by Dale Mayer
Of all the things her father had drilled into her brain, the most prevalent was that they were always in danger. They always had to be on the lookout for the police. Always had to take safety measures, even to the point of being ridiculous. And she had continued the habit all throughout her ensuing years.
One foster family had thought Phoenix was nuts and had asked for another foster child because Phoenix’s idiosyncrasies used to set off their nerves, making them aware of all the dangers around them. They said they didn’t want a child constantly on the lookout about being attacked.
She wasn’t looking to be attacked, but, as her father would say, it was looking out to not be persecuted.
In the elevator she pushed the button, and, as the door closed in front of her, she saw the cop watching her from the lobby. She didn’t say anything, just stared right back. She had learned a long time ago not to withdraw if she couldn’t do it without being seen. It was better to stand your ground and to wait for whatever it was to blow over.
*
Rowan Einar studied the elevator as it closed. He turned toward the receptionist who’d registered the woman he had been speaking to. “Paul, what can you tell me about her?” he asked.
Paul looked up in surprise and shrugged. “Honestly the day’s been bus after bus. I have the registration with a copy of her passport. If you want to take a look at it, Chief, go for it.”
Everybody called him Chief, even though their chief of police was in a coma. Rowan hadn’t been promoted, and neither had anybody else. He was still a constable, as the top job hadn’t been given to him yet. But he didn’t make any comment over his presumed title, just snatched up the paper and read it. Seeing her name, his eyebrows shot up. “Did you see her name?”
Paul looked up, his eyes already distracted. “Yeah, right?”
Phoenix Rising. Rowan looked at the copy of her passport and realized it really was her name. He shook his head and said, “Can you get me a copy of these, please?”
Surprised, but willing, Paul walked to the office behind the counter and photocopied both documents. He brought them back over and said, “Is there a problem with her? She didn’t look like much.”
Rowan’s lips kicked up. “Maybe not,” he said. “But sometimes you got to watch out for those. They’re a little more dangerous than the others.”
Paul didn’t appear to care. He barely nodded and went back to his computer. “It’s been a hell of a day. I should have left over thirty minutes ago. I’m heading out now, if I can slip away.” He glanced at Rowan and asked, “Unless you need anything else?”
Rowan looked up. “What room did you give her?”
“Room 232,” Paul replied.
Rowan’s frown deepened. “Didn’t the last person in that room commit suicide?”
Paul shrugged. “I have to fill the rooms. You know that.”
Rowan did know that. He turned and walked out of the hotel, stopping just outside the front door and took a deep breath. Only he thought these suicides were something other than normal. He had tried to talk to the chief about it before he was hospitalized, but the chief had told him to shut down that line of inquiry. The last thing the town needed was any bad publicity.
Rowan took several long, slow, deep breaths, inhaling the sweet scent of the warm air. Even though they were still a good distance from the fires, the heat always seemed to settle on top of the town.
And, right now, it seemed as if everything was heating up. He didn’t know what it was about her, but something was off. Something … ancient? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But if she’d come here to commit suicide, that was the last thing he would allow.
They had a lot of missing persons’ reports from their town and surrounding areas as travelers checked in with friends and family one last time, then nothing. A lot of suicide notes were left behind with no bodies to go with them. The Burning Fires was a perfect way to dispose of the bodies. The town had a perimeter set up around the Burning Fires so nobody should get close enough to commit suicide, but somehow these determined people found their way in regardless.
Rowan had often wondered if somebody in town wasn’t facilitating the suicides, maybe making money off them by helping them complete the act. Which would be a sad situation, but, with human nature being what it was, he had to acknowledge it was at least a possibility. Just sucked if it was.
He ran his fingers through his hair, shifted his shoulders slightly and headed back to his vehicle. He would stop at the hospital and check on the chief. Something was odd, off, about his condition.
Rowan saw energy in Technicolor all around the chief—floating greens, yellows, blues and reds. Always red. Something about this town turned tempers into a hard, red, angry, mobsterlike energy. Rowan had only seen the phenomenon a couple times, and that it was happening again bothered him. Always involved a death at the end of it. Something ugly was brewing, and just dealing with it made it uglier. This was a tourist town. People came here to have fun.
*
He rubbed his host’s hands together, staring around the town center with its cobblestone streets and old-fashioned lights. He loved this place. He came and went freely, disguised as a local and yet, at the same time, not. He appeared human to get the job done … Entities by right weren’t defined by their previous incarnations as to what sex they were. He identified as male in his head but could be either depending on his host at the time. He had one main one but sometimes needed to hop out to give that one a break. A holiday so to speak. He smirked at his own joke. At least he was highly gifted. His ties here could never be disputed, but he loved leaving here just as much. After all, he was reincarnated each time to feed the gods, the Elders. Every time he came back to the Burning Fires of Iceland in his newly-reincarnated body, it was with a rush of power. That surge of need. Although with each new life he didn’t fully understand his powers or his purpose until he hit about age ten or eleven. Then that thirst-quenching desire for what was to come clarified, which he could not deny.
Today he was already looking for his next offering to the gods, having already provided them with more than seventy so far for this lifetime. The Elders demanded live and conscious offerings, which made his job a bit more challenging.
Plus he needed to find the right one, the best one for a sacrifice to the Elders, so to speak. He’d been communicating with this god of the Icelandic Burning Fires for centuries and knew nobody could understand that, and that was okay by him. As long as people didn’t try to stop him, then he could do what he needed to do. And, if they did try, … well then, he had more sacrifices for the Elders—or more victims for himself.
His powers had grown with each reincarnation, so he knew to cloak himself from the readers and the seers, from those other gifted humans, so they couldn’t detect what he really was. So, when he did get found out, each time had been because he had wanted too many, too much, too soon, without proper planning. Something to keep in mind each time …
This was a perfect little town for his needs. The fact that he traveled all over the world to many sacred sites and repeated this process over and over should have gotten old by now, but it hadn’t. His own blood bubbled at the thought of this sacrifice. The ones from here were special. Something was special about these eternal fires. Something about this fire and the fact it left no trace. It was the perfect killing machine.
These people intent on suicide were perfect offerings. They were people with no lives, no land, no space, no wish to go on. Some of them left notes at his suggestion, and others just simply disappeared without a final word. He couldn’t do too many from each location, which was why he traveled constantly. But he was here in Iceland now, and three new buses had arrived. Surely he could find somebody to fit his purpose among one of the new arrivals.
The buses would be here for a day or two, and then they’d be gone. But he knew that, as soon as they left, more would come. He wanted something special this time. A pregnant woman maybe? Maybe a single father with a l
ittle child to help make the sacrifice all that much sweeter. The twins last time had been supremely wonderful. He smacked his lips together at the memory.
Under his breath he whispered, “I promise you that I’ll find the perfect victim. She’ll be absolutely perfect.” He always rotated from men to women to men again if he could. But he wondered if he needed to up his game. Things could get boring if he didn’t. He wasn’t sure the Elders themselves cared as long as he kept them with a steady supply, but, considering he’d been doing this forever, it was important he find pride in his work.
He was a Supplier, which was not exactly a job description to raise joy and delight, but it was definitely a job he loved and had been doing all his many lives, doing it in previous lifetimes too. He kept coming back, doing the same thing over and over again.
People didn’t understand reincarnation. They didn’t understand faith and duty that transcended time or physical reality. That was their fault. The Supplier had been born blessed with purpose, and he knew it right from a young child on. As soon as he could, he’d shaken loose of the family ties and had dived back into his purpose. In this lifetime he expected to perform even more sacrifices for his Elders than ever before.
He had tried hard the last lifetime but hadn’t quite succeeded. He had offered one hundred sacrifices to his Elders, but still they hadn’t been happy. Instead they’d made sure he was caught and killed. This time he knew he had to up his game and do a lot more. He was only at seventy-two so far.
It wasn’t enough.
As long as the Supplier kept on the move, nobody would know. Nobody would ever know. He realized that would be a problem, which it was with every lifetime, but this time even more so with the extent of travel he could do now. He always made sure he kept a steady supply of income flowing in so he could travel. And, of course, every lifetime he shifted bodies, sexes, professions. Whatever worked was his motto. His awakening to his real purpose in life was always harsh. A refusal first to understand—to believe—followed by zealous commitment to his higher calling, no matter who thought he was nuts. They didn’t understand. Who could? Except him.
Depending when he got the call for a sacrifice, he ran the feeding of the Elders in rotations. Occasionally one of the Elders got hungrier and needed more. It was his duty; it was his honor, and he was here once again to make sure this god, this Icelandic Burning Fires god, got exactly what he needed.
As that familiar hand was placed atop his head and gave him a gentle squeeze, the Supplier felt a shiver run down his back. He dropped to his knees and whispered, “I obey your command.”
He was on the sidewalk at a bench digging through his pockets. As if looking for something lost. And he was, but what was lost was a soul that needed to go home. A soul that needed to reconnect with his god. And his job as Supplier was to make sure that happened.
Chapter 3
Phoenix headed out as soon as she had dumped her bag onto one of the two beds. She caught sight of the cop as he got back into his vehicle and left. With him out of the way, she put her hands in her pockets and strolled from the hotel. She perused the town, wondering at the weird buzz she felt. Something unusual was going on here. Maybe caused by the lava fires? The Burning Fires stopped at fall and restarted in spring all on its own. With a sudden awareness, she realized no ash fell. No ash floated in the air or fell from the sky. This close to the fire, she expected a layer of ash to be everywhere. Was eternal volcanic fire the same thing as a volcanic eruption? She thought so but couldn’t be too sure.
It was hard for her to even know why she was here except for the damn Burning Fires recital from her father. She didn’t even want to call him her father. A DNA test to prove otherwise would be reassuring, but was that even possible to do now? She knew the police had his DNA because he’d done a lot of other things wrong besides abusing his other cult family members.
She wandered from store to restaurant to café, picked up a coffee to take on her walk outside. She stopped at the edge of an alley and stared down it while she sipped on her coffee. That she was here after all these years filled her with a heady excitement, and yet brought a deep-seated worry to the surface. What if she didn’t find what she was looking for? What if no answers were to be found?
She took deep breaths and reveled in the feeling of being here. The alley ahead of her was dark, and yet didn’t have an eerie feeling she would have gotten from where she lived in Seattle. A lot of predators were in Seattle. Were there any here? In reality, predators existed everywhere, yet this was but a small town that bustled innocently around her. At least it seemed innocent—on the surface.
She was puzzled by suicide season. Surely there were easier, cheaper ways of committing suicide. Not understanding the mind-set, she continued walking down the alley, checking out the small side streets that came and went. The streets were lovely—cobblestone and unique.
She took out her phone and took several pictures. She didn’t know what she would do with any of them. What did any tourist do with this stuff? At least she had avoided buying the T-shirts that read I Was in blah blah.
She smiled at that because she had picked up a couple small baubles along her travels, and she would likely pick up something from here as well. Her tour group didn’t leave until the day after tomorrow, so she had a little time to explore. Part of the appeal of taking the bus tour was she didn’t have to do any of the driving or navigating where to go or where to stay. The disadvantage had been that she was on a bus, full of people.
Not being a big fan of crowds was why she was off exploring the less-traveled corners of the town. She came out on the other side of the alley to see a much smaller area of town, nowhere near as well-lit, nowhere near as nicely decorated as the main center. This area was likely more for the locals. Not such a tourist trap as the rest of the city and, with a little luck, might offer something a little more unique. She wandered up and down a few streets, happy to see some of the stores were still open. She stepped into a tea shop, but it appeared to be more of an apothecary store. She found it fascinating and spent twenty minutes browsing the shelves before buying a lemon balm and leaving.
Tucking her purchase into her pocket, she went to a couple other stores and heard her stomach grumbling. Meals were provided with the tour, but she’d missed a bunch of them, as she didn’t always want to eat at the same time as the other travelers. She knew the hotel was supposed to give them a meal, but she had a two-hour window in order to get it. So she kept on walking. She finally came to the far end of the street and took a left, intent on returning to the main center of town.
As she rounded a corner, she heard a cry off to the side. She stopped and spun around. “Hello? Is someone there?”
She stared at a large grove of trees, sure she had heard a woman’s voice. She crossed the street on an overpass that looked down into a creek that was likely a raging river at some points during the year. Trees grew down the gully on either side, and the gully itself was at least thirty, if not fifty feet down.
She frowned, wondering where the cry had come from. At either end of the overpass were wooded sections too. She hesitated, then turned her back on the noise and kept walking toward town. When the cry came a second time, she stopped and turned around. Only she saw absolutely nothing.
“It must be a bird,” she wondered out loud.
Resolutely she turned again and kept walking. She wasn’t sure what she heard, but an almost electric atmosphere surrounded her. Then again, it could be her sensitive instincts kicking in. Maybe a bird of prey had picked up something for dinner, something that hadn’t wanted to be dinner.
Shaking off her nervousness, she rushed faster toward the main part of town. It turned out to be farther than she had expected. More streets coming in and off than she had left. She chastised herself for forgetting to pick up a map of the township.
One of the first lessons when traveling was to always make sure you knew where you were, or else you got lost. She wasn’t good at navigating witho
ut her phone, and the cell reception since she’d arrived had been terrible. So, with a sense of relief, she saw one of the big buses parked up ahead. Her shoulders sagged, and she continued forward, relieved to see she was on the main street again.
She stopped at one of the benches and plunked down, controlling her breathing. She hadn’t realized just how those odd cries and finding herself so far from her hotel had agitated her. When an old woman sat down beside her and smiled, a half toothy smile, Phoenix smiled back. “I’m not from around here,” Phoenix asked. “Any idea where I can get a map?”
“Staying at a hotel?” the woman asked.
When Phoenix nodded, the woman stated, “They should have them.”
“I meant to pick up one before I left,” Phoenix confessed. “Do you live here?”
The old woman nodded. “I was born here,” she said. “I’ve traveled plenty, but I’m still happy to come home. It’s a hard place to leave permanently.”
“Why is that?” Phoenix asked.
“It’s hard to walk away from everything you know.” She looked at Phoenix. “Don’t you feel that way about your family?”
“I don’t have any family anymore,” Phoenix replied in an abrupt tone. She stood and gave a small nod of goodbye and rushed away. She should be used to the questions by now. She’d gone through school having to answer all kinds of them, and every time it had gotten easier, but, for some reason, this woman’s reasons for staying seemed foolish to her, but Phoenix couldn’t really determine what that would feel like because she did not have anyone to stay for.
As she continued walking, she looked behind to see the woman staring after her. Something was creepy in the look on her face. Feeling chills running down her back, Phoenix hunched her shoulders and hurried away, hating that she saw evil everywhere she looked.
That was because of her father, still showing up everywhere in her life. Every time she’d seen him, she’d cringe and would try to hide, and he’d always catch her and pull her forward for punishment. He never called it punishment though. He always said it was time for her to learn something new. He called it teaching. But she’d be tortured in front of everyone because she was the Golden One. And because of her status, the others used to love to see her suffer.