[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

He let out a whine and pushed his nose under my arm, hiding his face as if he at least knew what was coming. I yanked a harness on around me, tangling it with Abe in the hopes we’d both make it through.

  There was a moment of absolute quiet as the engine of the helicopter flicked off and electricity crawled over the metal, creeping toward me and Tommy. I took one look at him and grabbed a parachute from my side and flung it at him as the helicopter flipped sideways and the door clicked open. We spun hard, he stumbled toward me, and his hands jammed against my sides, pushing Dinah and Eleanor against my ribs. They squawked and I shoved Tommy with the parachute.

  “Jump!” The engines flicked on as suddenly as they’d gone off, and we were thrown hard to the right as if a giant fist had slammed into the metal. My last thought as the lightning crawled over my body, as Abe howled for all he was worth, was that I didn’t think I liked Killian’s family any more than I liked mine.

  2

  Crashing metal, the howl of my dog, the loss of oxygen as I tried to pull all the electricity away from Abe and take it into myself.

  Bits and pieces of the fall from the sky flicked through my mind like chunks out of a movie. The rotor blades slowing, Tommy flipping out with the parachute, Killian leaping to cover my body with his own.

  And then the electricity as it had slammed through us, knocking me out no matter how hard I’d pulled it away from Abe.

  Abe.

  “Assholes.” I groaned the word as I came fully around, my hands searching for my four-legged companion. His fur was as soft as ever, but I felt nothing moving under it. Panic set in as I scrambled to get myself out of the straps. “Abe.”

  His body was limp as I got myself unbuckled and went to my knees beside him. The helicopter was on its side, the open door buried in the ground, my knees pressed into grass and dirt.

  “Abe, don’t do this to me.” I took his long muzzle and lifted it to my face but there was no warm breath escaping his nose.

  “Here.” Killian pushed me aside and his hands crackled. “It’ll help or it won’t.” He put his hands on Abe’s side and a pulse of electricity jumped through him. Once, twice, three times.

  My jaw ached from holding it so tightly. I knew we were wasting time. I knew that whoever had downed us was waiting on us to come out and face them, or maybe they thought we’d be dead.

  And we were trying to save my dog. But he was Bear’s dog, and I just couldn’t let him die without trying to fight for him.

  Abe sucked in a breath and groaned, his tail thumped once and I couldn’t help the rush of air that escaped me. “Don’t do that, Abe!”

  His tail thumped again and he tried to lift his head.

  Killian looked at me. “Lass, you be okay?”

  I nodded and the pains in my body finally made themselves known, from the bruises on my back to the sharper pains in my ribs where Tommy had fallen against me. “Alive.”

  At least we were on the ground and not still in the air. That was something. “Abe, stay.” I rubbed a hand over his face and he closed his eyes, not fighting me on my command.

  I pushed to my knees and looked around us as my hands went to Dinah and Eleanor. “Ladies?”

  “Here,” Dinah said softly. “Are you okay?”

  “Bruises only,” I said, and already those bruises were healing. Points for learning about being an abnormal and tapping into the power. Go me.

  “Eleanor?” I reached and touched my other gun. She didn’t answer. I looked down to see the butt of a gun sticking out. But I didn’t even need to pull it to know it was not Eleanor. I yanked out the look-alike Berretta.

  “Eleanor?” I spun on my knees, searching the area. The scene hit me hard—Tommy had fallen into me, jamming both guns against my ribs . . . “Tommy, you piece of shit!” I shot to my feet, shaking.

  “What happened?” Dinah asked, panic in her voice. “Where is Eleanor?”

  “Tommy snatched her when I pushed him from the helicopter.” I growled the words, anger and fear making my movements hard and fast despite the fading bruises.

  Killian stood beside me. “Why would he take Eleanor?”

  I closed my eyes, thinking about the possible reasons. Tommy had been working with Noah, who’d been working with Justin. Tommy had to know what would kill Romano, and maybe part of that was Eleanor. “Because he believes she can kill Romano. Fucking moron.” Some of my anger leached away. Tommy wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was trying to kill Romano. And that could be forgiven. Maybe. As long as I got her back.

  I had no time to guess at how right or wrong I might be because the helicopter jerked around us. I lifted Abe and moved to one side, keeping my feet on the ground. The helicopter lifted into the sky once more. As it went, the helicopter righted itself, chunks of grass and dirt falling through the air. We scrambled to keep out of the way from the shifting metal frame.

  Fuck, I did not need to crash-land again.

  Killian dropped a hand on my shoulder and tugged me close. “Listen to me. My family are not only capable of lightning, though that is the power held by the strongest of us. They are weather controllers—all of them.”

  Of course they were. That explained the way the helicopter had fallen in such an orderly measure even after the blades had stopped moving. I felt around inside me, looking for the pool of lightning that I suspected would be there. My lower back rumbled with it, ready to use. “Dinah, you ready?”

  “I wish Eleanor were here, but I’ll do all the killing you need,” she growled.

  I adjusted Abe in my arms so I could pull Dinah from her holster and switch her to my left hand. “Sorry, but I need you here.”

  She shivered. “I understand.”

  I was faster with my left, and my right hand was a good place for another kind of weapon. One that was just a simple gun.

  The helicopter jerked suddenly as if it would come crashing down on us and we both stumbled to the side. A move to literally put us off balance, clever, but also a serious dick move considering this was Killian’s family.

  “Going to take more than that to make me like them,” I said.

  “Let me try and talk them down.” Killian tightened his hand on me. “If it goes sideways, you’ll know.”

  I snorted. “Sure thing.” I laid Abe at my feet.

  Through the dust stood a semi-circle of seven people that ranged in age and size, from a tiny woman who could be no more than five feet at best, to a man well over seven feet with flaming red hair and beard.

  But it was the woman in the middle who was our problem, and I knew it the second my eyes locked with hers. She had enough of Killian in her facial features that I was betting she was his mother, or maybe older sister. Hard to say with the agelessness of her face. Her eyes were wide, and though I couldn’t see the color, I guessed green like Killian’s. Those eyes narrowed when I didn’t blink or look away.

  Score one for me, I’d already pissed her off.

  Killian stepped out in front first, from the shadow of the helicopter. I followed him, staying behind and to his left.

  “Mam, what be going on? That is no way to welcome the son home who is your bread and butter.” Killian spread his arms out, showing he had no weapons, his Irish accent thicker than I’d ever heard it. I, on the other hand, brought Dinah up and held her with both hands, sighting down his mom in the middle of the group of seven.

  Her long blond hair flying around her face, her feet lifted off the ground as she floated toward us. Impressive, I suppose, but I’d seen scarier. And if she could only control the wind, then she wasn’t as strong as Killian, which should work in our favor.

  I kept Dinah on her. “Hold.”

  “I’m ready,” my gun whispered back to me.

  “Killian,” his mother said, her voice soft and lilting with an accent that made Killian’s seem mild, “we told you that we didn’t want you causing trouble. That we liked the status quo. But here you are, tangling with things you would be better off ignoring. Like that one there.” She f
licked a hand at me and I smiled back.

  “Not causing trouble, Mam. Just chasing down the bad boys to give them a spankin’.” Killian grinned, and I wondered if it would work on his mother.

  She frowned and the wind whipped around him, picking him up. His hands went to his throat.

  That was sideways enough for me.

  I squeezed Dinah’s trigger as I stepped to the right. I hit Killian’s “Mam” in the shoulder, spinning her backward. Killian fell to the ground, but I couldn’t look at him. The other members of his family rushed us and there was no time to second-guess.

  I did my best to hit them in non-lethal, but debilitating places. Knees. Shoulders. Hips. Feet. Hands. Not pretty, bone-crushing, but at least they’d have a life after I was done with them—

  Lightning arced from the sky and slammed into me, throwing me backward, my back arching so hard, I was sure my head would touch my heels. I didn’t fight the current. I let it slide through me, let it pool under my skin, gathering it even as it stole my breath and tried to stop my heart. Mancini’s words replayed back to me that an Ascendant like me had taken in too much power from someone else, and it had killed him.

  But I could feel it in my belly that if I didn’t keep taking it, the electricity would stop my heart.

  A split second before I knew it would be too much, the current stopped.

  I hit the ground and lay there a moment, doing all I could to remember how to breathe.

  “Killian, we don’t like your choice in women,” his mother said with a voice filled with anger.

  Damn it, everyone thought we were fucking each other. I sucked in a hard, pain-laced breath and sat up.

  “Fuck you.” I flicked my hands at the group, sending the electrical current I’d pulled in from both the helicopter and the last blow back at the Irish folks. They could dish it out, but could they take it?

  The blue lightning danced out of me in six perfect streaks that slammed into each member of Killian’s family at the same time. They were blown back, flipped three or four times each and at least thirty feet away from us, and then finally there was blessed silence.

  I deliberately didn’t take out his mother.

  I pushed to my feet, wobbled and made my way to Killian while his mother watched with big eyes, her lips tight with anger and pain. I kicked him in the leg. “Get up and tell your mother I’ll kill her if she doesn’t fuck off right now.”

  Killian rolled to his knees and then stood. I didn’t try to brace him. Didn’t give him my hand. We needed this to be clear cut—we were not a couple; this was a business arrangement we had and nothing more.

  Not to mention, I didn’t want him to look weak in front of his family.

  “You are not Irish,” his mother said. I turned only my head toward her, lifting Dinah as I did.

  “No shit. And you are not a very nice mother.” I glared at her.

  “You have a child?” She arched an eyebrow.

  “I do.” I stared back at her. “And let me tell you, a mother who tries to choke the life out of her own son? If you were on fire, I wouldn’t spit on you.”

  “My son has been a thorn in my side for many years,” she purred.

  I didn’t like that she used the same words for Killian that my own father had used for me. Which made me wonder if there was a connection, and those two pieces slid together. “You’re working for Romano, aren’t you?”

  Killian jerked beside me as if I’d shot him. “Mam, tell me you haven’t defected to that piece of shit?”

  She smirked. “The pay is far better, and the man is a beast between the sheets.”

  I had Dinah up and pressed to her temple so fast, her smirk was still on her face. “Killian, say it.”

  His mother looked past me. “He won’t. He be soft, like his brothers.”

  I laughed softly. “Wonder why he brought me, then? I’m the bitch Romano made.”

  Her eyes slid to me and I smiled at her as I let the emptiness of my killing blood float through me, let the darkness that was death in my world rise until it filled me and I felt nothing but the trigger under my finger and the pulse of my heart and hers. Her eyes were as green as I’d thought they would be and they widened as her smirk slid from her face—finally.

  “Who are you?”

  “Who do you think I am?” I whispered.

  Her throat bobbed. “I can guess. Romano said you be traveling with Killian, but I didn’t believe it. I thought you be dead. The Shadow—”

  “Is nothing to me. Besides, the dead rise from time to time. You should know that, living in this world.” I pressed Dinah a little harder against her temple. “Killian, what do you want to do with her?”

  He stepped up beside me. “She’ll go to Romano, and that’s if she doesn’t try to take us down on our way.”

  I couldn’t look at him, but I heard the indecision in his voice. There was some love still there for his family. I did not have that connection with my own surviving parent, but I understood. I dropped my hand, she smiled, and I shot her in the belly.

  The boom rattled around us, Dinah howled with laughter, and Killian’s mom clutched at her wound, her eyes widening as the blood spread and slid over her white shirt. “You . . .”

  I shot her again, a little higher, closer to her diaphragm.

  “That should slow you down,” I said. “And maybe you’ll think twice before fucking with either of us, yes?”

  She fell backward, her eyes rolling as she passed out. I stared at her and the wounds that were already healing. Maybe I’d been wrong about how strong she was.

  “That won’t hold her back for long,” I said. Killian didn’t move from beside me and I didn’t dare put Dinah away. “Where to now?”

  He snapped out of his daze. “This was our destination. I’d planned to come home for a bit and recharge, to gather the things that we could use. None of them were supposed to be here.” Killian’s voice was oddly detached. At least, for him.

  I nodded. “They’ll be out for a bit, I think, but we don’t have a shit ton of time. We could grab what we need and go if the place is close enough.”

  He nodded. “Aye, let’s do that.”

  I went back to the helicopter and picked Abe up, sliding him over my shoulders so my hand could still be free to go for Dinah if need be. He grunted and let out a fart as the pressure on his belly increased.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Glad to see everything is working.”

  We started away from the still-unconscious bodies and the passed-out, bleeding-out woman who was his mother. “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Ellen.”

  “Nice meeting you, Ellen!” I gave a half-hearted wave back at her as we walked away. From the corner of my eye, I saw Killian smile.

  And that did a funny thing to my heart that I squashed immediately. I focused on the moment at hand. “What about Bobby?”

  “Didn’t make it,” Killian said. “They killed him as soon as they took control of the wind around the helicopter.”

  Bobby was—had been—Killian’s pilot. I didn’t like him, but if we had to fly something else, he would have been handy. Especially seeing as he had four arms, notwithstanding the one I’d broken at the elbow. Three was still better than two.

  I took a good look around and blinked a few times. We were on what appeared to be the back lawn attached to a giant-ass mansion that made the home I grew up in look like a white trash potato shack.

  “Shit, you grew up here?”

  “Nah, I grew up in Ireland.” Killian shook his head. “This be the home me mam wanted forever.”

  “How the hell did she manage this?” I looked at him, saw the look of chagrin cross his face and then got it. “Shit, you got it for her? You paid for this for that woman who just tried to kill us?”

  He shrugged. “I was stupid for a long time when it came to me family. Traditional Irish are tightknit, even if they don’t always get along. You fight, you drink, you make up. Then you do it all over again the nex
t day.”

  I blinked a few times. “Sounds lovely.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, well, I stopped funding her life a few years ago. She killed someone close to me, and I realized I was fooling myself. My family was never going to be what I thought they were. But I can’t seem to cut the ties with them that I should.”

  “Remarkably, I do understand that realization. Mine just came a few years ahead of yours.”

  He glanced at me. “Yeah, you’d be one of the few who would get it.”

  I did not like the warmth that flushed through me with his words. We understood each other; that was not a bad thing in a working partner. That was one good thing about Killian. For being the head of an Irish gang, he was damn honest. I valued that more than I wanted to admit, even to myself. That was more than I could say for my ex-partner, Simon.

  I grimaced at the thought of the chameleon who’d killed Zee, and almost killed the man beside me. I’d trusted Simon and been fucked over for that trust. I didn’t want to make that mistake again, but . . . Killian made me want to make it, as stupid as that was.

  Which meant that as much as I wanted to trust Killian, I had to reserve judgment. I had to keep something of a barrier between us so I wouldn’t be pulled off guard, so I wouldn’t be blindsided when he did something that would hurt me or someone I loved. Or . . . if I had to kill him at some point. My heart tightened on that thought with a pain that I normally reserved for my worries about Bear.

  But damn it, Killian had brought Abe back without question, without saying we needed to leave him behind. I didn’t want to believe that he was so devious as to be working me over that hard.

  “How long do you think they’ll be out?” I motioned back the way we’d come.

  “Thirty minutes, tops. Plenty of time for us to gather up the goods and get out.” We were at the back of the house now and Killian pulled the door open for me. I lowered Abe off my shoulders and he took a wobbling step and then another. A working dog at heart, he had his nose up and scenting the air immediately.

  He trotted through the door, his nose lifted as he sucked in the smells around us. No growls, so that was good. I followed him through and dropped a hand to the top of his head. “Good to have you back, buddy.” I scratched his ears and he gave me a soft woof.