THE PHOENIX CODEX (Knights of Manus Sancti Book 1)

by Bryn Donovan

  “It’s not that strange of an occurrence.” Cassie had to grin at the two of them together: the magical warrior, and the messy nerd. They were too adorable.

  “Please,” he said. “You’re a rarer sight here than I am at the library.” His hooded, dark eyes landed on Cassie. They were framed with lashes so thick it made him look as though he were wearing eyeliner. “This is the bruja?”

  Lucia reddened. Cassie had figured out by now that for them, bruja was an insult—“witch” in the bad way. “Cassie Rios, this is Samir Hassan. Manners aren’t his strong suit.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “They aren’t mine, either.”

  “Good to meet you, Cassie Rios,” he said. “Even if you’re the reason Luci has to abandon me on a quest.”

  Cassie told Lucia, “I’m sorry you have to go all that way.”

  Samir laughed. “She loves to travel.”

  “I’ve heard Aquileia is lovely,” Lucia said.

  “She thought Los Angeles was lovely,” Samir teased, which seemed to Cassie like uncalled-for snark, coming from someone who lived in a giant glass hole in the desert. But still, most of the people here had lived in many places, and the Knights were always getting sent on missions to various parts of the country.

  “In its way,” Lucia said. “Before Cassie works out, I need to debrief her.”

  Samir had, at least, heard about her invitation to join Manus Sancti. She could tell by the more sober look he gave her. “All right,” he said to Lucia. “Find me before you leave, almeris.”

  At the far side of the gym, they met up with Gabi, who wore a black athletic top, matching loose cotton pants, and bare feet. She flashed a smile at Jonathan. “Ready for jiu jitsu?”

  Cassie blurted out, “You’re fighting him?” Crap. She’d probably insulted her. “It’s just that he’s so much bigger than you. And he does that mixed martial arts stuff.” Gabi was also at least fifteen years older, though Cassie didn’t think that played into it so much. Hell, Gabi looked like an ad for gym membership or protein powder.

  “Not really fighting,” Gabi said. “His ground game’s rusty, and that’s kind of my specialty.” She wiped at her brow with one end of her towel.

  “Let’s do it,” said Jonathan. He paused to look back. “Ask a lot of questions,” he told Cassie, and then added to Lucia, “Don’t lie.”

  The Scholar straightened. “That’s offensive.”

  Jonathan took in a breath and looked like he might respond with something even more offensive, but instead he said in a gruff voice, “Sorry. I don’t like this, but it’s not your fault.” He turned and walked away toward the far ring. Gabi made a face like, All righty, then, and went after him.

  Cassie told Lucia, “He doesn’t think I should join. We had a big fight about it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she admitted. “It is a dangerous life.”

  They sat down in a couple of chairs not far from the ring, where Gabi demonstrated a move for Jonathan.

  Lucia asked, “How are those Spanish videos?”

  “Good. I love them.” Cassie watched Jonathan practice the move Gabi had shown him. “It seems like you can learn about anything here.”

  Lucia’s eyes sparkled. “You have no idea. For a Scholar, there’s no better place. Or for a Mage, or a Knight. The resources we have—” She cut herself off with a glance at the practice ring. “But it truly isn’t my place to sing the praises of Manus Sancti, only to tell you about its history.”

  “Jonathan said it started in the fourteen-hundreds.” This still sounded incredible to Cassie, but Lucia merely nodded.

  “Yes, in Granada, Spain. At that time, the Nasrid dynasty had ruled the city for two centuries. Samir’s ancestors, in fact. But they didn’t require citizens to be Muslims, and learning was valued.

  “Granada developed an intellectual society of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and even freethinkers who would’ve been condemned in most places as heretics. Scholars, alchemists, philosophers. Besides the Spaniards, Arabs, and Berbers, there were people from Paris, Sicily, and as far away as Egypt and Ethiopia. And all of these brilliant men—fifty or sixty altogether—met weekly to share their theories, translations, and discoveries with one another. It was like a spontaneous university.”

  “Only men, though.”

  Lucia gave Cassie a conspiratorial smile. “That soon changed. Manus Sancti was centuries ahead of the world when it came to welcoming women. Much of it was practical—some women had psychic talents that men didn’t. But I get ahead of myself. They weren’t Manus Sancti yet.”

  In the practice ring, Jonathan bent halfway over Gabi, who lay on her back on the mats, attempting to pull him down by wrapping both of her legs around one of his. They broke and switched places.

  Lucia said, “Among this group of intellectuals in Granada were several men with psychic abilities. Jewish mystics, a Christian priest, and others. Another man had translated old texts with magical spells that, as it turned out, worked. So you see, what we’re doing with the Phoenix Codex is something we’ve done for centuries.”

  “Wait,” Cassie said. “The Phoenix Codex?”

  Lucia flushed. “I’ve been calling it that. There’s the Dresden Codex and the Paris Codex, both named after the cities in which they’re housed and, well, your ancestors’ codex was housed in Phoenix for decades.”

  In my mom’s basement. Cassie shook her head to dispel a sudden sense of disorientation.

  “You don’t like the name,” Lucia ventured.

  “What?” Cassie thought about the question. She’d named it after Cassie’s hometown, and it seemed like an acknowledgement that it belonged to her and her family. “No, I love it, actually.”

  She smiled, her dimples flashing. “Good.” Cassie felt a sudden affection for the Scholar. Something told her they’d be good friends. Lucia explained that before long, Manus Sancti had begun what they now called missions.

  Jonathan and Gabi rolled on the floor with their legs wrapped around each other. Cassie gestured toward them and asked, mostly joking, “Should I be concerned about this?”

  “Not in the least. It’s just training. And everyone knows Jonathan’s excruciatingly monogamous.”

  “Excruciatingly,” Cassie repeated. She didn’t know what amused her more—that particular word, or the fact that everyone seemed to know about one another’s sex lives. “Okay, go on.”

  Lucia nodded. She explained that the name Manus Sancti referred to no particular religion, but to the sacredness of their calling to fight supernatural evil. Although they tried to operate in secret, southern Spain had come under Catholic rule, and a Catholic-sounding name seemed like a good idea. Their group spread to Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, Italy, and Greece. “By the dawn of the twentieth century, we were all over Europe and the Middle East, in many parts of Africa, in Russia, the Americas…we’d just started spreading to China.”

  “World War One must have been awkward,” Cassie quipped.

  Her forehead creased. “It was terrible.” She reacted as though it were her own memory. Maybe Scholars took history more personally.

  Cassie wanted to turn to a less painful subject. “Here’s something I keep wondering. How in God’s name do you all have so much money?”

  She laughed. “For centuries, we had people with the gift of divination. They made brilliant investments. And in modern times, we have algorithms and certain inside sources that predict the market quite well.”

  Cassie nodded. “How many people do you have in total?”

  “About ten thousand. A thousand right here, and the rest scattered in guaridas across the globe. But most are in supporting roles. We have fewer than eight hundred Knights, and only about five hundred Mages. Real psychic talent is all too rare.”

  “You must be growing in numbers,” Cassie said. “Hardly anyone ever leaves, and you recruit new people like me…” She trailed off at Lucia’s pained expression. “You also lose a lot of people.”

  “Let me
be completely clear.” Lucia leaned forward, her expression earnest. “The cost is enormous. Mages are prone to psychological breakdowns and have a high suicide rate. And one-sixth of all Knights die on missions before they retire.”

  Cassie swallowed. It was worse than she’d expected. She looked over at the practice mat where Jonathan and Gabi still writhed on the floor. Gabi had one leg hooked around Jonathan’s neck and appeared to be trying to pop his head off in the crook of her knee.

  She shuddered and turned her attention back to Lucia, who asked, “Have you decided against joining now?” Her tone suggested there would be nothing wrong with that.

  “No. How many people do you recruit a year?” With those odds, many people would probably turn them down.

  “Maybe a couple dozen a year, mostly Knights and Mages.”

  “I didn’t know I was so special,” Cassie said weakly.

  Lucia stared at her. “You’re the rightful owner of one of the rarest documents on earth, and you’re one of the heirs to its magic.”

  Cassie gave a half laugh, shaking her head. “I’m an ordinary, unemployed, divorced lady.”

  “These things are not contradictory.”

  Lucia hadn’t told her everything. Cassie asked, “What else is in the codex?”

  The Scholar dropped her head. “It is yours, and you have the right to know. But I don’t recommend discussing it with Jonathan, at least not today. It won’t make things any easier.”

  Gabi and Jonathan had taken a water break. Gabi was gesturing as she talked, perhaps describing a defensive move, and Jonathan looked relaxed for the first time since Cassie’s fight with him. “Yeah, I’ll hold off on that,” Cassie promised Lucia. “What does it say?”

  “Much of it is devoted to describing an ancestor of yours and his particularly epic ball game.”

  “Seriously?”

  Lucia shrugged. “The ancient Mayans loved their sports. And you already know about the famine spell—which may not work, but we don’t recommend your trying it, anyway.”

  The woman was hedging. “What else?”

  “Well,” Lucia said, “although you’re not exactly what we’d call an earth elemental—someone with a magical connection to the earth or stones and crystals—there may be a spell that allows you to use obsidian to make you immune to any psychic attack, including demon possession.”

  “Whoa.” Cassie had heard enough about their missions to understand how powerful that might be.

  “I’ve written out the spell in English syllables, just as your great-grandfather did with the animal spell. The text is so ancient, it’s difficult to know if I’m getting it right. That’s why I want Lorenzo in Aquileia to take a look. I would’ve been unsure of the animal spell, too, except in that case, I already know it works.”

  “We should try it,” Cassie said.

  She held up a warning hand. “If I’m reading it correctly, doing the spell also brings up an onslaught of self-hatred that’s difficult to survive. According to the text, the spell caused the last person to kill himself on the spot.”

  “Oh my God.” That was a hell of a side effect. “Why? Nothing bad happens to me with the animal spell.”

  “We’re still researching, but I believe it’s integral to the working of the spell. The language is something like… For an hour, conquer the demons within. For a day, no demons may conquer you.” She gave a rueful smile. “It is, as they say, a feature, not a bug.”

  Cassie tried to wrap her head around this. “So it wouldn’t last forever, anyway.”

  “A day at most, and maybe much less. We don’t recommend experimenting any time soon.”

  “No. It sounds like things are dangerous around here enough.” She considered the mortality rate of Knights and Mages again. “If you only recruit a couple dozen people a year, you guys must actually be getting smaller.”

  “Ah, well. I was talking about active recruiting. Some people marry sonámbulos, and to do this, the outsider needs to join.” She smiled. “It’s hardly discouraged. We would have a very shallow gene pool if it didn’t happen. The sonámbulos almost always take a safe, non-specialized job, and of course, some choose to be full-time parents.”

  Something clicked in Cassie’s brain. Was this what Jonathan wanted? For her to stay with him, but out of harm’s way? She’d been angry and hurt that he hadn’t welcomed the opportunity to keep her near, especially after startling her by declaring his feelings like he had. But maybe he’d seen a less dangerous way to keep her close.

  Why hadn’t he said so?

  Of course he hadn’t. Why would he talk about a future together when she hadn’t even said she loved him back?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Cassie talked with Lucia until the woman finally had to leave for the airport. By that time, Jonathan had finished training with Gabi. Cassie didn’t really feel like working out. She had her usual session with Val in the afternoon, and Jonathan came to the office to meet her afterward. When Cassie asked him if he wanted to go to the cantina, he made a noise she took as a yes.

  Although she expected him to have a ton of questions about her meeting with Lucia, he seemed to be sticking to their resolution of not discussing the whole issue for a while. In fact, he hardly seemed to want to talk at all. Cassie told him about how Val was training her to focus the energy of the spell, and he made polite but brief responses. He barely even looked at her, which for him was very strange. Tension tightened his shoulders and expression.

  As they reached the elevators, he said, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  “All right.” She looked up at him, waiting for further explanation, but none came.

  Apprehension seeped through her when they got off on the medical floor of El Dédalo, where Cassie had gotten her ten thousand tests when she’d first arrived. Jonathan, she’d learned recently, underwent physicals every month—standard protocol for Knights. They’d talked about not needing a condom, since they were both clean and she was on the pill, which the medical department had graciously refilled for her. If she did join Manus Sancti, it seemed, at least the health care benefits would be good.

  Cassie couldn’t imagine what they were doing here now, though.

  The man at the reception desk said, “West. Are you visiting?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man addressed Cassie. “If you’re waiting here, there’s tea or coffee—”

  “She’s coming with me,” Jonathan said.

  They went down a short hallway of closed doors. All of them had corkboards, and in addition to notes, cards, and some oddball items, a few were decorated with milagros. Cassie had seen the tin charms before in gift shops and in one old Catholic church in Tucson where people had pinned them to the blanket covering a statue of a saint.

  She took a closer look at a cluster of them on one corkboard. Next to a few of the expected forms—a heart, a cross, a praying figure—hung a tin pentagram, a little disc scripted with a word in Arabic, and a couple of discs emblazoned with the Manus Sancti design of Jonathan’s tattoo.

  “Who’s in these rooms?” she asked him in a quiet voice, although he’d stopped several feet in front of her. “People who have gotten hurt in action?”

  “And anyone who’s sick. Cancer, heart problems, anything.”

  Impressive—a full-fledged hospital, although a tiny one. They turned a corner, and moaning emanated from one of the rooms. Someone else muttered to himself behind a door that stood ajar. Cassie’s heart sped up. What were they doing here?

  A man in scrubs approached them. “Salaam, Jonathan,” he said quietly. “Here to see your mom? She’s awake.”

  Cassie froze. What the hell? He’d told her his mom was dead.

  No. He’d said he’d lost her. Cassie’s nerves frayed like wires chewed by rats. She followed him into the room, and he shut the door behind them.

  A thin woman with short gray hair perched on the edge of the bed. Her thin cotton robe had slipped off one of her narrow shoulders, and Jo
nathan leaned over and carefully pulled it back up again before sitting down on a chair. If his mother noticed him, she gave no sign of it. She stared straight ahead.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said. “I brought someone with me today. Cassie Rios. I told you a little about her before. She’s, uh, she’s my girlfriend.” He sounded so much younger, almost like a teenager.

  Cassie realized she was pressing her fingers to her lips and forced her hand back down to her side. Should she say something? “Hello.” She felt like she was doing the wrong things even though she was just standing there.

  “Capitán Renaud asked her to become a Knight,” he said. “I don’t think she should.” Silence. From outside the door came the muffled sound of more moaning. At least his mom looked clean and neat, well cared for. The room itself, though almost empty, gleamed spotless.

  It was only fair, Jonathan pleading his case in front of a mute witness. Gabi had told Cassie that Jonathan’s mother had lost her mind because of her work as a Mage. His mother couldn’t offer an opinion, but if she could, she’d no doubt agree with him.

  “She has magic, like I said,” Jonathan said to his mom. Sympathy squeezed Cassie’s heart. She was honored that he’d told his mom about her, and stricken that his mom was unable to respond. “And I’m scared I’m going to lose her, like you. Like Michael.”

  Cassie stared down at the floor. She should’ve been more understanding and less worried about whether he doubted her abilities. But she’d been hoping for reassurance, because she doubted her own worth.

  “Anyway, I thought you should meet her,” he said to his mom. “I’m not going to stay today, but I’ll be back on Sunday like usual, all right?” He got up and leaned over to kiss his inert mom on the cheek. God, he was so good, down to the core. She tried not to make any sound as she followed him back out into the hallway and he softly shut the door.

  “This is where you go every Sunday.” Cassie’s voice came out small.