out of a can before. Who kne
w it could be so good? There are pieces of fresh celery, carrots, and onion and tender chunks of chicken breast in it.

  “If she had succeeded, it would have been well deserved,” Cassie smirks. She is sitting crosslegged on the bed beside me. She has not left my side since we got to her house.

  “What she said.” It’s the best I can do. The ibuprofen is starting to wear off but I have another hour to go before I can take more. My headache is increasing from dull to splitting.

  “Whatever. Cass, Mom says to take Ash home whenever she’s ready. I have to go meet with the Council in Highland Village.”

  Derek looks from Cass to me. “Mom is going to follow me there so I can drive your car back. I’ll drop it off to you later tonight. You’re welcome by the way. And you owe me. I figure since it is going to take three weeks to repair the Mustang you should volunteer to be my personal chauffeur. It is your fault it was nearly totaled.”

  “How is it her fault?” Cassie argues with him for me.

  “Because it was her ass I was trying to save when I ran. Otherwise, I would have stayed and fought.”

  “She says you can kiss her ass.” The seven words cost me a thudding pound in my head for each one I say, but they are worth it.

  “Derek!” His mom hollers from downstairs. “Get out of the guest room and stop antagonizing Ash. All I asked you to do was take her the soup and tell Cass to drive her home when she’s ready.”

  “I swear it’s you who is her child and not me,” Derek mumbles as he leaves the room.

  “I wouldn’t mind swapping the two of you out,” Cassie says loud enough for him to hear down the hallway.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hell Freezes Over

  I hear heavy footsteps, I hear a voice, I hear shouting. I bury my head beneath the blanket. The shouting is coming from the same source that it usually does. My parents. They are fighting again. The footsteps thud down the stairs. A door slams and tires screech out of the driveway. Lighter footsteps pad down the stairs sometime later. They wake me up and I want to go to my mother now that we are alone again. Kiss the sadness off her face that I know will be there, just like I’ll do with Dad when he comes home again before the sun rises. I love both of my parents and I don’t blame either of them for their constant fighting. Even at six I understand that they are different people, moving in different directions, with different desires. Mom is not a hunter. She knew the life she was signing up for when she married Dad, but she can no longer bear the weight of it. She hasn’t been able to for two years now. Not since my cousins’ mother, her closest friend, was killed on a hunt in the park. She doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Dad or to me someday. But Dad has sworn a duty and Mom doesn’t understand why he feels so compelled to uphold it. She often yells at him that if he loves us he will leave. Dad yells back that he can’t. I wait for the footsteps to come back up the stairs. When they never do, I assume that she is sitting in the leather recliner, staring bleakly into nothingness with swollen, puffy eyes. I go in search of her and the recliner is empty. Our back door sits ajar. Our back door is never ajar. It and the front door and the basement door are always triple bolted. Especially at night when only her and I are inside. Something crawls over me warning me against going into the backyard. It whispers to go back upstairs and get back into bed. I ignore it because I know my mother is beyond that door and go outside anyway. I see something. Something that I know I shouldn’t be seeing. But my brain can’t make sense of the image. It’s fuzzy and shrouded in darkness. Then the darkness envelopes the entire scene… and everything is about to start all over again but the urgent whisper of my name jerks me awake.