Phoenix Burn (From the Ashes Trilogy Book 1)

by Karina Espinosa

  9

  Did I say I wouldn’t rat Nick out? Nah, that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant to say was that I’d string his scrawny ass up and beat him like a piñata.

  How could his gothic ass send me to a vampire den? Wait. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for all of this. He said he got the lead to NightCrawlers from the dark web. It’s quite possible he didn’t even know.

  At Tristan’s revelation, I squeezed the plastic water bottle in my hand so tight, the water gushed out and spilled all over me. Okay … so maybe I was a little pissed.

  “I never saw anything,” I mumbled, my thoughts far away.

  “You would have, if you’d been chosen to work the VIP area. The vampires aren’t allowed to feed on the dance floor, but they have free reign in the VIP lounge. Sometimes they bring humans into the club with them, but more often than not they take advantage of the Nightcrawlers’ staff.”

  I opened my mouth to say something smart and then shut it. I didn’t know what to say. My emotions were a mixture of anger, shock, and disgust, and from the look Tristan gave me, they were broadcast in hi-def all over my face.

  “We don’t hurt anyone, Octavia,” he said, taking a step toward me. “It’s a euphoric feeling for those who are bitten. Sort of like a high.”

  “It doesn’t make it okay,” I grimaced. “We’re not food for you to feed on.”

  “Everything we do is consensual, but we’re getting off topic.” He slinked closer to me. “I want to know who referred you. They put you in grave danger. If Roberto had gotten his hands on you …”

  My eyes widened when he mentioned the creepy club manager. “Is Roberto a vampire?”

  Tristan only nodded.

  No wonder he was always trying to get me alone in his office. The creep! I shivered at the thought of what could have happened.

  I twisted my mouth to the side as I contemplated my dilemma. “My contact might not have known where he was sending me. He’s helped me out a lot since I first disappeared.”

  Tristan rolled his eyes. “I promise not to hurt him. Just tell me who he is.”

  “His name is Nick. I don’t have a last name, but I can take you to the warehouse that he lives and works out of.”

  “Great.” Tristan threw a towel at me. “Go shower and get dressed. We leave in half an hour.”

  We took the 405 and then the 5 to Sun Valley and then to Nick’s warehouse. The drive there was fairly quiet, with just a few mentions of what had happened during training. I wanted to gush about the phoenix, but Tristan was so stone-faced, I worked to keep my excitement to myself. I’d wait until Maverick came over and then tell him all about it.

  Tristan parked his blacked-out SUV in the farthest part of the warehouse’s parking lot and turned to me. “I see a lot of cameras. Is your friend paranoid?”

  “Yes he is. He probably won’t let me in if you’re with me.”

  “Fine. Go alone.”

  My brows furrowed. He agreed far too easily, and I didn’t believe him for one second. There was no way we’d come all this way just for him to let me go in alone. I wasn’t that naive. But I’d indulge him.

  After hesitating a few seconds, I exited the car and slowly crossed the lot to the warehouse. When I approached the front door, I looked up at the camera and peered at the blinking red dot that let me know he was watching, and then I waited. He made me wait longer than usual this time. Probably no more than a minute, but it felt longer. Like he thought my presence there was suspicious. Which it was, since I’d always given him a heads-up I was coming the other times I’d visited.

  A moment later, the door locks disengaged and I stepped into the darkened warehouse. A gust swirled and rushed past me, almost knocking me over, and I quickly shut the door to cut off the wind.

  I strolled down the center of the warehouse, passing a plethora of beeping computers and blinking cameras following my every move until I reached the back wall, where Nick was hunched over a desk with three computer screens, typing away at his keyboard.

  “Hey Nick,” I said casually as I peered around the cluttered space for anything out of the ordinary. But the murky interior was covered in shadows and honestly, everything in this warehouse was weird.

  “Octavia.” He didn’t look up from what he was doing. “What a surprise.”

  “Can’t be that much of a surprise,” I chuckled dryly, glancing at his wall of cameras and screens. “I think your lead at NightCrawlers is no good. I’m pulling out.”

  His head popped up and I could see the charcoal smudge of his emo eyeliner through his glasses. “You can’t,” he said quickly.

  I fiddled with the corner of his desk and tried to act distracted, not like I was fishing for information. “There was like, a gang fight the other night, and I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of that, so I think it’s for the best. Some really shady stuff happened at NightCrawlers. How did you get that lead, anyway?” I asked nonchalantly.

  “I told you, I heard about it on the dark web. Don’t you trust me?” He cocked his head ever so slightly, peering at me in an unnervingly calm way. He knew I didn’t trust him. That I didn’t trust anyone. So why was he trying so hard to keep me at the club?

  “Thanks for trying, Nick, but I think I’m done looking.” As I went to turn around, I heard the unmistakable click of a gun’s hammer being cocked. I peered over my shoulder and found him standing with a gun in his hand, aimed right for me.

  “We’re not done, Camila,” he taunted with a smirk, his face transforming into that of a stranger instead of the mild-mannered Goth kid I’d come to partially know.

  My stomach turned to lead and I wondered how long he’d known who I was. Since the very beginning? “How long have you known?” I asked quietly.

  “It wasn’t until recently, when someone approached me with a large sum of money. More than you could ever pay me,” he scoffed as he stepped carefully around his desk and inched closer. “I found your killer, but then he found me. We got to chatting, and he told me quite a tale, Camila.”

  I gulped. Nick found him. He actually found him, but then he turned on me. And for what – more money? How much could my life possibly be worth?

  “Nick …”

  When the gun went off I shut my eyes and screamed, but felt nothing but the painful ringing of my ears from the echo of multiple gunshots fired within an enclosed space.

  I cracked my eyelids and found Tristan standing in front of me with his back to Nick. His face was frozen in a grimace as his green eyes stared into mine.

  He took the bullets for me.

  Tristan grunted as he arched his back and winced. When he spun around to face Nick, more gunshots rang out as they pounded into his marble chest. His shoulders twisted back from the force as he walked calmly toward Nick. Blood blossomed and dripped down the back of his shirt and I gaped, wondering how he could possibly be upright after that barrage.

  The gun clicked and clicked, the empty sound belying the fact that my second would-be assassin had run out of bullets. Nick scampered around his desk, looking for something to use as a weapon as Tristan continued to prowl toward him slowly.

  He fumbled with drawers, opening and closing them rapidly, when I saw what he was scrabbling for ... a wooden stake.

  “Tristan, look out!” I yelled as Nick launched himself at the wounded vampire. Undeterred, Tristan maneuvered out of the way smoothly.

  He grabbed Nick by the throat and held him in the air like he weighed nothing, then slammed him down on the desk, knocking a jumble of expensive-looking computers to the ground.

  “Tell me what you know about her killer,” Tristan snarled, his fangs extending as he pulled Nick close to his face to get the full effect. “Tell me!”

  Overcoming my momentary shock at the sudden turn of events, I darted over to where they stood, just close enough to hear Nick’s strangled reply.

  “H-He was h-hired by s-someone,” Nick st
ammered. “H-He’s h-human.”

  “But the person who hired him is not?” I called out anxiously, my hand on my throat.

  Nick attempted a shrug as if he didn’t know, but Tristan refused to budge. “Does he know what she is?” Tristan growled.

  Nick gave him a confused look and tried to glance at me, but from the angle Tristan had him suspended, he couldn’t. “W-What?” Nick choked out.

  He doesn’t know what I am.

  “Why send me to NightCrawlers?” I demanded, wanting to know the truth. My hand rubbed at my throat as I saw Tristan’s hand tighten around Nick’s.

  Nick coughed and gasped, “At first, I-I did get a lead there. I-I wasn’t lying about that. S-Someone messaged me that the killer would be there. N-Now I-I know it was a trap. F-For both of us.”

  I nodded. “Just let him go, Tristan.”

  Tristan turned the full intensity of his glare on me. “We can’t. He knows who you are.”

  I shook my head, trying to understand Tristan’s point. “What difference does that make?”

  While Tristan’s attention was diverted to me, Nick reached for the stake lying on the desk and stabbed Tristan in his side, making him groan in pain. The vampire jerked to the side, but he never released the bone crushing grip on Nick’s throat.

  “Tristan!” I gaped in horror at the stake embedded in his side, which was compounded when he turned his icy black glower at Nick and gave a slight twist of his hand, effortlessly snapping his neck. The sharp crack of snapping bones echoed in the stillness of the warehouse and I gasped at the ragged sound.

  Tristan released him and Nick’s body fell limply onto the desk before crashing to the floor, moments before the vampire staggered back and grimaced.

  I was frozen, unable to move or comprehend the events that had just unfolded, but when Tristan groaned and tried to catch himself on the desk before falling over, I snapped to attention, rushing to him before he could fall. He held a bloody hand tightly against the side where the stake still protruded.

  “Oh my gosh, Tristan, what do I do?” I tried to hold him up, but if I thought his face was made of marble, it was nothing compared to the heft of his body as he placed all his weight on me.

  “Take it out,” he heaved. “You need to pull it out.”

  “Won’t you bleed out?” I knew it was possibly the dumbest question on earth, but honestly, vampire physiology was all new to me. Sue me.

  “I’ll heal. Just do it,” he panted. He clenched the sides of the desk, digging his nails into the table and causing half-moon indentions in the wood.

  With shaky fingers, I reached for the wooden stake, wrapped my hands around it, and tugged, but it refused to budge. Taking a deep breath, I tightened my hold on it, counted to three, and pulled with all my strength. With a sickly, wet flesh sound, the stake eased out, inch by agonizing inch, until the entire shaft had been yanked out.

  Tristan arched his back and roared into the quiet of the warehouse. The agony of his cry pierced the rafters and seemed to echo on the walls around us.

  I trembled as I held onto the bloody stake and then dropped it like it was coated with STDs dipped in boiling acid, then rolled in a candy coating of assorted germs.

  Through the torn gap of his t-shirt, I saw his skin knit together and heal right before my eyes. It was incredible. Was that how I healed?

  “I need you to remove the bullets from my back,” he said as he gingerly tugged his shirt over his head. I averted my eyes self-consciously, unaccustomed to seeing his bare skin. “I can get the ones in my chest, but not the ones in my back.”

  I gulped. “Okay …”

  “Octavia,” he said coolly. “Can you do this?”

  “Yeah … yes.” I took a few deep breaths. “I’m just freaking out a little, but I’m okay. What do I need to do?”

  “All right,” he said warily, handing me a pocketknife. “You’ll need to dig out each bullet. But hurry, these hurt.”

  I spent the next twenty minutes digging into the skin of his back, which was the most disgusting thing I’d ever done in my life. I dry heaved no less than ten times, but luckily, I didn’t vomit as I painstakingly carved out the three bullets that were lodged in his back. Today was one of the most traumatic days of my short, ill-fated life, though I was fairly certain that in this freaky new existence of mine, I had more to come in my future.

  I watched as he put his shirt back on, even though it was riddled with holes. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For taking those bullets for me,” I replied softly. “You didn’t have to do that. I mean, since we know I can’t die and all.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  Yeah, it sorta was, but I didn’t voice it. If he wanted to play it off like it was nothing, I’d let him. But we both knew he could have let me get hit today. The worst that would have happened was I would have woken up later with a headache. The best that would have happened was he would have enjoyed a brief reprieve from my constant questioning and judging while I was unconscious.

  “Do … do you need blood?” I winced as I asked.

  He paused what he was doing and his gaze snapped to me. “Yes, but I can wait until I get home.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, relieved. “What are you looking for?”

  Tristan was digging through Nick’s desk, searching for something. “For his hard drives. Someone like Nick always backs up his data. I want to know what he was working on and who he was talking to.”

  I helped him search for the hard drives, but after an hour of searching the place, we were still empty handed. We finally gave up and texted Echo the location of the warehouse so she could come and clean the place, and possibly break into his computers. According to Tristan, she was tech savvy.

  I was walking around Nick’s desk when I tripped over something. I looked down on the floor and found a red leather-bound notebook. When I picked it up, I realized it was a planner and quickly flipped through it. Stopping at today’s entry, I saw an appointment.

  Meet MD - USC - Watt Hall 6pm.

  We were exiting the warehouse, but I froze mid-step as I reread the entry. I pulled out my phone and saw it was five minutes until five. Whatever Nick had planned with this MD person was going down today, in an hour. And it was happening in …

  “Oh my God, Tristan!” I ran to catch up to him with the red planner in hand. “We have to get to the University of Southern California right now!”

  “What?” Tristan grimaced and stretched his body that was most likely aching from all the fire power it took less than an hour before.

  “Look!” I pointed to today’s entry in the planner. “Nick was meeting someone today at USC, at Watt Hall. That’s the School of Architecture—where my brother Carlos goes to school!”

  “That could be a coincidence, Octavia,” he said tiredly, reaching for the planner. “We don’t even know who this MD character is.”

  I snatched the planner back from him. “I’m not willing to take that chance. This is my brother we’re talking about. He could be in danger!”

  “But why? It makes no sense.”

  I had to admit that it didn’t. Why go after one of my family members? And after six months of quiet, why now? Then again, maybe my killer had been searching for me all along, and when he found Nick, he found me. By using Nick, I pretty much led my killer to me. But it still didn’t explain why my brother would be involved.

  Was he trying to lure me out in the open? He knew I was at NightCrawlers and could easily have gotten to me without all these games. What was he playing at?

  “I don’t know, Tristan. But I’m going with or without you.” I made my way toward the exit of the warehouse.

  With a frustrated sigh, Tristan followed me, taking hold of my arm and leading me to the SUV.

  The drive to USC only took thirty minutes with Tristan’s lead foot, which gave us ample time to get lost on campus. I’d only followed my brother Carlos a handful of times to school,
and not at all since the new semester started, so I didn’t know his new schedule. But I knew for a fact that Watt Hall belonged to the School of Architecture. He’d talked about it often enough.

  It was getting close to six p.m. and we were still driving aimlessly around campus, looking for the building. We decided to park and start walking, relying on the kindness of strangers to point us in the right direction. After Tristan used his model good looks to score some directions, we hurried down a jumble of side streets until we finally arrived at Watt Hall mere minutes before six o’clock.

  We were contemplating whether we should wait inside, but the decision was made for us when I saw Carlos exit the building with a friend. I grabbed Tristan’s hand and watched my brother smile at his female friend. They were exchanging notes and having a playful conversation. She was giving him a flirtatious smile, but my brother’s expression was tentative, cautious. He ran a hand through his wavy brown hair and put some space between them. His honey brown eyes held a sadness to them that I felt guilty about, like it was my fault it was there.

  I was about to tell Tristan we should go, that I was invading my brother’s privacy, when a hooded figure darted around the building. With the glint of a gun in his hand, he jabbed the butt of it into the back of the girl’s head, knocking her unconscious. Then he swiveled and pointed the muzzle straight at my brother’s head.

  “Tristan!” I gave an anguished cry and began to edge forward, but he stopped me.

  “Stay put,” Tristan commanded, releasing himself from my death grip and crossing swiftly to the entrance of Watt Hall.

  The area was devoid of people except for my brother and his friend, the shooter, and now Tristan, who was creeping up on them with the stealth only a supernatural creature could possess.

  I quaked in dread as I watched Carlos hold up his hands shakily just like I did the night of my murder. His eyes were opened wide in horror and disbelief.

  He can’t die! No, not my little brother.

  I hated that all I could do was stand around and watch. I had to do something!