Whether she heard, Nickie couldn’t be sure, but they kept moving. After what felt like an eternity, the wind and rain vanished from one breath to the next. The sudden departure left her stumbling to the ground.
“There they are. Come on,” Jasmine said, hauling her up again.
Not twenty feet ahead, the other women stood, staring at a motionless lump on the ground.
Jessica turned, shaking her head with a disgusted look on her face, and strode toward them. “No way am I strapping myself down to that. You can have him,” she said, as she walked away.
With a grunt and another blast of pain, Nickie joined the women. What she found when she got there ripped a sob from her throat. A man, tall and emaciated, lay there. His chest rose and fell, barely. Every inch of his naked body was torn to shreds from what she could only imagine were claw, fang, or maybe beak marks. She hadn’t seen any predators on the way to the clearing, but the rain had blinded her.
A deep, agonized groan came from the guy who struggled with his last breaths. How could he live through this? He couldn’t. The pain in her chest squeezed the air from her lungs. Falling to her knees, she got closer. It had to be him. He was at death’s door, and he would take her with him one last time.
“Rest, mate. Things will be better when you rise,” she promised as she collapsed onto his chest.
Chapter 3
Zenon gasped his first breath, taking it deep into his lungs, or he tried to. The rise was almost as painful as the death, but it would soon pass. The heaviness on his chest, however, should be gone. His heart and lungs were healthy once more. They would function strong and true for a few months before his body gave out again, so what pressed on him, keeping him from taking a full breath?
A soft moan filtered through his foggy mind. There was no way that velvety noise had come from him. His voice didn’t go that soft. That silky. The noise curled around him as he fought the momentary lethargy that accompanied the rise. He blinked his eyes open, then shut them again, certain he was hallucinating, before slitting them against the blue skies above.
His heart skipped a beat, then another, as it raced ahead. Had he died the true death? Had his greatest wish finally come to pass? He looked around him, seeing one beautiful face after another. Angels, all of them. He couldn’t see their wings, but how else would this vision grace him?
Another moan whispered from the region of his solar plexus. He drew more air into his lungs, finding them working fine, but a slight weight covering him gave him the resistance that he’d mistaken as heaviness.
The hard-packed dirt beneath him dug into his skin, cementing the fact that he had not risen to the heavens. He lifted his head and shifted his body, peering down to see what pressed against him. Not another nidhogg, that was certain. For one thing, they were much heavier, and for another, it would have torn through him already.
A mop of dark hair splayed across his chest. From what he could see, it was one of the females, lying unmoving on top of him. Why she would sleep on his body as he came back to life was beyond his understanding. Had she been there during his transition? Her hair was not charred. Her skin not blistered. Humans did not tolerate the fire of the rising. Yet not one of the women standing around him suffered burns. Perhaps the women were other. Though he couldn’t think of a creature so exquisite that would take the form of a human and remain on the earthly realms. Demons came in all shapes and sizes. Perhaps they were his newest torment. Sent to tease his mind and his soul only to feast on his flesh.
“He’s mine,” shouted a woman with hair the color of a russet sunset. It was cut short, almost man-like in style, yet lovely. In her small hand, a blade glinted in the sunlight as she pointed at one of the others.
“Back off, bitch. You go anywhere near them, and I’ll end you,” the other said, standing with her legs shoulder width apart, her back to him. If she carried a weapon, he couldn’t tell.
Deep inside, his phoenix roused again, filling his chest with heat. Had he not experienced its resurgence before the transition, he might not have recognized it at all.
Two other women came closer, each of them scowling. “He still gets to choose. Just because she passed out doesn’t mean a thing,” yet another said, trying to push past the one standing between him and others.
“Passed out? She didn’t faint, you idiot. She fucking died. Her heart stopped. You all saw it. He’s hers! We only get to ask him to choose if it’s not clear who he belongs to. And it’s as fucking clear as my bullet if you get any closer,” the one with the wild hair standing between them and the others shouted, waving something metallic in the air.
Even if he hadn’t seen the weapons being brandished, the aggressive energy beat at him, letting him know how volatile the situation at hand was. His phoenix struggled against its restraint. The woman sprawled over him pressed a palm to his chest as though to remove herself from his body.
Deep inside, the need to defend and protect exploded, making him as dizzy as if he’d tried standing—as weak as he had been—in the days prior to his rising.
The sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard drew his gaze to his other side. It didn’t matter that he’d been held captive for millennia, one never forgot that sound. A woman with hair so pale it was almost white sprinted toward them with a curved saber gripped tightly in her fist. Her cold, blue eyes slid to the one still struggling to rouse, promising one of two things: pain, or death.
Neither was acceptable. With a groan, and more power than he’d possessed in centuries, he wrapped an arm around his charge, cupping the back of her head in his palm, and rolled, covering her petite frame with his body.
A chorus of gasps sounded just before fiery heat sliced through him, digging deep into his back. He ground his teeth to keep from screaming.
For a second, everything around him stilled. The small female beneath him struggled against his weight as whatever lethargy had been plaguing her receded.
“What the fuck did you do, Michelle?” a woman screeched. A second later, the blade ripped away from him again. The weight and pressure behind it disappeared.
Damn and damn again. Scorching heat akin to a metal poker left for hours in fiery embers speared through him where the saber had nearly skewered him through. The pain blinded him and stole his breath. Beneath him, the small female shuddered. Was he mistaken? Had the blade sliced into her as well? Was she injured? Their attacker had missed his vital organs, so he would live, but would she? His heart beat a wild staccato against his ribs. She, of all people, could not die. He wouldn’t allow it.
Ignoring the warm stream of his blood along his ribs, he forced himself from her and onto his back once more, placing himself between her and the others, including the one brandishing the saber.
He found the woman who’d sliced into his flesh with his gaze, warning her without words. Come near again, and you will die. He didn’t know how he would do it, only that he would. No one would touch the fragile female at his side and live to tell the tale.
To his surprise, the pale-haired female’s eyes rounded, and tears pooled in her lids. Hands shaking, she dropped the saber to the ground at her feet as a sob tore from her throat. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a broken whisper.
Never had he encountered an enemy such as this. He’d seen men fight and experience remorse afterward, but this was different. It was as though she’d woken from a nightmare only to find she’d done what the dreaded dream had foretold. The devastation in her eyes didn’t lie. She hadn’t meant to do what she’d done, which was what would save her from his wrath. Perhaps she had a souring of the heart, or of her soul, and it was poisoning her mind. If that were the case, the poor lass would be in the heavens soon enough. He’d seen such madness spread, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
“Are you okay?” One second, his focus was on the enemy, the other, it was wrenched to the female he’d protected once more. She’d found the strength to sit, and her small hands flitted over his naked chest, shoulder, and down his
arm. The feathery caress strummed through every part of him. “Turn over so I can see the wound.”
The words were whispered in a breathy voice that seeped into him as a balm would his skin. “What are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse from years of disuse, his parched throat forever raw. Already, the burn in his back gentled to a warm pulse as his phoenix worked to repair the damage. Of course, it could only do so much. Like any other being, as he weakened, so would it.
“Jas, get him a water bottle,” she said, not taking her eyes off him. “I’m human.”
Impossible. He regarded her for a moment longer, then looked at the other women who stared on as though he’d grown an extra appendage. It wasn’t like he was a dual-headed dragon. He focused his attention on the woman once more. “It can’t be. You would have burned with my rising.” Testing his coordination, he pushed himself to a seated position, pleased that no dizziness came to haunt or humiliate him in front of the group of women.
Her eyebrows lifted, as did one delicate shoulder. The woman who had come to this one’s defense earlier approached. Her unruly curls whipped about her face in the breeze. She grasped onto a clear vessel that he suspected to be glass and tore off a tiny portion at the top. Not glass, then. She handed it to the human angel sitting with him and stepped away.
“I don’t know. Here, have a drink. It’s okay, it’s just water,” she said as she placed it in his hand. Water. How many centuries had it been since he’d had a proper drink of water? Sometimes, when the storm was fierce enough, he could almost get his fill, but those were far and few between in the arid wasteland. When he tightened his hold, the vessel crumpled upon itself in his grip, sending cool water flowing over his knuckles.
“Easy, the plastic bottle isn’t rigid like glass.”
With a shaking hand, he brought the narrow tip to his lips, cautious of what had to be a sharp edge, yet when he pressed it to his mouth, it was as smooth as could be. The first drink threatened to come spewing back out as his throat rebelled against the wetness coating it, but he refused to waste another drop. It was bad enough that a few mouthfuls had already made it to the baked ground to be sucked in and forever lost.
Her gaze fell to his neck, and her brows furrowed at the center. The brightness of her brown eyes darkened like an oncoming storm, roiling with potent power and fury.
“Who did this to you?” she asked, pointing to his collar, her voice stronger than it had been only moments before. It had a distinctive bite. “How do we get it off?”
He kept his eyes trained on her the entire time he drank, which admittedly, wasn’t long considering how fast he drained the bottle.
She reached a hand toward him, then pulled back when sparks flew between the collar and her fingertips. “Holy hell. What the fuck was that?” Her breasts heaved with her rapid breaths.
“Dark magic. The metal alloy is infused with it. It’s unbreakable. It cannot be removed.”
She shifted to her knees and scooted closer, staring at the collar as though entranced by it. She reached her fingers toward it once more, and once again the energy sizzled on the air, singing the tips.
The woman huffed and glanced at him. “Since it seems our futures are entwined, maybe it would be a good idea if we introduced ourselves?” she asked, but her eyes had already gone back to his neck. She twisted, peering down his back, a frown marring her beautiful features.
“I am Zenon,” he offered, keeping himself still as her small fingers probed at the tender spot where the saber had punctured. The electric jolt coursing through him from her simple touch sent a different kind of heat flooding into him.
“I can barely see the wound.” She looked at him again before sitting on her heels. “Wow, you heal fast.”
“Of course, I am a phoenix.”
“Yeah, I know. We’ve been looking for you. I’m Nickie,” she added as her gaze went back to his collar. “I don’t know about you, but this place doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies, if you know what I mean. Let’s get this off you so we can get out of here.”
His heart pounded at the notion of leaving the field. He’d long ago given up hope of seeing anything but that stark landscape ever again. He didn’t know what warm fuzzies were, but they didn’t sound so bad. Not when he thought to the multitude of creatures he’d dealt with over the years. None of those had been warm in the least. But it was no use. He’d fought against his restraint more often than he could count. “It can’t be done.”
She pursed her lips and drew closer still. Her warm breath fanned his shoulder as she tilted her head to get a closer look. “There are indentations here, close to what looks like a hinge mechanism.”
“In the years since my capture, I have done everything imaginable to release it. It will not release. It is bound by magic. Unless you’re a witch, it will not open.”
Heedless of his warning, she reached for him. Sparks exploded from the collar, but she gritted her teeth and pressed the pads of her fingers to the metal. As predicted, nothing happened.
“Stop. I order you to cease,” he shouted. The boom of his voice silenced the excited chatter of the women around them. Nickie huffed, then dropped her hand, glaring at him.
“It hurts you. I will not have that sin upon my soul,” he continued, offering the only explanation he could.
Nickie’s cheeks flamed red, and she squinted at him. “It’s not your sin. It isn’t even your fault. I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do. And commands are a no go for me. Consider yourself warned. If we’re going to make this work, you should probably cut that bullshit out.”
He blinked down at the feisty woman, at a loss for what to say. No female—human or otherwise—had ever spoken to him with such a sharp tongue. Unlike the meek and docile women from the past, the women from this time had grown into their own. What were they to make work?
Jas, the one who had brought him the water, came to his other side. “There are grooves here, too, Nick. Same thing at the front and back. Finger-sized. I’m game if you are,” she said, ignoring him completely.
Zenon looked from one woman to the other. “Wait, please. I beg you. I’m sorry to have offended you. I do not wish you harm. We do not know what will happen. You could be killed.” Fear pounded through him. He could not allow it to happen—not to Nickie—not even for his freedom.
“Nothing I haven’t been through before,” Nickie grumbled. “What happens if you put your fingers close?”
Jas lifted her hand, and just as it had for Nickie, the magic roared to life. “It stings, but I can handle it.”
Nickie took a deep breath and nodded.
“On the count of three,” Jas added, not paying him any mind.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three,” Nickie said.
Both she and Jas reached for him at the same time. Sparks flew from the collar, sizzling on his shoulders. They had to be burning the women’s hands, but neither backed down. For a second, nothing happened, but then a soft clink sounded, then another, a third, and a fourth. He froze. His breath seized in his lungs.
Jas groaned and slumped forward. Nickie swayed but kept her hands steady. “It’s working. I can feel it,” she grunted through clenched teeth.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and a sickly blue tint surrounded her luscious lips. No, he could not allow it. The magic was too potent—too wicked. He opened his mouth, ready with his protest. Prepared to demand she stop harming herself, but miraculously, the metal collar that had kept him chained to his prison broke apart in two heavy pieces, the first landing in his lap, the other on the ground somewhere behind him with a clunk.
Power exploded into him. Wild. Ferocious. Unrestrained. The essence of the phoenix surged, erupting from his skin. He sucked in a shuddering breath, then another as he fell forward under the onslaught. He could hardly see through the raging fire engulfing him. He didn’t want to.
Shoving himself from the ground, he took a few faltering steps before crashing to his knees, not
caring about the fresh cuts on his newly healed skin. They would be gone in an instant. A deep, guttural screech ripped from his body. He was free.
Chapter 4
Helpless, Nickie watched as the huge man stumbled to his knees, her heart breaking for him. If she’d had any doubt he wasn’t human, the wicked, tormented sound that tore from him proved it. He might look like a normal man when he wasn’t swallowed in fire, but there was nothing ordinary about him. His broad shoulders heaved as shuddering sobs shook him. Her throat thickened, and even blinking couldn’t quite keep the dampness rimming her eyes from slipping down her cheeks. Glancing around, she noticed the other women all staring. Some looked horrified, and others, scared shitless—but they all kept their greedy eyes on him.
Her mate wasn’t a fucking freak show. “Give him some damned privacy,” she yelled at them, wiping her tears from her face as she stood between him and them as if she could save him a tiny measure of anguish by keeping them at bay.
All but one turned away. With a smirk on her face, Jessica ignored her demand. Instead, she rolled her eyes and smoothed her hair. “I don’t think so. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not handing him over without a fight. As soon as he’s done freaking out, he’s going to have to choose one of us, and I’ll bet I can convince him to pick me,” she said, thrusting her double d’s out in front of her.
Nickie gasped and curled her hands into fists so tight that her nails dug into her palms. They weren’t best buddies or anything, but Jess wasn’t usually an asshole. “Back off. We all got the same information, and that’s not how this works. He only chooses if there isn’t a clear mate. None of you died when he did. Just me. Don’t fucking push me.”
“And if I do? What are you going to do? You’re as weak as a scrawny alley kitten.” As if to prove her point, Jessica got into her space, lifted her hands to Nickie’s shoulders, and gave her a shove. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to send her stumbling back.
Rising Darkness_Book One of a Phoenix Shifter Fantasy Romance Page 2
