by Lucy Auburn
I suck in a startled breath, full of emotion—and feel Sebastian’s hand brush against my skin, very real and warm, fingers sending tingles down my arm that awaken my senses.
Seeing him, the White Phoenix startles in confusion for just a moment. And that’s all the chance he needs. With a delicious grin, Sebastian slashes her outstretched hands with a knife. The phoenix screeches, stumbling back as blood pours from the hands she was about to use to burn me alive
I look to each of the others, their desire to fight written clearly on their faces. As Ezra lunges forward with his sword, I touch his soul with my mind and tug his body out. He grins as his blade slices through the edge of the phoenix’s skirt and sends her whirling in his direction.
Lynx is next, his rope corded around his heavy fists, desperate to trip her and punch her. I imagine what it would feel like to have his large hands trail down my body, and he becomes whole again, the light no longer shining through him. With expert precision he throws a rope around the phoenix’s ankles and tugs her down to her knees, then backs up through the wreckage of a door, dragging her out towards the backyard.
“Dani!” Mateo calls out, his hand raised above his head, a grenade in his fist. “Don’t leave me for last!”
Whirling around, I reach out and push against him. He’s solid in a second. With a grin he pulls the pin then throws the grenade in his hand, lobbing it right for the phoenix as Lynx ropes her down onto the ground and dodges out of the way.
“You see?” Sebastian murmurs, as the grenade hits and silence hangs in the air for a moment, full of danger. “We work well together, when we’re given the chance.”
His hand trails down my arm. A great boom echoes through the backyard. I admit to myself that the shiver that goes through me has nothing to do with the explosion and everything to do with the danger standing right beside me, tempting fingers brushing against my skin.
“Did I ever tell you,” Sebastian murmurs, as Mateo hoots and Lynx hollers, and Ezra strides into the backyard to make sure the phoenix is done, “that I can increase not only pain but also pleasure? They’re two sides of the same coin after all.” His breath ghosts against my neck as he leans close to me. “I wonder what would happen if I tried to double your pleasure right now.”
I lick my lips, completely flummoxed. His grin is rakish, his blue eyes intense, as he lets his fingers trail against my neck—and then abruptly pulls back, concern flashing across his face as he looks towards the backyard.
Ezra cries out, “She’s not entirely dead!”
I run—not away, but towards the confusion, which just goes to show what a fucking idiot I am. There’s a great big hole in Sara’s garden, a bowl made in the earth, and at the bottom of it is the phoenix’s twisted body, covered in blood.
Her insides are splattered everywhere, and there’s no sign of her great white wings. The flimsy white dress she wore is no more; Mateo’s grenade took a big piece out of the middle of her. Seeing her like this, I can’t help feel pity—mixed with alarm, because the explosion also took out the back fence, and all around us car alarms are going off, awakening the neighbors and no doubt sending the police our way.
“She looks pretty dead to me.”
“Look.” With a grimace, Ezra uses his sword to point towards the cavity of her chest, where flesh has peeled back from white rib bones. I resist the urge to vomit. “Her heart. It’s still going.”
It takes me a moment to realize that he’s talking about the black piece of flesh in the middle of her chest, twitching like a rabbit and covered in gore.
Urge to vomit growing.
Black energy starts to spool up in the hollow cave of her chest, and bit by bit flesh knits back together, covering bone and squishy things I don’t want to think about too much. The energy bubbles and multiplies beneath her, until her chest is rising and falling with breath. Fascinated as much as grossed out, I lean forward to get a better look.
“Dani, get back.” Lynx puts an arm in front of me and ushers me back from the hole, still solid despite the seeming end of the threat. “I’m not completely sure what’s happening here, but it’s powerful necromancy. It’s not safe.”
“I’ve got an idea.” Reaching into his vest, Mateo pulls out another grenade and casually pulls the pin. “Run back inside.”
With a quick lob of his wrist, he throws it into the hole, right in the spot where the phoenix’s body is filling back in. I turn and run, blood pumping, body working into overdrive; I feel the others around me, running just as fast, Ezra cursing wildly at Mateo.
We’re almost to the front door when there’s a wild boom behind us. This time it’s louder, like he used a bigger explosive, and I fall to the ground from the force of the blast. I clap my hands over my ears, curling up around my middle.
Seconds pass.
Shakily, I get up to my feet, Ezra helping me on one side, Lynx on the other. Mateo has a sheepish look on his face; he murmurs something, but I can’t hear it past the ringing in my ears—a ringing that’s growing louder by the second.
Turning around, my stomach drops to see the destruction in the house. No. Half the rear wall is gone on either side of the burned-out door. The garden may as well have never existed, and chunks of the bird bath are stuck in the trunk of the tree, which looks like it’s had branches ripped away.
The distant sound of car alarms breaks past the ringing of my ears, as well as the sound of sirens.
“I hope she’s dead now,” I quip, voice muffled to my own ears. “Shit, Mateo, next time use something a little smaller.”
“I’ll go first.” I can barely hear Sebastian’s voice despite the fact that he’s just a few inches away from me, but I get his intentions. Walking in front, he leads out towards the backyard, Ezra hot on his heels, Lynx helping me—and Mateo taking up the rear, his gun pointed towards the floor in front of him, ready to fire.
It has to be over now.
It has to be.
Sebastian reaches the (now much bigger) hole first and stops, staring at it expressionlessly. Getting there second, Ezra whirls around, sword in hand, looking like he’s seen a ghost. I can tell they’re saying something, but their voices are so low I can’t hear past the ringing, which is slowly fading second by second.
I don’t understand what’s going on until I step up to the edge of the hole and peer down into it.
She’s gone. Not in bloody chunks gone or disappeared into the center of the Earth gone. There’s no sign of her at all, no proof she was ever in the hole in the first place.
Dropping my arm, Lynx mutters, “That can’t be possible.” Looking fascinated, he paces around towards the other side of the hole, neatly avoiding the wreckage in his path. His next words are muffled and distant. “I’ve heard of this sort of thing, but I didn’t think it was...”
I reach up and stick a finger in my ear, swirl it around for a second. My fingertip comes back covered in dust from the explosion and a few things I’d rather not look at too closely, but it restores some of my hearing. I repeat the action on the other ear, taking a step back from the giant hole as Mateo slides down into it, looking a little too proud of himself.
“Olivia Lewis.” The voice in my ear is so close, so sudden, that I startle forward—and then ten claws dig into my arms, keeping me still, preventing me from getting away. They’re more than just flesh and bone; they dig into me with fire and drain my strength, severing my connection to the demons. “I’d like to pluck her wings. I’ll kill the weak, pretty bird slowly.”
Ezra sees what’s happened first, but the White Phoenix has me already. “There are so many weaklings to choose from. Sam Leong... a tiger shouldn’t be so fragile. Liam James will taste so sweet.”
Her voice echoes in my ear as Lynx lunges towards her, rope around his fist, aiming a punch right for her cheek—he shimmers and goes right through, as incorporeal as a ghost.
I try to concentrate on bringing him back, but the pain. There’s so much of it. I can’t think past it, c
an’t act past it.
She drags me backwards with just the claws in my arms, making me cry out in agony. I hear Sebastian chant, “No pain, no pain, no pain,” desperate to take it all away and soothe me, but without his corporeal form he’s powerless to help.
Mateo shoots his useless gun, and the bullets go right through her.
Ezra’s face twists in angry agony as his sword pierces nothing.
Back she drags me, through the ruins of the house, glass and plaster crunching beneath her bare feet. Her arms are twisted with black blood. Looking down, my stomach churns as I realize the black of her veins is draining through her claws and into me, sending rivulets of dark grey down my skin.
“Petra Smith... a strong one, one I’ll leave for last.” Her words send a chill through me as I realize she truly means to kill every last student on her list. “Irene James, she’ll go before that, maybe Kristy Owens too, who will surely scream for mercy. Amber McGonnell, so weak, prey animals shouldn’t be let into the school at all.”
The guys are arguing with each other, but I can barely see or hear them anymore. Something about what she’s doing to me is fading the connection, yanking it away so it withers and dies.
Or maybe it’s me that’s withering and dying.
I can hear Lynx, his voice a distant whisper, trying to come up with a plan. “We’ll become corporeal and protect her, and then—”
Mateo cuts in, angry. “If we’d told her what she was all along, this never would’ve happened.”
I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but it doesn’t matter. As the White Phoenix drags her claws out of my arm all I know is pain. My scream is muffled as she pushes me down onto the couch face-first, then yanks me around hard, her blaring white eyes staring down at my chest.
The black runs through her now, every inch of her skin covered in it like lines of ink, darkest in her chest where her body was torn to pieces. Curling behind her back, her white wings look like two dying things, delicate lace full of big black holes, Swiss cheese from tip to tip.
“Your heart will make me free and whole,” she says, her hair falling forward and brushing against my body. There’s something familiar about her voice now; without the power wrapped around it, I feel like I’ve heard that careful tone before, those clipped syllables. “One, two, three...”
She taps her claws along my chest, then with a feral grin, positions them right above my heart. In a low, creepy voice, she chants, “Tha-thump, tha-thump, until it doesn’t anymore.”
“Don’t kill them,” I say, as the tips of her claws tear through my T-shirt and scrape against the skin of my chest. “They don’t deserve to die.”
I don’t know if I’m talking about the demons or my classmates—even the worthless, gossiping, rumor-starting ones—but it doesn’t seem to matter. Cocking her head to the side, she licks her lips and shoves her fingers into my chest.
I scream.
Claws scrape bone.
Everything tears wide open.
When I pass out, mercifully, the last thing I hear is a mournful, agonizing cry that chokes off into a bellow of anger.
And all the pain goes away at once.
Chapter 23
“No pain. No pain. No pain.” The voice is so low and quiet that I feel the words more than hear them, soft warm lips pressed against my temple, fingers twined in my hair and supporting my head. Words caress my skin. “Take her pain away.”
There’s a wetness on my cheek that I don’t understand. Looking up towards the white ceiling, I cast through my recent memory and shy away: hand in my chest, claws tearing open my ribs, sharp points digging into my heart. The oblivion of death, felt a second time, was a welcome release, and it took the pain away.
Or maybe he did. “Sebastian?” Licking my dry lips, I try to turn towards him, but his face is pressed flush with my cheek. His hair tickles against my lips, smelling softly of rainwater; he’s stretched out beside me on the couch, body half-covering mine, a weight I know is there but can barely feel. “There’s no pain.”
Pulling back enough that his blue eyes can meet mine, a strange rim of red around them, he nods. “That’s me. But it’s taking a lot of effort.” I start to glance towards my chest, but his fingers dig into my chin. His voice is sharp, clipped as he says, “Don’t look down.”
So it’s bad. I swallow, and below the neck I feel nothing but numbness. “I think I died. I lost my life.”
“Lucky for you, phoenix get a few of those.”
The headmaster said I had a dozen. Mentally, I cross one of the list. “Where is she?”
Sebastian glances up, eyes shadowed, face so close to mine that I can see the specks of dark blue swimming in his cold, ice eyes. “They chased her up the stairs. I stayed down here with you. To make sure she didn’t take your heart.”
A shudder goes through me, and I feel a brief tha-thump inside my chest as my heart contracts. “We have to do something.”
There are footsteps down the stairs, and Lynx comes around the corner, barely in my line of sight. Breathless, he says, “We forced her to the attic. I tied her down with everything I’ve got. Mateo is going to guard her with his gun. Ezra is—how’s Dani?”
“Okay,” I answer, as Sebastian says, “Not well.” Again, I swallow, wondering if there’s a hole in my chest, wondering why I can’t feel anything. “Can I see?”
Blue eyes stare down at me, steady. “Give it another minute.”
Lynx peers over, trying to see between Sebastian’s body and mine. He whistles, low and dark. “Yeah Dani, don’t look.”
Mind scrambling to think of something besides the hole that must be in my chest right now, I ask them both, “How come you’re corporeal right now?”
A weighted glance crosses between them that I barely understand. Lynx answers, “When you died—or started dying—I don’t know exactly, but suddenly we were here. I think it had something to do with what she was about to do to you.”
“We’re still anchored to you, though,” Sebastian murmurs, fingers smoothing back my hair. “Death didn’t get rid of that part of the deal.”
I don’t want to let them know how relieved that makes me feel.
More footsteps come down the stairs, and Ezra moves into my line of sight. He’s splattered with blood, his sword held out in front of him, dripping wet and dark red. His eyes roam through the room silently, then meet mine.
“How is she?”
Glancing down, Sebastian looks towards my chest and nods, his expression shifting to something like relief. He moves off the couch slowly, carefully, keeping one hand on my chest, the other lifting slowly away from my face. “You can look down.”
Cautiously, I sit up and glance down towards my chest. And suck in a breath.
My shirt is ripped open, the bra beneath gone, exposing half my upper body to the guys. But I find that in a time like this I don’t care, and it doesn’t matter; there’s nothing sexual about the way Sebastian’s fingers press against the edge of what was an open wound.
Like a star with five points, a large, bright red stretch of new skin and scar tissue splays across the place where my heart is, from the flat of my chest up onto half of my left breast. The scar has five points, positioned like four fingers and a thumb, each puncture wound marked with a dark red, raised scar.
Everything about it looks fresh and brand new. My ribs creak with every breath, as if newly remade, rejoined after being broken open by a feral monster. The pain had to have been unbearable, but I felt nothing.
Looking over at Sebastian, I’m struck by the tired edge to his eyes, the way his dark hair presses to his forehead, which is damp with sweat. “This must have taken a lot of effort for you.”
“Your body did the healing,” he says dismissively. “I’m just taking the pain away.”
And taking it into himself. I swallow. “I don’t want it to hurt you.”
His jaw clenches, stubbornness flashing in his eyes. “It’s nothing compared to what you woul
d feel if I took my hand off you now.”
“Speaking of.” Grabbing a half-destroyed pillow off the ground, Lynx pulls off the ripped pillowcase and gently covers the giant hole in my shirt, leaving just enough skin exposed that Sebastian’s fingers stay in contact with my chest. He shrugs at Ezra’s incredulous look. “It’s hard to concentrate around exposed nipples.”
A snorted giggle escaped my mouth. “Seriously? You’ve spent half my classes shirtless.”
“And you were distracted, so I would know.”
“Enough.” Ezra’s firm voice cuts through the hysterical, after-death shenanigans. “Lynx, you said you might be able to find a way to kill her once and for all. That tie down you’ve got her in won’t work forever, especially once she’s healed enough to teleport out of here like she did last time.”
“Oh, right. I need the book.” Searching through the chaos on the floor, he finds the black cover of The Arcane Arts of the Living and the Dead and blows dust off it with a triumphant expression on his face. “Still intact! And just the thing we need to end this once and for all.”
“Good. Sebastian, you get Dani out of here. We’ll figure this out on our own.”
Lynx frowns. “Ezra, we can’t do this—”
“We’re not risking her,” he insists, voice overlapping with Lynx’s. “She’s already died once at the White Phoenix’s hands. It’s clear she wants her heart, and we can’t let her have it.”
“Don’t I get any say in this?” It feels ridiculous trying to assert myself in a lying down position, so I slowly sit up, Sebastian’s fingers moving with me, flattening out against the bare skin of my stomach. Aware of how undignified it is to debate a topic naked, I pull the fabric of my shirt closed around my healing wound and newly-scarred chest. “You guys are only here now because of me. You’re only corporeal because of me, and we don’t even know how long this latest moment is going to last. I can’t leave you to that psycho bitch. Especially not when she’s threatening to kill my friends.”