Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  I let go of his hair and ripped my own headset off. I needed to speak without having Mancini hear me. And I wanted to pace. I needed to move, and yet in the small confines of the helicopter that was open on one side, there really was no room. My mind and thoughts were on fire. My guns had souls trapped in them. My father had likely known what I was all along and I’d fallen into his trap time and time again which had only served to make me stronger so he could use me. There was not a lot of new information here. Unless we got back to the deal my father made, and the demons he thought I should protect him from.

  Killian put a hand on my upper arm but I didn’t look at him, not right away. He put his mouth to my ear. “Lass, what are you thinking?”

  I turned to him, doing the same, putting my mouth against his ear, the strands of his hair blowing across my lips. “He doesn’t have much more to tell us. And he is going to cause more grief than help if we don’t get rid of him.” I pulled back and looked at Killian then, and he nodded.

  Once more he tucked in close. “Agreed. But he’s a hard one to kill, believe you me. I’ve tried.” He gave me a half grin. From my other side, Tommy shifted so I could see him. He was my brother, but he’d also been one of my tormentors in our early years. I’d been the child of the second wife to Romano, the only one born to the family without any abnormal abilities. (Besides Gabe, but he was dead, so he no longer counted in my mind, even if I had been the one to kill him.) Tommy had his own set of abilities that could tip the balance in our favor.

  Tommy stood and approached us, his eyes fogged with worry. He put his hand carefully on my lower back to balance himself in the center of the helicopter. He leaned in close so he could be heard.

  “I could steal his memories. We’d know then what he was really thinking,” Tommy said. His face had zero scars from his ordeal with the Shadow, and even his eyes were back to normal. Which was saying something since they’d been gouged out of his skull by his own hands in the throes of the madness the Shadow induced. And I knew what that madness could do; I’d felt the Shadow’s power beat against my own skin. That red paste had healed him back to good as new. Again, I had to give Simon props for that, even if he was dead by my hand.

  I shivered and he patted my back as if to soothe me. I fought not to roll my eyes. It was a little late to suddenly play the considerate big brother. “Any backlash for you, though?”

  Tommy shook his head. “No. I’ll stuff the memories where I can’t see them.”

  I frowned. “You mean you’d have them forever?”

  “Yeah, that’s the deal. Myst must have balance. For every action, there is an equal and measurable reaction. The memories aren’t really taken or wiped out, like they say. They stay in the person’s mind, just buried to a point where most don’t find them again, not unless they really go searching. So, after I see them, I have them, and I do all I can not to look at them.” His eyes flickered and I saw the level of fear he was attempting to keep from me. The twitch at the edge of his dark eyes, the tightening at the edge of his jaw. He didn’t want Mancini’s memories. I wouldn’t want them either.

  But for Bear . . . for him, I would throw anyone into the fire, including my brother. I grabbed the headset and slid it back on, adjusting the mouthpiece as I turned. “There are better ways to make someone talk. Mancini, why do you really want Luca Romano dead? Or should I have Tommy here take your memories?”

  As I finished my turn toward him, Mancini lurched to his feet, toward the open side of the helicopter. I lunged for him, grabbing at his suit coat, snagging the edge of it, but the headset slowed me down. He spun and smiled at me as he fell backward into open air. The coat ripped and I was left standing there with nothing but a piece of deep blue cloth that fluttered in the wind.

  Still smiling, his body swept away and behind us, but I felt like his laughter chased me. I stood at the door, my fingers gripped into the edge and stared as he fell from the sky, his shape indiscernible from any other speck. I stepped back and slid the door shut, turned and looked at Killian and Tommy. They both had headsets on.

  “Guess he really didn’t want to talk. I’ll catch up to him later,” I said.

  Killian laughed and shook his head. Tommy just stared at me. “You don’t think he’s dead?”

  I snorted. “No. If he thought he wouldn’t survive, there is no way he’d have tossed himself out. He’s not fucking stupid, and we’d be idiots to believe he would die so easily. Romano isn’t the only one playing a long game, well hidden.”

  Tommy turned to Killian and asked where we were headed. I let the words wash over me because my mind was busy elsewhere.

  The thing that tugged at me, though, was why would Mancini have gone to all the trouble to get Noah to bring him to me, to give me the diary, to tell me about my abilities and about my guns, only to balk when it came to the big question. Why did he really want Luca Romano dead? Or was it more than that? Or was it just the diary? I slid my fingers over it, feeling the worn edges again. I didn’t even look at it, but I knew it was possible that it could be that important.

  The only thing that was obvious to me was that Mancini wanted to use me as his weapon to get rid of my father. But what reason could make him unwilling to speak of it?

  I finally let myself slide into a bench seat, the one where Mancini had sat, and actually relax. Though, even that wasn’t the right word. Maybe rest was a better one. I needed to rest after what I’d just walked through, after what I’d just done. There would be no relaxing until Bear was back with me. And the fact that he was alive meant I would not stop until he was at my side once more. Abe let out a long low whine and pushed himself between my knees so his nose was pressed into my belly button. I rubbed his head with one hand, absently.

  His breath was hot through my shirt, reminding me he was there, even if he wasn’t vocal like the other men who surrounded me.

  I closed my eyes and let myself go over what had happened at the jail-turned-laboratory. For the first time, I’d tapped into my abnormal abilities, all the way to the core, and used them to destroy the Shadow, a guardian of Hell. Not something I would have ever thought I could do, and yet there it was, and I’d survived.

  Yet again. Between Mancini, Vivian, and my own experiences, I couldn’t deny the truth of the survivor defenses. I would embrace them as my own.

  I rubbed a hand over my face and leaned back so my head was against the paneling of the helicopter. My eyes stayed closed as Killian sat next to me, the line of his body warm against mine.

  “Hello, Lad,” he said. I cracked an eye as he gave Abe a rub between the shoulder blades. “You stick close to her.”

  Abe snorted and rubbed his face against my thigh as if to say, What do you think I’ve been doing?

  I let myself lean into Killian, just a little bit. Not enough that anyone watching would be able to see it, but enough that he took some of my weight.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open, Lass,” Killian said through the headset. “Try to rest.”

  “Where are we going, again?” I blinked up at him even as a massive wash of fatigue worked to close them against my will.

  “We’ll head to a safe house not far from here, a couple hours. Then we’ll make a plan.” He didn’t touch me, other than offering his body for me to lean on. Didn’t tell me not to worry, or that we’d get Bear back. None of that. He knew I wasn’t looking for anything other than a partner to get my son away from Romano. And yet he was there beside me, helping me through it when he didn’t have to.

  “We’ll take care of this mess,” he said softly, barely heard through the headset.

  We . . . there was that word again. I wasn’t sure I liked it, wasn’t sure I disliked it. For now, though, his help would be a godsend. A partner I didn’t want, but knew I needed to get through this shit storm I faced. With each passing second, I could feel it looming larger, coming for me faster. I closed my eyes again and sleep swept over me between washes of the helicopter’s blades.

  Dreams. I had
begun to hate them for they held my fears and my hopes and dashed them both. So even while I knew this was a dream, I also knew it held something more, some piece of information I needed to be aware of that my waking mind refused to see.

  “Bear?” I called for my boy as the scene around me slowly came into focus. He was only ten; there was no way he would survive with Romano. I’d at least had my mother and Zee looking out for me at that age. Bear had no one. Not even me. My heart twisted with that shitty truth.

  There was no answer from him and the fog that surrounded me faded, revealing a dusky landscape of flattened buildings and expansive desert all around.

  “This is not Kansas anymore, Toto.” I glanced to my side looking for Abe but he wasn’t there either. I frowned and took a step, a click sounding under my foot.

  I leapt to the side as the landmine went off behind me, sending me ass over head. The only thing that saved me was my abnormal ability. The survival instinct that had kept me alive so many times before. Before I even knew it was a part of me. But this was more than that. The mine should have shredded me to pieces even if I leapt off it.

  A warning then of what was coming?

  The scene shifted and went from dead silent to a roaring war zone in a matter of a single heartbeat. The ratta-tat-tat of rapid fire weapons, of mini-guns, and the massive concussions from landmines and hand grenades alike. The screams of dying men, the calls of their leaders as they were pushed into battle, in a language I didn’t know, but I knew the cadence. My hands went for my own guns and I found neither.

  I searched my body. Dinah and Eleanor were not there.

  I was truly on my own for the first time in I didn’t even know how long. I should have been more afraid than I was.

  I crept forward, searching the area for something to use as a weapon, to find Bear because I knew without a doubt he was somewhere here in this war zone. I blinked and I was in the middle of the battle, no longer on the edges. Bullets zinged by me, the resounding boom of something larger went off over my head, and after the concussive ringing in my ears eased, I saw him. There on the far side of the red zone was Bear, pinned down by fire, his hands over his head as he lay flat on the ground.

  I bolted toward him, ignoring the way the bullets whipped by me, ignoring the pain as they slammed into my limbs, back, hip, shoulders, ignored them until I fell at his feet.

  He jerked away from me, staring up at me, his face twisted with anger and even hatred, emotions I’d not thought I’d ever see on his sweet face.

  “You lied to me. You never tried to save me.”

  I snapped awake as we dropped from our cruising altitude, the air pressure popping my ears. Abe scrambled to keep his footing and I pulled him up beside me on the bench seat, looping an arm around him as he trembled. Almost like he’d been in the dream with me in spirit.

  “Bad dreams?” Tommy asked me from his spot across the way.

  I nodded and ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah. Was I talking?”

  “More like yelling.” He grimaced. “Bear is a good kid, and he’s stronger than all of us. We’ll get to him in time.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, he is. He’s better than any of us too.”

  Tommy laughed. “That isn’t so hard, to be better than us, I mean. We were all assholes.”

  A part of me didn’t want to let him back into my life. He was my brother by blood, but my enemy by the same blood. The better sense in me said not to soften, to keep the hard exterior up. But I couldn’t help it. I still wanted something that resembled family. Even if it was royally fucked up. My lips twitched. “Yeah, you were all born assholes. I had to learn to be an asshole.”

  “Learned, or born to it, your son isn’t like that. You did good with him, Nix.” Tommy gave me a nod and then he frowned. “I always hoped you wouldn’t get sucked back into this life.”

  My heart gave a funny twitch. “What made you turn on him?” Him, as in our father, Luca Romano.

  “He . . .” Tommy winced as if pained, “he raped my wife and then she killed herself.”

  Everything in me lurched because I knew the pain of losing a spouse all too well. “I’m sorry, Tommy.”

  “Me too.” He shook his head. “I thought I could protect her because I was his favorite, you know? But he knew how to hurt me, and when I refused to go to the Middle East for him, he tried to force me.”

  The Middle East . . . there had been rumblings about powerful abnormals there even when I was still in my father’s employ. Was that what my dream had been about, the Middle East? What had Romano wanted from Tommy’s visit there?

  “Why didn’t you want to go there?”

  His sigh came through with a crackle over the headset. “Guy named Shaitan holds the power there. He’s a total power-hungry shit that makes Dad look like a child in the playground who can’t figure out how the swings work, and this Shaitan was the one who made the playground. I tried to tell Dad he was messing with darker forces than just a damn abnormal. He wouldn’t listen. I think he planned to try and marry one of us boys to one of Shaitan’s girls.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. “After I was gone, then, this all happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you end up going?” I felt Killian stir beside me a split second before he got up and headed to the cockpit to check on the pilot, but more likely to give us some semblance of privacy, even if the headsets were still transmitting to everyone. The man could nearly read my mind, and while I appreciated it at times like this, I wasn’t fully sure I liked that he knew me so well already. It made Killian dangerous to my health in more than one way.

  Tommy waited for Killian to go, then he fell back into his story. “I went, when he threatened my wife’s life. I knew he wasn’t bluffing. We all know he doesn’t bluff. And he’s done it before, killed the spouses of those who pissed him off.”

  I startled. “Whose?”

  “Zee’s wife,” Tommy said. “Her name was Alma, and she tried to get Zee to leave Romano’s employ. At least, that’s what I understood.”

  My heart lurched with more than a wisp of green jealousy. I hadn’t known about Zee’s wife.

  The killing of spouses was not new to me, even if the loss of Zee’s wife was. Our father had Justin, my husband, killed in a car accident that was anything but an accident. Bear and I had been in the truck with him, and while I’d been injured, Bear had been snatched away before he knew I’d survived, or I knew he had. He’d been taken, and I was left believing he was dead for nearly six months before I found out the truth.

  I frowned, pushing my own feelings aside. Abe curled in tightly so he lay across my lap, all eighty pounds of him. I stroked my hand through his fur. I made myself go back to the important information. “And when you were gone, that’s when he raped her?”

  My older brother shook his head. “No. He waited until I came back, like the asshole he is. I was home a week, and I walked in on him with her. She was crying, tied to the bed, begging him to stop. He rolled off her and I shot him. You know how that goes. No bueno.”

  I nodded. I did know. Our father had made a deal with the devil. We’d thought for so long that the deal only entailed him gaining power, prestige, and money, but there had been an additional bonus. He was no longer mortal, and wounds that would kill anyone else didn’t even register on his radar as a damn scratch.

  “And, after that?” I prompted.

  Tommy shrugged and stared at his feet. “He took my gun from me, turned it around and held it to my head. It scared her so badly, Whitney was never the same after that. I tried to help her. I tried to get us both away from him but . . . the Hider I employed wasn’t like Zee. He didn’t have the ability to keep us Hidden for more than a few days before the shaking sickness took him. I had the money to pay him; he just didn’t have the ability he’d claimed.”

  I kept my jaw clenched tightly for a moment. There were no words I could offer. “After that, after she killed herself, that was when you tried to stop him?”

&nbs
p; He blew out a slow breath. “I reached out to a few low-level contacts I had in Mancini’s employ. Noah was one of them, and he was nervous to let too much show, but I knew I had him from the first day. He said he knew the man who was married to my sister, to Bianca. I never believed she was dead, you know. She was too fucking smart to die easy.”

  I nodded. “That was the trail I laid. I let Justin believe I was her. Simpler that way. Zee hid my tattoo, and that was that.”

  Tommy snorted. “You didn’t want your husband to know you were the abnormals’ boogeyman?”

  It was my turn to snort, deliberately mimicking him. “Something like that. I wanted a normal life. Can’t have that if your partner thinks you might off them in their sleep, or if he’s wondering just how many people you’ve killed.” Justin had thought the Phoenix was a monster, and maybe he was right. I didn’t want to burst the bubble on the life I’d created.

  “What happened to Bea?” Tommy asked, and it was my turn to sigh softly.

  “I found her dead in her room that weekend you all went to Miami for business. It was just the two of us. I heard her cry out. I went to investigate and she was dead on the floor. There was a note for me and in it she begged me to hide her body.”

  Tommy frowned. “Why would she want that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did it.”

  His jaw ticked. “You were a better sister to all of us than we deserved.”

  I blinked a couple of times before I responded. “I think we were all fucked over, coming from Romano.”

  Tommy barked a laugh. “There is that. Surprising we turned out as well as we have.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You think we turned out well? What mirror have you been looking in lately?”

  Laughter crept up my throat and I let it out, and Tommy joined in. Maybe for the first time, I felt a connection with one of my siblings other than a passing indifference or, worse, outright hatred.

  The helicopter tipped to the side and began a descent, the blades slowing.