Phoenix Legacy

by Corrina Lawson

  She pushed down harder on Hawk’s chest, trying to remember if this pressure stuff really worked. “How can I help?” she whispered out loud.

  Hawk’s hand brushed her abdomen. “Your son is safe,” he whispered so low that her heart broke into a thousand pieces. He shuddered. She was losing him.

  “The boy’s our son, Hawk.”

  “’S’good.”

  His voice was so low now she barely heard that. No, no, no. He was supposed to be invulnerable, indestructible, immortal. He would never leave her again. She held his hand to her face, kissed it and put his palm over their baby. “Hawk. Stay with me. Stay with our son. Heal.”

  Warmth rose from inside her, beginning from her stomach and bursting all the way to her fingers and toes, like some internal fireball. Her head snapped back and she bit her tongue, tasting blood. What the hell?

  Hawk’s hand twitched, but she didn’t let go of it. Maybe she was getting some sort of healing overflow from him. She hoped so. This had to be from him and it had to be a good thing. It meant he was getting better. She gripped his hand tighter. His hand over their baby, her hand over his.

  “That’s right, that’s right, heal, get better. Fight.”

  Her hands throbbed with each breath she took. Her body seemed to be pulsing molten fire, as energy of some sort flowed from her into Hawk’s hand and then into the rest of his body. She squinted. The energy seemed almost visible between them, a faint glowing red haze.

  His eyes flicked open, meeting her gaze. They stayed locked together, breathing as one.

  Vaguely, as if from far away, she heard someone yelling her name. That voice on the phone sounded awfully loud.

  The door crashed open. The dresser Hawk had used to block it smashed against the far wall. Alec stood revealed in the doorway.

  That explained why his voice sounded so loud.

  Alec dropped to his knees across from her. “Help’s here, Drake. You’ll heal, because Beth will kill me if something happens to you.”

  “I…Lily.” Hawk’s eyes shifted focus to his hand, the one connecting them together over their child. “I’m healing but…not all by myself. Not all from me. Our son’s helping.”

  “The baby’s helping to heal him?” Alec asked her.

  “Must be. I’ll be damned if I know.” Her son could do that? Already? Thank God. No, she decided. Thank the late Dr. Cheshire and his accelerated development.

  “Listen!” Hawk insisted.

  She leaned over so her ear was just above his mouth.

  “Del…Lily…healing is draining. You have to stop this, you have to break the contact between us. He could die…the baby could use himself…up.”

  “Die?” Her panicked voice broke the word into two syllables.

  “Yes,” Hawk said, his voice stronger. “I can’t move. I can’t break the connection. You have to…you know what to do.”

  “But then you might die!”

  “You know…what to do.”

  He closed his eyes. She closed hers. Yes, she knew what to do. She gritted her teeth and carefully peeled Hawk’s hand away from her, away from their baby.

  His hand fell limply to the floor.

  The molten heat flooding her body receded. Cold spread through her. The world spun.

  “Help him!” She reached across Hawk and grabbed Alec’s arm. “Save him!”

  Someone caught her from behind as she began to fall sideways. Spots appeared before her eyes. Her stomach flopped, as if she was about to be sick.

  Inside, she screamed in grief, fearing she’d lost them both.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Del flitted in and out of consciousness, not sure when and where she was for what seemed like a long while. When things finally came into focus, Alec was at her bedside.

  “Hawk?” she whispered.

  “Critical,” he said in a low voice. “We transported him to the ER fast, in our helicopter.”

  “Is that where I am?”

  “In a hospital, yes.”

  She put her hands over her stomach.

  “The baby’s okay,” Alec said, anticipating her question. “They ran a boatload of tests while you were unconscious. They finally concluded that you were mostly suffering from exhaustion. The baby seems to be unaffected by it all. I told the hospital we were family, that I was the baby’s uncle, so they let me watch the ultrasound. Damn, he’s a kicker.”

  “Hey, you are family, right?” Del looked at her stomach. A round device was strapped around her baby bump. There was a regular beeping sound in the room that finally registered on her hearing.

  “That’s a monitor for the baby’s heartbeat. They wanted to take no chances.”

  “Oh. So you’ve been watching over me all this time?”

  “I promised Drake I would protect you. And I promised you too. I meant it.” He looked away. “I’ve just done a lousy job of it.”

  He was feeling guilty. Join the club, Alec. “It’s not your fault. Cheshire tipped off Genet’s people. That’s how they got into your place and released the gas.”

  “Gabe’s beating himself up over that. There was a backdoor in the old security program that he didn’t find.” Alec sighed.

  “Genet claimed he knew Lansing, that he was the true owner of Orion, where Cheshire worked. I don’t know if he was conning Cheshire or not, but if that’s true, that explains why Genet knew about the Institute’s alarms, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I should’ve found out more about Lansing’s businesses.”

  “Oh, puh-leeze. We’ve all got enough guilt to go around.”

  She’d ordered Hawk to spare Cheshire. She’d forced him out of his learned way of thinking into something new. Now he was fighting to live. She’d been wrong about Cheshire, and he’d been right. She’d been stupid enough to believe that the scene would somehow play out better than the night her parents had died. That was on her.

  And she’d let Hawk choose their son’s life over his own. She didn’t feel guilty about that. That one was on him. She couldn’t do anything but follow his wishes.

  It would’ve been very wrong not to do what he wanted. Not because she valued the baby over him—how could she pick one over the other?—but because Hawk would’ve never recovered, emotionally, if the baby died for him. He’d live maybe another few months, enough to ensure she was back in her home, with her friends and safe, and then he’d disappear so he’d die alone.

  She didn’t need telepathy like his daughter, Beth, to know that. She knew Hawk.

  Oh, God. His daughter. “What did you tell your girlfriend?”

  Alec dropped his head. “I didn’t call her yet. I was hoping for better news. But none of the doctors will say anything except he’s critical, the blood loss was bad, the injury’s severe… I held the artery together as best I could with my TK but it was in tatters, I couldn’t repair it. He needed surgery to repair it. I didn’t get all the details but he’s still in surgery and it’s been hours.”

  She closed her eyes. All those years, she’d spitefully wished Hawk dead to pay for her parents’ murders. If she prayed for him now, would that make up for it?

  “Is Genet really dead?” she asked.

  “You saw him run through with the sword, right? What makes you ask that question?”

  “He claimed to be an immortal, like Lansing, except a lot older.”

  Alec’s eyes widened. “That explains a lot, especially about how he was connected to Lansing. But he’s really dead. The CIA grabbed his body for cold storage when they helped us clean up the op. Not that Drake left us much to clean up except bodies. And he damn near took down that house with the truck.”

  “Hawk never did anything halfway.”

  “You’re telling me. We traced the registration on the truck and found out someone had reported it stolen. Drake had left him a note that he owed him one truck. Gabe talked the guy out of pressing charges if we paid for a brand-new truck.” Alec shook his head. “The guy’s got no problem shooting down a ne
st of bad guys but when he steals a truck, he leaves a polite note.”

  “He probably figured the truck owner hadn’t done anything to him.” She smiled.

  “Did Genet give any clue as to why he did all this, other than wanting control of your child?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We found some records about Orion and Cheshire’s research in the warehouse we raided but nothing conclusive. Gabe’s still going over them. Makes him feel less guilty. What did Genet tell you?”

  “He told me nothing—he thought I was unconscious. But he said a lot. He claimed that his name was really ‘Plantagenet’. He offered Cheshire patronage and talked about a court with a queen. There are definitely more immortals out there. He seemed to think Cheshire should know what that meant. I think it just freaked Cheshire out. And when he was fighting with Hawk, he claimed he should never die. He said others would avenge him.”

  “Holy shit,” Alec said.

  “You know what he meant?”

  Alec leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Yeah, I think. It has to do with that damned tie too. It’s a long story, though.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First off, Plantagenet is the name of a dynasty that ruled England in the Middle Ages.”

  She listened intently as Alec spoke, glad for the distraction as they waited on Hawk’s fate. Edward V, a boy king, had supposedly been murdered in the Tower of London by his evil uncle, Richard III. That rang a bell. She’d studied Shakespeare’s Richard III in high school.

  “Edward V and his younger brother were imprisoned in the Tower and never seen again,” Alec said. “But a lot of people think Richard III didn’t kill them. The contemporary records don’t claim he’s their killer until a generation afterward. Some people think that the king who defeated Richard III in his last battle killed them.”

  “Wait, I know this. This is Shakespeare. Richard III is the guy who yelled ‘my kingdom for a horse’?”

  “That’s him.” Alec smiled. “No traces of the boys were ever found, at least not conclusively, though some bones that are thought to be them are buried in Westminster Abbey.” He frowned. “Lansing loved telling me that story. He was nearly obsessed with it. He also had a real fondness for Richard III, said he’d been maligned by history.”

  “So you’re saying Edward P. Genet the Fifth was this Edward V Plantagenet who disappeared? Oh, c’mon, Alec! He’d have to be over five hundred years old.”

  “More like seven hundred. You know firestarters and healers are real, don’t you? Lansing was about two hundred years old. Older immortals are possible, even likely.”

  “Genet’s not a few hundred years old any longer. He’s dead.”

  Alec looked solemn. “And he mentioned a court and someone coming to avenge him. There’s sure to be others. And Lansing knew. They must be the watchers he talked about. Fuck.” He stood up and began pacing. The room suddenly felt warmer.

  “Guess there are more psychics than you ever thought, huh?” She drew in a deep breath, wincing, remembering what else Genet had said. Her family was apparently among those psychics.

  Alec was at her side in the blink of an eye, misinterpreting her wince.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not in the way you mean.” She explained what Genet had said about her preacher grandfather being a “charismatic”, whatever that was.

  “Huh, well, that makes sense. Beth once said most people have a touch of psychic ability, they just don’t call it that. They call it intuition.”

  “You wouldn’t find this so easy to accept if you’d just learned about your family being from a line of mind-altering preachers.” Of course, it wasn’t as bad as her parents being crazy terrorists, so there was that.

  “Hey, I’ve been hit with that before. I didn’t know Lansing was two hundred years old or so until after he died. But I guess it was dumb of me to think that he was the only immortal. Drake was right that I’d no idea what I was getting into.”

  “If you’d known, would it have made a difference?”

  He grinned. “Nah. But it’d be nice to know what we’re facing.”

  “You do now.”

  “Thanks to you. And Drake. I misjudged him.”

  “He’s well aware of his shortcomings, trust me.” Far too aware. The humor disappeared as she remembered that he could well be dead. There was silence for a few moments while she stared at the walls and listened to the beeping that reassured her that her son was alive.

  “Hawk never had a chance, you know. His stepfather used to beat him senseless. It’s a miracle he ever survived to grow up, though I guess maybe that was his innate healing ability saving him.”

  “He said to me once that killing my father figure was no way to start a new life. Is that what he did?”

  She nodded and told him about their childhood. She poured it all out, everything she could remember. Secrets would do them no good now, and it felt right not to hold it inside. She trusted this young man. Hawk did too, or he’d not have trusted Alec with her safety.

  As she spoke, Alec’s expression dissolved into shock, then sadness.

  “I shouldn’t have been so pissy about what happened between you at the Institute. You really did have things to work out.”

  She nodded and glanced at the door.

  Alec answered her unspoken question. “They said they’d come for me as soon as they knew.”

  “Okay.”

  “What happened to Drake’s mother?”

  “She never protected Hawk, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, I meant what happened to her after the arrest? Is she still alive?”

  Del blinked. “I think she’s in prison still. That’s what Hawk said. Why?”

  “It’s just that she finally stood up for him. Then she made sure Drake didn’t go to prison. I wonder what she’s like now, after all these years.”

  “Should I care? Should Hawk care?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Lansing was a son of a bitch, but he died protecting me. I wish I’d had a chance to see what he might’ve been like after making a decision like that. Do you think it’s possible for people to change?”

  “I don’t know. My parents never had the chance.” She’d given Cheshire a chance, but he too had been a lost cause. It had felt so good to try but that feeling wasn’t worth Hawk’s life. “I’m sorry, that’s not much of an answer.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. For all of it. I’ve done a lousy job of protecting you and cleaning up after Lansing, I know, but I’m going to get better at it.” He paced to the door. “I’m tired of waiting. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  Del stared at the ultrasound photo, so much clearer than the original one she’d kept on the fridge in her home.

  “Del, c’mon, the cupcake will do you good.” Tammy offered the tray again.

  More to please Tammy than out of any desire for food, Del took one. Chocolate with chocolate frosting, of course. Out of habit, she ate the frosting first.

  “Thanks for visiting me,” Del said.

  “Are you kidding? We’ve all been worried sick.”

  “Everything’s fine with the baby, as you can see.” Del handed over the photo.

  “But not fine with you?”

  Del shook her head. Not with Hawk still unconscious. The surgery had repaired what the doctors wanted, but he was in a coma. The doctors weren’t sure why. They talked about shock and blood loss.

  She wanted to see him. She’d pleaded with Alec for it. But he’d said if Hawk said it was dangerous to the baby, she had to stay away. She knew he was right. But she’d given him a copy of the ultrasound photograph to show Hawk. Maybe it would make a difference, though she didn’t know how. Alec said Beth being here would help. He said Beth could reach Hawk telepathically.

  She was due in this morning.

  “You’re not giving me the whole story,” Tammy said.

  “I can’t, it’s all classified by Homeland
Security.” And that was the truth. “All I can say is that Philip Drake is the baby’s father and they came after me because of him.” Also pretty damn close to the truth.

  Tammy shook her head. “I found you unconscious on the floor of the bar that morning, Del. What was that? Rough sex?”

  Del shook her head. “No, Drake had been to visit me and left before they arrived. The men after him drugged me to see if I could tell them where he was. That’s why I couldn’t remember.”

  It was a good lie because it was almost true. She closed her eyes, realizing she’d been taught to lie like this at a young age. This was for a better cause, at least.

  Like Alec, she wanted a better world for the next generation. But it’d have a hole in it without Hawk.

  “Dad?”

  “Tired. Go away.”

  “Dad, I’m not going anywhere. Wake up. I need your help.”

  “You have Alec.”

  “Well, yes, but neither of us has any idea how to deal with a baby brother.”

  “A brother?”

  “Your son, Dad.”

  “He’s alive? Lily’s alive?”

  “Of course he’s alive, and she’s sick with worry and guilt about you being so injured, so you’d better wake up and talk to her.”

  “If she’s alive, why didn’t she come to me?”

  “You told her to stay away. You told her it’d be bad for the baby, remember?”

  Philip opened his eyes to find Beth standing over him, tears in her eyes. He was alive. Huh.

  “Figures.” Beth wiped the tears off her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ve been trying to prod you awake telepathically for an hour by talking about stuff we did together, but one mention of Del Sefton, and you’re back.”

  “You have Alec now.” His voice sounded raspy and unclear. “You don’t need me.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” She smiled. “Besides, if I ever have kids, who’s going to scare them into good behavior if not you? Alec will just spoil them.”

  He smiled back, his disordered thoughts finally coalescing into some sort of order. “Del and the baby are both fine? Is that what you just said?”