“How many are we expecting?” I asked as I circled around. A question I should have asked sooner, but I’d been excited to come. Like a puppy going for a walk.
“One,” Father said. “You are to say nothing.”
“Of course,” I threw back. I was young in my late teens, green, but no fool. I knew this world well already.
I came around to his side, satisfied that there was no entry behind us. The only way in or out was through the door we’d entered and now both faced.
So much for that belief. The door slammed shut and a sharp wind raced through the room hard and fast, knocking my father back in the chair.
The fireplace groaned and the bricks around it began to shift, opening the space so it was no longer a fireplace but a wide pit the length of the table and half as wide. The heat in the room ratcheted up as the flames licked higher, reaching out for us with hands. Flame hands.
I held my ground but it was difficult. My father scuttled out of his chair and stood behind me. A part of me was proud, because I was doing my job. I was protecting him.
Drawing on Zee’s training, I let the fear flow through me and didn’t fight it, but used it to heighten my senses and reflexes.
“Romanoooooooo.” A voice boomed out of the fucking fireplace.
“I . . . I am here,” my father stuttered and managed to move out from directly behind me to the side of the table farthest from the flames. Whatever sweat I produced dried before it could drip down my skin. I forced myself to control my breathing so I didn’t end up panting like my father.
He was sucking for wind like a fish out of water.
A body stepped out of the flames, ten feet tall, heaving with muscle and flames along the limbs that were nothing but blackened flesh. “I am Bazixal. You called on me and I answered. You claim a deal and you come to make it now. Unless you have changed your mind?”
Holy shit, my father made a deal with the devil? That was what we were here for?
“Dad, this isn’t a good idea,” I said, moving toward him. My job was to protect him, which meant I had to get him out of here. Now.
I reached his side and put a hand on his shoulder. He backhanded me, catching me off guard. I took a step back, tasting blood.
“I told you not to say a word,” he snarled at me.
I clamped my mouth shut and gave him a tight nod. If the fool wanted to make a deal with the devil, then I wouldn’t stop him. But I’d remind him of this moment one day. That I’d tried to save him from himself.
“Here is the deal in writing.” Bazixal held a piece of parchment out to my father. My father reached over the table and took the paper.
“What is this, a joke? I can’t read this nonsense.”
“It is as we discussed. Power and prestige and the other gifts you require for the price I require of you.” The demon’s voice curled around me like a constrictor. I wanted to slash at it with my knives, to drive it away from me. The fear he induced was nothing I’d ever experienced before, like I could shatter to pieces if he so much as looked at me.
As if my thoughts called to him, the demon started around the table toward me. My father moved backward, away from the man that was anything but.
I did not.
I planted my feet even though my head screamed at me to run, to save myself from the come-to-life monster in front of me. I refused to back down from this creature. Just another abnormal ready to be ended by my hands.
“I kill monsters like you.” The words slid from me, ice against the flames.
The demon leaned over me, his eyes drawing mine. “You have great fire in you, Phoenix. Perhaps one day I will taste your wrath, but not this day.”
I glared up at him, holding to every bit of training Zee had given me. How to keep the fear at bay, how to stare down the monsters, how to hold your ground. My knees were locked but trembling as the demon looked me over, and it was only then that I realized the heat around us was curling up through my hair, lifting it in a wave away from my neck.
“Your price is as we discussed?” Father said, breaking the spell. “Two as well as mine?”
“It is.” The demon turned from me. “Two of any flavor.”
His eyes, black as night, flicked back to me. “I will take the strongest for my own, Luca Stephan Romano.” Those eyes flicked and jigged, dancing as if alive with some sort of parasite.
My father pulled a knife, pricked his finger and signed the paper while I watched in horror that he would actually go through with this madness. “It’s done.”
The demon snapped his fingers and the paper flew to him. He looked it over and gave a low chuckle. “Done it is, and better than I could have hoped. I will send you three guardians as agreed upon, to help you in your quests for power.” The devil laughed then and the sound rumbled through me, cutting the last of my strength in my legs. I had to reach out and grab the table to keep from falling.
Bazixal stepped back into the pit and the bricks around him shifted again and then the fire dropped to nothing, dead, black, cold. But the heat stayed with me for days, waking me in the dead of night with the feeling that I was being roasted alive.
I opened my eyes, my heart racing as if I stood in the presence of the demon once more. There was a brush of cold against my cheek, like fingertips trying to soothe me. I ignored Martin’s attempts to get my attention. “At least, that confirms what we’re seeing here.” I pointed at the translation.
“It does, and it’s rather concerning how well you remember it. That does not bode well.” The professor sat with his fingers steepled under his chin.
I stared at him. “What do you mean it doesn’t bode well?”
He laughed softly. “You remember every detail, down to your father striking you. Not good. You see, there will be some people who want to use you, but in order to do that, you can’t know the truth. For that, I must take your memory from you. Mancini, as my benefactor, wouldn’t want you to remember everything.”
I started to ask him what the fuck Mancini had to do with this deal, but then his body began to shift, elongating and stretching upward until his head brushed the ceiling fifty feet up.
I had Dinah out and firing before the professor even completed his shift. I only knew two things. One, I couldn’t let him take this memory from me, and two, I had to get that skin back.
“Killian!” I yelled for him, the professor stood between us. Abe let out a sharp bark and then he dodged in around the professor’s spindly legs. He bit at the back of them, tearing the flesh and drawing a scream from the now overly tall abnormal that swayed above us. His movements reminded me of the Stick Man, of how he seemed so fragile in the thin makeup of his body. But that had been a lie, and I suspected this would be the same here with the professor.
The professor’s skin was tight over his bones, stretched and taut, and Dinah’s bullets bounced off him like it was armor instead of skin.
Lightning arced up around us in the small space and the professor bent backwards, howling through clenched teeth as Killian nailed him. The crack of molars on molars was rather satisfying and I used that moment to leap toward the desk the professor now straddled. I landed on my belly, slid across and grabbed the deal and fell off the other side, rolling as I hit. As fast as I could, I was up on my feet and bolting around the side.
Something tugged at me, a cold brush. “Come on, Martin.” I didn’t know why that ghost had to come with me, but he did. Then again, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to stay with the professor.
There was a chuckle in my ear that I ignored as I bolted for the only exit. “Abe, hier!”
Abe was to me in a flash and Killian was right behind me as I sprinted through the tight, dark hall that would lead us out. Warmth trickled down the side of my face. Blood, but whose?
We burst out of the small door, tumbling over one another in an attempt to keep moving.
Abe circled around me until I got back to my feet. Killian and I ran like children running from the cranky old neighbo
r down the street. Only this neighbor was trying to hurt us, not just yell at us to get off his fucking lawn.
The floor of the main hall bucked and rolled as we ran across it, sending us flying in opposite directions.
I hit a wall hard and slid to the floor.
“Dinah.”
“I’m here. I don’t understand why my bullets won’t pierce his flesh. That dirty old bastard needs to die!” she snarled.
I didn’t disagree, but again I was reminded of the Stick Man. The professor looked like him; it seemed reasonable that his body might have similar defenses. “Think Stick Man! Right now, we need to get the fuck out of here.”
I pushed off the floor and sprinted toward the big double doors until I realized it was just me and Abe. I spun.
Killian was pinned against the far wall, a long, narrow hand and fingers pressed to his throat. The professor’s hand as he climbed through the floor. I had Dinah up and fired three times in the space of a heartbeat. Right into the professor’s wrist. The bones shattered even though the skin didn’t break. It was enough that he dropped Killian. “Abe, bewache!” I gave him the skin document, right into his mouth. He sat where he was, even though he trembled.
I ran toward Killian, sliding to a stop as the professor pushed himself farther up out of the floor, coming for us.
“Motherfucker.” I growled the word, the fury of protecting someone I loved rising through me with my flames. My hands caught fire first, the blue and purple heat rising around me as the professor came at me. I lifted Dinah and shot, sending my fire through her and into the bullet like I did with the electricity.
The bullet drove into his chest, burrowing in past the hardened skin and straight into his heart. He froze as the bullet dug deeper, his twilight eyes going to mine.
“The righteous anger of a woman defending her family is a sight to behold, even in death. Beware the demon, for he will wish you to be his own.”
He fell backward, his legs still in the hole he’d created in the ground, his back cracking as he dropped.
The flames around me faded and I waited until the professor’s chest stopped moving.
“We are a fucking rock star team,” Dinah said. “That was amazing!”
I turned toward Killian, going to a knee. “Hey, you all right?”
He blinked those green eyes up at me, confusion and then anger filling them. “Who the fuck do you be?”
9
Killian’s confusion was contagious. I stared right back at him. The professor he’d taken us to who deciphered the deal my father had made with the devil lay dead behind us. But not before he’d tried to kill us both, or maybe just take our memories. It made sense that he would have that ability though, to take memories, create a world of history inside his head and then teach it to unwitting students.
And that’s when it slammed into me.
“Holy shit, he took your memories.” I breathed the words, shock filtering through me along with the implications.
Killian pushed up and away from me as he looked around. “Why am I in the university?”
I stepped away from him. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
He hesitated, his eyes going distant as he pulled on his memories, or what was left of them. “Going to Barron’s.”
I squinted one eye because I didn’t dare close them both, not right then. “That was right before we met for the first time, Killian.” Shit, this was not going to help anyone. Least of all me and Bear.
“And you are?” He arched an eyebrow.
Yeah, this was not going to go well, but I still needed him, and I did not mean in the emotional sense, not at all. I snapped my fingers and Abe trotted to my side. I took the skin document from him and tucked it into my sister’s journal and put that under my shirt. There was only one truth that might keep Killian with me now. Because there were no feelings left in him for me. I ignored the pang in the region of my heart.
“You were going to help me kill Romano. We have a way to do it.” I tapped the journal. “We came to the professor for more information and then he tried to take my memory. Instead he took yours.”
Killian shook his body a little. “How can I trust you? Are we fucking?”
“Nope. And stop fucking asking about it.” I turned away from him, hoping he would follow. But I wasn’t going to stand there and argue with him. There was not time to fix this mess and kill Romano and get Bear back. The loss of his memory was a pain in the ass, but it wouldn’t change the course of what I had to do. I’d just have to go it alone.
A tiny bit of my heart reminded me that Tommy had said the memories could come back, if the one they’d been taken from searched for them, if they wanted to know what was in their past.
Nothing new there.
Again, I did what I could to ignore the pang in my heart region and banished all the thoughts I had of someday, of maybe when this was over, or we’d deal with it later. Killian had been right: there was no knowing when we’d lose each other. Or that we could lose each other without even being dead.
“Are you crying, Lass?”
“Fuck off.” I hadn’t realized he’d caught up to me or that there were tears sliding down my cheeks. Again, there was a brush of cold against my back. Martin then was sticking around for sure.
I made my way to the Humvee, brushing my face clear of the tears. “Can you fly for me?”
Killian’s eyebrows shot up. “You hired me as your pilot?”
“It’s a long story, and I doubt you’d believe it. But your pilot is dead, and we’re on a time crunch to kill Romano.” I let Abe into the backseat and then took a seat in the passenger side.
I wanted to deny the tears but perhaps a few had slipped out. Damn it, I did not need this shit. This emotional realization that he meant more to me than I wanted to admit was rough.
Killian slid into the driver’s seat and turned the engine over. “The plane’s here then?”
“Yes.”
“You going to fill in the gaps, Lass?”
His use of the word Lass almost undid me. I took a breath and then spoke, filling him in on autopilot, the words just a numb recitation of what had happened so far. “My name is Phoenix. I was Romano’s boogeyman. He’s taken my son, and to get him back I need to kill Romano. You were helping me; my ten-year-old son saved your life at one point and you felt obligated to return the favor.
“We’ve got the original deal between Romano and the devil that has extended his life. We brought it to the professor to translate to make sure we got it all. Then said professor decided I remembered too much and that Mancini wouldn’t like that so he attacked us. I guess he thought you needed to have that memory of me speaking my memory silenced. From here, the plan is to go to Jackson Hole, get Brikoff working on a magic bullet, and see if we can figure out the next step from there.”
Killian said nothing as I spoke, as I went through the details of the things we’d done, of who we’d eliminated, of what we had ahead of us.
I drew a breath as we reached the quiet airport for a second time.
“You expect me to come with you then, to risk my life for a kid I don’t remember?”
I shook my head. “No, I expect that you will want to help me kill Romano to secure your place in the underworld as the new top dog.”
I couldn’t believe I was having to even have this conversation. At least he hadn’t drawn on me, because I wasn’t sure I could pull the trigger on him. And that was dangerous. I needed to be able to eliminate anyone who stood between me and Bear, even if that person was Killian.
“I need you to fly for me,” I repeated. “Will you do that? The possibility is there that your memory could come back. If you wanted it to.” That last bit . . . what if he didn’t want to figure out how his memories were attached to me? No, I could not go there. I had a job to do and that job was kill one person, save a kid. That was it.
He rubbed a hand over his lips and looked at me, really looked at me as if he were trying to read
something only he could see on my face. “Aye, I can do that much for you. But you can’t expect anything else.”
It was the best I was going to get and I shook his hand on it.
Moments later, we were on the plane, and moments after that, in the air. I stayed in the back because I didn’t want to see the distrust on his face. Distrust I hadn’t even earned. I snorted to myself.
“You should just fuck him. He’d do you even now, you know,” Dinah said.
I slapped a hand over her. “Shut up, Dinah, or I’ll never let the lightning run through you again.”
She huffed. “That’s rude.”
“That’s a little sister knowing how horny her big sister was before, and based on previous encounters, it hasn’t changed.”
Dinah let out a laugh but I didn’t laugh with her. There was nothing funny about any of this. I’d just lost my best ally to a twist of fate I’d not seen coming. Across from me, the seat cushions depressed and Abe watched, his head tipped to one side.
A voice whispered to me.
You aren’t afraid of me.
“No, Martin,” I said. “I’m not. I’d like to know why you are with me, though.”
The depression shifted a little and then I had the impression he leaned forward. You will walk into the void soon. You’re going to need my help. I can see a bit of the future. You will lead me to my savior. But only if I help you survive to reach her.
“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Dinah grumbled. I agreed with her.
“Okay, Martin. I’ll take it. But let’s be clear, I am not your savior.”
No, that you are not.
His laughter rose and faded and the air around me warmed once more. Abe gave a snorting huff as if he’d scared the ghost away.
I stood and went to the door into the cockpit. “Killian, how long to Jackson Hole?”
“A couple hours, tops.”
I turned to leave and he reached out his hand, snagging my wrist. “No, sit with me, here.”
There was no reason for me not to. Except that it involved my feelings for Killian, and all those did right now were frustrate me and apparently produce tears, which other than for Justin’s death, I had never given to a man. But I sat and slid a headset on over one ear.
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