Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  But I hesitated. “With or without blood?”

  “With.” Noah held a hand out to me.

  I paused. “You made me love him, didn’t you?”

  He snorted. “You wanted to love Justin, to fit in with the normal world, but you didn’t. And you never would have without me. I gave you the push you needed. There was no way I was going to let you out of my sight. I promised Bea I would do all I could to protect you.”

  I shook my head and took a step back, suddenly uncertain. “Then why not just give us the answers? Why make me jump through all these hoops?”

  He grinned then, surprising me. “I’m still an asshole demon, Phoenix. I answer to my creator, as you will answer to yours. My boss wants Bear. And he wants you. I will do what I can to help, but I am bound by the chains I carry too.”

  I didn’t like that his words made sense. But did they make sense, or was he manipulating my mind once more? Sweat broke out along my spine, but I pushed on. “You’re a guardian of HELL. How can you love?”

  His grin was lopsided and I saw more of the Noah I knew in it than ever before. “We—all of the guardians—were human once. We made a deal with the devil and the price we pay . . . well, this is it. Or at least, it’s mine. What is more torturous but to still have your emotions intact, to have them play out in front of you but be unable to act on them?”

  Human once, then. Not abnormal. He reached out for me and I offered him my hand once more, reaching back for Killian. His fingers tightened on mine. “God, I hope you be right, Lass.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  For Bear, I would take the hand of a demon and let him lead me. Strike turned my wrist so my palm stretched out in front of him. With the tip of one finger, he drew a line along and blood welled up through the skin. Not a cut. But through the pores of my hand.

  I locked eyes with him and he just smiled and winked as if . . . as if this were a game to him. Which I was stupid to think my life would be anything but a game to a demon.

  Strike clasped his hand over mine and there was a blast of heat that ripped from his hand through mine and up my arm. On some weird instinct, I tried to grab at it for my own, to make his fire mine.

  “Don’t do that,” he growled.

  I didn’t say anything but did try to stop drawing his heat to me.

  Strike tightened his hold on me. “You might want to close your eyes for this.”

  “Not a fucking chance,” I said. There was no way I would close my eyes and not be ready for wherever the hell we popped into. Because if he took me anywhere but the desert, I was going to kill him on the spot, his help be damned.

  The heat between our palms intensified and I let it burn through me, breathing it in and out. Between one breath and the next the world around us fuzzed over. There was no jerking sensation, no sense of moving in any direction. Just a fog that closed in around us and made the world indistinct as if we walked in a dream world. Strike let my hand go.

  He turned and walked away from us. “Follow me.”

  “We’re going to walk all the way there?” I barked the words at him, anger suffusing me.

  “This place here is not like the real world. The time is slow here. We’ll walk and be in the desert in a matter of minutes in the real world.” He didn’t look back once.

  I looked at Killian who slowly put Abe down. I called Abe to me with a simple hand gesture and he hurried to my side. Killian’s eyes were tight.

  “Lass, this is dangerous. I’ve heard of stories like this, people being trapped inside a void with a demon. I thought they were fairy tales.”

  “Nope,” Noah threw over his shoulder. “Not at all.”

  I broke into a jog to catch up to him, all the while my fingers itching to hold Dinah. But I wasn’t so sure she would shoot him even if I asked her to. I suspected she would hold back even if it meant her actual death.

  I was going to make the best of this time with a demon who was trying to help us, even though he’d tried to kill us.

  “Tell me about your boss.”

  “He’s a demon. You’ve met him, if I recall correctly.” Noah didn’t look at me but continued to navigate his way through the clouded terrain. I could see that each step we took jumped us forward far more than a single step in the real world, but still, we weren’t exactly going at light speed.

  There was a strong chance he wouldn’t acknowledge any of my questions, but we had the time so I was going to try. “Why does he want me and Bear?”

  He surprised me by answering in detail. “You are the Ascendants from a long line of abnormals with great power. Demons crave power, they want to control it, to make it their own. It’s the only way they do things. Ascendants are rare, only coming through one or two in a generation.”

  A few more strides and we were across half the country by what I could see, the landmarks I knew flickering in the blink of the eye. This was going to go fast indeed.

  “There could be another abnormal like me then. Why not go after him or her?” I stepped over a rock and we were in the middle of a highway, cars going by us so slowly they might as well have not been moving at all.

  “You are correct. In your generation, there were three born to the Ascendant lines. To your mother’s generation only two. Her and another male.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Three in my generation. What happened to the other two?”

  “One died in a robbery gone wrong, when he tried to rob Mr. Mancini. What powers he had were being used as a two-bit thief and Mancini didn’t realize what he was until it was too late.” Noah glanced at me. “The other of your generation is unfound. My boss has looked, but all he knows is that it’s a man around your age. No actual information other than that.”

  Something niggled at my mind. “Are the Ascendants born usually men?”

  “Yes. Women are rarely born into this line. The emotions they have naturally make them more likely to burn up within the flames of their own power. Natural selection has created a bloodline that is primarily male.”

  He spoke so casually, but also with such certainty that I believed every word.

  “So, I’m abnormal even for a rare abnormal is what you’re saying?”

  He did look at me then. “Something like that. There is a chance you could burn the power right out of you if you use too much.”

  Lie, that was a lie and it lay heavy on the air between us. I didn’t call him out on it because I didn’t need him to know I could pick out the lies on his tongue. I smiled to myself. “Good to know.”

  Step, step, step.

  Dinah cleared her throat. “We still have to finish the bullet to end Romano. What’s the plan for that?” I tightened my hold on the metal box.

  Noah glanced at me, but really he was looking at my side where Dinah was. “That will be up to Phoenix. It is her flames that must melt the products together.”

  I snorted, not willing to tell him we had the bullet and that it was primed. It needed only the ingredients and to be capped and it would be ready. “Sure. Because I’ve done that shit before. I am not going to put my son’s life on the line with something I’ve never even tried.”

  “Then you will have to figure it out. I cannot hold your hand through every step,” Noah said.

  We were over an ocean now, and each step I took, I expected to fall into the water. Killian was on my left and Abe was glued to me, panting hard as we moved along. No doubt his brain was saying run away. I didn’t blame him.

  “Here.” Noah stopped, and around us I saw nothing but open sky and desert sand.

  I had one more thing to say, knowing what I knew about Justin now, how he’d been Simon, how he’d fooled me so deeply with Noah’s help.

  “You knew all along what was needed to kill Romano, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “I did.” He nodded and the air went out of me as the realization struck.

  “Justin felt like he was truly going to be free, didn’t he?”

  “He did.” He nodded again, his eyes unb
linking.

  “But he was never going to be, was he?”

  Noah shook his head. “I needed him to be fully invested in you and your son. To protect you. And he needed something to do to keep him busy and out of trouble. As you’ve seen, on his own he finds trouble rather easily. This task kept him busy for years. Now . . . I am not quite sure what to do with him.”

  “What do you mean?” Killian asked the question that was on the tip of my tongue.

  Noah looked at him. “I own him. He is my creation. And he is down to his last life. Re-spawning is not infinite.”

  He spoke as if he were a parent speaking of his teenage son who needed to be manipulated into the right path.

  “All along you had the ingredients.” Not a question, a confirmation. All those trips Justin took away from us. The first when Bear was just days old. I did close my eyes for a moment, seeing the sadness on Bear’s face whenever his father left, the worry that he wouldn’t come back. A father he would never see again even though he was still alive. Fucked up, this whole world was royally fucked up.

  The metal box in my arms suddenly felt very heavy and I lowered it to the ground between my feet. “I’ll finish it here.”

  “Do you not want to know what’s missing?”

  “The curse,” I said. “That’s the part you could never find, wasn’t it?”

  He snorted. “Too smart. I should have brought you in on this years ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I rolled the ruby ring on my hand, thinking about how many times I’d been duped by Strike, Noah, whatever name he went by.

  “Boss didn’t want you in on it. He wanted you weak. I told him that would never be the case, not a sister of Bea’s.” He shrugged. “Not my call, Nix. It was never my call.”

  I didn’t feel bad for him. He’d made his choice and become this demon for whatever reason.

  Killian put a hand on my arm, carefully. “Out, we need out now.”

  I twisted around. He was pale, his face so white it blended in with the fog around us. “Noah. Get us out now!”

  “Finish the bullet, make sure you’ve got it,” he countered.

  I spun, kicking out and catching him in the knee. Abe barked once, leapt forward and bit into Noah’s other ankle, yanking him off balance further. I reached back for Killian even while I scooped up the metal box. We had everything. We were in the desert. We just needed to get out.

  Dinah screamed as Noah went down. “Don’t hurt him!”

  “He’s not on our side, Dinah! It’s a trap!” I yelled back. I didn’t know why I believed that, not until the heat started in around us. The pull and tug of flames, the call of a demon I’d met once before.

  I shoved the metal box at Killian and spun, snapping Dinah up and firing right into the mouth of Bazixal as he strode toward us.

  Noah groaned behind us. “I’m sorry.”

  Killian started to slump, shaking his head. I stared straight at Bazixal and aimed for his eye. “Go to hell.”

  23

  Facing down the demon from my past, the demon who’d made the deal with my father, was no small thing. The heat rolled off his body in waves and lifted my hair, the same as he had done before.

  A cool breeze brushed over me. I am still here.

  Martin, bless him, kept the worst of the heat at bay.

  I put myself between Bazixal and Killian and Abe. “Get ready to run, boys.”

  Bazixal laughed. “I have you now. You don’t think I’m going to let you go that easily, do you?”

  I still had the electricity pooled in my spine from before we went into Vivian’s house. I tapped into it and sent it shooting down my arm, and through Dinah as I pulled the trigger. There was no thought as to whether it would work or not—it had to.

  The electricity and her bullet slammed into his eye, which sent him tumbling backwards with the force of a Mack truck ramming him. He roared, royally pissed even as he pushed back to his feet.

  “Time to go.” I jammed Dinah in her holster and yanked a knife. I cut my hand, the blood dripped into the ground at my feet and the fog around us faded. I reached for Killian but he was already stumbling through, out into the real world and the cool night air.

  I spun as I stepped across the threshold and looked back. There was nothing behind us, no void, no Noah, no Bazixal.

  “That . . . could have been worse,” I said.

  Killian laughed and shook his head. “No, it couldn’t have been.”

  Abe whimpered, his body shaking where he pressed against me. I dropped a hand to him and he flinched before he relaxed again. I knew how he felt. Jumpy and uncertain, ready to run, fight, or fall depending on the situation at hand. I refused to let my mind think on what had almost happened. Why the fuck did Bazixal think he had any right to me?

  Nope, I couldn’t go there. We were too close to Bear.

  “Noah, Strike, whoever he was is right about one thing.” Killian handed me the box. “Finish the bullet. Can you get it ready to be used?”

  I nodded and flipped the box open as I dropped to my knees. “I have to.” The sand cushioned me, cool from the night, but I had no doubt the grains would super-heat in a matter of hours.

  I made myself focus on the task at hand, to not think about what was coming.

  The herbs were all there. I lit a small fire in the palm of my hand and let it heat the bottom of the box until the items were on fire, burning. Even as I took this first step, the next bloomed in my mind, each step forming behind my eyes a split second before I needed them.

  Burn the items to ash, put them into the bullet. I used the edge of my knife and ground off a few bits of the ruby ring for the grindings of a curse and put them in too. I pulled out the diary and cut off a piece of the original deal, and put it into the metal box. The smell was sweet like a heavy rose perfume. I grimaced but kept the heat up, kept moving the box so the ingredients meshed. They pooled together as though they were attracted to one another. They were a powder so fine, it looked like a liquid. Killian helped me pour them into the empty casing.

  Finally, there was that last bit of gold at the bottom of the box. I heated it into a puddle and poured it into the top of the bullet, capping it, trying not to think about how my hands had become a crucible for my father’s death. I smoothed the edges out as best I could.

  “Not pretty,” I said as I held the bullet up, still warm from my flames. “Dinah, can you shoot it?”

  “Put it in, and let’s find out,” she said.

  I did as she asked and there was a clicking noise, not unlike the sounds she made when shifting to a smoke bomb.

  “Yes, I can shoot it, but there is a but,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “You need to be close. It has zero trajectory. Without a proper tip, I can’t guarantee where it will end up if you shoot from a distance.” She shivered in my hand. “I’ll hold it back, shoot as you wish and—”

  “How close?” Killian asked.

  “Like, an inch from his head,” she said. “There is no other way.”

  Of course not. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was a little. I’d hoped to be able to just shoot Romano and then walk away.

  “Let’s go.” I walked toward the glowing orb of the moon that hung low in the sky.

  “How do you know what direction?” Killian asked.

  “I don’t. I’m following my feet,” I said. “All this Ascendant shit is supposed to bring us luck, and some sort of path to follow when we need it. I’m letting it happen.” Because there was no other option.

  Killian was beside me, his hand brushing mine as we walked—trudged really—through the loose sand. An hour passed in silence before he cleared his throat.

  “I remember most of our time together now.”

  I flicked my eyes to him and then back to the sand. “Okay. Is that important?”

  “Aye. It is.” He took my hand and stopped me, pulling me around to face him. “It’s important because I believe you are right. Death i
s stalking us.” He kissed me gently, a flash of electricity slipping through him and into me, giving me some of his power.

  “Thanks.”

  He grinned. “I think I love you, Phoenix.”

  Dinah let out a soft sigh. “Say it back, please say it back to him.”

  I couldn’t, though. Love was a tool to be used against me, and it had been used effectively. “I can’t.”

  He gave me a wink. “I understand. I can say it for both of us, Lass.”

  I opened my mouth, not sure what I was going to say because there would never be a right time to tell him I loved him. Instead of words, though, I tipped my head toward the sound of feet pounding the sand.

  I flashed a hand movement at Killian and Abe, and the three of us flattened to the ground. I counted five men wearing guns, and then a sixth . . . a sixth that I knew. A man who’d been at the school where Bear had been attending, a man who had been his bodyguard.

  “Abe, fass!” I pointed at the big guy and Abe hesitated. I put a hand on him gently, and gave the command again as I got up. With more confidence, Abe stood and I ran with him toward the man who’d been set to guard my son. Abe was the only one fast enough to get to the bodyguard and take him down before we lost him in the desert.

  The dog shot across the sand in a blurred streak, silent as he raced after the bodyguard.

  The big man twisted in mid-stride, sensing something in that split second before Abe tackled him from behind. They went down in a flurry of cursing and flailing limbs. Abe snarled and then let out a yip as he was booted in the side. But I was there a moment later and I leapt on top of the bodyguard.

  I had Dinah out and a knife pressed to his throat as I knelt with one leg on his chest. “Where is Bear?”

  His eyes flicked to me and away. “You can’t save him. Let him go, Phoenix.”

  I pressed harder with the knife. “How do you know?”

  “Because I tried, Nix. I tried to save him. I got all the stuff. I got all the secrets and it still wasn’t enough. Romano can’t be killed. Tommy failed.” His words came out louder with each one until he threw me off him.