[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  “Dietrich, get us going!”

  “On it, boss lady!” a man I assumed was Dietrich yelled back. I just sat there and watched it all happen like I’d been smacked on the head.

  Repeatedly.

  “What happened?” I repeated as Killian crumpled next to me, breathing hard, one arm wrapped around his middle. My legs were wobbly, trembling like I’d been sick for weeks.

  “I am hoping our new friend can tell us.” Killian slid his other arm around me. “You walked into the storm on fire and then the flames were just gone. I couldn’t see you. Three men attacked from the other side.”

  I leaned into him, my head drooping to my chest. “I feel like shit. And you’re hurt.”

  Killian groaned. “I’ll be okay.” Except his voice did not sound okay. I tried to turn to get a closer look at his wound.

  Bear curled in tighter to my side. “We’ve got you, Mom.”

  There was a snort from behind and I didn’t bother to look. Rooster was pissed. Let him be. He missed his chance for making things right.

  Footsteps turned all three of us around. Easter strolled our way, her face a mixture of disbelief and suspicion. Her eyes shot to Killian. “Oh, that is bad. Did you get hit with one of their pig stickers?”

  “Aye.” He groaned the word and lay back on the floor. “Aye, I did, and they are curved.”

  “Fuck.” I had to push back the spike of fear that caught me off guard. “I can close the wounds, but I can’t get them out. You got a healer on board by chance?” As much as I wanted an answer to my question, it would have to wait. Killian was in trouble and I had to focus on him. I pushed the fog in my brain back.

  Easter dropped to a crouch beside me. “No. If he can hold out, there will be one in Ireland.”

  Killian sucked in a breath and grimaced, his face paling. “Why not Heathrow?”

  “Because that’s an international airport and we’ve been smuggling things, fool,” she snapped. “Ireland has a great airport for people like us.”

  He grunted. “Aye, I’m aware of it. When we land, we’ll stay in the plane. They don’t like me so much there. We’ll get a healer in the States.”

  “Worse than your family?” I managed to quirk an eyebrow.

  “Worse than me family.” He grinned but it was tired. He closed his eyes. I peeled his arm away from the wound. Deep, bleeding and riddled with foreign objects if I was seeing this right. This was not good. “Killian?”

  He didn’t answer.

  I put a finger to the pulse in Killian’s neck, slow and unsteady. “He won’t make it that long. I think he’s bleeding out.”

  “Then he’ll die.” Easter stood and walked away to a set of seats screwed into the wall. I looked around the space while I struggled to find an answer to this new problem. I would not think of Killian dying, not now. I’d healed Bear. I could heal Killian. But I couldn’t get the hooked blades out. Which meant this was just a stopgap.

  “Easter, I need you to hold him down. Bear, get back,” I said. “I’m going to cauterize the wounds so the bleeding stops. That will get him through the next few hours.” At least, I hoped it would. I could feel the edges of blades that had been broken off inside of him and I knew that the blades would be hooked and curved. I knew because I’d used some just like them in one of my hits years ago. They were meant to kill slowly, and meant to be placed so if they were removed they would take half your innards with them.

  “We have nothing to cauterize with.” Easter approached slowly, her eyes narrowed. “So, what in the . . . name of sweet baby Jesus . . .” Her words trailed off as I lifted my hands and called my fire to them.

  “Yeah, I doubt Jesus has much to do with this,” I muttered. Dinah snickered, but I heard the anxiety in her laugh. She was worried too. Killian was family now.

  Easter crouched beside his head, took both his hands and raised them to her where she could kneel on them. “He’s got electricity. That may go off,” she said, concern in her voice.

  “He should focus it on me.” My hands tingled with the blue and purple flames. I didn’t know how to temper this, so I was going in hot in the most literal of senses.

  I glanced up at Easter. “Ready?”

  “I don’t think there is any ready when it comes to lighting a man on fire who could fry us both like a high voltage electrical line.”

  My lips quirked and I nodded. “Point taken.”

  I straddled his hips so I could hold his bottom half down, then dropped my hands to the first two wounds and pushed the flame into them. Killian’s body arched upward under me, and a scream ripped from his throat. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand, like that of a wounded and raging lion who was cornered and knew it couldn’t escape. That image was so strong, I closed my eyes and just fed the flames.

  “They’re done,” Easter said.

  I lifted my hands and stared at the first two wounds. Blackened with lines of purple and blue racing from them, they were indeed closed. But those two were not the ones that truly worried me. The one under his heart, cutting through several ribs, was going to be the bad one. If I used too much heat, it was close enough that I could heat up his heart.

  I blew out a breath and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  Killian let out a groan. “Enough.”

  “Not yet,” I said, “and try not to fry us, please.” I pressed one hand over the wound below his heart and carefully fed my flames into it. This time I didn’t let the fire do as it wished but tried to hold it back, to rein it in, and keep the heat to a minimum. Just enough to cauterize. Killian roared and I pressed my free hand into his shoulder just as a tingle of electricity tripped along my skin, an early warning.

  “Let him go!” I yelled at Easter a split second before the lightning ripped through him and into me. Easter was thrown back, but I got the brunt of the electricity and I took it in, let it pool in my body even while I screeched. The pain was white hot and it seemed to go on forever and ever, as though I were caught in a loop of neverending agony.

  As fast as it hit me, it was just as suddenly gone and I flopped backward. I hit the deck of the plane hard and lay there twitching, my limbs dancing and jerking like I was a marionette on someone’s puppet string.

  “Nix, you okay?” Dinah yelled to me from her holster. At the same time, Bear scrambled over and grabbed hold of me.

  “Mom, are you okay? Is Killian going to be okay?” He grabbed my face and forced me to look at him.

  I managed a groan, but my throat was raw as if I’d been screaming. I didn’t think I had, more likely it was the path of the electricity that had burned its way through me.

  Easter bent over me, her eyes wide. “You took that like a champ, right on the chin.”

  I laughed, but it sounded like a hoarse bark. “Not my intention. And we will be okay, Bear. We both will.” His face was an open book.

  He didn’t believe me, at least not completely.

  Easter did laugh as she held a hand out to me. “You must really like him.”

  I stifled another groan as she helped me to my feet. “Something like that.”

  We all turned to look at the still-prone Killian. “We can’t move him now,” I said. “If we do, it could wiggle those blades and set off the bleeding again.”

  Easter nodded. “I’ll grab a couple blankets to toss over him.” She walked across to the back of the plane and pulled out a couple of green army blankets. She handed them to me and I limped over to Killian. My entire body was bruised and twitching. But I moved toward him, bending and checking his pulse first. Steadier now, even just that bit of stabilization would be enough to get him through to Ireland and a healer, no matter what he thought was happening. I laid the two blankets on him, careful not to move him so much as an inch.

  My shoulders slumped, but I couldn’t rest, not yet. There was still shit going down that I had to deal with. “Easter, what were you doing in the Arabian desert?”

  I turned to see her drop onto one of the benc
hes. “Making a run for it. Mancini is cleaning house, killing his contractors left and right.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?”

  She shook her head and scratched at the side that was shaved. “He’s taking out the powerful ones for sure. I slipped through his noose with barely a minute to spare.”

  I moved slowly to sit beside her, grimacing as I slid into the seat. “Why the desert?”

  “There’s a powerful shaman here, though I doubt she’s actually called a shaman. She’s put a call out to any powerful female abnormal to come to her and band together against the men. She said it’s always been the men who ruled the abnormal world and that needs to change.” Easter looked at me. “I don’t want power, but I don’t want to die either.”

  I grunted. “I think we met her. Powerful, yes, and she sent me to you. Said I could help you. Though, I don’t know that I did much seeing as we are headed back the way you ran from.”

  “Your man did help. I’ll count it. Any longer there and Shaitan would have had us all.” She grinned at me. Bear stood at my side, his arm around my waist. He didn’t say anything else but I could feel the fear rolling through him. I tugged him a little closer.

  “You’ve got some new tricks since I saw you last,” Easter said. “What’s with the hot hands?”

  “Latent abilities showing up,” I said.

  Easter squinted at me. “You remind me of someone.”

  “I’m a Romano by blood.”

  “No shit!” She blurted the words. “I hate that man.”

  “Well, he’s dead now, as are all his children except me.” That truth was harder than I thought to say.

  “Not really,” Dinah said. “I just stuffed my soul into a gun.”

  Easter’s eyes went wide and her face paled. “Did that gun just talk? Holy hell, then . . . you’re the Phoenix?”

  A sigh slid from me. “I am. Though, right now, I feel like a pitiful sparrow that’s been caught in a tornado and had its ass kicked repeatedly.”

  Easter snorted a laugh. “Well, I might just come along with you then. Just to see what trouble we could get in together. The Phoenix,” she shook her head, “who would have thought it?”

  I turned my head to look at her, but Bear tugged on me. “Mom, I have to show you something.”

  I glanced at Killian, my heart twisting. There was nothing I could do right at the moment for him. “Easter—”

  “Yeah, I’ll watch him.” She nodded. Weird that I could trust her, even though we knew very little about one another.

  We moved away from the open door and deeper into the cargo plane, Bear leading me along.

  When we got into the hold, the smell of horses assaulted me. “Bear, want to tell me what happened?”

  “I couldn’t leave them behind,” he said softly. “I just couldn’t, not after leaving . . .”

  He didn’t say Abe’s name, and I knew why. It was too soon, and the thought of his body still lying on the dance floor inside the burning Grotto was too much pain. I kissed the top of Bear’s head. Even though I could see Abe’s spirit there, brushing against Bear’s legs. I ran my hand over the image and could have sworn I could feel him there.

  “I get it. I do. And it’s okay.”

  All four horses were bedded down with straw and had water and hay. But the pens they were in were far bigger than they needed, which made me wonder just what Easter and her partner were doing, what they were shipping out into the middle of the Arabian desert. There was no way she was just making a run for it. A woman like her did nothing for nothing. Money was involved somewhere.

  I had more questions that I needed answers to if I could. Like what had happened back there in the desert, but I wanted Bear out of the way for them. As much as I could, I needed to give him a semblance of normal.

  “Bear, get their tack off, make sure they have something to drink, okay?”

  He bobbed his head and shot off to do as I asked. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but I knew that there would come times like this that he would need to be on his own. To know he could still stand without me next to him.

  A fine balance I wasn’t sure I could walk well, at least right away. Reluctantly I went back the way we’d come, settling on a compromise. I stood in the doorway between the hold and where Killian lay.

  Easter saw me and walked toward me. “I gotta ask, what made you think you could take on Shaitan anyway? I mean with the fire and everything, I would have thought you’d have run from him.” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke.

  I leaned against the door frame. “I thought I could deal with him, and why would my fire make it harder?” Pride got in the way there. I’d killed my father and thought I could take on a demon. I was an idiot.

  Easter shook her head. “No one can deal with him. He’s a demon, Phoenix. And not just any demon, but a fire demon. He has control of the flames that light in the desert. You’d have been better off to use your boyfriend here to zap him.”

  A breath slid out of me. “You’re saying anyone who has fire could be controlled by him?”

  Bear tugged on my arm. I looked past him. The saddles were all off the horses, but he had to have done it at light speed. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one having separation anxiety. “He was looking for the Phoenix. He thought it would be a man and then he thought it was me.”

  “He didn’t try to control you?” I stared down at him, concern arcing through me.

  He shook his head. “No, I got to the desert witch before he could do anything. And I wasn’t fighting him either. Maybe that made a difference.”

  I didn’t think we were done with Shaitan . . . call it my Ascendant sixth sense, but that desert demon would be trouble.

  The plane rumbled through some turbulence and I put a hand on Bear for what looked like balance, but was really so I could make sure he was still there. It would be a long time before I let him out of my sight.

  I had to admit that the cargo plane made me nervous. How many times had planes failed me now? Three? Four? I’d lost count.

  And this time, Bear was with me. I wanted nothing more than to strap him to my side with a large safety harness. Just in case. I grabbed another couple of blankets and set him up next to Killian. He fell asleep, his head in my lap. From the entrance into the cargo hold, Rooster stood watching.

  I scooted out from under Bear and stood, walking over to the body that held my husband’s soul. There was no other way to put it. This man was not my husband, but . . . he had been.

  And it was time to have a discussion that was long overdue.

  26

  Rooster stared at me as I walked toward him, the cargo plane bumping in a bit of turbulence and then settling once more. We were only a few hours from Ireland. Killian was holding steady, but I wasn’t going to push it.

  He would stay in Ireland and someone would have to get him to a healer.

  “Do you have something you want to say?” I stopped a few feet from Rooster.

  He sighed and lifted a hand as if he would take mine.

  “Don’t you dare,” snarled Dinah. “Don’t you touch her.”

  “She is my wife,” Rooster said.

  “No,” I fired back. “You died, not once, but twice. Till death do us part, remember?” I stared hard at him, seeing only an echo of the man I’d lived with for more than ten years. “And you ran away.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I told you that in the note.” His plea fell on deaf ears. I leaned in so we were a hairsbreadth apart.

  “I would have found a way.”

  “You think that now, but you wait. You wait and see what happens to you when you face Bazixal. Or Strike. You can’t stand up to them, Nix. You can’t.” He shook his head and a shudder went through him. “I’ve been running my whole life from them and just when I think I’m free, they pull me back in. If I could die, I would have let it happen already.”

  “You’re truly immortal?” I arched an eyebrow. “I doubt that.”

  H
e put a hand over his face. “No, not immortal. But I don’t know how often I can re-spawn. I assume not indefinitely.”

  I just stared at him, hearing the lie. He did know, even if he wasn’t telling me. So many emotions rushing through me, so much hurt and pain and loss. And love . . . yes, even a little love still. “He was the best thing we ever made. I could forgive you for hating me, for running away from me. But not from him.”

  Rooster’s eyes snapped up to mine. “Strike can find us even now through me. Do you understand that? I need to get away from you both. You might not think that I care, but I do. I love you both.”

  He took my hands and Dinah let out long hiss but I said nothing.

  “You were the best of any of my lives, both of you. And if I thought that staying would help, I would stay, but I don’t think it will help. I think it will only end this faster. Maybe you can find another Hider, someone like Zee who can tuck you away.”

  I pulled my fingers from his hands. “You will get off the plane with Killian in Ireland. Get him to a healer. Let your son have at least one man to look up to.”

  The words were meant to hurt and they did the trick. “You think he can’t look up to his real father?” he snarled, his fingers curling into fists.

  We were nose to nose, anger snapping between us. “I think the man he knew as his father is dead. That man would have given his life to save his son. But not you. You’ll run and that will be that. So, run away again, Justin. Only care for Killian first. It’s the least you can do.”

  He stepped back, breathing hard. “I still love you.”

  I turned my back on him. “Words, Justin. Those are just words. Without actions behind them they mean nothing.”

  “And you think Killian loves you? He’s known you for weeks, a month at best.” He spit those words at me. I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have to.

  I knew Killian loved me. I’d seen it in every step he took beside me, facing horrors that he could have just as easily walked away from, even after his memories were messed with. He could have let me go it alone, but he hadn’t. I moved toward where he lay, Bear’s head on his thigh.