Phoenix Team One: Selected (Mythical Alliance: Phoenix Team Book 1)

by Claire Luana

  Sal’s gold eyes flashed, and I could swear I could see his hackles rising. “What are you crossing vamps for?”

  “It was a…misunderstanding. But do you think you could work with me on finding a way around his moves?”

  Sal grinned, stepping into the ring. “With pleasure, Cobra Kai.”

  8

  My mind was clearer than it had been in a long while when I headed home from the gym. I’d forgotten how good a hard workout felt—how it turned off my thoughts and filled me with endorphins. Sal had made me promise I’d return later that week, and I’d been happy to agree. I felt more like myself than I had since Dad had died.

  I stopped at my favorite bodega for some falafel as I strolled home. I actually liked to cook—Auntie was a miracle worker in the kitchen and I’d always worked as her sous chef when Dad had been traveling. But our fridge was currently an empty black hole and my stomach was demanding something quick.

  I sat at one of the little rickety tables on the street, pondering how the hell I would get into Kiki and Konstantin’s hidden lair. I still didn’t understand the connection between them or how they appeared and disappeared in the middle of a city park, but magic was obviously involved.

  I closed my eyes for a moment at the thought of Konstantin Bauer, my mouth going dry, and not just from the falafel. I hadn’t dated much in college, too focused on school and my studies, and med school had been even worse. There had been a fling or two, and a few ill-advised one-night stands, but the pickings had always been slim, as humans were off-limits. I hadn’t been prepared for how my body had responded to his nearness.

  Vampires had always been the celebrities of the supe world, and there were vampire groupies that got off on drawing a vamp’s eye. It certainly didn’t hurt that a few drops of vampire blood were all it took to turn a human into a glassy-eyed thrall who would do whatever the vamp told them. That was why the substance was strictly, aggressively banned.

  But I’d never considered myself into vampires. If anything, I’d avoided them. They were ancient, dangerous, arrogant, unpredictable. Though somehow, when applied to Konstantin Bauer, all of those adjectives became downright delectable.

  I shook my head, realizing I’d drifted into a dreamy fog, my fingertips lingering on my lips. “Cool it, Zariya,” I muttered to myself, devouring another bite of falafel. He was the enemy. I didn’t care if he’d known my dad and knew Kiki now. He was resolved to keep information from me that I needed. That made him my adversary.

  I finished my pita and headed back towards the apartment. I wasn’t sure what to do about Kiki. How I’d go about finding the key to whatever mysterious other realm Kiki had disappeared into. Maybe my glands would be able to smell something that would clue me in to the key.

  But I wasn’t prepared for what I found when I got home.

  Alviya and Bas were posted up on the couch, watching Netflix and munching on a bowl full of popcorn.

  “Hey, Zar.” Alviya perked up as I came through the door. “Where’ve you been today?”

  When a person doesn’t leave their room for six weeks, I supposed that any trip out of the house was cause for celebration.

  I sank onto the couch on Alviya’s other side. “Went for a walk, then I went to the dojo and sparred with Sal for a while.”

  “That’s great!” Bas said, baring his straight white teeth in a grin. “We should all work out together some time.”

  “That would be fun,” I said halfheartedly, knowing that Alviya and Bas were in way better shape than I was.

  “Popcorn?” Alviya offered me the bowl.

  And I froze.

  My glands flared.

  I recognized the smell coming off Alviya. It was faint but undeniable. Starlight and empty space. Ice and deep water and stagnant snow. The smell of Konstantin Bauer.

  I took a handful of popcorn to cover my shock. Alviya knew Konstantin. Or had at least met him. Encountered him. “How was work today?” I managed.

  Alviya shrugged. “Business as usual. Office stuff. Boring.”

  “You meet any new clients, or have meetings out of the office?” Inwardly, I cringed at my inelegant questions.

  “Naw.” Alviya didn’t seem to notice. “Just chained to my desk, as per usual.”

  I nodded, piling popcorn into my mouth. I had no idea how to fit this new piece into the puzzle. I was getting closer to something—but what—I had no idea.

  Alviya, Bas, and I powered through two episodes of Fixer Upper before I headed off to bed. Kiki still wasn’t home, which was okay by me. I needed to make my move quickly and try to find the real version of the report. I could keep my mental shields up for a while, but I wasn’t great about mental discipline. If I let it go more than a few days without talking to her, she’d probably pick up my thoughts without even trying.

  I had to confront her. It was the only way to get to the bottom of things. Kiki and I had been friends for too long to leave such a huge gulf between us. Besides, judging by the text to Konstantin, she’d felt bad about giving me a report that didn’t have all the details. Maybe I could guilt her into telling me the truth.

  After I made my mind up about how I’d handle Kiki, I finally fell into a deep sleep.

  I woke to a prickle in my awareness.

  Someone was in my room.

  Moving only infinitesimally, I opened my glands. Not only did naga glands grant us an incredible sense of smell, but they worked as infrared sensors. I could smell the heat in the room, conceptualize the size, dimensions. It was a small body—familiar. Kiki.

  What was she doing?

  Curious, I kept my breathing still and deep. My eyes closed.

  She crept closer, and I felt as she stood over me. Watching me.

  Her heartrate was elevating, her heat increasing.

  Something was wrong.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  I caught her hand before she struck and rolled her onto the bed, pinning her.

  She didn’t struggle against me, even when I caught sight of the syringe in her hand.

  “What the hell are you doing, Kiki?”

  She started to cry.

  I plucked the syringe from her fingers and sat up slightly so I wasn’t holding her down. “What is this?”

  She curled into a ball. “I’m so sorry, Zariya. It’s to make you forget. It wouldn’t hurt you. The place I work, it’s top secret. They know you’d just keep digging.”

  “Konstantin,” I said. “The vamp. Do you work for him?” I looked at the syringe in disbelief. He’d actually erase my memory? So I forgot our conversation, forgot how close I was getting to finding the truth about Dad’s death? Anger flared to life in me, bright and hot.

  “Not him, not exactly. I can’t—I can’t say,” Kiki said.

  “We’ve been friends for over ten years, Kiki, and you’ve been lying to me this whole time?”

  “Not the whole time, Zariya, I swear. I never lied about the stuff that mattered.”

  “Like who killed Dad?” I scoffed. “I’m going to find out. You can’t stop me.”

  Kiki’s eyes flashed and she sat up. She snatched for the syringe, but I was too fast and moved it out of her range.

  Her mind flashed out, her thoughts barreling through my pitiful defenses. She was inside my mind, raining her will down upon me like a hailstorm. Kiki wasn’t much of a physical fighter, but with her mind—she was deadly.

  But I was ready. I lunged and stabbed her in the thigh with the syringe, emptying the vial with one quick shove of my thumb.

  Her mental barrage stilled in shock.

  “How do I get into the facility?” I asked her. I didn’t have her satori gifts, but her mind was inside mine, her thoughts frozen in surprise. It was enough. A mental image flashed by and I caught it. She made an involuntary fist, curling her hand into her stomach.

  Bingo. Kiki’s ring was my ticket through the portal in the park.

  She slumped back against the bed as the memory potion in the syr
inge went to work. I pulled a silver ring etched with a pattern of bamboo leaves from her middle finger and slipped it onto my own.

  I stood, staring at her passed-out body slumped on my bed. A flurry of mixed emotions buffeted me.

  “I’m so sorry too, Kiki,” I said softly. I was sorry it had come to this. That she had pushed us to this. But I wasn’t sorry for taking her ring. Because it was time to get the answers I deserved.

  9

  My guilt over leaving Kiki passed out in my bed, next to an empty syringe, was short-lived. She was going to use it on me first! Still, I prayed there weren’t any negative side effects. If this ring didn’t get my answers, Kiki was my best hope of figuring out what the hell was actually going on.

  The ride to Roosevelt Island felt endless. When the Uber driver dropped me off at the entrance to the park, I practically launched myself from the car, jogging towards the island’s apex. The city skyline was breathtaking from here—noble towers shimmering with endless lights.

  I’d dressed in black jeans, an old gray tee, and my green army-style jacket. I’d threaded the sheath for the knife Dad had given me for my sixteenth birthday through my belt, but I really, really hoped I didn’t need to use it. My muscles were already sore from my workout with Sal, and if my run-in with Konstantin had shown me anything, it was that these guys were good—whoever they might be.

  The park was deserted except for a couple nestled under a tree, far too wrapped up in each other to notice me. My steps slowed when I neared the point where Kiki had disappeared. Would I know how to summon the magic that had whisked her away? Suddenly, I wished I’d asked her more or had tried to rifle around in her thoughts when they’d been exposed to me. Maybe there was a magic password that I was missing and I’d just stand here in the cold, like an idiot.

  I stepped forward. “Come on, come on—”

  My stomach dropped out from under me as the world spun, shifting into something new.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed with a pump of my fist. No magic password or spell. Then I flinched, realizing that my voice was now echoing throughout an enclosed space.

  I looked around. I was alone in a gray concrete alcove, surrounded by walls on three sides. And before me, an elevator door.

  “Looks like I’m going down,” I whispered, pressing the button.

  The door opened and I stepped in, turning to examine my options. Buttons for floors one through five stared mutely at me. I bit my lip. Which floor had the answers I sought? And more importantly, which floor opened to a nice empty hallway, rather than a mess hall full of soldiers?

  I opened my glands and quested below me, seeing if I could sense bodies. There was nothing but cold stone and rock. Either there was no one home, or whatever materials they’d used to build this place blocked my naga senses. I suspected the latter.

  On instinct, I pressed the button for the fifth floor. Might as well go all the way.

  My heart seemed to race down before I did as the elevator started to move. Had my dad ever ridden in this elevator? Konstantin had clearly known my father, but in what capacity?

  The elevator stopped moving and my hand gravitated to the knife at my hip. Not that it would be much use against automatic weapons.

  The doors opened to an empty hallway and I nearly sagged with relief. A shaky laugh escaped me. I prayed my luck would hold.

  Now that I was down in the bowels of the place, my glands could sense all the spaces of this floor. There were two people on floor five—in rooms lining the hallway. I’d skip those in my investigation.

  I started forward, unsure what the hell I was looking for. Anything. Answers. I poked my head through a doorway and found a quiet room lined with filing cabinets. I perked up. Files were good. Files had answers.

  The cabinets were arranged alphabetically, and so I opened up the drawer containing the C files. Chanji seemed a good place to start.

  I thumbed through the files and my breath caught. There he was. Vizol Chanji. I pulled the file from the drawer and scanned it, my slitted pupils helping me in the low light. MASC Veil Force Personnel File, the title read. In the upper left-hand corner was a symbol—a circle bisected by a diagonal cross. A symbol I recognized as the one that had marked both my dad’s palm and Konstantin’s. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “Veil Force?” I puzzled out loud. “What the hell is that?” My father had worked for MASC, the Mythical Alliance of Supernatural Creatures, as a diplomat. How could he work for this—Veil Force—also?

  But it was undeniably my dad’s much younger face gazing out of the photo. His roles were listed below.

  2001-2011-Hydra Team Commander

  2011-2020-Director

  I sat my ass down in a chair before my knees gave out. According to this file, Dad hadn’t just been involved in this organization, he’d been the fucking head of it. Not to mention he’d been involved in it for nearly my entire life—meaning he’d been lying to me for basically as long as I could talk.

  A tear trickled down my cheek. It had always been me and him. I’d thought we’d told each other everything. How could he have kept something like this from me? Why?

  My glands sensed movement in the hallway and I froze. Someone was coming. Maybe they’d just pass by this room, headed farther down the hallway. Come on, come on—

  The light flicked on.

  Shit.

  I don’t think he saw me right away. The incredibly handsome man in a white doctor’s lab coat. He had strawberry blond hair, exotic golden eyes tilted up at the corner, and bronze skin that seemed out of place beneath the sad fluorescent lights flicking to life above us. He was tall and well-built and formed far too perfect a picture to be human. This man was a supe.

  He blinked when he saw me and halted mid-step, a file in his hand.

  It was the only opening I’d get.

  I bolted from the chair and barreled past him into the hallway.

  “Hey!” he shouted after me.

  But I was already booking it towards the elevator, moving at a breakneck pace.

  “Lock down the elevator,” he said to whoever was at the other end of his comm. “We’ve got an intruder on the fifth floor.” He had an Australian accent, I noticed, as I slammed into the open elevator and jammed the button for the ground floor. Maybe I’d get lucky and start moving before they managed to lock it down.

  The button lit up and the doors started to close. I grinned victoriously.

  Then the doors stopped.

  My luck had run out.

  “Stay there.” He advanced on me, arms out in front of him. Why, so he could jab a needle in my neck like Kiki had planned to? Fuck that.

  I darted out of the elevator and ran straight towards him with a naga war cry, my fangs bared.

  I didn’t know what my plan was. I had no plan. Knock him over and barricade myself in one of the file rooms before going down in a blaze of glory?

  I was stuck inside a secret base and there was no way they’d let me out voluntarily. But at least I could go down fighting.

  The air seemed to shimmer and shift around the doctor. I gasped as every hair on my skin raised. It was the feeling in the air right before a lightning strike. Or right before a shifter changed form.

  Hot Aussie doctor was a shifter.

  I zigzagged against the wall, trying to make space for whatever was about to manifest in this hallway.

  And boy was I glad I did.

  Magic exploded around me as he finished shifting. And then the hallway was filled with legs and talons and a sleek sinuous body covered in golden scales.

  Holy fuck. A dragon shifter. He was a fucking dragon.

  His roar rent the air and I clapped my hands over my ears, staggering to one knee. My fingers came away bloody as I scrambled to my feet and hurtled myself down the hallway, towards any sort of protection from the dragon.

  He was big—too big to maneuver in the hallway, and I looked over my shoulder to see him struggling to turn around—his massive body smashing against the walls, crac
king the concrete.

  I wrenched open an iron door at the end of the hallway, slamming it shut behind me.

  I looked about in a mad panic for anything I could use to defend myself. The knife on my belt was nothing more than a toothpick to a dragon. The room was some sort of treasure room—with art in glass cases on two walls, the other two covered with glass cabinets bearing ancient-looking antiquities. Weapons.

  A sword. Prominently placed in one cabinet on the far wall was an ornate sword. That might be enough.

  I yanked at the cabinet door, but it was locked. I smashed it with my elbow—once, twice.

  The room’s iron door exploded inward and I was thrown against the cabinet, my hands scrabbling against the broken glass.

  The dragon shoved its head through the door and screamed, baring glistening white fangs as long as my forearm.

  Pain exploded in my ears and my heart seized with fear, my limbs freezing, my mind numb. It didn’t matter that the dragon was too big to get in the door. Dragons breathed fire. One shot and I was toast. Charred toast.

  The sword.

  My naga instincts screamed at me, singing life into my veins and overpowering the paralysis of my human fear. I wouldn’t go down without a fight. I would show this pretender the true might of the serpent.

  I reached into the case and seized the sword’s scabbard, pulling it from its hooks.

  And then the sword in my hand started to burn.

  10

  I screamed as pain ripped through my hand and up my arm. The sword was magicked somehow—it must have been a protective enchantment. The sword clattered to the floor as I cradled my injured hand against me. I looked down at the burn and gasped.

  The same symbol was burned into my palm as had been branded into my father’s. And Konstantin’s. I looked at the sword with new realization dawning. Somehow, this blade was the same sword from my father’s story. He’d always said he’d left it in the dragon’s lair. Another lie.

  An explosion across the room startled me back to where I was. The dragon had broken through the wall, busting the concrete around the door frame to create a hole large enough for his body to get through. He advanced on me now, his fangs bared, his golden eyes ablaze with fury.