Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years)

by Vremont, Ann

  Danny pointed. "Those are fresh tire tracks."

  I followed them to the edge of the turn around and pointed the flashlight into the darkness below. Light reflected back. The car was about two hundred feet down the incline, its front end crumpled against a tree.

  Chris stood next to me, looking over my shoulder. "How the hell did he plan on getting out of here?"

  In answer, I swung the flashlight back at the station wagon.

  "Fuck that," Chris growled.

  Danny joined us, the sniper gun slung over his back. He pushed the 9mm at me, roughly saying my name when I refused to take it.

  "Every second you spend arguing is another second he's alone with Casey."

  Bloody bile rose in my throat. I took the gun, checked to make sure the safety was off and started down the trail marked at the far end of the turn around.

  I could smell where Paul had walked on the trail. He must have carried Casey. There were only a few spots where I could smell her, the scent in those areas filled with terror and desperation. He must have placed her on the ground at those locations.

  Seeing the flicker of firelight from a clearing in the distance, I reached behind me to stop Chris with a touch. He stopped Danny in turn. I motioned to them that we were leaving the trail and entering the shelter of the surrounding pine. We moved slowly, trying to minimize the noise we made and stay down wind of the campfire.

  I think I knew before we reached the edge of the clearing what we would find. The scents were there, scratching at my sanity.

  As the last bit of camouflage before the trees gave way to dirt and rock, I sank to my knees. Danny and Chris stopped and knelt beside me. A pine had fallen over, the trunk stripped of its branches. We sheltered behind it for a few seconds.

  About sixty yards into the clearing, the fire burned. Paul sat on a large rock a few feet away, tossing small sticks into the flames.

  Danny slid the sniper rifle off his shoulder. One round in the chamber - that was it. I put my hand over the barrel of the rifle. "Wait."

  "Where is she?"

  I pointed. There was a blanket a few feet beyond Paul, where the firelight faded to shadow. I felt the blood bile rise up again. Whatever the blanket covered, there was no movement.

  Let it be a pile of rocks, I prayed.

  "Lee, if she's dead-"

  I stopped Danny's suggestion with a shake of my head.

  "She's not moving," Chris whispered.

  Danny's gaze was on me and I turned to him. "I have to know."

  He looked away for a second, over to where Paul sat deceptively quiet, feeding the fire. As he did so, I placed the 9mm next to him and stood up. Stepping from the tree line, I heard Danny urgently whisper my name once -- as if he could make me come back and take the gun.

  As if a 9mm would do any good.

  I walked slowly towards the fire, my gaze jumping between Paul and the blanket. The closer I got, the worse the smells became. Dried blood, urine, vomit. I could not tell if it was shadows or stains that darkened the fabric.

  Grabbing another branch, Paul leaned forward and fed it to the fire. I caught the glint of light in his eye as he looked sideways at me.

  "Worm."

  I had approached on the opposite side of the fire and I stopped at the nickname he had given me so many years ago. More than a nickname, it was a code word, presaging what would always be a rough night. Everyone else thought it was a fishing reference, that's how he told it.

  You should have seen her put that worm on the hook all by herself, I never saw a kid look so proud.

  But when we were alone, he would ask, "When is a worm not a worm?"

  And when I refused to answer, he would finish the riddle. "When it's a little girl, wet and ready to be popped."

  An invisible vise squeezed at my chest. I felt like I was nine-years-old all over again, Paul explaining what he meant with the wet pop of his finger from his mouth and a poke with it low down on my stomach.

  Studying me, Paul tilted his head. "But you've already been popped, haven't you, Worm?"

  Staring past him at the blanket, I didn't answer. If she was breathing, it was too shallow for me to hear above the fire's crackle and Paul's shifting motions.

  He nodded over his shoulder. "This is your fault."

  "It always is," I answered wearily.

  "I thought she would turn...I thought--"

  "Shut the fuck up!" I screamed. I knew what he thought and it would cloak my soul like a poison-dipped shroud for as long as I existed. It was an evil nightmare, what he had done to her, that he had planned to make her a vampire that he might always do it...

  "Of course, it was my first time trying." He turned his head, freakishly slow, to look at the spot where I had exited the tree line. "I heard that pussy Oscar couldn't finish those two fags off."

  He began to move his arms through the air in slow motion, replaying the judo moves he said he'd learned in the Marine Corps. He stopped when I stepped close to the fire.

  I held my hands a few inches from the flames. "I almost killed you once," I confessed.

  "I don't remember that."

  "You were passed out."

  Paul thumped his hand against his chest, smearing ash and blood on the shirt. "I mean it's not in the blood."

  I shrugged. "Takes time to pull memories up like that. You remember that house we rented before you moved us onto the mining claim?"

  Seeing his faint nod, I put my hand another inch closer to the fire. Blisters rose up, popping with blood. I pulled my hands back, watched them heal before I continued.

  "You and Sandy had been out drinking. You came home fighting. You backhanded her, cut her lip."

  He nodded more vigorously, and I didn't know if he was seeing it through his memories or mine.

  "And then the two of you staggered into the bedroom and fucked."

  Paul grinned at that. "Yeah, she was so fucking drunk, barely knew what was going on. I mighta called your name, even."

  He had. Glaring at him, I shoved my hands in the fire and let the flame lick at them. When I pulled them back out, fire still danced on my skin. I blew it out.

  "When you were both passed out and snoring, I took a butcher's knife into the bedroom."

  "Stupid cunt, I see it now."

  I stood there, in front of the fire, waiting as long as I had stood over his inert body that night more than five years ago. I stood there, smelling the final minutes of my cousin's life, tasting her fear and pain in the molecules of the air swirling around me.

  "I was going to kill you both." I glanced at Paul. "You first. But then I would have been in jail."

  "I knew you had it in you. You're my girl."

  Shaking my head, I pushed a few of the rocks ringing the fire out of the way. The canvas shoes started to smolder. "I'm not your girl," I told him. "When I realized I couldn't stop you, I took the knife back into the kitchen. But I couldn't put it away."

  I put my right fist to my stomach, laid the other fist against the first, as if I still had hold of the knife handle. "I was ready to kill myself."

  I pushed another rock out of the way. This time the shoe caught on fire. "Can you see the knife?"

  He looked down at his own stomach and nodded. He was seeing it -- feeling it -- as I had. Desperation, self-loathing at my helplessness, intent.

  Then and now. I took my first step into the fire. The wind caught my shorn hair, lifting it for a moment before it ignited in a halo of flame.

  My name echoed through the clearing. Paul and Chris screamed it. It slipped from Danny's lips, too, but with all the quiet calm of a prayer. Paul lunged at me, trying to pull me out of the fire.

  I wrapped my arms around him. "I'm burning for you, Paul," I screamed before descending into the insane laughter that had bottled up inside me with the certainty that Casey was dead. "Is it as hot as you always dreamed it would be?"

  Paul struggled, this time to escape my embrace. I heard the crack of Danny's sniper rifle and then the si
de of Paul's face disappeared. The force spun us, putting me briefly outside the fire.

  I didn't let go. Paul was still alive, squirming and clawing at me. Outside the fire, he would heal. I leaned forward, sending us both into the fire, my body trapping him beneath me.

  I was aware of my name being shouted again, as if I were at one end of a long tunnel and the caller at the other.

  The shout was followed by the fastest sprint of Chris's mortal life.

  Hands wrapped around my legs. My body was dragged from the fire. I was rolled in the dirt. Someone cried human tears that fell and stung my flesh, making me cry out in a way the fire hadn't.

  Next to me, the flames flashed higher and then there was an explosion of muscle and blood and bone.

  "Stop fighting!" Chris screamed, throwing his body on mine to smother the last of the fire. "Damn it, Lee, he's dead. Stop fighting."

  The sniper rifle fell next to my head and then Danny was on his knees, pushing Chris out of the way. The KA Bar he'd picked up in Robles' shed flashed for an instant in the firelight and then Danny cut himself and held his wrist to my mouth.

  I licked it, stopping the blood flow. I didn't want to be whole, didn't want to be healed. I wanted to crawl back into the fire. I'd cost Casey her life and ruined Danny and Chris's because of the obsessions of other men.

  "Why did you do that?" Danny asked, his voice angry. "Why did you risk your life like that?"

  I knew he wanted to shake me. I could see it in his eyes. He just didn't know where to put his hands. I looked away. I had no answer that I could be sure of. Maybe I knew Paul would follow me into the fire and it was the only way I could think of to destroy him.

  Maybe I just wanted to burn.

  I was still burning -- even if there were no flames or smoke visible. The fire had found its way into my blood. It consumed me, kept me from healing. In agony, I forced myself to sit up. The skin on my arms and legs was blistered and bleeding. I could feel the same acid tightness in my face as coated my limbs. Most of my clothes had burnt away or were bonded to my flesh. Bone showed itself in my left hand.

  I pushed up with my right, ignoring the pleas from Danny and Chris to feed. I walked to the blanket and the small, lifeless lump beneath it. I uncovered Casey's face and studied the slack, bruised surface.

  Sinking to my knees, I whispered, "Burn her, please." Chris and Danny came to lift her and I put my hands on the body, stopping them. "No, not with him."

  Leaving me, Chris gathered the wood that Paul had been feeding into the fire. Danny knelt next to Casey. He reached beneath the blanket to find her hands and folded them across her chest. He brushed the hair from her face and tried to clean the smudge of dirt and tears from her cheeks. Before he tucked the blanket back around her shattered body, he pulled the crucifix from his pocket and placed it in her hand.

  I waited transfixed until Chris coaxed me away and laid the wood around the body. When she was covered, Danny brought over a lit branch and placed it on top and then another and another until all of the branches and logs were ablaze.

  The smell of the soiled blanket turned to that of smoke and burning flesh. I stumbled to my feet and started walking. Danny and Chris called to me, following me when I didn't turn back or stop.

  "Lee, baby, the station wagon is in the other direction." Danny grabbed my shoulder and I cried out in pain. "Lee, the wagon..."

  I twisted free from his grip and staggered further from the fire. The moon was up high and I could see down the hillside. Trees gave way to the dirt and brush floor of the desert. Looking out on the landscape, I couldn't think about getting back to the station wagon. I thought only of the direction ahead, of the thousands of bodies buried or left to decompose, of the border town whore houses and white slavery rings, of the drug tunnels and the part that Oscar and his gang played in all of it.

  Danny grabbed me again, catching my hand, his fingers unintentionally touching the exposed bone. Screaming, I collapsed. Danny and Chris collapsed with me. Blood touched my lips. Danny had sliced himself again. He begged me to take it. They were both bleeding, both begging me not to turn away again.

  This time I didn't refuse.

  Broken, scarred. Nothing beautiful was left of me, but they touched me like I was sacred to them. They opened their veins. The blade cut into their arms, across their chests. They opened themselves. I drank. I drank until there was little life left in them and then I opened my own veins, feeding them my memories and strength.

  We fell to the ground, the three of us. Chris rolled onto his back, bringing me with him to shield my still raw skin from the dirt and rocks. Danny pulled away the last of the clothes that had fused to my flesh. I drank from them again, their scents and sounds no longer distinguishable as we writhed on the ground. I offered myself -- and offered myself. I let them touch, taste, bite, suck. I bit back, kissed, licked. One of them entered me, trembling as he did so. The other fed at my throat and I wrapped my hands around his cock, squeezing and milking both lovers.

  I lay flat, my back against a hard chest. Another hard chest pressed against my breasts and I felt the slide of a second cock inside me. Lips kissed my lips, a tongue slid into my mouth. Hands pushed at my thighs, holding me hot and open. I breathed fire and blood.

  We rolled until I was on top of one lover and beneath the other. Our moans flowed together, falling down the hill as if from one mouth. I forced my eyes open as my climax slammed through me. My vision was blurred. I blinked, focusing in time to see the splash of my tears against Danny's warm brown skin.

  The tears were clear - no hint of blood. I blinked again, a sob of fear or relief ripping through me at the sight of their liquid transparency. I looked at Danny. Tears of red bled down his cheeks. He was vampire now. They both were.

  But what was I?

  Phoenix Rising

  From first release of Becoming (Part One of The Vampire Years) in 2010 until now, there has always been a plan for more stories set around Lee, her lovers, and the vampire clan that hunts her. They're in my head, crafted in stolen moments between other books under other names. You can release them, you can turn those other books into those crafted in stolen moments and bring Phoenix Rising and Solandro into being.

  How? Reviews, ratings, word of mouth that drowns out my other projects.

  Until then, you can find backlist (more coming soon) at annvremont.blogspot.com or on twitter/i_am_valk.

  Legal

  Copyright © 2010 by Ann Vremont (writing as Chance Valentine)

  All persons and entities are fictional or fictitiously represented. Not for sale to libraries. No lending outside distributor (e.g. Kindle/Nook) terms of service. Otherwise, re-distributing, lending, or reading this e-book without first purchasing a license to do so is illegal and subject to heavy fines.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Part One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Phoenix Rising

  Legal

 

 

 
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