The chair beside my mother’s death bed was occupied. Bianca sat beside her, holding her hand as if she gave a shit about a woman who’d taken her own mother’s place.
“Stop touching her,” I snapped. Seventeen years old, I was young in so many circles but here I was the experienced one. I already had as many kills under my belt as years to my life.
“I just came to say goodbye.” Bianca stood and clutched at the purse in her lap. “I’m sorry for your loss, Nixi.”
“GET OUT!” I screamed at her and she moved, not fast, but she moved. I waited for her to go, waited for the door to shut before I went to my mother’s side. She was gone, dead. My father had sent me out on a job, testing my loyalty to him, and even though my mom had been sick, I’d gone. She’d told me to go, that she’d be here when I got back. I slid to my knees beside her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Mama.” I bowed my head, pressing it against her side, praying for the first time in a long time that she would take a breath. That her heart would beat again and I would be able to tell her all the things I needed to say.
That I still needed her. That I was a child still and I knew it and I was so afraid of what my life was becoming. I didn’t want to be the killer I was. But there was no one left who would believe me. There was no one left to save me.
I took a breath of the hot humid air, and realized tears streamed down my face, the Savannah summer wind catching and drying them before they left a track on my skin. I rubbed at my face. “Fuck.”
Dinah wiggled in her holster. “We couldn’t tell you. That day, your mom was sure it was one of her last and she begged me to take her soul before Romano did.”
I frowned. “Why would Romano take her soul?”
“I don’t know. But I think it has to do with the deal. I think he has to give a soul to the devil, and I don’t know how soon it is but he was always on the lookout. I think the soul had to be one of his own blood, or close to him. Otherwise, he would have just taken someone off the street. She was like you, Nixi. She was a creature of legends he didn’t realize he had under his thumb, so . . .”
Killian stepped up beside me. “If he’d known, he would have fought to keep her alive, to use her for more than her soul.”
“Agreed,” I said. I understood why my mother had done what she had. I’d do anything for Bear even if it meant dying for him. I just wished I would have known that she had sacrificed so much for me.
We headed toward the private plane, and I moved on autopilot. If anyone jumped out at me, they were going to get shot. My nerves were strung tighter than a two-dollar banjo and they hummed for me to draw Dinah and start firing at something. Anything.
“Where to, Phoenix?” Killian hitched the bags of gear on his shoulders. He was not letting me get off track. “Are we going after your father, or Bear? Because while Romano may have the kid, those are two very different courses of action. We need to be sure this is the right choice.” He was being careful with his words and I didn’t like it.
“Bear,” I said without hesitation. “I won’t leave him behind again. I thought he would be safe and I was wrong. He needs to be with me.”
“It was reasonable to leave him behind before,” Killian said. “I would have argued if I thought differently.”
I reached to my bag for the phone Mancini had given me. Untraceable and pre-loaded with helpful numbers amongst the underworld of the abnormals. My fingers found no phone.
“Fuck you, Tommy, you stole my phone too?” I didn’t remember him being so good at lifting things. I blinked and grabbed Killian’s arm. “You got that number I called you on still on your phone?”
He nodded and dug it out of his pocket. “What are you thinking?”
“Tommy thinks he knows where Romano is, and where Romano is, Bear is. He can take a go at Romano all he wants. That will keep Romano busy, and we’ll get Bear, and then we’ll get Eleanor.” I couldn’t make myself call her my mom even if it was true.
Killian cleared his throat. “Phoenix. We need to talk about something hard first. Something I’d hoped you’d have seen on your own by now.”
I stopped moving, the heat around us suddenly seeming to ratchet up another few notches. “What kind of hard?”
He grimaced. “You need to kill Romano, and we know how with that list of whatever it is you have there that you’ve been avoiding looking at.” He pointed at the diary.
“I know we need to and I have not been avoiding it.” I didn’t know where he was going with this.
“You said it’s a magic bullet needed.” He arched an eyebrow. I nodded. “Then you need Brikoff. He can pull this shit off in no time. Once we have ingredients, we need that Russian to finish this off to make the bullet. Magic and metal. That’s his jam. We need him to make it right.”
“We don’t have anything yet.” I could feel my ire rising. “Why is this a hard choice?” He wasn’t going to go there, was he? Fuck.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “I think we should get it all done before we go after Bear. Getting Bear first is your heart talking, Lass. I need your head in the game if we’re going to actually save the boy.”
My jaw dropped and my anger spiked along with the shock. “Are you fucking kidding me? My head is always in the game, Irish, always!”
The way his lips tightened said it all. He didn’t think my head was in the game. “It’s not smart to go at Romano when we know we can’t kill him. You’re not going to get more than the one shot at him, Phoenix. Let’s make it count.”
I didn’t think I could be any angrier. And then Dinah spoke up.
“I hate to agree with him, but I think he may be right. I think we need to look at this like any other job, Nix. Not that it’s your son waiting on you.”
I jerked Dinah from her holster and threw her at Killian without any thought. He caught her easily and I strode away from them both, back toward the Humvee. “Then you can be his fucking gun, Dinah.”
“Lass,” Killian called after me.
I didn’t say anything, because there were no words to define the emotions swirling within me. Anger, hurt and mostly . . . chagrin that burned all the way through my belly and to my back along my spine.
I got into the driver’s side and turned the key, backed the armored vehicle up and took off. I needed time to think, to clear my head.
My throat was tight and I struggled to breathe around the lump in it. I was a mother first, and my instinct was to go after Bear. To save him and bring him home. He’d been without me for too long and there was no way he wasn’t wondering where the hell I was, why I hadn’t come for him.
But there was another instinct at war with that of a mother. The one of a killer, the one that knew Killian and Dinah were right even though I hated every part of that truth in that moment. I hit the brakes and the Humvee slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and spitting gravel that tinged off the sides of the vehicle. I didn’t know where I was and I didn’t care. I slammed my fists on the steering wheel as I screamed, tears streaming down my face. Every breath burned as I sucked it into me because the truth cut through me like nothing else could.
Killian and Dinah were right.
That truth tore what was left of my heart and soul to shreds. In order to save us and find us all peace, I had to leave Bear at the mercy of the evil and danger around him, trusting he would still be there when I finally found him.
The sobs were part anger, part hurt, and they drained me of the emotions as surely as if I’d turned a faucet on.
I waited for the heaves and the hiccups to subside. I wiped my face, found a water bottle, and then a cold nose stuffed into the back of my neck and a big warm tongue gave my skin a swipe. I reached back and curled my face into Abe’s neck, drying the last of my tears. “I’m so sorry, Abe. We can’t get him, not yet.”
He gave a snort and pushed harder on me, and I clung to him as I pulled my shit together. We needed the bullet. Then we’d get the kid out.
The kid.
Not Bear.
Not my boy.
The kid.
That was how it was going to have to be if I was going to walk away from going after him again.
“This is the last time,” I whispered, almost a prayer. “The last time I walk away from you, Bear.”
7
I made my way back to the small airport to find Killian sitting on the tarmac, his back against the stairs that led up into his private jet.
“Abe, let’s get this kid home.” I opened the door, went around and opened the back door for him. He hopped out, grunted and then limped alongside me.
When we got close to the plane and Killian, he stood and offered me Dinah back. I took her without a word and stuffed her—harder than necessary—into her holster.
There was not going to be any of this “you were right” shit.
“Where is Brikoff?” I asked.
“I called in a favor while you went for a drive,” Killian said. “Funny enough, he’s in your home state.”
“New York?” I frowned. “Why there?”
Killian shook his head. “No, I meant Wyoming. Fly fishing from what his people said, out of a little town called Jackson Hole.” The coincidence was not lost on me, which meant that Brikoff was there for something other than fly fishing. But what the fuck was he there for? Jackson Hole was overly religious and had very few abnormals to be dealing with. Maybe he just wanted a break from the madness of the abnormal world.
“How long is he there?” I asked.
“Two weeks, and he got there three days ago,” he said.
I tapped a finger on my thigh, thinking, but I wasn’t left to it very long before a high-pitched bell went off.
I tensed until Killian dug out his phone and answered it.
“Aye?”
Watching his face, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, he’d be an excellent poker player. Not so much as a twitch passed on his features.
“Aye, here, talk to her.” He handed me the phone as I frowned at him. Who the hell would be calling me on his line?
“Sis.”
“Tommy.” I breathed his name and the anger came roaring back through me. “You fucking shithead!”
“I’m sorry I took your gun,” he said and in the background, Eleanor screamed obscenities at him. Another time I would have smiled, but not now. “Listen, Nix, I have everything I need and I’m going to take a go at the bastard. I have a bullet, it doesn’t need all that shit that you think it does. It just has to be gold.” Just as I thought, he was going in half-cocked. “Will you talk to Eleanor and tell her to shut the fuck up and help me?”
I did laugh then. I bent at the waist while the mirth poured out of me, taking all the nervous energy and anger with it. “Sure, hold the phone up.”
“You aren’t really going to tell her to be quiet, are you?” The incredulity in Dinah’s voice was not lost on me.
“Eleanor, can you hear me?” I asked.
There was a sharp intake before she spoke. Her voice was rough from screaming. “Phoenix, I can hear you.”
All the things I wanted to say bubbled up and it took all I was to hold them back and just keep it short. “Help Tommy. If he thinks he can kill Romano, then help him. But realize you are my gun, not his.”
She snorted. “I have always been your gun, Phoenix.”
I had to close my eyes to hold back the sudden tears that bubbled up. God, I was a mess. I had to get my shit under control.
“I know, you’ve always been with me,” I said.
Killian’s hand brushed against my lower back, supporting me silently, but I shoved his hand away. I did not want his touch right then, not when he’d backed me into a decision I didn’t want to make. I swallowed down the emotions, burying them under my training. “Tommy, where—” Hell, I wanted to ask him where he was, where he thought Bear was, but I held off with the barest threads of self-control. “Where are the ingredients you found? I’m going to get a second bullet ready.”
“Are you serious?” he spluttered. “I’ve got this. And I’m telling you all that herbs and lightning and blood is bullshit designed to put you on a wild goose chase. Just the gold. Like a werewolf of old, only this is a gold bullet instead of silver.”
“Sure, and when he kills you because you didn’t use the recipe, I have no desire to be left in the fucking dust with nothing when you already know this shit.”
The sound of his teeth grinding came through the phone clearly. “I don’t know where Noah put the stuff. He pulled it all together. Him and your hubs. Noah brought me a bunch of the stuff a while back.”
“And you’re not even using it, are you?”
“Look, I didn’t think it could hurt to put the stuff in he gave me, but there were things that are impossible, that make no sense. This will be enough, it has to be.” I heard the desperation in his voice. Maybe a part of him knew it wouldn’t work. But the hate that was pushing him wouldn’t let him slow down. I understood that probably better than anyone else.
I looked at Killian and hit the button for the speaker phone. “You’re telling me Noah can get us the ingredients?”
“The herbal stuff. He told me Justin had a stash of it, so he would know where it was,” Tommy said.
My thoughts raced at a rate that I knew what it meant. “And the grindings of a curse?”
“I used my ring.”
My father wore a ruby ring that connected him to his three guardians. He’d given each of his sons a duplicate ring so they could have the backup if they needed it. That was what I understood, anyway.
I didn’t say anything, but it didn’t feel quite right to me. The rings, they were a part of this, but there was still something missing. “And the whole thing from the past?”
“I used an old photo of Dad’s dad. A picture of the past. Look, I’m telling you I’ve got this.”
Again, it didn’t feel right to me. Maybe the translation was off on the deal. Fuck if I knew. I wanted to scream in frustration, but I knew that would answer nothing. “Tommy, one more question. The magic bullet, the coded paper Justin had, where did it all originate from?”
“The deal. But the deal was something I never did find. Not the original,” Tommy said.
He confirmed what I suspected. “Try not to get my gun stolen or broken,” I said.
“I’ve got this, Nix,” Tommy growled. “I have to say, you’re colder than I thought, not going after your boy.”
“Fuck off,” I snarled, all former warmth between us gone in the heat of lies and pain.
He was quiet a moment and I wasn’t sure if he was still there until he took a short breath in.
“I’ll kill him, Nix. I will. We’ll all finally be free.”
Dinah snorted. “Overconfident as usual, Tom.”
“Who was that?”
“My other gun,” I said. “She’s pissed you took Eleanor. So am I. But I’ll get her back. One way or another.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to keep her. She’s a mouthy fucking hag.” He snorted.
I hung up on him. There was nothing more he could tell me.
“He might have known where Bear was,” Dinah offered, her voice a careful neutral.
I didn’t answer her because my mind was spinning. Justin and Noah. Once more, things came back to the deadly game they’d been playing.
Without another word, I hurried up the stairs, poor Abe limping along behind me. I reached over and grabbed his collar, carefully helping him up the last few steps. He grunted when I let him back down and I followed him to the rear of the plane.
I wished that I could heal him the way my body healed itself at a rapid pace. Maybe I could help him out, though. Maybe I could do something to ease his discomfort. All my thoughts of sending him away were gone now. I needed him with me, the one companion who I could trust.
I put a hand on him and just kind of pushed some of my buzzing abnormal energy into him. He picked his head up, and his eyes brightened as I kept gently moving more and more of my energy to him, giving
him what he needed to heal.
His tail thumped a few times and he stood, shook his whole body and gave a bark. I slumped in the seat. At least there was that. A small thing but a victory no less. I patted the seat beside me and Abe leapt up, where just moments before he could barely take a step.
I looked up to see Killian watching me. “Lass, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I shrugged and turned to face him. “You were right. And that fucking pissed me off.”
“No one doubts your love for him—”
I held up a hand to stop him. “I have to treat this like a job, Irish. We get the bullet together, we go after Romano, we get the kid. Got it?”
His eyes tightened as if I’d punched him in the gut. “Got it.” He drew a breath and then spoke again. “Where are we going then?”
I stood and moved to the galley where I grabbed a paper pad and a pen. I took them back to the seat with me and started jotting notes. “We need a ruby ring. The spit of a female demon. The herbs. Gold for the casing. Brikoff. Something to do with the past. And the grindings of a curse.” I tapped the pen on the paper. “Some of these don’t feel right. Like there is something missing from the translation. I think,” I frowned and closed my eyes. “I think that we might find some of the stuff at the house in Jackson Hole.”
Killian startled. “Why?”
“Because that is where Justin would have hidden something. Especially if he thought it needed to be safe. He would have put it where it would be protected the most, right under my and Zee’s noses.”
“And the translation?” he asked.
I grabbed the diary. “Dinah?”
“Yeah, it’s in there. The front cover is pasted together. That’s where the original deal is.”
I grabbed a knife from my thigh straps and slid the tip of the blade through the layers that hid the last piece of information we needed. I put the knife back and then pried the layers open with my fingers. Inside the tiny opening was a thick piece of parchment. I pulled it out, blinking several times as I ran my fingers over it.
[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix Page 8
