[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  “Yes,” I said. “The more upset he is, the worse his control will be with his dead things. When it comes to abnormals, I’ve never faced another that could control the dead. But with most, when the focus wavers, they lose control of their ability and that is that. And you are correct, that is why I moved the truck.”

  Killian grunted. “Sometimes I forget who you were before. Even without the memory loss.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. We were within a hundred feet away and I pulled Dinah from her holster.

  Dinah cleared her throat. “I don’t want to kill him, Nix. I . . . I was close with him, as close as I could be without setting off Father’s radar. Danny was sweet at one point. No matter what he is now, I loved him as my brother, once.”

  Well shit, that was going to complicate things.

  “Fine. Leg shots, to be clear, and we’ll try not to kill him.” At least, not right away.

  I aimed down her sight, seeing Daniel’s kneecap as clearly as if it were five feet in front of me, and squeezed off a round.

  Daniel spun and went to the ground, grabbing at his knee. I had no doubt that this was not going to be easy. But dead things didn’t like fire, and that was something I knew I could pull off.

  Score one for me.

  I strode forward as the things he was controlling raced out of the shambles of my house. Not just dead things, but bits and pieces of dead things. Hands mostly, some attached to forearms, some not, some with all the fingers, some down to nothing but the skeletal bones of hands.

  Several raccoons, though I couldn’t be sure, because honestly, without fur and missing large chunks of flesh, it was a bit harder to say. Mostly it was the way they moved with their strange hopping waddle toward us that made me think of the little masked bastards that had tipped more than their share of garbage cans. That, and the fact I knew we’d buried at least ten after the dogs got ahold of them. Beside me, Abe let out a low growl, and his back hunched. Yeah, definitely raccoons.

  “How are we handling this?” Killian’s voice had a bit of a catch in it. I couldn’t blame him. The things coming at us were less than pleasant to look at and that was without the smell that rolled out ahead of them.

  “Fry them,” I said and tried to call up my fire. It seemed to sputter inside me, unable to light. What was this garbage? “Shit.”

  Damn you, Strike. He’d done this to me. This was a bad fucking time to learn a lesson.

  Uncertainty caught me off guard and I struggled to find the flames that had saved us more than once. What the fuck good was it to be a goddamn abnormal, freak show of nature, if I couldn’t at least use the ability when I wanted to? Sweat dripped down my face. What if Strike had done what he said he was going to do and stole my ability to use my fire? Damn, this was going to make life shitty in a hurry.

  Killian stepped up beside me and electricity danced all over his body. “Nix?”

  “I’m working on it,” I growled. Forget the fire; I’d always done things my way, without any stupid ability. I yanked Dinah and my backup gun and aimed not at the oncoming mass, but at Daniel.

  “Abe, hier, bewache!”

  Abe pinned himself to my right side and let out a long snarl as the creeping things drew closer. It was hard to take my eyes from them; the unnatural movements as they scuttled across the ground was like something out of a horror flick.

  “Daniel, you do not want to piss me off. I want to talk, not kill you!” I squeezed a round off at the closest raccoon to me with my backup gun, hitting it in the head and flipping it over backward. It lay still but only for a moment.

  “I think you underestimate me just like the others,” Daniel called back. “You think you know me? What I’m capable of?”

  Abe lunged from beside me, grabbed a hand by the dangling forearm and shook it hard enough to snap bones before flinging it away from us.

  “Killian, hold things down.” I tucked both guns away while Dinah gasped.

  “Nix, what are you doing?” she squawked.

  “Abe!” I called as I leapt to the side, going to the outside edge of the horde of dead things. They followed me, hurrying to catch up to me. That was the only advantage now: I was faster than them.

  I sprinted, pumping my arms and legs as fast as I could, ignoring the fingers and claws that grabbed at my pants and boots as they scrabbled to get a hold on me. I was ten feet from Daniel when he smiled at me.

  Fuck, that smile was all Romano. “You’re going to regret this,” he said.

  I grinned back and launched myself not at him, but to the left of him, rolling my body perpendicular to his. I saw the confusion on his face a split second before I finished my spin, and slammed my boot into the side of his face.

  I landed hard, rolling a few feet before I caught my momentum and slid to a stop on the debris of the house. Daniel was still standing, barely. His body swayed where he stood, his hands holding his head.

  “You were always an asshole,” he muttered. “Thought you were better than me because you were a better fighter.”

  I snorted and pushed to my feet, looking to the dead things. They’d paused in their movements, uncertain without his direction.

  “No. I never thought that.” I stood. “Daniel, Romano is going to kill you the second you are no longer useful. He needs two souls, two of his kids’ souls to keep his own immortality. Tommy turned on him. Bianca was going to turn on him before she died. Gabe is dead. You can’t think that you’re going to get anywhere by actually staying loyal to him. He’s going to hand you to a fucking demon, Daniel.”

  His eyes rose to mine and he stood straight. Blood trickled down the side of his head, down his neck and disappeared into the top of his shirt. “I was always the favorite, Nix. He won’t hand me over. He’ll give the demon you and Tommy. If that’s even what’s going to happen.”

  I laughed at him, I couldn’t help it. “Nope, his favorite was Tommy. The rest of us knew that. How could you be so stupid as to believe you were a favorite?” Yeah. Poking the bear, this would either work brilliantly or completely throw me on my ass.

  I was banking on brilliance.

  His face tightened like he’d just had a lemon jammed into his mouth. “That was a ruse. I was the favorite. You killed who he wanted. But I raised them from the dead and we questioned them. You were just a cog in his plans. The dead don’t argue, they just answer.”

  Well, that made a whole lot of sense when I looked at it that way and only confirmed what Dinah had said about why she wanted her body hidden.

  I shrugged, knowing that I only had a minute if I was lucky to shut him down. “What are you looking for?”

  “Same thing you are. Going to make sure no one finds it. Dad has worked too hard to have this taken from him.” He grinned at me and my heart pinged a little. There were echoes of Bear in his face.

  “And you would be looking for what exactly?”

  “You don’t know?” He barked a laugh. “Shit, you really stuck your head in the sand, didn’t you? Your husband knew everything about you. He knew who you were and he used you to get to Romano. He didn’t love you, Nix. He knew you were the Phoenix. He knew you were a killer. He worked with us for years. We just didn’t know he was your husband. We knew he was married. That he had a kid. That he was vulnerable.”

  His words could not have rocked me more. “No. That’s not possible.”

  He nodded, his smile grim. “How do you think he was found so quickly. Killed so easily? Because we knew him.”

  “No. Romano would have gloated to me about it. He would have—”

  “He still wants to use you. Why, I don’t know since you are fucking useless,” Daniel snapped, his fists tightening at his sides. “He wants to use that truth about your husband as a hammer at some point to break you, but I told him it wouldn’t work. Not when you’re already fucking the Irishman.”

  He tipped his head toward Killian who stood silent waiting with his lightning, ready to fight at my side.

&nbs
p; “Even if everything you say is true, it changes nothing,” I pointed out.

  “It changes everything.” Daniel shook his head and I realized he was buying himself time. My kick to the head had rattled his ability. I should shoot him now. Slow him down further, but . . . I wanted to hear what he had to say. Maybe I was being a masochist, but I couldn’t pull away from it.

  “You’re saying that Justin and Noah worked for you?” I asked, keeping one eye on the dead things as they slowly made their way closer.

  Daniel snorted. “Noah worked for Mancini all along. Justin worked for Dad.” He glared at me. “He gathered all the information he thought he could blackmail Dad with and then hid it.”

  Killian shifted his stance, drawing our eyes to him. “You mean information of how to kill Romano.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Suspicion rolled through me along with a sense of unease. “What do you get out of spilling the beans?”

  Daniel gave me a slow grin that tightened the skin on his face, making it skeletal in the fading light of the day. “Time, Nix. I was buying myself time to bring my friends to the party.”

  There was a rumble on the ground, the sound of hoofbeats that slid up through the soles of my feet. I spun around to see a dozen skeletal bison running for us from the far side of the ranch.

  I dropped to my knees and twisted around to shoot Daniel but he was already at his vehicle. I shot anyway, hoping to hit the radiator.

  “Bison, Nix. Let’s deal with the bison,” Killian yelled.

  Damn it all to hell. I stayed on my knees, fighting with the fire inside me, all but begging it to unleash on the things that were coming for it. The more I tried, the more it slid through my fingers, which only pissed me off. That was what I needed to feed the flames—anger.

  Abe started barking at the bison skeletons that were now within a hundred feet. I had seconds at best.

  The other dead things lay down where they were, no longer under Daniel’s control. All his power was running through the stampeding two-ton herbivores.

  Killian arced a shot of lightning into the lead bison. The bones lit up from within but the thing kept moving, kept thundering toward us.

  “Shit, how do we stop it?” Killian grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the way of the herd of bison as they thundered past.

  We leapt to the side, their hooves slamming into where we’d been only seconds before. They didn’t slow, but spun on their hooves as they raced toward us again.

  I could just imagine trying to get their bodies off the remains of the house.

  “We need to lead them away,” I yelled as I pushed to my feet and bolted from the house, down the slope that led to the river. That was only part of the reason. The farther Daniel was from his creations, the less control he’d have over them. That was how it had worked with every other abnormal I’d ever faced.

  Down the slope we ran with the dead bison right behind us. Skeletal they might have been, but there was still weight to them, still some flesh; they were not small creatures even in death.

  A horn jammed me in the back and a bison let out a bellow of triumph as I stumbled.

  Dinah gave a screech that was pure frustration. “I hate necros!”

  I was hit again and this time flipped into the air, ass over head so I got a glimpse of the herd as they thundered underneath me. I landed behind them and they slowed, turning back to me. So, it was just me they were after, not Killian.

  “Abe, to Killian, bewache!”

  Abe gave me a look and then raced to Killian’s side. “I’m going to lead them away.” I panted the words. There were some ribs broken, I was sure of it. “Get back there and see if you can figure out what he was looking for under the house.”

  I didn’t wait to see if Killian nodded or so much as blinked a yes. I tore off, leading the bison deeper into the fields. I headed for the trails I’d run when I’d been getting back into shape so many months before. The curve of the trail ran around the side of a gorge; if I played my cards right, I might be able to lead the bison right off the edge.

  I might not be able to kill them, but maybe I could slow them down long enough to deal with whatever was still at the house.

  My breath came in gasps and the bison were not slowing as we raced through the trails. The adrenaline pulsed through me, but my fire still burned low. Whatever Strike had done to me, he’d done it well.

  A bellow of the lead bison was the only warning I got. I dodged to the left as a set of horns swung through where I’d been only a moment before. I could see the edge coming up. I put everything I had into picking up speed despite the sharp sting of the broken ribs. I had to time this right or I was going to be hurting a hell of a lot more than just a few broken ribs. My death would cement the loss of Bear’s soul to the demon. I could not let that happen.

  I raced away from the trail toward the open ledge. Ten feet away, then five. This was it. I dropped to my knees and then spun, sliding to my belly as I turned around, my momentum taking me over the edge feet first in a shower of dust and pebbles. I stared up through the cloud of self-made dust at the bison as they picked up speed too, charging at me with their heads low. The smell of death and rot preceded them.

  My feet went over the drop off and gravity took hold. I scrabbled at the dirt as I slid over the edge. I gripped the rocks, tore nails off and held my breath as my fall halted and the bison leapt over the edge of the cliff, tumbling down around me. I pinned myself as flat to the edge of the cliff as I could, holding my breath.

  14

  Pinned to the cliff wall, I knew it was a risky move, but there had been no choice. Daniel’s connection to his dead bison was obviously stronger than any other abnormal I’d dealt with when it came to their abilities. Which meant there might not be a distance issue with his hold on them. The hundred-foot cliff was the only hope I had to slow them down long enough to get done what I’d come home to do.

  Hence, the cliff diving.

  My fingers gripped the edge of the dropoff, digging in and holding all my weight. Which was why a hoof slammed into my left hand, cracking it under the weight of the dead bison.

  I let the scream explode out of me. Not just because of the pain but because that was my fast hand. The one I killed with. I’d injured it before, but I felt the twist of the bones cracking as the bison used my hand as a launch pad.

  The last bison fell over the cliff and I just hung there by my right hand, breathing hard, not sure I could even pull myself up over the edge. My vision blurred and I fought the darkness as it crept up around me, fueled by the break in my hand, the warmth of my own blood flowing down my arm. I didn’t dare bring my hand to where I could see the damage. I knew by the feel that there were compound fractures—two at the very least. Every movement of my body sent a shot of pain through my hand.

  “Pull your shit together.”

  I stared up, blinking several times because what I was seeing was not possible, which meant I was hallucinating. “Zee?”

  My mentor, gruff as usual with one eyebrow arched, crouched to stare me in the eye. “You heard me. Pull it together. I might be dead, but you’ve still got work to do. And Martin here is only able to reach you part of the time because the connection isn’t strong.”

  I hung there, staring up at the man who should have been my father. “Zee, I left him. I didn’t go for him first.”

  “Bullshit. Romano took him from you, and you’re doing what you have to do to get Bear back. Don’t you start wallowing in your emotions, that won’t bring him home. You are the terror of the abnormal world. That has not changed. Get your head out of your heart and kill that fucker Romano.”

  The image of Zee faded and there was the sound of barking. Abe.

  “I’m here!” I yelled.

  Moments later Abe was there sniffing at my broken hand as I held it above my head to keep the swelling from going out of control. “Abe, nein.” There was no bite to my words, but I knew that if he so much
as bumped my hand, I’d lose consciousness.

  “Nix!” Killian was there a split second later, dropping to his knees. He reached over the edge and grabbed my shoulders. “Lass, this is going to hurt.”

  “Pull me up.” I locked my eyes on his as he tightened his hold on me and yanked me up. My broken hand flopped and I blacked out as the pain crashed into me, a wave of nerve-biting agony that might as well have been one of those bison slamming into my head.

  I was on my back when I came to, my hand being held over my head, and my head against someone’s knees.

  “Irish?” I kept my eyes closed because a rush of nausea circled through me.

  “Yeah. Your hand is shit, Nix. Can you heal it? There be tales of fire being a healing thing,” he said.

  “I don’t know.” The truth galled me to say it.

  “You’d better try.” He didn’t have to say why. I knew without having him say anything. I would lose the hand if I wasn’t able to heal it on my own. Already it grew cold from the lack of circulation. The trickle of my blood running down my arm had slowed, but that was about the only good thing.

  My eyes were already closed, so I let my mind go to that place in me that the fire resided. It flickered there, as hot and wild as ever. But I couldn’t reach it any more than I could reach it when I’d been facing Daniel.

  I whimpered, for the first time realizing that I could not fight my way out of this. That I was going to lose my hand and that was going to hurt my chances at finding Bear. Zee’s words whispered through me.

  Pull your shit together. Pull your head out of your heart, Nix. Your heart will get you killed.

  Zee, as so often was the case, was right even in death. I focused on my breathing, slowing it until my body calmed. Every beat of my heart sent a pulse of pain through my hand and up my arm. I had to figure this shit out and there was no time to do anything but fully embrace it. Whatever belief I had that perhaps I would go back to being normal after all of this had to be banished.

  The fire in the center of me did not want to be beckoned out. “I do not have time for this shit.” I snarled the words as I mentally grabbed at the fire. “You belong to me. You do not belong to Strike or any other abnormal. Do what you’re fucking told!”