Chapter Twenty-Nine
If I had thought killing the Shadow meant I was safe, I would have been very wrong. But I was no fool, and I knew we were far from done in the jail. I raced through the halls, looking for Killian, stripping a pair of pants, shirt, and holsters off one of Romano’s downed men. I followed the scent of ozone, finding the Irish mobster near the front doors, defending them with everything he had against a flood of Ikimono abnormals.
“Get down!” he yelled as I stepped toward him. I dropped to my belly and an arc of white-blue lightning raced over my head and slammed into a group of twisted abnormals who’d crept up behind me.
“Clear!” he yelled and I was up and running for him.
“Bear—”
“We found a walkie talkie and dialed into them,” Noah said. “They’re already on a plane. Romano took him again.”
I slammed a hand into the wall next to me. So close, I’d been so close and yet even then I’d not been able to get him back. “Goddamn it.” The tears that threatened were tough to hold at bay and I leaned my head against the concrete. My boy was alive. He was playing an act with Romano, an act that could get him killed if he was discovered.
“The Shadow?” Killian prompted me, bringing me out of my frustration.
“Dead.”
He nodded as if he’d expected no less. “We’ll get him back, Phoenix, but we have to get this place dealt with. Not all those affected with Ikimono got the spray.” He waved a hand at two more abnormals coming our way.
Holy shit. I’d left Abe in the arena. “I’m going back.”
“No,” Noah put a hand on my arm, “the Yakuza are going to blow this place. You can’t go in. It will be nothing but fire and chaos.”
I shook him off. “Not the first time I’ve walked through fire.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then I’m going with you.”
Killian shook his head. “Let her go. We’ll hold here as long as we can. Bobby is swinging in for us. You have ten minutes.”
I sprinted away. Using the schematics in my head, I raced through the halls, slowing only when I was once more back in the cells that had held my brother. Was he alive?
There could be no hesitation, I had no time for second guesses. I raced down the cell block and skidded into the cell that held Tommy. He hung from the chains. His chest rose and fell.
I yanked Dinah out and fired into the links on the wall, blasting them off, shards of concrete and metal flying everywhere. He fell to the floor. I jammed Dinah in her holster and yanked him up over my shoulder. Ten minutes. Would it be enough to get Tommy out and get Abe, too?
I went as fast as I could, taking my brother to the main doors and all but dropping him at Killian’s feet. I yanked my pack around. “Red paste in here heals, use it on him, light it on fire.” And then I spun and ran into the jail a second time.
“Don’t, Phoenix, don’t!” Noah yelled after me. But I had time, and I believed I could make it out.
I found the arena and the bodies strewn about. I ran through the mass, stumbling and tripping on arms and legs, my eyes locked on Abe. He lay flat out on his side right where I’d left him.
“Buddy, come on, wake up.” I fell to my knees beside his twisted form. He was breathing at least, but there didn’t seem to be any change to his body. I grabbed him by the front legs and heaved him up and across my shoulders.
Exhaustion hit me like a hammer right between my eyes as suddenly as if a spell had been launched at me. And I knew even before I turned what I would see.
I moved slowly, to see Vivian standing in the doorway. Her head was rather small, having re-grown from the nub of her neck.
I laughed, oh, God I laughed at her. “You look like a fucking joke.”
Her screech was high-pitched and it whipped through the room, stirring the creatures. Abe wriggled on my shoulders and I set him down, but then couldn’t look away. The new attachments—wings and talon legs—slid from him like a second skin and there was nothing but my Abe standing with me.
“Look at me.” Vivian squealed the words and my eyes jerked back to her.
“I’m looking.” I could feel in the marrow of my bones the heat of my magic curling upward. I swallowed hard. It was one thing to use the abnormal magic that was my own in a crisis situation, but I’d beaten her before. I didn’t need it. I didn’t have to use it.
Vivian glared at me. “No one to save you now.”
“Except me.” Killian’s voice spun her around and a burst of electricity wrapped around her, shaking her so hard that she was flung across the arena, smoking and charred with the power of his current. I snapped my fingers at Abe, then bolted across the arena, catching Killian around the waist as he slumped.
“You shouldn’t have come in for me,” I said as I half carried him through the halls. Around us was the rumble of explosions going off deep in the building. This would not be like Hollywood, there was no escape hatch to use, no timed explosions. This place would go down, and if we were not out, we were going down with it.
“Couldn’t leave you,” Killian breathed out.
“I do not want to like you,” I said.
He barked a laugh. “Good. I wouldn’t want this to be easy.”
He leaned on me, slowly getting his legs under him as we burst out of the crumbling building. The helicopter was waiting for us outside the fence line, Noah beside it.
He waved at us to hurry, his mouth moving but no sound could be heard over the helicopter blades.
We’d escaped. We were alive. Bear was alive, which meant I still had a chance to take him home, to hold him again.
I helped Killian into the helicopter, then motioned for Abe to get in. He leapt up and then flattened himself to the floor, his eyes intense.
I stared past him to the man who sat smiling back at me, his irises jigging and dancing.
It took all I had not to shoot him right there. The man who’d called the hit on Zee. The man who’d said he’d send help and then didn’t.
I pulled out Eleanor and stared down her sights and yelled to be heard over the blades of the helicopter. “You’d better talk fast, or I’ll just blow your head off right here.”
A hand on my arm jerked me in and I looked up to see Noah staring down at me.
“I called him, Phoenix. Told him where Bobby was waiting.”
Again, again, I’d fallen for Noah’s lies.
“Bobby!” Killian snarled.
“No choice, boss. I had no choice,” Bobby called back as we climbed in.
The helicopter began to climb and I waited until we were twenty feet in the air. I spun and kicked Noah in the head twice in sharp succession, grabbed his arm and threw him out the door.
Killian cleared his throat. “That’s why I wouldn’t lie to her, Mancini.”
Mancini leaned forward. “Are you ready to hear it all, Phoenix? The truth behind your power? The truth behind your guns, your sister’s death, and the man whose blood runs through your veins?”
He held out a small, leather-bound book.
“That’s it. That’s the book!” Dinah yelled.
I snatched it from Mancini. “And why are you helping me now? Why now?”
“Because I think you are what your mother named you. You are the Phoenix in flesh and blood.”
Bear
I lay crunched on my side, a funny sensation rolling through my belly.
“What’s wrong with the kid?” Rooster said as he patted my back, somewhat rough.
I closed my eyes, nausea ping-ponging in my guts.
“What is wrong with you, boy?” Luca snapped. “Did you get hurt?”
“I drank some of the spray,” I mumbled. “Didn’t mean to.”
“Well, that is a pity,” Luca sighed.
I forced my eyes open. “What is going to happen to me?”
“Simple,” Luca said. “You will die and it will not be an easy death because that spray was meant to reverse something that does not exist in you. I can only guess at wh
at it will do. But death is most certainly going to be a part of it.” He leaned back in his seat.
I blinked away a few tears and turned, found myself looking at Rooster. My lower lip trembled and a flash of compassion shot over the big man’s features. “Come on, kid, if you’re going to puke, let’s do it in the bathroom.”
He dropped a hand on my shoulder and lifted me out of my seat and all but carried me to the bathroom. I leaned over the sink, splashed some water on my face and tried to pull it together. I looked to Rooster, his mashed up face the only kindness I’d seen in the last few hours. “Do you think he’s just trying to scare me?”
“I don’t know. Probably.” Rooster shrugged, but the lie was acrid on the air between us. He thought I was going to die, too.
Which meant for the first time in my short life, I had nothing to lose.
I let him carry me back to my seat. I didn’t know how long I would have, how long before I . . . died. But between now and then I knew two things. One, I wanted to see my mother one last time, to hold her tightly and feel her arms around me. And two, I wanted to see my grandfather dead.
If it was the last thing I did, I would make him pay for pulling my world apart.
Afterword
Hey, you made it to the end! Blood of a Phoenix is a big book for me, over 100,000 words (0_o )
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Rise of a Phoenix (Nix Series Book 3) will release this winter. Turn the page for a sneak peek at the cover!
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The final book in the Nix Series!
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