Romance with a Bite

by Tamsin Baker

  “Up.”

  Hana had to admit, scaling the side of the building with the Dragon in tow was kinda fun. Whatever was happening in her body lent her extra strength and agility, and so they raced up stairwells, fire escapes, clambered up window sills and balconies, and she relished in her precarious grips and balance until finally they were on the den’s rooftop with the city laid out sparkling before their feet like the night sky reflected on a lake.

  The phoenix took long, deep pulls of the fresh air, spreading its wings inside her. The moonlight cooled the fire that burned deep in her core, flaming in anticipation of what was soon to come. Logan remained silent while she watched the city below her, her gaze catching on the rubble of the abandoned Phoenix Quarter.

  Finally, he said, “I want to show you something.”

  He fished in his jacket pocket, coming out with a dagger. It was thin and spindly with a white handle. On the handle was carved that symbol. The circle with the two slashes.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “The girl who you found on the sidewalk under my building?”

  She nodded, stomach roiling.

  “She attacked me with that, then leaped to her death.”

  Hana felt the truth of his statement tingle through her Phoenix markings.

  “What are those damn Tigers up to?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But, Hana, I need to play this carefully.” Preternatural stillness. He showed her his true face again, and she almost gasped at the otherworldly beauty. “I have a son, Sebastien. He is half Tiger.”

  The boy, with the silver hair, in the swimming pool.

  She swallowed.

  Chapter 37

  “You said his name, your son’s name, over and over, while you were out of it,’ she murmured. “‘Sebastien.’ Will the Tigers retaliate for you helping me?”

  “It’s the boy’s weekend with me, so I’ve asked Jyll and Alessio and the others to keep him entertained. They’ll keep him safe.”

  For now. The words lingered in the air.

  “I’ll explain it to the boy, see whether he’ll come live with me for a while.”

  Hana took a deep breath. “But his mother—”

  “His mother died in childbirth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His face softened again, the usual scowl replaced with something ancient and weary.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “You loved her.”

  He nodded. “We fought together in the Tiger’s wars. Had each other’s backs.”

  “The wars?”

  “Too long, Spitfire. For too long have I fought the Tiger’s battles, succumbed to the will of the Queen.”

  “Were you…did you fight in the Battle of Phoenix, all those centuries ago?”

  Heaviness settled in those otherworldly eyes. “I was but a youngling when that war struck. My father fought for the Tiger Queen, as did the majority of the Dragon Clan. But before he passed into the next realm, he told me stories of what it was like before the war. A time when all Clans were equal. It sounded like a peaceful time.”

  Perhaps that was what he’d tried to recreate in the garden room in his penthouse. It sang to her phoenix of ancient stands of redwoods, deep, wild forests and majestic mountain glens.

  She longed to reach out a finger to brush over his hand. “You have not felt peace in your existence, then?”

  “I admit I have been numb to the pleasures and pains of this world for what feels like an aeon. I sought only to protect my son, to bring my family’s influence to bear on his upbringing. I fear that, too, has been tainted by the Tiger Queen’s influence.”

  “Her influence is great. But my Clan has survived—hidden and desperate, yes—but we have survived alongside you, Dragon.”

  He paused, and a wary glint lit his eyes.

  “It seems that something has sparked my interest of late. Your fire, Spitfire, perhaps it can move a Dragon frozen solid in another time, another place. A dream.” He smirked. “I can sense your phoenix skimming my heart, Hana. Testing my intentions.”

  He looked amused.

  Heat flooded her face. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. If you can channel your ability, we might be able to gain the information we need without putting you in danger, without seeking out your family’s mausoleum.”

  She looked questioningly at him.

  “Did your gran tell you about the ancient Phoenix Fae’s abilities? About the truth-tellers?”

  “She talked about them being the keepers of Justice, that they upheld the truth above all else, yes.”

  “Some could read minds, others a person’s deepest desires. It is a powerful gift, but open to manipulation. If you know what a person most desires, and you can give it to them…”

  She nodded. This was why she had been able to reject his intrusion into her mind that first night at the Full Moon party. Why she knew the antique dealer had been lying, why she knew Logan spoke only the truth to her now.

  He continued, “Some of the Phoenix could tell the story of an object by holding it. Want to try?”

  She held the knife, her phoenix rippling over her skin. The symbol. Perhaps this knife could tell them the story of how it had been forged. Who had forged it, and why.

  “What do I do?”

  “Just let the phoenix guide you.”

  Hana gingerly took the knife by the bone handle, running her fingertips over the slashed through circle, lowering herself to crouch close to the ground. Logan followed her movements, placing a hand on her elbow, as though to steady her. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of the handle, smooth and cool under her fingertips.

  She scented a hint of that sweet, rotting decay, the darkness that had chased them, and her hand began to shake. She was aware of Logan shifting to sit behind her and she relaxed against his outstretched legs as he circled her into the warmth and strength of his body.

  Tears slid unbidden from her eyes and she dropped the knife, which clattered to the cement.

  “It’s subverted, like a fawn choking on its own blood. Where once was beauty and innocence, now lies destruction, death and chaos,” she gasped.

  “Who forged it?” he whispered, but Hana could not hope to contain or direct the visions that assailed her now.

  She was in the body of a Phoenix ancestor, a youngling, crouched under a broken and battered shield, around her on the battlefield were mountains of gold and scarlet. Her people, the Phoenix, screamed and cried and bled out on this field. The phoenix song that blasted through a horn on the plane begged her people to retreat, retreat, retreat.

  She shivered and shook, hiding under her shield, frozen in place, not daring to move lest she gain the attention of the great, stinking mass that scoured the plane, the entity that would leave none alive.

  The entity that would cleanse this plane of the enemy, the Clan that had disgraced its name and spiraled them all on this disastrous course. The Phoenix.

  Hana turned in Logan’s arms, not able to fight the sobs that wracked her body, nor escape the sensations of being on that plane. The mud under her shattered fingernails, the wound that oozed blood down her leg, the terror and despair that held her like a mouse under a snake’s gaze.

  “I can’t…I can’t…”

  Logan murmured soothing words in her ear, rubbed a hand over her back.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got you, Hana.”

  The echo of darkness throbbed and ebbed around her; the phoenix song mournful within her. All night, Hana was stuck on that plane, in that battle to end all battles. But she gritted her teeth and refused to come away from it. She would bear witness to what her ancestors had died for—and lived through—so that she may now live.

  All night, the Dragon held her.

  Later, much later, he murmured against her hair, “My brave, brave Phoenix. Never in all my centuries did I expect to see one such as you face up to the history of our Clans.
You amaze me,” he whispered, the awe plain in his voice. “Thank you, Spitfire, for having courage enough for all of us. We will fight the darkness together, Hana. That is my promise to you.”

  Then his lips found hers and he soothed and ignited and took her away from the pain and longing that wracked her body, her soul, until the sky turned deep blue, almost the shade of the Dragon’s eyes. Dawn was coming.

  And the vision yielded one last memory. The young girl, fingers numb and slow, her breath a rasp, had lasted the night on the plane, hiding beneath her shield. The frozen ground yielded to fingertips that sputtered embers. Hana could feel the last of the girl’s magics emptied out.

  What was so important that she’d saved the last of it for this moment, after all this time? The girl gasped and sobbed as the flames sputtered out. The scent of her despair was thick around her. Instead, she used her bloody fingertips doggedly, made that impossible hole in the frozen ground.

  The girl’s last movements were to take something from inside her tunic and carefully place it in the hole, covering it up with the packed, frozen dirt. A flask covered with all the Clan symbols. But on the inside, Hana sensed another, hidden symbol.

  A gold and scarlet circle slashed through with not two, but five lines. One for each of the Clans.

  That was not just any flask. It was the flask that was usually stashed in Mama Singh’s cupboard. The one Hana took with her each time she visited her family crypt, the one she’d smashed on the ground as she ran from the Tigers who had been raiding another Phoenix Clan mausoleum. Perhaps looking for Phoenix artefacts just like this one? The fear in the antique store owner’s face flashed into Hana’s mind.

  “I know where to find the symbol,” she said quietly, as she uncoiled to her feet, Logan a breath behind her as they both watched the sun rise over downtown, bathing it in golden light.

  The light of the Phoenix.

  That light was not gone from this world, not just yet.

  Not if Hana and Logan and their small band of rebels had anything to do with it.

  Chapter 38

  The Tiger compound would be on full alert. The fact that they didn’t need to break into her family crypt, only get close enough to seek out the broken shards of the flask beneath the tree on the edge of the cemetery was small comfort.

  Hana and Logan waited in the pines, for the distraction that Jyll and Alessio had set up around the northern side of the Jade Palace.

  “What?”

  Logan eyed his watch. “And, wait for it…”

  A red glow lit the horizon. Flames, Hana realized.

  “Your boys set a fire?” Hana asked, eyes wide.

  “The Tigers fear flame. It is the sign of the Phoenix. They’ll take this as a sign that the Phoenix are rising.”

  Hana smirked. “Well, perhaps we are.”

  Hana wanted to pace, to move, but Logan’s hand rested on the small of her back, soothing, calming, urging her to wait. Soon enough, there was movement atop the compound walls. The fire had been sighted, and Tigers poured from their den to deal with it.

  It was their signal to move. They did so carefully, Logan’s eyes crinkled in concentration. He kept a glamour around them as they inched closer to the stand of gums by the Phoenix Clan section of the cemetery. She tried feeding her power into the glamour, the reverse of what her magical instincts wanted to do. She could feel it now, the tendrils humming against her skin, gritting her teeth to get them to stay with her when they desired to dart out into the world to seek out the deceptions and lies. To seek out the truth. That is what we seek, she murmured to the licks of fire, as she stayed within the safety of Logan’s outstretched arms, the cage of his body protecting hers.

  Hana wracked her brain, trying to recall which gum she had climbed that night. She never sought out the same one, trying to keep herself free from detection.

  “I think it’s under that one,” she pointed in the direction of a tree right on the edge of the cemetery.

  Logan rolled his eyes. “Of course, it is.”

  She punched his arm, and couldn’t help the small tilt of her lips.

  “I thought my Dragon liked a walk on the wild side,” she said, and was gratified at the way his eyes heated as he looked down at her, the way his glamour flared out momentarily.

  He growled. “Eyes on the prize, Phoenix.”

  They moved carefully from the shelter of one trunk to another, stopping each time to note the progress of the Tigers. Still more soldiers poured out towards the northern side of the compound, but some remained on lookout, making looping patrols.

  Hana saw the flash of china scattered beneath the trunk, pulled out her satchel and ran the last steps.

  “Hurry,” Logan said, his eyes scanning the hill around them, the mausoleums and statues glittering in the morning light.

  Hana grabbed at the scattered pieces, shoving them carefully but quickly into her satchel. She gasped as the jagged edge of one cut into her hand, but she grit her teeth and kept going.

  Her phoenix shrieked a warning a moment before Logan cursed.

  “They’re on to us, Hana. Tigers incoming. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 39

  The Tiger shifters didn’t run. Didn’t deign to. They stalked down the hill, glossy fur shining in the morning light. Terror rippled through Hana as she stood, transfixed in their too-bright green gaze, her limbs heavy and immovable, as if she’d been frozen in sheets of ice. Logan’s arms still encircled her, his glamour still intact, but by the way the Tigers marked them, she knew they saw through that glamour as if it were made of glass.

  She watched the dripping canines, saliva in thick threads looping towards the gravel, disgust making her nauseous. The Tigers didn’t run, didn’t need to. Instead they prowled, lazily, so arrogant, down the gravel path.

  “I can’t…” Logan gasped.

  Frozen. They were frozen like dragonflies in amber, just waiting for the tigers to come.

  The last pieces to the puzzle of that symbol lay scattered on the ground in front of Hana. She willed her foot to move, to stand in front of the last pieces of the flask, to keep them from the Tiger’s knowledge and power.

  But her lungs would barely obey her command to breathe, let alone her limbs to move. The only movement inside her was the phoenix, frantic in its cage, battering itself bloody against the bars, wings fluttering like ash falling on an empty battlefield. All that was left to do was to raise her eyes to meet the glare of the approaching Tigers. If the time for hiding was done, she’d face her enemy as what she really was.

  A proud child of the Phoenix, with the Dragon beside her.

  The phoenix trilled a small sound, a sad one, as it strained towards the Dragon. Her Dragon, the phoenix sang defiantly, as though he were the first creature to ever sing in the dark before the coming of the dawn.

  Because that’s what she felt as she stood next to the Dragon, even as they faced their end together. The promise of what they could be together in the gentle touch of his hand, the way he looked at her, the way he’d risked everything to bring her here, protect her. To stand against the Tiger force that had imprisoned him as surely as they had her people.

  It was hope.

  That was what she felt, even as they stared down their doom. The Tigers could not take that away. With that hope, she was able to move a fingertip, graze it over the Dragon’s wrist, a thank you and a prayer.

  She felt him still, his sharp intake of breath, as the phoenix worked to unpick the binding of the Tigers. The phoenix was a truth-teller, a story-seeker.

  A truth-bringer.

  And the truth was that no Tiger, no Clan, no matter how powerful, or how fierce, could keep the Phoenix and the Dragon apart. That, she felt in her bones, which heated and melted and reformed, so that when she moved her hands to take the Dragon’s face in hers, she saw that her fingers were strong, lithe, tipped in scarlet claws.

  And in his shining, silver-lined eyes, she saw her reflection. Gold, unearthly glowing eyes, deli
cately arched ears, wickedly pointed canines. His smile, when he gazed at her, was earth-shatteringly beautiful.

  She turned her Phoenix face, her warrior Fae face, and bared those canines in a fierce snarl towards their enemy. Then she turned to face the Tigers.

  She would meet her end with the Dragon beside her. Together. And she would fight the Tigers to her last breath, as what she was.

  A Phoenix Fae warrior.

  She slashed out with her wicked sharp scarlet claws at the tigers that circled them, but they didn’t attack, not yet, just surrounded them slowly but surely, so that there could be no escape. They snapped and snarled at Hana and Logan, who stood back to back, Hana heaving her breath in with the monumental effort to keep them free from that paralysing power.

  She couldn’t summon the words to come her lips, wishing more than anything to speak to the Dragon in their last moments. But the phoenix couldn’t bear to look on him. The male she’d just found, only to have him taken away so soon. But he felt the press of his hand, the squeeze at her wrist that told her everything she needed to know. He felt it, too.

  Hana dodged out of the way of ripping canines, stepping back, again and again, up the hill.

  She realised the tigers weren’t here to attack. They were here to herd their prey. Another fifty metres back up through the cemetery, and they’d be at the Palace walls.

  Right where the Tiger Queen wanted them.

  They were yards from the wall, when something gave the tigers pause. Their heads lifted as one to the sky over the trees that had so loyally hidden Hana for so long.

  Jyll and Alessio’s fire still raged in the north. But something set the sky alight in the south, as well. A blood-red glare and a cacophony burst through the trees. A high-pitched trilling, a flash of scarlet and gold, as if the very sun itself hurtled towards them.

  The blazing ball of sunlight and smoke had the imprint of wings. A distraction, made just for them.

  Hana gaped in amazement as the tigers abandoned their posts and fled to the wall.

  Logan panted, bracing hands on his knees, as they were both released from the tiger’s grasp. She tugged at his arm. “Let’s go.”