by S. D. Grimm
My mother swirled her hands together until a huge ball of fire filled her palms. She looked at me. “Your grandfather spared me from losing my fire. He could choose one. It was me—to make sure the twins in my womb were protected from losing theirs. Tell no one.”
I nodded, trying to tear my eyes from the fire.
Gwen and her men pushed us into the tunnel. That was enough to gain my attention.
“Get inside.” I looked at my mother. She herded Ava and Cade there.
Dinah stay beside me, spear ready. “Don’t give me that look, Elderson. I fight with you.”
I nodded and hoped she’d be all right. Then I looked at Gwen. She smiled, but there was no love in it. No affection. It seemed to brim with hatred. Was that how quickly the darkness had consumed her? Fed her selfishness?
“Kill them,” Gwen said.
And her Phoenixes raced forward. The tunnel mouth limited how many could come at Dinah and me at once, and we fought side by side, but we had no fire. They did. Gwen shot dark flames from her hands, and they pinned Dinah to the wall.
She screamed, and I launched myself at Gwen only to have one of her Phoenixes get in my way.
“Enough, Gwen!”
Her fire stopped and Dinah slumped to the ground. Breathing. She was alive. I raced to her side, but Gwen whirled around and stabbed Dinah. I screamed, my throat raw and red.
She threw Dinah to the ground, and the Dark Phoenix I knew to be a Taker shot the sickly greenish-black flame at Dinah’s still form. Flame enveloped her until she stopped screaming, and snakes of black veins covered her body. She seemed to crumble into a thousand pieces and explode into a puff of smoke and ash that blew away in the wind. No. My soul screamed. She was gone forever.
I fell to my knees; someone grabbed my shoulder. I didn’t care. Cade, Ava, and Mother had made it through the tunnel. They didn’t need me anymore.
“Nick!” Cade grabbed my arm. “Hurry. More Dark Phoenixes block the way out. Mom needs you.” He gasped. “Dinah?”
I pushed my brother off of me. “Get out of here! Run for your life.”
“That’s right, Cade. Run.” Gwen’s voice grated. How could she do that to me?
I pulled out my sword and faced her. “You killed her. I loved her!”
She glared. “Kill me then.”
I clutched my sword tighter. “I would if I could.” I raced after her, and she took my moment of weakness to rush past me while two more Dark Phoenixes ran into the tunnel. Cade. My heart jolted.
I swung my sword and it clashed with another. He shot dark fire in my direction. I ducked, rolled, and sliced him open. Then I headed after the person I’d once called sister.
As I rounded the bend in the tunnel, I caught sight of Gwen blasting fire at my mother. Ava whirled toward her and shot fire from her hands.
White. Hot. Pure.
I’d never seen anything like it.
And it headed right for Gwen.
I breathed in. This was it. My final lifetime. She’d kill Gwen, and it would strip me of the ability to rise as a Phoenix again. I’d be done.
I was okay with that. I’d lost Dinah.
“No!” my mother screamed. She jumped in front of Gwen and yelled something I didn’t hear. Her sacrifice jolted me to action. How could I think of giving up right now? I raced toward my mother, but it was too late. Ava’s fire slammed into her with such force it pushed her into the wall. Her body seemed to light up from the inside. Cracks broke out all over her skin, and she shattered into a thousand pieces.
Gone.
Forever.
Dead.
I shook. Why had she jumped in front of Gwen?
Wasn’t Ava supposed to kill Gwen?
“Retreat!” A voice sounded from the outside, and Gwen glanced at me for a moment before she ran. I was not going to let her get away. If Mother was willing to save her, was there a reason? I chased after her, but she spun around and faced me.
She held out her hands. “Don’t follow me, Nick.”
“Gwen, you still have a home here.”
She laughed. “With a family who thought we were expendable? They love Cade and Ava, not us, Nick. Come with me.”
What? My heart stalled at her words. How could she even consider that I’d join her?
I stared at her outstretched hand. Watched it tremble. Her eyes started to fill with tears. “You always loved me. You were the only one. I thought you’d understand.”
The sounds of other Phoenixes coming to my aid rumbled through the tunnel. I shook my head and backed away from Gwen. From her hand. Her offer. “I don’t understand.”
She retracted her hand and heat filled her eyes that spoke of hatred. “Then you are my enemy.” She raised her palms and dark, sick fire shot out at me.
I ducked to the side of the tunnel as the stream of flame cut through the center. When the fire stopped, she was gone. I headed back and found Cade hunched over Ava’s crumpled form on the ground. She was sobbing.
She’d killed our mother.
Father stood there, standing still over the charred spot on the floor where I’d last seen my mother. His red-rimmed eyes turned to me.
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t blame her for what she’s done.” A heaviness filled his voice. “You and Ava are the only Takers left. Cade’s power will remain dormant until Gwen is dead. I cannot change that now, Nicodemus.”
“She has to kill Gwen,” I whispered.
My father closed his eyes and bowed his head as he stared at Ava sobbing on the ground next to the place where she’d killed our mother.
Father held up a stone. “I’m going to make them forget.”
“Forget what?”
“Who Gwen is. How your mother died. Her secret weapon.”
“Ava just unlocked her fire without training. If you take away this memory, you risk tampering with her ability to use her fire again. How will that help?”
“That’s why you will remember for her. You are her only guardian left now.”
I didn’t even have fire. How would I be able to help her?
He started walking over to them.
“Father, I—if she kills Gwen, it’s a death sentence to me. She won’t do it if she knows.”
He nodded. “I know, son. Can you keep the secret from her?” He held up a stone. “Because this will be the last memory I will steal from my daughter.”
I thought my heart would shatter in my chest, but it turned numb. Dinah. I pressed my hand against the tunnel wall so I wouldn’t fall over. I had nothing to live for now except protecting Cade and Ava. “Do it.”
I shook myself free of the memory that had the ability to crush me. The one I’d begged my father to take from me.
If Ava killed Gwen, I would cease to be a Phoenix. This was either my last lifetime or Cade’s.
Even if he did survive one more cycle, which I didn’t find likely, that was sure to be the final one. Not a chance I was willing to take. It had to be this time.
Gwen had to die.
Which meant I had to die.
An ache hollowed out a hole in my insides.
My purpose was clear. My father wouldn’t have wanted me to fail. I’d already failed so many times.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ava
It wasn’t hard to find out where Cade lived once I texted Yuki. Apparently, she’d spent the whole afternoon with him. And by the dreamy sound in her voice, she was falling hard. That meant I had more than a mission to talk to Nick. I had to warn Cade to not hurt my best friend, too.
I marched up the steps, banged my fist against the front door, and waited for one of my brothers to answer. Brothers. I still didn’t know how to process that.
Cade opened the door, hair sticking out in all directions in what seemed a purposeful chaos. He squinted as if the daylight bothered him. “Ava?” He opened the door, and I walked right past him and his surprised face and into the very sparsely decorated—if that term even applied to an old dining table with
mismatched chairs and a floor lamp—front room.
I crossed my arms and faced him as he closed the door. Darkness shrouded everything. No wonder he’d been squinting. I marched over to the drapes and pushed them open. “Avoiding the sun? What are you, vampires?”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Where’s Nick?” I breezed past him and into the kitchen, which was much bigger than expected and led right into the spacious family room. That’s where the TV, couches, and gun safe sat. Good to know there were priorities. The view out the back sliding door was pretty. But led right to trees.
“He’s not here.” Cade’s voice followed me, and he walked into the kitchen a moment later.
“Of course not.” I looked around. The gun safe in the family room wasn’t the only sign of weapons here. “You guys really should put some of this away. If someone were to come in—”
“We aren’t exactly expecting guests.”
“No. Just monsters.”
Cade wandered over to the cupboard. “Not expecting them, just ready for them.” He pulled out one of the five mismatched glasses on the shelf and turned around to set one on the kitchen island. “Do you want a drink?”
I crossed my arms. He really had no sense of why I was here, but that wouldn’t stop me from being angry. “I’m not staying. I just need to talk to Nick.”
“He’s not here. Have a drink. Or we could get started without him.”
My breath caught. “Get started with what?”
Cade did not use one of the fancy glasses. He drank orange juice right from the container. As he put the carton back, I was sure to make a grossed-out face at him, and all he did was laugh. Something deep in my heart warmed. Another something in the pit of my stomach warned me not to get attached. I tried to ignore it. Because he was my brother—if all this craziness was true.
I followed him outside where a plethora of arrows and crossbows leaned against the aging brick house. No wonder they had an eight-foot privacy fence on either side of the yard. But the back was open, right to the woods. “I bet your neighbors love you.”
“We don’t really have any.”
Sort of true. The house was the only one on this side of the dead-end street, somehow different and secluded from the rest of the neighborhood.
“Besides, we can’t exactly shoot guns out here in suburbia.”
I picked up a knife.
Cade crossed his arms and gave me a cocky grin. Then he nodded toward the targets at the end of the yard. “Go for it.”
I felt the strange handle, and something inside me felt confident that I could use this. I tossed. Bull’s-eye.
“Whoa.” Cade half laughed through the word. Then he scrambled for a crossbow. “Try this one.”
I was going to ask how to use it, but my muscles knew exactly where to place my fingers. Exactly how to hold it. Load it. Bull’s-eye again.
“This is not fair.”
“You’re not a natural?” My turn to smirk.
“Shut up.” He took the crossbow and hit the target dead center.
I stole the weapon back and amazed myself that I knew how to load it. “What else do you have?”
“I want to take you to the firing range. Or at least for a game of paintball.”
“I played that once! I smoked everyone.” My heart felt lighter. I had a past. An actual past. And a family. I just had to remember.
Cade’s smile left. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But even as I said it, my throat was tight.
He stared at me for a moment. I wanted to tell him that I wished I remembered more than him almost dying and Nick braiding my hair. I wanted nothing more than to remember them.
“Do you want to see your room?” he asked.
My heart leaped. “I have a room here?”
His smile was warm. “Yeah. Come on, I’ll show you.”
I followed him up the rickety stairs. The room to the left caught my attention first. The front of the house. Most exposed with windows on two sides. The bed was made. Nothing on the walls. I bet if I opened the bedside drawer there would be a gun and a knife and maybe some brass knuckles inside. I ventured closer.
Cade followed me. “That’s—”
“Nick’s.” I knew. Something in my heart pulled me to investigate. To remember.
“Yeah.” He didn’t stop me as I walked in. A gun behind the door. The table was full of weapons and an envelope I wasn’t going to touch. I didn’t want to pry, just learn. Absorb. Like a dog sniffing out its new home. Nothing here made this his. Nothing said it was his room. Nothing warmed it. It was like every room in every foster home I’d ever stayed in, which meant Nick was carrying the truth about who he was somewhere else.
I kept mine in my playlist and my sketchbook. Where did Nick keep his? “What’s he like?”
“A jerk.”
“Okay.” I faced Cade.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, Ava. I know what it’s like to want a family. I checked out your room, too.”
He had? They were remembering me like I was remembering them. We were in this together. “Then show me yours.”
He laughed and motioned for me to follow, but I took one last look at Nick’s room. Then I headed straight in again and opened his second drawer. A mysterious guy like Nick wouldn’t hide his special belongings in the top drawer. He’d go for the second. Under his shirts. There. I pulled out an old envelope. There was a photo inside. Me, Nick, and Cade. And we were all smiling. We looked to be at an amusement park. Nick’s arms were around both of us and he hugged us close. Big smile on his face. I had a dandelion behind my ear.
I turned to Cade, who had wandered in after me. “If we can’t take anything with us, how does he have this?”
“He remembers first. He told me of a few hiding places, but he said a lot have been destroyed over the years.” He took the picture. “We look happy.” Then he handed it back. “Nick is mostly business now.”
I put the picture away and headed out into the hall, then beat Cade to his room. “Wow. You couldn’t wait to showcase your differences, huh?”
“Shut up.” He laughed.
A leather jacket hung on a chair, and he had a huge Star Wars poster on the wall. Electronics plugged in to every available outlet.
“You like cars?” I picked up a model and he practically took it out of my hands like it was an egg I might crack.
“Careful with that. I’m going to own one someday.”
“What’s this?” I wandered to his desk and picked up a book off the table. “Are you seriously reading Shakespeare?”
He plucked the book from my hand and shoved it in the second drawer. Before he could close it, I stopped him. “You like black licorice, too?”
“Yeah.” He pulled out the package and offered me some. “It helps with headaches.”
I took a piece.
He put the licorice away, but I caught sight of another book. Catcher in the Rye. Cade, the secret literary lover. For some reason that made me smile. He tipped his head toward the hall, and I followed him to my room.
I wanted to see if it would match my tastes. If I was the same person.
I walked in and breathed in a tight breath. My mouth opened as I stood there. Took it all in. The strange sense of familiarity. Of belonging. It tugged at the hole in my chest, like stitches closing a wound. A strange burn settled in my chest and flooded me as if I wanted to cry but couldn’t because I was too absorbed in the world around me. The room around me.
Almost everything was…perfect.
My eyes burned, and I blinked to refrain from shedding tears.
I stared at the lamp, because it was gross ugly. Like, ancient. And it made me laugh. The dresser, though, was old but sturdy and plain with pretty wood grain. I loved it. The bedspread looked new. Soft periwinkle with the white silhouette of a dandelion, its fluff being blown in the wind. I would have picked this myself.
And the line of three black-and-white photos on the wall stole my breath
. The one in the center was a silhouette of a huge oak tree with happy branches and a strong base. The tree sat in a field of dandelions. Some still flowers and others fluff ready to blow in the wind. Rays of sun shone through the tree’s branches and birds flew away from it, leaving nests for the day.
On the left side was a close-up photo of the birds. The right was a close-up of a few dandelions. The seeds of one blowing in the breeze.
Everything about this embodied my thoughts—my feelings—of belonging and family and freedom. I couldn’t describe how beautiful this was. And to think that it was mine.
“Do you like it?” Cade asked.
I faced him. “Did you—”
“The bed and furniture was all Nick. The lamp was me.”
I bit my lip but he burst out laughing. “I’m kidding about the lamp. It was in my room, but I hated it, too.” He motioned to the pictures on the wall. “I picked those for you.” He looked away for a moment, suddenly seeming vulnerable. Strange for Cade.
“I love them. Where did you find them?”
He stared at them for a heartbeat with his mouth open, as if he wanted to explain where he got them but suddenly wasn’t sure.
Realization hit me. “You took the pictures?”
This time when he shrugged, he dipped his head low. Was Cade Elderson actually hiding his pride?
“They’re beautiful, Cade.”
“I don’t know what it was, but before I even met you, I just had this feeling every time I looked at these photos, that they reminded me of you.”
My eyes burned and I bowed my head as I tried to keep tears from coming. I brushed my hair away from my neck and showed him the tattoo on the back of my left shoulder. “Look familiar?”
A dandelion. The white seeds blew in the wind, turning into a flock of flying birds. The perfect blend of his photos.
“Whoa.”
I faced him, a joy welling in my chest, filling a void. It scared me a little. But mostly, I relished the feeling. Was it safe to show love to someone who had loved me back for lifetimes?
He smiled. “I’m glad we found each other.”
That jolted my heart to a faster beat. I could accept his love or I could push him away. I stared at him for a moment, watching him take a step back, eyes rounding as if he thought maybe he shouldn’t have said that. It was now or never. I touched his arm. “Me, too.”