THE PHOENIX CODEX (Knights of Manus Sancti Book 1)

by Bryn Donovan

  “Knights.”

  “Both men and women? That’s pretty badass. And you’re all over the world? Gabi, where are you from?”

  Gabi raised her thick eyebrows at Cassie’s attempt to get to know her. “Brazil. I grew up in Sao Paolo.”

  “Oh. I guess that’s a Portuguese accent.”

  “Guess so.”

  Late in the day, Cassie woke up as the car turned onto another highway. Still wearing his sunglasses, Jonathan relaxed back into the seat at an angle, probably to avoid too much pressure on his stitches. His long legs sprawled wide. The fact that she’d seen him naked made it even harder for her to ignore the proximity of his body to hers. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of how ridiculously good he looked. She got the sense that he treated his body as a vehicle or a weapon—to take care of, certainly, but only so he could rely on it.

  What was he like in bed? Gentlemanly? Domineering? She’d seen him both ways.

  Sex with Rick had lacked a certain kind of passion. Not that it had been exactly bad. She hadn’t been stupid enough to marry someone with whom the sex was terrible. But once a person got divorced, she admitted all kinds of things that she’d pretended were okay before, and Rick had always been very…calm.

  She knew now that Jonathan had strong emotions. And obviously, he could be forceful. At least once again in her life, she wanted someone to just shove her up against a wall and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. To tell her what to do, which she loved during sex as much as she hated it at almost every other time.

  “Thirsty?” Jonathan held a bottle of water out to her, and she shook her head. She needed to pee, and if they didn’t stop soon, she was going to have to ask them to. “Open it for me,” he said. She obeyed and handed it back to her. He took a long drink, the muscles of his throat contracting.

  Gabi glanced back at him. “Guess you’d better drive for a while. I’m about to nod off.”

  “Sorry, better not. My hand’s swelling up again, and my head’s about to explode.”

  Cassie peered around him to see his bandaged hand. It was puffy, though not as bad as before.

  Gabi sucked in a breath. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Nothing we can do about it.”

  She smacked her palm on the steering wheel. “Why didn’t Nic pack more antivenin?”

  “It’s hard to get. I’m lucky he tracked down two.” They passed a sign announcing gas stations and a fast food restaurant at the next exit, and he said, “Hey, I need to stop.”

  Gabi hesitated. “All right. I need more coffee.”

  They pulled into a convenience store, and Cassie went to the women’s room and peed furiously. When she emerged, Gabi was waiting for her right outside the door. “Hurry up, we need to go.”

  Jonathan already stood at the entrance. She couldn’t blame them for rushing because of his hand. Once they were pulling onto the highway, he asked her, “You’re sure it was them?”

  “I’m sure.” She nodded at the rearview mirror. “Look.”

  A black Jeep drove far behind them. Cassie felt shaky. “Are they following us?”

  Jonathan squinted back at them. “Yes.” He drew his gun.

  Shit. “Who is it?”

  He paused before answering. “Coyote Shifters.”

  Coyote Shifters. She repeated these two words in her head a few times. He’d said they existed, and that they weren’t all nice. Obviously, these were the not-nice kind. She glanced back at the truck. She couldn’t see them well, but they were in human form, of course. Coyotes didn’t drive. “Why are they following us?”

  Jonathan ignored the question. “What are you thinking, Gabi?”

  Gabi glanced back at Cassie. “Can her animals help?”

  Cassie blinked. She didn’t expect to be considered as an ally.

  Jonathan shook his head. “She doesn’t have any control of it.” It gave her a pang of regret, even though it was true.

  Gabi said, “Then I’m thinking we’re getting off the road.” She turned and stepped on the gas.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They jolted over the desert floor. The Jeep following them had no trouble with the terrain. It sped up, coming closer. “Abandoned buildings over here,” Gabi said to Jonathan, and Cassie understood. Gabi had gone off the road to make sure nobody else who happened to be driving on the interstate got smashed into or shot.

  After all Cassie had been through, she’d be damned if she got hurt by Coyote Shifters. Fury rose in her like a boiling tide, and a metallic tang filled her mouth. Where had she tasted that before? It tasted like blood. But it was more than that. She’d tasted it when she and Jonathan had argued, right before the snake had bitten him.

  It came with the kind of anger that would trigger the spell. The anger felt different from annoyance or irritation. It required swift and dramatic retribution. She was almost sure of it…but not sure enough to tell them.

  Jonathan pulled her down by the arm. “Get down and stay down.” The earnestness and authority in his deep voice compelled her to obey. She kneeled between the front and back seats. He watched the back window, gun in hand.

  His left hand. “You can’t shoot,” Cassie said in a rush. “Give me your gun.”

  “No way,” Gabi said, taking a sharp left turn that sent Cassie flying into Jonathan’s knee.

  “Then give me another gun!” She had a feeling they had more.

  Jonathan pressed his lips together. Then he unloaded the Glock and set both the gun and the magazine on the floor of the car next to her.

  “The fuck are you doing?” Gabi exploded.

  He took another gun out of the side compartment and loaded it with stiff and careful movements, telling Cassie, “Stay down. Don’t do anything unless I tell you.”

  Gabi took another sudden sharp turn, and they passed a stone building. Cassie caught a fleeting glimpse of a hand-lettered sign that read Sandwiches.

  How in God’s name had she wound up here? If she turned up dead in Las Cruces when she said she’d be in Cancun, her parents were going to be so pissed. She couldn’t cower like a jackrabbit behind a shrub. She rose up high enough to see the black truck looming closer.

  Gunfire rang out, and two holes exploded in the back window. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Cassie said as Jonathan yelled to Gabi, “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” Gabi yanked the car left and headed into a rickety wooden garage. The Jeep followed. “Hang on,” she said, and Cassie let out a little scream as she drove straight into the back wall.

  The windshield smashed, but they emerged from the structure, which crashed down on the Jeep behind them. Jonathan rolled down the window.

  Gabi said, “That Jeep is bulletproof.”

  “The tires aren’t.” He leaned up against the window on his side and glanced over the backseat. As Gabi floored it across the bumpy terrain, Cassie rolled down her window, too.

  The Jeep exploded out of the wreckage. Jonathan flung his upper body out the window and took aim. Cassie had a gun, too. She had to try to help. Jonathan fired. He wasn’t going to be able to hit anything, not with that hand.

  The car jolted as she loaded the gun. She leaned out the window, bracing herself on shaking legs. Front tire. She squeezed the trigger, missed. Fired again. The tire exploded into scraps of black rubber. She dove back into the car just before a bullet whizzed by.

  She flung herself down onto the seat, and Jonathan did the same while Gabi crouched low. Another shot crashed through the back windshield, and Cassie sucked in her breath.

  “Hang on!” Gabi’s voice flooded Cassie with relief. She drove them up a rocky hill. No more shots—someone needed to reload, maybe.

  Cassie unloaded the gun in her hand so she wouldn’t accidentally shoot someone or herself in the face as the car bounced around. The car slid backward and she gasped. It ground forward again. The Jeep couldn’t follow with its blown-out tire. Cassie peered out the back to see two men jumping out of the car.

  “Look!” Gabi came to
a stop, staring in the rearview mirror.

  Something gold flashed in front of the men. It pounced on one of them and sunk its jaws into his neck, knocking him backward. My animals. The other man whirled, trying to get a clear shot. His companion must have dropped his gun. His arms and legs flailed and he screamed, high-pitched like a terrified child. The animal adjusted its hold on his shoulders, gnawing his throat.

  “Mountain lion,” Cassie said stupidly. Two more of the animals ran at the standing man from the opposite direction. He blurred, and Cassie blinked, trying to clear her eyesight.

  A coyote stood where he’d been, larger than any she’d ever seen. It barked at the mountain lions, a croaking yell that sounded too human, and bared its teeth. One of the felines leaped at its throat. The other sank its teeth into his leg and yanked hard.

  The coyote went down. Cassie cried out as it fell limp, spattered with gore. The mountain lion tore its back limb from its body. The animal let out a strangled scream, and Cassie covered her eyes.

  “Christos,” Jonathan and Gabi said at nearly the same time.

  After a few moments, she looked up again. Two men, one clothed and one naked, slumped bloody and inert at the bottom of the hill. A detached human leg lay a couple of yards away. The mountain lions, their muzzles, paws, and the fur on their chests mottled with blood, prowled slowly around the men’s bodies, sniffing at them.

  “They’re making sure they’re dead,” Jonathan said, his eyes wide. Slowly, the animals walked away.

  Gabi stared after them. “That was incredible,” she murmured. Then she started driving again, easing diagonally down the slope of the hill toward the highway.

  “They’re dead,” Cassie said. Just like Rick. Except this time, she’d seen it happen. That leg torn off. “Oh my God.” Her insides swam with nausea and horror. She leaned over, gripping her head in her hands.

  Jonathan encircled her shoulders with his strong arm and pulled her close. “Shh. Everything’s fine.” She melted against his body, solid and reassuring, and allowed herself the luxury of a deep breath, in and out. He stroked her hair. The over-familiarity and gentleness startled her, at odds with the violence they’d just ridden out, and she loved it. “You don’t have to feel bad about this one. They were going to kill us.”

  She nodded. Would the police come after them? But they were far enough from the road that it might be a little while before they were found. And the men had been torn apart by wild animals.

  “Well, now I’m awake,” Gabi quipped as she pulled the vehicle onto the interstate again.

  “Nice driving,” he said to her, and they exchanged weary smiles. He turned back to Cassie. She expected him to let go, but he kept his arm wrapped around her. “I thought I told you to stay down.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he said, “I’m kidding. You were amazing. The animals attacked so fast. And that was a great shot from a moving car.” It had been. All her hunting and time at the range had come in handy. He leaned closer. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Something inside her melted, as sweet as chocolate. He cared about her, a lot. She’d pulled her unwashed hair back into a ponytail, and his mouth hovered not so far from her neck now. His breath heated her skin, and every nerve of her body vibrated in response. No matter what his fine-tuned sense of honor compelled him to do—or not do—he wanted her.

  “I’ll take that gun back from you now,” Gabi said to her from the front.

  Jonathan straightened and moved his arm to the back of the seat. Cassie tried to ignore her pang of disappointment. She looked down at the Glock and the magazine on the floor. It wasn’t like she had any more use for it. What was she going to do, shoot Gabi and Jonathan both in the leg and run off in the middle of nowhere? Not a smart plan, and even if it had been, she wouldn’t have done it. She handed the magazine to Gabi and then the gun, facing down with the grip toward Gabi, the way her uncle had taught her to give someone a firearm. Gabi put them both in the glove compartment and glanced back at Jonathan. “You’re going to catch hell for letting her have that.”

  Cassie asked her, “How did you know those buildings were abandoned?”

  Gabi’s lip curled. “I’ve been down this road fifty times. I’ve taken cover there before.” The ridiculous pop song that was her ringtone sounded again, and she picked it up. “Salaam, Nic. We had a detour.”

  As she explained the situation, Cassie joked with Jonathan, “It’s dangerous to talk and drive.” Jonathan managed a quick grin, though his face looked gray. How much pain was he in? Hopefully, his group would be able to take care of him. “Are all Coyote Shifters bad?”

  “What? No. These guys are pretty bad. Though we sort of had a truce with them. They’re drug dealers.”

  “They’re, like, a gang?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cassie shuddered. “Why would you have a truce with them?”

  “They were better than the alternative. A drug cartel was becoming active in this area. Well, not just drugs. Extortion, kidnapping, lots of human trafficking.”

  “Are we talking sex slaves or workers or what?”

  “Both,” Gabi said, having just hung up.

  Jonathan said, “Coyote Shifters here managed to beat the cartel out of the territory. And the Shifters only sell drugs—none of the rest of it.”

  “Except for the occasional magical artifact,” Gabi added.

  “Right,” Jonathan agreed. “They’re a rough bunch, but sometimes we have business with them, and mostly, we stay out of one another’s way.”

  “It sure as hell didn’t look like that to me. What happened?”

  “I killed one of their buddies last month,” Gabi said.

  Her words made Cassie freeze up inside. Maybe she wasn’t with the good guys, after all. “How come?”

  “I met him at a house party to buy a certain artifact for our group. I don’t know how they got their hands on enchanted Viking gold, but they did. I passed a room where people were fucking, and I saw a girl wasn’t moving. I went in. She was a human girl, passed out, getting raped by a Shifter in human form.” Gabi’s jaw tensed. “I put my gun to the Shifter’s head and told him to stand up. He did. Pants around his ankles. I told him, ‘She’s unconscious.’ He said, ‘But she’s fucked half the guys here.’ That’s when I took out my knife and slit his throat.”

  Cassie’s mouth fell open.

  Jonathan said, “Any one of us would have done the same. Even if he were one of our own.”

  Cassie hardly knew what to say. Finally, she asked, “Why did you slit his throat instead of shooting him?”

  “So no one would hear. I got the girl out to the car and took her to the hospital. Am I going to get the speech about due process now?”

  Jonathan watched Cassie, clearly wondering the same thing.

  “No.” Cassie’s voice came out annoyed. Yes, it was wrong, killing a man in cold blood. But she was in no mood to give someone who was more or less her captor a lecture. And most rapists never even got reported. She wasn’t going to cry over one of them receiving rough justice.

  Gabi’s eyebrows rose. “I’m starting to like this bruja.”

  After another half hour or so, Jonathan said, “My hand’s not as swollen.” Color had come back into his face.

  “Maybe you’re through the worst of it,” Gabi said.

  They took an exit to apparently nowhere, and a while later, they turned onto a dirt road. After many more miles, they arrived at a tall chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. It cordoned off a huge portion of land, as though it surrounded a prison. A gate blocked the road, and two men in quasi-military outfits carrying automatic rifles stood on either side.

  Cassie sat up straighter. “Shit. Who are these people?”

  “It’s okay,” Jonathan said. “This is us.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cassie’s eyes darted from the closest guard to the car door handle. Jonathan reached over to squeeze her hand. To any sonámbula, the perimeter of El Dédalo
would have been alarming, and she’d been through so much already.

  Was he looking for excuses to touch her? Maybe, but he did want to comfort her, too. Honestly, after the run-in with the Coyotes, he’d also wanted to comfort himself. He’d been terrified that she’d get hurt or killed. It was bad enough when it happened to Knights, but they had chosen this life, more or less. Many of them, like him and Michael, had always been expected to take this path. But Cassie was never meant to have anything to do with it.

  Gabi pulled up to the gate, stopped, and rolled down the window. “Bravo 1115,” she said to one of the men.

  “Salaam, Bravo. The bruja needs a tracker.”

  As the guard handed Gabi a box, Jonathan told her, “It gets injected under your skin so you don’t show up on the security grid as a non-registered.”

  She swallowed. “Can I get it out later?”

  “Absolutely. They’ll remove it when you leave.” Don’t get angry, he added mentally. A mountain lion or bear attack as soon as she arrived would mean that she’d be put in psychic suspension, no question, assuming that a frightened guard didn’t turn his weapon on her first. He didn’t even know what he’d do if that happened, but none of the likely choices would be good. Cassie nodded, and Jonathan exhaled in relief.

  Gabi leaned over the back seat to give her the shot in the forearm. Jonathan pressed a clean handkerchief against the drop of blood that welled up.

  Cassie took it from him and stared down at her arm. “Is the chip in there?”

  “Yeah, it was in the solution. It’s tiny.” She scowled out the window as they went through the gate and continued down the narrow road. “Hey, Cassie.” He tried to keep his voice casual. “There’s going to be a couple more security procedures that might seem a little weird, but try to stay relaxed, okay?” Security had already texted him detailed instructions.

  She snapped, “What are they going to do, strip-search me?” Jonathan froze. She said, “Oh my God.”

  “You’ll walk through a body scan. No one will touch you.” Sonámbulos in most countries he’d lived had an aversion to nudity. He almost said he’d be right there, but he wasn’t sure that would make it better. “And then someone will Read you.”