Sadie picked up her duffel bag, nudging aside Marcus’s attempt to take it from her. “If Karma doesn’t want to stay in the mountains, we can take her with us. You’re not dying, so there’s no need to find her a home. She loves you.”
Emotion crossed his face, swift and heart-breaking, at her words that he was loved.
I love you. But she thought it was too soon to say the words. Too soon for her. Too soon for him when he was dealing with so many emotions: his not-dead mom; his own escape from a death sentence of addiction; and Stag mercenaries chasing them.
Karma flew from the window to perch on his shoulder, her claws faintly scratching his leather jacket.
“Karma, do you want to stay with Marcus?” Sadie asked the bird.
The phoenix remained stubbornly bird-like and apparently oblivious to the question. She wiped her beak on the collar of his jacket.
Marcus put a hand low on Sadie’s back, ushering her to the door.
She felt as if her whole body and soul leaned into his touch.
“There’s a minor nexus fourteen miles north of here.” He closed the door and dragged his foot through the dirt near the step, breaking the ward he’d set around the rented cabin. “It seems as good a place as any to offer Karma her freedom.” They reached the truck and he scuffed a line in the sand, breaking another ward he’d set around it. He opened a door for Sadie to put her duffel bag on the back seat and stashed his backpack as well.
Karma scrambled but retained her perch on his shoulder.
He put his hand under her claws as she clung to his jacket. “You need to ride inside,” he told her.
The phoenix stared at him a moment before allowing him to put her in the truck. She hopped onto the cup holder between the passenger and driver’s seats.
Sadie climbed into the passenger seat and waited for Marcus to get in and drive off.
He got in and rubbed his hands down the sides of his jeans. “I’m nervous. It’s ridiculous. A nexus, even a small one, ought to attract magical creatures. This is Karma’s chance to have a normal life for a phoenix, a free one.”
And he’d been willing to die for the phoenix’s freedom; to set her free rather than farm her to feed his addiction to raw phoenix blood.
But the addiction was broken. Sadie believed it with her whole heart and hope. Yesterday, he’d healed himself. She wouldn’t lose him.
“If Karma doesn’t find others of her kind here, we can try elsewhere,” she offered.
He nodded as he started the truck. “I’ve been concerned that my presence near her might keep away other phoenixes. That they might think I was using a young phoenix to lure them into a trap.” He gripped the steering wheel tight, frowning at the road although it was empty of everyone bar them. “We might have to leave her there with food and water and return later. After we’ve made your meeting in Los Angeles.”
Sadie looked at Karma as she roosted between them. Gently, she stroked the bird’s soft feathers. “If you understand us, Karma, you could give us a hint what we should do.”
The phoenix chirruped.
The fourteen miles went by quickly. With the windows of the truck cracked open, the cool air smelled faintly of ponderosa pines. At the nexus, Marcus parked beneath one, having gone off-road and out of sight of passing traffic.
Sadie didn’t know how he intended to handle the situation. She got out of the truck when he did, and Karma hopped out with them.
The bird of paradise was an exotic oddity. Its golden tail feathers trailed over fallen pine needles as she explored the ground.
“Can you sense the nexus?” He leaned his back against the hood of the truck and drew Sadie in front of him, wrapping his arms around her.
Instantly, she felt warmer and grounded. “I can’t sense magic. But if you want me to use my talent to find it, I can.”
“It’s okay. I can sense it. It feels as if the land has a pulse. Karma is walking toward it.”
Sadie studied the bird’s slow, ambling progress toward a bare patch of rocky ground.
The bird shimmered, then shimmered again. She turned to face them. The bird of paradise still existed, but rising up from that physical body, engulfing it, was a spirit body of fire and raw magic.
“A fire eagle,” Sadie said.
A phoenix. The words whispered on the wind as if they were an exhalation of the earth, itself. I am a phoenix. But you may call me Karma.
The spirit bird glowed in fiery mother-of-pearl, translucent enough that the landscape was dimly visible through her. There was no heat, only light and a sense of the numinous.
Into that timeless moment intruded the harsh ring of Marcus’s phone.
Vanessa can call back, Sadie thought. Then she thought of how Vanessa suspected danger for Sadie or her heart. If Sadie didn’t answer it, Vanessa would mobilize a rescue mission. “I have to get that.” She disentangled from Marcus’s embrace and ran for the phone. She fumbled it on while staring at Karma. “Hello?”
“Sadie.” It wasn’t Vanessa’s voice. It was a man’s, strained and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Get my son. Get Marcus. Or we’ll die.”
“Marcus!” Sadie shouted, wrenching his attention from Karma. “It’s your dad. He’s—” She shoved the phone at him.
“Dad?” he asked as he studied Sadie’s freaked expression.
“Now that you’re on the phone.” It wasn’t Paul Aurelius. The male voice had an Ohio accent. “This is Nelson Davies. You can speak with your parents in a minute or two. First, I need to make the ground rules clear.”
Fear and rage merged and exploded in Marcus. He controlled his response. He stayed silent.
There was a moment’s awkward pause, as if Nelson had anticipated a protest from him and his silence disconcerted the wizard. “Your parents are currently my guests. I have no particular interest in them. Whether they live or die is up to you. However, your father had some intriguing information for me. It is surprising how much the quiet, ineffectual men observe. He told me that you drink phoenix blood and have your own phoenix.”
Marcus jerked. It wasn’t possible that his dad knew…except Paul had perhaps seen the pieces of eggshell in the remnants of the cage where the Senator had kept Karma’s mother, and then, he’d seen the bird of paradise that accompanied Marcus to their meeting at the hotel. A meeting during which he’d foolishly created an image of a phoenix in the marble. It had been reckless and stupid behavior on his part, even if he had been struggling to control the fever in his blood.
“And your father told me that your grandfather the senator had possessed a journal with instructions for rendering the phoenix blood safe.”
“I burned it,” Marcus said.
A moment’s silence stretched and was broken with faint scuffling sounds. Then a woman screamed.
“Your mom,” Nelson said calmly.
Marcus managed to sound equally calm. “It doesn’t change that I burned the journal. The Senator was an evil bastard and his evil had to die with him.”
“Except you still live,” Nelson said. It was a wicked, precise attack.
Beside Marcus, Sadie, who’d been listening intently, wrapped her arms around him.
Karma’s spirit form approached, and the pearlescent, insubstantial beak stroked his hair.
Their sympathy and love for him beat back the evil of Nelson’s words.
Marcus wrapped his free arm around Sadie and held her close. “What do you want, Nelson?”
“So many things. But for now I’ll settle for the amulet, the phoenix, and you. 10 a.m. in Albuquerque. I’ll send you the coordinates. Start driving.” The last words suggested he knew where they were. He’d probably tracked Marcus’s phone, having copied its number from Paul’s phone. Nelson hung up.
Sadie unlooped the amulet from around her neck. “It’s yours.”
He put the phone in his jacket pocket and accepted the amulet. The stylized silver owl stared at him blankly. “No.” He gave it back to her.
“Marcus, the amulet isn’t w
orth your parents’ lives—anyone’s lives. Millie would understand.”
“Millie?” He stared at Karma’s spirit body, barely seeing the phoenix. He was turning scenarios over in his mind. “Oh, the woman who gave you the amulet. Maybe she would. But it won’t help. Nelson can’t afford to leave my parents alive.”
Sadie gripped his jacket. “But he wants to do a deal!”
“No, he wants to trap me—and get the amulet. That’s important. He’s hated me a long time. To do this, to kidnap Paul and Winona, the client offering the bounty for the amulet must be powerful. Nelson wouldn’t risk this without a genuine belief it’ll benefit him beyond revenge. Nelson knows who it is that wants your amulet.”
Sadie uncurled her fingers from around the silver owl. “I found this for Naomi so that she could see through glamours to study fantastical creatures. Is the ability to see through glamours important enough to burn a house, pursue us, and now, kidnap people?”
“Evidently it is to someone, and I’m going to find out who.”
They’d been so intent on their conversation and each other that it was only the absence of light that drew Marcus’s attention back to Karma.
The phoenix had once more hidden her spiritual body and appeared as a bird of paradise. However, her magic remained. Her voice truly seemed to come from the land and air, resonating in his bones. Do you require my assistance in retrieving your parents?
“I don’t want you anywhere near Nelson,” Marcus said swiftly.
Karma flew onto his shoulder. Return when you are able. There are things you should know. For an instant her feathers pressed against the side of his face, and then, she was gone, flying upward, shifting from physical form to spiritual body and vanishing in the glare of the morning sun.
“I don’t want you near Nelson either, Sadie.”
“You can’t face him alone.” She walked stiffly, arguing, as he urged her into the truck. “Nelson has had time to set things up and we know he’s not working alone. There was the man tracking me on the highway, yesterday. I know I’m not trained in combat, but if you got me a gun…”
He paused in buckling her seatbelt. “You’d shoot him?”
“I’d probably miss. But I could scare him.”
He kissed her earnest face. “What I need is for you to be safe.”
She caught hold of his jacket before he could straighten and close the door. “Right back at you,” she said intensely.
It had been too long since anyone had worried for him. He kissed her again before stepping back and closing the passenger door. He reversed the truck onto the road and headed away from Albuquerque.
“Marcus? Where are you going?”
He understood Sadie’s concern. He’d barely make Nelson’s 10 a.m. deadline even if he drove straight to Albuquerque. But making the deadline would probably get him killed and his parents after him. At the moment, Paul and Winona were worth more to Nelson alive than dead. It was a ruthless calculation, but in a hostage situation, there were no good options.
“Nelson, or his partner, can identify this truck,” Marcus said. “It’s warded, which makes me reluctant to abandon it. But I can ward another vehicle or place. What we need is faster, unidentified transport and for you to use your talent.”
“Me?”
He frowned at the winding road. “I need you to find my parents.”
Chapter 14
Sadie clutched the amulet and mentally scrambled to keep up with Marcus’s plans. “I can find your parents from the truck. Paper maps work better for me than electronic ones, but I can make do with what’s on your phone.”
He pulled the phone out of his pocket and threw it out the window. “Thanks for reminding me. Nelson could track us via it.”
She swiveled around in her seat. “But how will he contact you?”
“That’s his problem.”
She stared at him. “He has your parents.”
“You can find them.”
“Not without a map!”
Marcus took a hand off the wheel and put it on her thigh. “You found me—safety—without a map. What direction do you think Dad is in?”
Her heart was racing and her thoughts jumbled. “I’m not used to any more stress than trying to outbid someone but stay within my budget at an auction.”
He squeezed her knee and released her, spinning the steering wheel to guide the truck around a sharp corner. This new road was narrower and bumpy. He drove down the middle of it to avoid the pine branches that leaned in.
She closed her eyes and breathed in, calling the magic from her seventh chakra to fill her whole body as she’d been taught at Minervalle School years ago. Her magic flared, stronger than normal, shocking her till she recalled the nexus close by. Perhaps the magical power boost would help her. She visualized Paul Aurelius as he’d appeared in the hotel suite with Winona, and by himself, hugging Marcus at their last farewell. She pointed and opened her eyes.
“East.” She was pointing toward the sun. “Paul isn’t in Albuquerque.” It was south of them.
Marcus slowed the truck for a bend in the narrow road. “There’s a Vietnam Vet lives here. She used to run the Arena.”
“She?”
“Louise was a nurse.”
Sadie struggled with the information. “How did a nurse end up running a fight club? That is what the Arena is?”
“A magical fight club describes it exactly. And Lou ran it because she had trauma and fighting experience and the magic to freeze combatants. If we didn’t obey the end-of-bout gong, she could compel the end of the fight.” He braked abruptly as the pines that edged the road gave way to a grassed verge. “Ward.” He turned the wheel into the truck’s skid. The truck straightened and continued. “I broke it.”
She remembered to breathe again. “What other surprises will this Lou have prepared for us?”
He smiled briefly. “We’ll find out.”
“Oh, good.” Dread was a cold lump in her stomach and her left hand hurt from clenching anxiously around the amulet. She looped the chain of it over her head and hid the silver owl under her sweater. “Why do you think Lou will help you?”
“After Lou retired last year, her former second-in-command took over the Arena. Cyrus couldn’t freeze combatants, but since Lou hadn’t had to use that magic in over three years, the owners of the Arena—which included my grandfather—decided that wouldn’t matter, that combatants would observe the rules, specifically the one that said a bout ended when the gong was struck. Cyrus was a wizard.”
Was, Sadie thought bleakly. Through the scrub and pine trees, a ranch house was visible, stables to one side of it, with further buildings beyond them, and a view across the valley.
Marcus slowed the truck to a crawl. The yard around the house was fenced and two large mutts lay in a patch of sunlight. They stood at the sight of the truck. “Nelson was fighting in the Arena. He was in werewolf form. His opponent was a guy in his early twenties, a fire mage who thought he was tough. The kid didn’t understand how much pain shreds control, and hence, the effectiveness of your magic. You have to learn to put pain aside.”
He parked at the gate, the one with a sign that said simply and unwelcomingly, Go away. He turned off the truck’s engine and rested an arm on the steering wheel. Someone had whistled or called for the dogs because they’d turned and were heading to the stables.
Marcus stared in that direction. “The kid surrendered. He was on the ground. Nelson had him pinned. The kid slapped the ground, signaling his defeat. The gong sounded. The bout was over. Nelson had won. He got off the kid. Cyrus opened the gate to the Arena. Nelson kicked the kid hard into the wall. He broke the kid’s back, but still went after him. Cyrus snapped out a hold spell…only Nelson broke it. The ricochet caught Cyrus unguarded. He lost control of his magic at the same time as the kid’s fire magic went wild. It latched onto the raw magic around Cyrus and he went up like a torch. Nelson took the opportunity to kill the kid. Said it was to save Cyrus.”
&
nbsp; “Except Nelson had caused all the trouble,” Sadie concluded.
Marcus nodded. “There was an inquiry. I was one of the witnesses. Nelson was banned from the Arena.”
“But the Stag mercenaries kept him?” she asked, disgusted.
“The Stag mercenaries officially ignore their members’ outside interests. Cyrus was married to Lou’s niece.” He got out of the truck.
Since he hadn’t told her to stay in it, she hurried to join him. She suspected he was looking for an ally on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Would Lou agree?
A woman in her early seventies, tall and upright, strode toward them. The dogs flanked her. “Marcus. So you’re the one who broke my ward. Aren’t many who can do that.”
If Lou chose to freeze them, could Marcus break that magic, too?
“Lou, this is Sadie Howard. Sadie, Louise Dubois.”
Lou stayed back too far to shake hands. Instead, the two woman nodded at one another.
Marcus continued. “Sadie has something Nelson Davies wants.”
Lou’s expression had been neutral, perhaps faintly curious. At the mention of Nelson, it went hard.
Marcus kept going. “In an effort to get that object from Sadie, Nelson has kidnapped my parents.”
“Your parents?” Lou blinked. “Your mom’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Apparently only while my grandfather was alive.”
The former nurse and Arena commander stared at him. Then she shook her head, once. It wasn’t disbelief. It was cynical acceptance. “Yeah, the Senator was enough to make a few people hide—or dance to his tune.” Her gaze was shrewd and challenging as she looked at Marcus. He’d danced to the Senator’s tune, though Lou wouldn’t know about his addiction to phoenix blood.
“Nelson demands that I meet him in Albuquerque in two hours.”
Lou checked the sturdy watch strapped to her wrist. “You won’t make it.”
“You have a helicopter and I need somewhere safe to leave Sadie.”
Sadie grabbed his arm. “I’m going with you.”
He ignored her.
Lou observed them both. “I never knew you to care for anyone,” she said to him. Her two dogs sat either side of her and she rested her right hand on the black dog’s head. “But what really interests me is how you knew to find me. I made some enemies, so I was careful people didn’t know of the ranch.”
Phoenix Blood (Old School Book 1) Page 13