THE PHOENIX CODEX (Knights of Manus Sancti Book 1)

by Bryn Donovan

  “Huh.” Morty’s lower lip jutted out thoughtfully. “That’s a new one. A wild animal like, say, a bear?”

  “For instance,” Jonathan said dryly. “There’s also been a jaguar, a coyote, and a javelina.”

  “I’ll try not to piss you off,” Morty said to Cassie.

  “The jaguar killed her ex,” Jonathan said.

  Morty sobered. “Ah, yeah. I heard about that.”

  “But she’s not doing it on purpose. Any idea what could cause it?’

  “Not offhand, no. It’s strange that they’re different animals.”

  “Really?” Cassandra interjected. “That’s the strange part?”

  “They’re all from the desert, except for the jaguar,” Morty commented.

  “The jaguar is, too.” Jonathan respected Morty and didn’t like correcting him. “They used to be common in this part of the state, just like in Mexico and further south. People thought they were extinct, but recently, a few of them have been seen north of the border.”

  “Good for them,” Morty said. “So you’re thinking they’re regular animals? I talked to an expert last year about all the local lore, right when I first moved out here. She said no one she knew had seen a skinwalker in a while.”

  “We haven’t dealt with one for over a century,” Jonathan said. Cassandra lifted her eyebrows. “Which isn’t to say they aren’t out there. But we were sure these were regular animals controlled by a witch—Cassandra.”

  “I go by Cassie,” she interjected.

  “Cassie,” he corrected himself. “Given the time delays between when she gets mad and they attack, that theory still makes sense. It takes a jaguar some time to get from the desert to Scottsdale. A little less time for a bear to get to her house on the outskirts of town.” Jonathan shook his head. “But it just started happening recently, and she doesn’t know why.”

  “Right.” Morty stood up. “You guys want pancakes?”

  Cassie said, “Oh my God, yes, I’m starving.” Their host disappeared into the kitchen.

  Jonathan rubbed his shoulder, although it wasn’t sore. The gashes in his back, on the other hand, throbbed in pain. He asked her, “How are you feeling?”

  “How are you? You’re the one who got mauled.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She looked him up and down, making him aware that his shirt hung open. No doubt she noticed how scarred up he was, which probably didn’t make him seem any more trustworthy.

  He searched his brain for something else to talk about and cleared his throat. “Sorry you lost your job.”

  She blinked. “I’ll find something else.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “Nothing important. It was a mining company—you probably knew that much. I dealt with the clients.”

  This was good. A normal conversation. “You liked it?”

  “I liked some of the people.” She shook her head. “They, um… The company said they had these high environmental standards, but I think it was bullshit.”

  “Do you know what you want to do next?” He felt strange asking the question. All his life, he’d known what he was meant to do.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I texted my sister, Sam, yesterday—she’s a park ranger. I thought that might be fun. Sam was at Organ Pipe, and there were a lot of problems with the drug cartels, but she’s at Bryce Canyon now.” Interesting that she’d describe the job as fun, even knowing it could be dangerous. “Anyway, Sam said it takes a long time to become a park ranger, but on the upside, the pay is crap.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  He doubted it was a reflection on him. She was the kind of person who said whatever was on her mind. He could appreciate that. In the past, he’d dated more than one woman who’d made him feel like he was always guessing about what they were thinking and feeling. He’d always felt like he offered all of himself and had gotten thin slivers in return. Not that there could ever be anything romantic between him and Cassie, but if they were going to figure out this curse together, her openness would make it easier.

  “I can see why you thought I was an evil witch, though,” she admitted. “I mean, if witches and demons are real.” She peered at him. “They really are?” He nodded. “What else is there? Vampires?” Most people in her position would have been significantly more freaked out than she was by this conversation.

  “They’re extinct.”

  “So you’re not one.”

  He straightened, offended despite all he’d done. Vampires had been disgusting creatures. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you can read minds? Not to mention you fight like a…like a person who’s super good at fighting.”

  Well, that wasn’t so bad. He reminded himself that sonámbulos had the wrong idea about vampires. “If I were one, I’d bleed a lot less. I’m a hundred percent human.”

  She shifted on the sofa to face him. “And you said there were shapeshifters? Like werewolves?”

  “Hundreds of little packs. There are wolf Shifters in Arizona, in Springerville.”

  “No way. I’ve been to Springerville! I might’ve met one! Wait, do they look different?”

  Her astonishment amused him. “When they’re human, they look like anyone else. And they’re not just wolves. There are others close to here—coyotes in New Mexico and elk in Colorado.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you lying to me?”

  “I’m never going to lie to you.” He knew he sounded too earnest, but he meant it.

  “They’re all over the country?”

  “All over the world. Foxes in Osaka, tigers outside Wuhan, lions in Nairobi, seals in the Shetland Islands. And lots more. Mice in Chicago.”

  She burst out laughing. “Mice.”

  Jonathan remembered the skinny teenage boy who’d helped him track down a banshee. “They’re really nice.”

  Cassie gave a little smile, as though she found this adorable. “Are all shapeshifters nice?”

  “Ha, no. Every pack’s different. And every individual.” He shrugged. “Like people.”

  “And your whole job is to fight evil, magical things?”

  After a moment of hesitation, he nodded. He was saying way too much, but he needed her to understand him.

  She traced the rim of her coffee cup with her thumb. “That sounds hard.”

  Of course, he thought of Michael. Silence hung between them, broken by a clatter of dishes in the kitchen.

  “Fine. You don’t want to answer questions about your creepy-ass fraternity. What about zombies?”

  “Brain eaters, no,” he said. “Animated corpses, yes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Real,” Jonathan said. “Definitely tortured and executed. Everything else is a matter of faith—” He registered her bemused look and stopped. “You weren’t asking about that one.”

  “That’s okay. Go on.”

  He shrugged. “Morty’s a better person to ask about religious stuff.”

  “How come?”

  “He used to be a priest.”

  “‘The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’” They both looked up at Morty, standing in the doorway. “It’s too early for theology,” he said. “Come eat.”

  They squeezed around the small table in the cramped kitchen drenched with the smells of coffee, butter, and syrup. Morty had sliced up bananas to go with the pancakes.

  Cassie shoved a bite into her mouth at once. “I never have anything for breakfast but coffee. But I really should.”

  Before Morty sat down, he put a black pill and a glass of orange juice in front of Jonathan. “Iron. You need it.”

  Jonathan washed the pill down. The syrupy pancakes were probably a good idea, too.

  Morty began cutting his up. “So. You all thought Cassie was a badass witch, and they sent you to deal with her in your usual civilized way.” He paused and looked at her. “How much does she know?�
��

  “Too much,” Jonathan said at the same time she answered, “Nothing.”

  “And I’ve given my word not to say more.” Regret tinged Morty’s voice. “There’s no use telling you anything anyway. They’ll wipe your memory if they have to.”

  “What?” Cassie whipped her head around to stare at Jonathan. “Are you going to wipe my memory?”

  “No.” Capitán Renaud might order a Mage to do it, though. He truly didn’t know what was going to happen to her if they didn’t solve her problem quickly. Cassie’s eyes narrowed.

  “He doesn’t have that talent,” Morty informed her. “Not personally, that is. His job is judge and executioner.”

  Jonathan bristled. “Do you know what this world would be like if it weren’t for us?”

  “You know I do. It’s when you have human targets that I get a little cranky.”

  Jonathan stabbed at his pancakes. “We don’t have much choice with witches who kill. They can’t be convicted in courts, and historically, they can’t be rehabilitated. They always get worse.”

  “Historically,” Morty repeated.

  “The last witch I dealt with? In less than a month, she went from giving people nosebleeds to drowning them in sinks full of their own blood.”

  “Ugh.” Cassie grimaced.

  Morty said, “Come on, Ace, we’re eating here.”

  “I’m just saying. Once witches start doing harm, it gets worse fast.”

  She asked, “You knew she did it because you mind read her, or whatever you call that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like? Going into the psyche of someone really evil?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Some images stayed with a person forever.

  Morty asked, “If you all thought Cassie was so dangerous, why didn’t Michael come with you?”

  “Michael—” A wave of grief rolled over him, and he couldn’t continue.

  This had happened a few times since the memorial service. He’d be fine, and then sorrow would come out of nowhere and blind him. Tears and revenge both honored the dead, and Jonathan had already offered up both, even if the latter hadn’t given him satisfaction. Now wasn’t the time for this. Deliberately, he set down his fork.

  “Ah, kid.” Pity filled Morty’s voice. “I’m sorry.”

  Jonathan didn’t look at either him or Cassie. “The Taos possession. You must’ve read about it.” His voice came out tight but steady.

  “I did. I figured possession, anyway. The victim had been to the Urraca Mesa portal?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  Cassie asked, “He was someone you worked with a lot?”

  “Yeah. My younger brother.”

  She put her hand over his. Jonathan flinched as though her touch burned him and looked over at her, startled. She withdrew her hand. Her eyes were filled with sympathy, her mouth slightly parted. How could she be so soft to someone who’d been so hard with her?

  Capture bonding. The thought gave him a heavy feeling in his gut. She was a natural fighter, but she’d lost, and now she was emotionally identifying with her abuser. It was a survival instinct, one he’d been taught to resist as part of his interrogation training, but she was a sonámbula with no training at all.

  “Your boss had no business sending you out this soon.” Morty’s voice was a growl. He’d never liked Capitán Renaud.

  “I wanted to go.” Being idle at the headquarters, El Dédalo, had nearly driven him out of his mind. Most people spent a week or two with their family after a loss, but that only consisted of Jonathan’s father, whose company wouldn’t have been much of a comfort in any circumstance, and who now blamed Jonathan for his favorite son’s death. “We should, um. Focus on the mission. I mean, on Cassie’s situation.”

  Morty pressed his mouth into a grim line. “All right. Cassie, he said this started not too long ago?”

  “Rick was the first time.” She looked ill. “As far as I know.”

  Jonathan asked, “Did you do anything unusual in the weeks before that happened? Visit a psychic, take part in any rites or séances?”

  “Rites? I went to Mass with my parents once. That’s it. Unless you call signing divorce papers a rite.”

  “Did you come into possession of any unusual objects lately? A piece of jewelry, any kind of antique?”

  “Hardly. I was trying to get rid of stuff, not get more.” She took another bite of pancake.

  “Get rid of things?” Morty chimed in. “How come?”

  “Rick kept the house. I moved out. I had to box up my stuff, and I threw things away right and left.”

  Jonathan leaned forward. “Did you throw away anything unusual?”

  “No, just a bunch of crap. You wouldn’t believe how much garbage I accumulated in only five years of being married.” She shook her head. “I moved in with my folks for a month with all my boxes, so I wanted to pare down.” She froze. “Oh, God.”

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle. “I think I know what happened.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Cassie had thought of this once before, after the coyote attack. Because the idea was so ridiculous, she’d pushed it out of her mind. Last night, a box full of curiosities on Morty’s coffee table had pricked at her memory again. Now, she told Jonathan and Morty the story.

  While she’d been finalizing the divorce, she’d moved out and stayed at her mom and dad’s house for a while. It had hardly made her feel like a success in life, doing that in her thirties. They’d been nice about it, mostly because her dad had loathed Rick all along.

  She’d hauled all of her boxes of stuff down to their basement, and her mom had suggested that she go through some of her old things already down there. Most of it she’d pitched, except the equestrian trophies.

  In one unmarked box, she’d found someone else’s belongings. A blurry gray photo of a woman standing in the middle of a jungle. A large toy army tank, its tin mottled with rust and chipped paint. A key.

  She’d pulled out a book with a worn, black leather cover. Small, slanted handwriting, in Spanish, filled the pages. The ink had faded, and she hadn’t known much of the language anyway. Her mom had never spoken it, and her father had never spoken it with them.

  Her mom hadn’t recalled seeing either of the photo or the journal before, but she’d told Cassie the woman was her great-grandmother, and the journal must have belonged to her great-grandpa.

  Cassie had asked, “Did you know Grandpa De La Garza?”

  “Well sure, sweetie, he only died a year before you were born. I’ve told you about him.” She sounded impatient, as she often did when Cassie had a lot of questions. “He was in Mexico, and we only went down there the one time.” Her mom was more Anglo than Mexican, though her dad was Mexican on both sides. “He was an archeologist. And an anarchist.”

  No way had she ever told Cassie this. Cassie would have remembered. “Why didn’t you see him more often?” Her dad’s side of the family loved getting together. She’d spent a good portion of her life in crowded relatives’ houses and pavilions at parks, drinking Coke as a kid and then beer as a grownup, playing with somebody’s baby or listening to an aunt’s long story about her last surgery. Cassie’s mom not seeing her grandpa was weird, even if he was far away.

  “He wasn’t sociable,” her mom had said. “After my grandma died, he kept to himself more and more. He would go off to different places, and nobody would even know where he was.”

  “Wow.” To Cassie, he’d sounded crazy.

  “He was a very smart man, though,” her mom had insisted. “Just an eccentric. An eccentric.”

  Cassie had returned the photo to the box in the basement and flipped through the journal. On a page near the back, the writing looked different: in larger block letters and short lines, like poems. Dashes separated them into syllables. It hadn’t looked like any language she’d seen before, although that wasn’t saying much.

  She’d pro
nounced the first word aloud and liked the sound of it, the feel of it in her mouth. Slowly, she’d read on, for some reason wanting to get all of it right. In a few places, he’d written two a’s together, or two i’s, and she’d drawn out the vowels. When she’d reached the end of the page, she’d stared at it for a moment, and then muttered, “Huh. Weird.” She’d shut the book and put it back into the box.

  When Cassie finished telling this story, Jonathan pushed away from the table. “Where’s the journal?”

  “Still in my parents’ basement.” She took her dishes to the sink, ran her sticky fingers under the tap, and then wiped her hands on her jeans. “But there’s no way you’ll know that language.”

  “I’ll find someone who does. And they’ll figure out a way to reverse it. Let’s go to your parents’ house.” He stood up.

  He really could be bossy sometimes. “How am I supposed to explain you to my parents? I’ll get it and bring it to you.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “I can’t let you out of my sight.”

  She stiffened. “Excuse me?”

  “I talked to my…coworker this morning.” The guy who’d called yesterday, Cassie guessed. “I have orders.”

  “Well, fuck your orders,” she snapped. Morty gave a broad smile at this.

  She half expected Jonathan to yell at her. Instead, he said in a low voice, “Look, I’m sure I’m the last person you want to be joined at the hip to.” Unexpectedly, an erotic image flashed through her brain. “But there’s no telling when you’re going to get mad at someone. If I’m close to you and that happens, I can save whoever the animal goes after.” He moved closer to her, looking into her eyes. “Think of what that jaguar did to Rick. What that bear tried to do to me. You really want to go to your parents’ house alone?”

  She sagged back against the kitchen counter.

  “He’s right,” Morty told her. “Sorry to say.”

  “I get annoyed at people every day,” she said. “I think I have to be seriously pissed for it to take effect.”

  “Good to hear,” Jonathan said.

  “But aren’t you afraid I’ll get angry at you again?”