[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  Like my dad.

  I gasped and opened my eyes as Rooster sat up. His eyes were wild, but intact. His face was put back together with only a few scars from where Shaitan’s fingers had gouged deeply. He reached up and touched his skin. He looked different to me, like the bone structure of his skull had changed, but I suppose that was to be expected when it came to having your face rearranged.

  “Your ability will get stronger. One day you will be able to take the scars too,” the desert witch said. She pushed to her feet and looked down at me. “I must go now. And you must go with the one who has come for you. That is your path; I see it. Go with him.”

  She turned her back on us as she raised her veil to cover the lower half of her face.

  “What just happened, kid?” Rooster grabbed my arm and I turned back to him.

  “Long story.”

  We just stared at each other. Rooster shook his head. “I was dying, for real, for the final time.”

  “Yeah, well, we both might die if we don’t get out of here.” I ducked as another round of gunfire went off around us, the sounds catching up to us as the desert witch disappeared back into her tent.

  Rooster grabbed me and hauled me up. He didn’t waste any more words as he all but carried me out of the range of the fire fight. As if he hadn’t just been laid out on the ground.

  He ran until we hit a slope of sand and then we both scrambled up it, sliding down the other side far enough that we could peek back over the edge and see what was going on.

  “Kid, you brought me back, didn’t you?” Rooster asked softly as we watched men shooting at each other from a distance.

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry about the scars. I’m just learning.”

  He dropped an arm across me. In a hug?

  “Kid, I’m proud of you. I’ll do everything I can to protect you, even . . . even if it means dying.”

  A strange flush of pride raced through me. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do. And I will. I’ll protect you with my own body.” His voice was gruff with emotion.

  “You already did that. I think we’re even.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to be responsible for his death again, even if it pleased me that he saw what I did as having great worth to him. That I wasn’t just a burden to be cared for, but to be looked after because I’d helped him.

  He stared out across the edge of the sand, not acknowledging that I’d pretty much just set him free from any further need to take care of me.

  “There he is.” He pointed at a Jeep barreling between the tents, my uncle hanging halfway out the window. A gun popped and blazed from Tommy’s hand, sending smoke bombs between the tents. Uncle Tommy had come for me, just like he’d said.

  I was up and running, Rooster right behind me, yelling.

  “Bear, don’t!”

  “He needs our help!”

  I slid to a stop at the base of the sand hill and called my fire up along my skin. I couldn’t let Uncle Tommy die, not when he’d come here for me. Not when he was going to help me get back to my mom.

  The blue and green flames blazed to life around me.

  “You ain’t got nothing to—holy shit.” Rooster skidded to a stop behind me, but I didn’t turn to him.

  I thought about throwing the flames outward toward the men shooting at Uncle Tommy. I balled up my hand and tossed a ball of flames like a baseball. Only it didn’t fly like a baseball but more like a rocket. The swirling blue and green flames exploded against one of the tents, lifting it off its tie downs and lighting it up in an instant.

  I bit my lower lip as I turned and flung my other hand toward tents on the far side. Fear raced through me as thick as the flames that coated my skin. I did not want to be a bad guy, but I couldn’t let someone else die when I had the power to stop it.

  The Jeep peeled out toward me and Rooster. Behind it came a swirling wind that I was certain was Shaitan.

  “Bear, douse the flames, you did good,” Rooster said softly, and I let the fire go. I slumped, fatigue hitting me so hard, I would have crumpled to the ground if not for Rooster catching me. He helped me into the Jeep and strapped me in. Tommy turned in the front passenger seat and held his hand out to me. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Are you okay?”

  He gave me a tight smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “We’re going after Romano. I’m going to stop him once and for all.” The Jeep took off, bouncing through the ruts and rises in the sand until we were long gone from the scene of the battle. I twisted around to see the desert witch standing behind us, between the swirling wind that was Shaitan and us. She stalled him.

  “You’re a damn fool. You don’t have everything you need,” a woman’s voice said with more than a hint of venom. I blinked and stared at the gun in his hand.

  “Did your gun just talk?”

  “Yeah. This is Eleanor.” He rotated the matte-black gun around and stuffed it into a holster on his chest. “She’s not happy because I took her from your mom.”

  “I’d rather have the boy take me than you,” Eleanor snarled from her holster. “At least he’s got some sense in his head.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “I know what I’m doing. The cursed bullet was only meant to throw us off. The only thing I need was a gold casing which I have, and you, Eleanor. For whatever reason, it needs to be you or Dinah who makes the final blow. That much I believe because of the heat factor of most guns.”

  I looked up at Rooster and he shook his head. “Don’t know what he’s talking about either, kid.”

  “Uncle Tommy, where is my mom?”

  “She’s coming too. We’ll take care of Romano and then we can all have a beer.” He grinned but I didn’t smile back. I didn’t think my grandfather—his father—would be that easy to kill. But I was just a kid, what did I know?

  I clenched my hands into fists and shook my head. I wanted out, but I remembered what the desert witch had said. “I’ll come with you, but only if you have a real plan. One I can help with.”

  Uncle Tommy looked at me as we bumped along the desert road. “You want to help kill your grandfather?”

  I swallowed hard before I answered. “I want to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone again. Not me. Not you. Not my mom. Not Killian. He’s already killed my dad. I . . . I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

  Rooster stiffened at Killian’s name. “You think Killian is worth saving?”

  I glanced at him. “He kept me safe. He tried to stop Luca from taking me. And he’s helping my mom.”

  “But he failed,” Rooster bit out.

  “You aren’t in a place to judge,” Tommy said. “The kid is right. The only way to stop Romano is to do it together.”

  I put my hand out on top of Tommy’s and waited for Rooster to do the same. Reluctantly he dropped a hand onto mine.

  “Then let’s do it.” Tommy tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Take us to the Grotto.”

  11

  Phoenix

  In the dream, I stood in front of a man all dressed in black, his hair a dark brown, eyes the same shade. I had never seen him before and yet I knew who he was.

  “Strike.”

  “You have a good set of instincts,” Strike said. The place where we stood was not real, more like an empty limbo, as if the world had been stripped away from us. I suppose that was the deal with dreams, though. They could do that.

  “This isn’t real,” I said.

  “I’m taking your connection to your fire.” Strike reached out and grabbed the edges of my face with his hand. “You are not tapping into your ability fast enough, deep enough. You are going to need it all to face Romano. This will speed up your learning curve.”

  I made a move as if to pull Dinah and shoot him, even if it was just a dream. He smiled at me. “You’ll thank me later.”

  “Why are you helping me now?” I struggled with the words as he faded.

  “I’ve been helping you all along,” he whispered.

  *_*_*_*

/>   “We’re close,” Killian yelled from the cockpit, snapping me out of my doze.

  A part of me had hoped that with my eyes closed the pieces of the puzzle laid in front of me would miraculously come together. They hadn’t, and now I was groggier than I’d started out. I sat up, rubbed my face and made my way to the cockpit to slide into the seat beside Killian, then put the headset on once more.

  “You know Brikoff. Will you put in the call to him?”

  “I suppose I was the one who found out where he was?” His eyes twinkled at me and I stared back at him. Twinkling eyes.

  “Do you . . . remember something?”

  He leaned in close and caught my mouth in a kiss that I was not expecting. I closed my eyes and kissed him back. The heat between us had not diminished in the least. I touched his face, shocked at how much weight came off my shoulders with his memory coming back. He was right, there was no guarantee of tomorrow, and I would take what I could get. I kissed him harder and had to stop myself from pulling him out of the seat and into the back of the plane to strip his clothes from him.

  As if he could read my mind, he let out a groan and slid one hand under my shirt and Kevlar, over my ribcage and onto my breast, squeezing so carefully with only the mildest trickles of electricity running from him to me. I couldn’t stop the way my body responded even if I’d wanted to.

  He was breathing hard when he took his lips from mine. Mind you, I was struggling for breath too.

  “Bits and pieces,” he said. “Enough to know you’re telling me the truth.”

  My jaw dropped. “But . . .”

  “I thought a kiss might jog me memory.” He winked at me and I couldn’t help the blush, and I didn’t even know why I was blushing, only that he’d caught me wanting him. Damn it, he’d caught me good.

  Killian glanced at me with his lips quirked up on one side. “So, here we go. I remember enough to know I want to keep you alive if only to see where we go from here. We get Brikoff to agree to make the bullet, check your house for ingredients and then what? Kill your father, rescue your son, and then run away to somewhere nice and quiet, just the three of us.”

  Dinah sighed softly. “Oh, yeah, totally dreamy and fuckable.”

  I had to agree with her but I kept my mouth shut, mostly because I was still thinking that same thing.

  Killian snorted. “She’s quite something.”

  I shrugged. “She was always like this, even before.” I frowned, though, as his words really sunk in. “You think we can just walk away from this world after Romano is dead? Because I don’t.”

  Killian sighed and reached across for my hand. I let him take it, relishing it more than I wanted to admit. “We can for a little while. But you’re right. A vacuum in the underworld of abnormals is not good. You either become one of the bosses or you work for one of them. And you’d have very little choice as to who you work for. There is no utopia here, no chance that all the bad ones will be eliminated and no one would take their place. Romano is just the worst of the worst. There will be others.”

  Abe bumped up beside me, putting his head into my lap and I absently stroked his ears. “Is that why you started your gang?”

  “Aye, it is. There was no safety with the Irish abnormals, just chaos and death. I knew from a young age I was going to try and harness all that power and use it to at least try and improve things. To escape in the only way, by leading my people.”

  “Did you know you would become a killer?”

  “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t.” He didn’t look at me, just stared straight out the window. “My father trained me young, not unlike Romano did to you. He beat me until my powers started to develop, and that’s partially to blame for the strength of my lightning.”

  Were all the powerful abnormals psychotic? I rubbed a hand over my face. “That seems extreme.”

  “It’s common practice amongst those with children who could develop powers.” Killian did glance at me then. “Did you not see any of your siblings beaten?”

  I shook my head, but already my thoughts raced into the past. “I didn’t, but I saw the aftereffects. I always thought it was because the boys were fighting amongst themselves. It never occurred to me that Romano was doing it to them.”

  Dinah cleared her throat. “It’s partly why Gabe was so miserable. He was beaten the worst and nothing came from it. He was a failure. Father didn’t bother with you because he didn’t think your mother had any abilities. That and you are a girl.”

  I looked down at her in her holster. “What do you mean?”

  “Mine came on during puberty when I was thirteen. More common in women to have that change in hormones start the shifting of powers, so I was never beaten. And it’s why he believed you were without abilities,” she said.

  “What was your ability?” Killian asked the question, and I was glad for it.

  “I dealt in illusions. I could change how people saw me, and how they saw the world around them.” Her voice was thoughtful. “It meant I could get the boys in trouble easily, and I was on the path to convincing Romano to put me in charge.”

  “Devious,” I said.

  “Surviving,” she tossed back. “But now that Romano knows you are an Ascendant, he’s pushing you too. I’m sure of it.”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure he knows what I am. There is only one person alive I am sure of, and that’s Mancini. I doubt he would have shared information with Romano, seeing as he wants him dead.”

  “No maybes,” Dinah said. “It’s Romano’s MO—force your kid’s powers to bloom, and that’s enough to convince me that he’s on to you, and maybe has been for a long time.”

  She might be convinced, but I was far from believing this was all on Romano. Mancini had a hand in some of it, that much was for sure. A thought caught me from left field. “Dinah, how did Mancini get your diary? It was in your room the night you died, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” she said. “You never saw it?”

  I shook my head. “No. But that means someone else knew you were going to let Strike kill you.”

  “No one else knew. I couldn’t take the chance they’d try to stop me. We planned it for that weekend when all the men were away, when it was just you and me,” Dinah said. “I knew that if Father found my body, he’d have had Daniel re-animate me long enough for Tommy to pull my memories.”

  My jaw dropped as my brain tried to work out her words. Killian had no such issue.

  “What the fuck? One of Romano’s kids is a necro? Who the hell was his first wife?” He muttered something in Gaelic under his breath, but I was struggling to breathe around this information.

  “Julianna was my mother,” Dinah said with more than a hint of pride. Killian cursed again and I lifted both brows.

  I caught his shocked expression. “Care to explain?”

  “Julianna was an unusual abnormal. Her powers manifested in different ways depending on what she was threatened by. She was a true chameleon in every sense of the word. She could take on others’ powers and make them her own. She was legendary; still is, I suppose,” Killian said. “She disappeared a long time ago. We all assumed she was dead.”

  “No, just trapped,” Dinah said. “And then when she had Gabe, Romano thought her ability to pass on her powers was gone. Her body died shortly after.”

  And shortly after that, he moved on to my mother, who had been an Ascendant too. Maybe Romano did know what I was. I changed the subject back to the original topic.

  “Daniel can re-animate?” I spoke slowly so as not to struggle with the words.

  “You didn’t know?” Dinah seemed genuinely surprised. “I thought you knew what we all did. Or maybe I just assumed because you were our boogeyman too. Killer of abnormals.”

  I shook my head, unable to do more mostly because my mind was racing at top speed. “Dinah, at the Magelore’s house in Seattle, do you remember what we faced? There was a re-animated crocodile. Magelores can’t actually re-animate anything, only take soul
s of their victims.”

  “Right . . . oh, shit. You think Danny was there?” She let out a long hiss and Abe growled next to me.

  “I think if he wasn’t there, he’d been there earlier. But why?” I clenched my hands into fists until my nails bit into my palms. The Magelore had killed the croc, but the croc had bitten her nearly in half. A creature that truly belonged to her wouldn’t have done that. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure it had been one of Daniel’s creations. I could feel it in my gut; this knowledge that Danny had been at the Magelore’s home . . . looking for something, maybe?

  “Necros are bad, Phoenix, one of the worst abnormals to tangle with,” Killian said. “I had to deal with one back in Ireland before I left. He wiped out my people and then raised them as an army against me. There are still stories of him floating about.” A quick shudder raced through him. “Fucking monsters. They often bed the people they raise, a desire for them so strong it don’t bother them that they be dead already.”

  Bile rose in my throat. Daniel had been the quietest of my three brothers, keeping to himself and only occasionally tormenting me. “Any idea on how to handle a necro then? Because as far as I know, Danny is still working for Romano.”

  “He was going to be sent out to the Middle East, after Tommy,” Dinah said. “I mean, that’s old news, before I died, but it is possible it still happened. He could still be there, I suppose.”

  I doubted he was still there, but interesting that there were so many pieces tying my family to the area. Not that the Middle East in itself was specific enough to get coordinates, but it was a start. I was not about to discount it.

  I wracked my brain. “Let me think.” Before I’d left Romano’s employ, Danny had been sent on a job to acquire new places for the money to come in through. I closed my eyes, trying to see the last few weeks I’d spent at home, trying to see if there was even a hint at where Danny might have been sent. But we’d not really crossed paths; Romano had us going in different directions.