by Jess Haines
Talon met talon as the two clashed, fire and darkness, corruption and light. The whirlwind of flashing claws and beaks and fangs splashed a rainbow of thick, oily slop and thin, red-hot lava that pattered in hissing pools on the stone floor below.
Victor ignored the battle raging above his head, striding over to where James had fallen. The sorcerer was pushing himself up on trembling arms, breaths coming in heaving gasps. All the breath went out of him in a whoosh as Victor’s boot connected with his ribs, sending him sliding another few feet.
“What did you teach her?” he hissed, grabbing James by the throat and yanking him up to eye level and giving him a shake as if he weighed no more than a kitten. “She couldn’t have learned how to do this without help. How much does she know?”
James’s mouth moved, but no words came. His eyes rolled back as consciousness waned.
Victor threw him into the circle with Moira, closing it once again with a sharply spoken Word of power. His dark eyes narrowed to slits as he turned to observe the battle raging above his head, ignoring the sting as tiny, burning droplets of blood ate into his skin.
Somehow, Lyra had nearly grown to the size of the demon. A bird shaped firestorm that hurt to look at directly, burning white-hot at its heart as it drove Bazriel back, tearing glowing rents in the demon’s flesh. Her own wounds were ignored; feathers spiraling through the air like snow, rivulets of red lava staining the incandescent phoenix like veins of impurities tracing through marble.
The demon was losing ground. It wasn’t a ploy; the creature was unable to cast since the phoenix was moving so quickly, forcing Bazriel to block her before he could get off a spell. Victor had to admire the ferocity.
He watched and waited for the right moment, calculating eyes glittering like the shell of a beetle. Flat, black, and unfeeling.
Chapter 17
Bazriel’s claws sliced along Lyra’s chest, flaying her open to the bone.
She didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Instead, she used the opening to whisk a talon in to catch him by the throat, tearing along what passed for the demon’s jugular. Its wingbeats staggered as it jerked back, widening the gash in its effort to pull away.
Lyra followed it down, her wings curled over like a hawk protecting its prey from other predators.
Victor had been waiting for a moment like this. The spell he’d been gathering was loosed, shooting like a dark comet straight at the phoenix.
It struck her beneath her right wing, driving her back. A sticky, dark red web formed from the point of impact, sliding over her body and yanking her limbs in to force her body into a fetal position. She gave a furious screech as she tumbled to the floor, wings and clawed feet paralyzed. Even as the heat in her body grew to the point where the stone beneath her was melting, the web tightened, constricting to the point where she had no breath left to scream her fury.
Bazriel lay on his back where he had fallen, great bat wings in tatters and a bubbling pool of greenish-black muck forming around him, growing with every beat of what passed for a heart.
Victor ignored his familiar in favor of strolling over to the phoenix, whose struggles were growing weaker.
He knelt down, staring into her red-gold eyes with a smile. “Perhaps Edward didn’t make as big a mistake as I thought with you. Such impressive power, my little bird. Keep burning hot for me, would you? It will help.”
That renewed her fury, some of the strands of the net snapping under the strain of the heat—but it still wasn’t enough for her to break free.
Victor rose and strolled over to his circle. He let it drop long enough to walk to the center, shoving Moira’s limp body out of the way and replacing it with James’s unconscious frame. As he adjusted the limbs of his next victim to match the alignment of the five-pointed star and withdrew a bone handled serrated hunting knife from a sheath at his hip, the red candles set at each point of the star flared to life and a low buzz of power whirred through the air.
Though she barely had the breath for it, Lyra screamed as the blade plunged into James’s heart.
His body jerked once, twice, then stilled. It wasn’t a dramatic shift between life and death like the movies.
One moment he was there, and the next, he was gone.
Victor, humming a jaunty tune under his breath, jerked the blade out and turned back to Lyra. He took slow, measured steps toward her, the light patter of blood hitting the stone the only sound to echo through the vast chamber.
He crouched down in front of her once more, forearms resting easily on his knees, another droplet or two falling from the tip of the knife before the blood dried almost instantly into rusty flakes from the bone-melting heat that radiated from her still frame. Sweat broke out on his body and some of the hairs on his arms and beard turned brittle and crackled from the heat, but he stayed where he was, admiring her one last time.
Dark, terrible words slipped from his lips, winding in some nearly tangible way around her heart in the same way the net constricted her body.
When he finished laying the foundation of the spell, a sly smile flashed pearly against the backdrop of his beard.
“Goodbye, little bird.”
The blade plunged down once more. An agonized cry escaped her as the silver-etched steel lodged in her heart.
Chapter 18
Fire consumed Lyra. For the first time since she had become the bird, the warmth wasn’t comforting—it was painful.
Death wasn’t a simple slide into oblivion. Paralyzing agony wracked her, but there was nothing she could do to fight it. Darkness stole her vision, even as a pillar of fire ate away what remained of her body.
‘Your work is not finished.’
The voice was a strange echo, more an impression than words. Flashes of images.
There had been a phoenix before her. A huge, beautiful thing, bringing succor to the sick in the shadow of a pyramid in return for gifts of myrrh and cinnamon. In a pagoda temple, spreading peace and prosperity to land with rolling green hills, and a white-capped mountain in the distance. Then again, later, in another land in an age of bronze, as a protector against serpents and demons. Again, in a land of lush forests and snow-filled winters, as a light to bring inspiration and beauty to a people who had nearly forgotten the joys of creativity.
Others flashed by, a parade of other times, other places, other memories. So many names for her. Fenghuang. Simurgh. Zhu Que. Bennu. Garuda. Firebird. So many, more than she could process. She had been both hunted and worshiped, feared and adored, a bringer of life, death, fertility, or prosperity, or even to bring her blessing on a new cleric or king, as her nature demanded and the needs of those who called upon her required.
Over time, the world had forgotten. People thought she was a myth. So the spirit of the bird had bided its time, waiting for the moment it was needed once more. All it took was someone to assume the responsibilities and then the mantle of the phoenix would pass to the worthy, given the right circumstances and ritual.
Lyra wasn’t sure what the bird needed her to do until she saw a flash of the future.
Victor walked through St. Augustine, but not the city as she knew it.
Death followed his shadow. All around him, plants withered. Bodies fell. Buildings crumbled to dust. The ocean ran red, the frothy surf stirring a miasma of dead fish and sea creatures on the shores of a dying city, piling higher with each wave. The sun went dark, and a host of demons flew in the twilit sky, bringing plagues and corruption on their wings.
She could not let it happen.
This time, accepting the power of the phoenix was as natural as breathing. She wasn’t letting something else take over. She was wearing it like a cloak. A feathered mantle with a mind of its own, and powers she had never even imagined.
The body was broken, but that was easily remedied. With a thought, the ashes that remained swirled into a pattern, circling her smoldering remains, unnoticed by Victor. The warlock was bent over James’s body, using a combination of his heart’s-blood
and some of Lyra’s to paint symbols on his own arms and chest.
The banked embers that had blackened the frame of the bird into a pile of ash stirred in the wind that touched nothing else in the cavern. Up it rose, up and up, reaching toward the ceiling, stretching toward the walls, becoming impossibly huge as it bent over the oblivious warlock below.
With a sound much like the snap of a twig in a firepit, the ashes became flames, reforming into the figure of an enormous Valkyrie of a woman with the wide, extended wings of a bird. Every part of that body was licked with fire, a pillar of elemental flame that lit the entire chamber brighter than daylight.
Victor whirled around, only to find himself brushed away like a flea by the giant hand that flicked him from the sorcerer’s body.
He could barely breathe around his bruised ribs, his skin sizzling where it had made contact. Victor watched as she turned away to kneel by Bazriel.
The demon weakly lifted a clawed hand, his voice thick with the blood choking his throat. “Some day... I’ll see you again, pretty bird.”
She didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, she slowly lowered her hand to meet his own outstretched one. Where she touched, the demon crumbled like the ash that she had been reborn from only moments before.
Bazriel voiced a sigh as if of relief as her great palm engulfed his frame. Before Victor’s eyes, his familiar became nothing but a pile of dust.
And as he raised his gaze higher, he could see that she had now turned her attention back to him.
The warlock crawled back, crab-like, to escape the enormous hand that reached for him.
“You can’t... you can’t! I’m immortal!” he screamed.
A voice that hissed like burning gas washed over him, singing his face and burning away his brows and beard. “This gift is not for you.”
The enormous, burning fingers closed around the warlock. His screams were eaten away much as the oxygen was by the living furnace that swallowed all the life he had stolen from her, from Moira, from people and creatures long since dead and gone, sacrificed to fuel an insatiable lust for power.
So it burned, the cleansing flames, taking away every last iota of magical power the warlock possessed.
When she opened her hands, the man slid to the floor and onto his knees, weak and choking for breath. Nothing remained of his magic.
He was mortal.
Lyra ignored him, swinging back to the body at the center of the circle.
He looked so fragile from her current vantage. Not like Moira; the specter was already stirring, freed from the bonds of magical constraint. A weak thing, but not broken beyond repair. She could wait.
With a long exhale, she shed the warrior form she had taken, shrinking back into the form of the bird she had been when James had initially found her. She shrugged her shoulders, resettling her wings as she looked over his body, assessing the damage.
The demon’s poison had worked its way through his body again. She could have traced all of his organs on his skin with the way the black corruption mapped them out for her. The worst though, the worst was his poor, damaged heart. It was nearly torn in two.
Victor had stolen that life far too soon.
Lyra rested one wing over James’s still stomach, closing her eyes as grief knifed through her. She had loved him, even when he drove her crazy. She’d never told him that, not once. He’d made her furious, found ways to get under her skin without fail every time, but he also made her heart race and swell, knew her needs and desires like no one else.
She couldn’t help but admire that he had attempted to be her knight in shining armor, even if his was more the color of soot, and dented in places.
The thought of never seeing his mischievous, know-it-all smile again brought tears to her eyes. Her body didn’t know how to cope with grief like a human. She couldn’t sob or cry like a person, but she wanted to. All she could accomplish was a full body shiver that made her feathers hiss like shifting sands, and the few tears that trickled down her feathers to drip, still sizzling, onto his chest.
And just like that, a sharp gasp escaped him, his eyes popping open as his back arched in agony.
Chapter 19
Stunned motionless, Lyra couldn’t believe what she was seeing. James was clutching at his chest, which was knitting shut right before her eyes. Even the poison in his blood was fading, leaving his skin with a rosy glow.
“Holy crap, somebody kill me,” he wheezed.
“Been there,” Lyra said. “I just got you back, you’re not dying again. Not today.”
“Necromancy,” Victor growled, arms wrapped around himself and rocking back and forth by the wall.
James looked around wildly. Lyra pressed her wing against his chest, shaking her head. “It’s over. He can’t hurt you now.”
“I’ll get you for this. Both of you,” Victor spat. The threat wasn’t very impressive without the magical boost to lend power to his voice. The tattoos that had covered his skin were gone, leaving him looking more naked than he was, even without his shirt.
Lyra ignored him, but James shivered, groaning with pain. He slowly rolled to his side, glazed eyes focusing on the fiery bird beside him. His fingertips drifted over her feathers, absorbing the warmth.
She hopped back a step, and closed her eyes. The fire in her feathers expanded, growing into the shape of a woman. Her shape—who she had been before the bird had taken roost inside of her.
Tears spilled down Lyra’s cheeks from eyes that were now filled with a strange flickering orange glow. Her bare, tanned skin was luminous, lit by the blaze that burned in her heart. Her hair, much like her feathers had been when she took the form of the bird, had become a riotous streak of red, orange, yellow, and charcoal.
James’s mouth fell open. He slowly reached for her, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Are you sure I’m not dead? Is this real?”
A thick laugh escaped her as she reached out to take and squeeze his hand. “No, you’re not dead. Not anymore. Hold on a minute, I need to help Moira, too.”
The shadow-woman’s form was still. It was hard to tell if she was still alive. Before she’d been twitching as the warlock stole her life away, but now...
Wiping some of the moisture from under her eyes with a fingertip, she the brushed the tears on what she thought was Moira’s cheek.
Like James, after a moment she was sputtering and shaking, back arching as her life and power were restored.
Something eased in Lyra’s chest with that knowledge. She’d brought balance back, saved her friends, and stopped a madman.
James’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. She’d thought he’d be looking after his friend, but he only had eyes for her.
“Before anything else, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “All of this was my fault. I shouldn’t have tried to steal—”
Lyra stood and put a finger to his lips, shushing him. As soon as he stopped talking, she took his face in her hands and dragged his face down to hers.
As she kissed him, his arms slid around her, and the world fell away from them both.
It was Moira clearing her throat that brought them out of it. “I suppose I have you two to thank for saving me, yes?”
Lyra turned in James’s arms, smiling at the shadow-woman as she formed beside them.
“I owe you for running into danger like this. If I had any idea, I never would have asked you to come.”
The specter waved a hand. “The danger was always there. One accepts these things when choosing my line of work. However, as I see it, payment is due as the book...” she paused, the shifting of the shadow indicating her head was turning. She pointed at the podium, which was now empty. “I see. My work is not yet done.”
Victor was gone. He must have taken the book and fled while they were preoccupied.
Lyra rubbed her chin. “You know, I don’t think I need it anymore. Victor can’t do much with it considering I stripped his magic.”
James spun her a
round, gripping her arms. “What? You did what?”
“Don’t ask me how. He’s not a danger to us anymore. Not a magic one, anyway.”
“Perhaps not,” Moira said, “but he might use the book as a tool for leverage with his contacts. He is—was—a powerful man, not just in terms of his magic, but with his connections as well. He’ll be dangerous now, seeking revenge.”
James barked a short laugh. “Dangerous. Who would listen to him now without the threat of having a demon sicced on them held over their head? Don’t worry about him. We’ll find the book later. Right now, all I want to do is take you home and show you how much I missed you.”
Moira went quiet and still in a way that suggested to Lyra she was holding in laughter. Flushing to the tips of her toes, she poked his shoulder.
“I don’t know. I’m starting to think a bit more of a grovel is in order, mister.”
It was his turn to blush, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really am sorry. I never thought things would turn out this way.”
“What, that I would end up with kick ass powers and now I can heal people and bring them back from the dead? That we’re going to get to live happily ever after once we get past the ‘I’m sorry’ stuff? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
A hint of that sly grin she loved so much curved his lips. “I’ve got other ways of saying I’m sorry...”
Moira snorted. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds... ugh, that was a horrible pun, never mind. Come find me when you’re ready to look for the book.”
As James wrapped Lyra in his arms again, he spoke between heated kisses. “It might be a while. Don’t wait up.”
The specter faded away, leaving the two alone as the soft sound of her laughter echoed off the cavern walls.
