Rise of a Phoenix

by Shannon Mayer

  It took me a moment to realize that Dinah was screaming at me, that her voice was barely audible through the ice that had formed inside my ears. “FOR THE LOVE OF BEAR, USE YOUR FIRE!”

  Bear. My boy still needed me and that meant I couldn’t die yet. No matter the cost to my own soul, I could not give up as long as he drew breath.

  I sucked down a gulp of air that barely squeezed through my tightened and iced throat, drew that air deeply into me and touched it to the flame that was mine. I gave my flame the last of what I was, whatever it needed to stop this madness around me. For Bear.

  The heat burst around me in a wave of purple and blue fire that licked along my skin and melted the ice, thawing it so rapidly that my skin tingled and burned for a second time as the cold left it.

  There was screaming then that I could hear, not only Dinah but someone else’s. The ghost? No, someone I knew. A man.

  “Dinah,” I whispered her name.

  “Get up, Killian is in trouble!” She didn’t turn down the volume for one second.

  Every muscle in my body felt as if I’d been beaten with a baseball bat, leaving me limp and weak. But Killian was in trouble, which meant I had to move.

  Above me the ghost Magelore writhed as my fire tangled with the edge of his feet. Fire didn’t kill Magelores, but it hurt them when they were alive. I didn’t think that this dead one was bothered by normal fire. But the fire of a Phoenix, maybe that was something else. I didn’t really understand what I was doing as I lifted a hand to the ghost.

  “Go.” I breathed the word and with it a burst of flame rolled from my body and through his form, the color of the flames soft, like the flames of protection that had wrapped us inside the plane. Pink flames fluttered through him and he arched his back, his arm and the stump of an arm splayed wide. The last thing I saw were his black eyes as they faded from my vision, fury deeply within them.

  I let my fire go and stumbled forward. The air around me was still cool but nowhere near the ice of before. It took me a moment to spot Killian at the front door, the female ghost circling around him. There was no more electricity around him and he was on his knees, his body encased in ice.

  Time, it all came down to time, and I had none left.

  I held my hand out, palm facing the Magelore ghost, and let my fire race out of me. A long burst of brighter pink flames flickered and shot in a perfect line, connecting me with the Magelore’s form. She reacted the same as the other, arching her back with her arms spread wide, her black hole of a mouth and eyes swiveling toward me.

  “Go to hell,” I whispered.

  And then she was gone, as if she’d never been. But I knew better. These were no ordinary ghosts. Sure as shit, I’d banished them, but there was no doubt in my mind they would be back. And I wasn’t sure I could do another round with them. I stumbled down the stairs and ran as fast as I could to Killian. His head was bowed, thick with ice. I grabbed his face in my hands and tried not to think about the way his skin was waxy and cool, as if he were already dead.

  I poured my fire over him, melting the ice as quickly as I could. As it left him he slumped forward into my arms.

  His words were slurred and filled with a pain I understood all too well. “Lass, I didn’t mean to kill her, you have to believe me.”

  I closed my eyes and just held him. “I know.” I helped him to his feet and onto the front porch, down the stairs and onto the gravel of the driveway. “Wait here.” I pointed at Abe who danced around us.

  “Abe, look after him. Bewache.”

  Killian groaned, but I made myself get up and leave them both. Because the reality was, as I stepped back into the house, I could already feel the ghost Magelores ramping back up for another round. And this time they would come at me together. I had only a limited amount of time before they were back full force.

  I ran up the stairs, slower than before but at least not dragging my ass completely. “Dinah, you saved both us back there.”

  “Fuck, don’t do that to me,” she muttered.

  “Might not have a choice. It’s getting cold again,” I said as I approached the bedroom, the one that I thought held the ruby ring. There was nothing Vivian would have protected more than a ring that in turn protected her from three guardians from Hell.

  It hit me then why Romano had sent me after Vivian. Because she couldn’t be hurt by the guardians because she held the ring, and he wanted a way to kill her off so he could get the ring back. But then why wasn’t he here now?

  My feet stuttered then and my ears strained at the sounds within the house. There was a creak somewhere, like that of a footstep. Then another and another.

  I bared my teeth and sprinted for the door of the bedroom, sliding through as I heard the roar of anger from something . . . big. I pushed the dresser in the room across the front of the door, buying myself time, and then started to toss the dresser drawers.

  “Dinah, any ideas?”

  “About what exactly? The thing that’s coming for you next, or where the ring is?”

  “Fuck, Dinah, be helpful!” I yelled at her.

  “Floorboards are too obvious. But the bitch liked her bed,” Dinah said.

  She had a point. I abandoned the dresser and moved to the bed. I stripped the linens off first and flipped the mattress over while I cursed Martin for not being more helpful. There were no cuts or stitched places in the mattress or the box spring.

  The door to the bedroom shuddered and the dresser screeched as it was pushed open an inch. A set of claws the size of bear paws slid through the edges of the door. I glanced at them only long enough to realize they were like the creatures that had pulled the plane apart, only sized up.

  Did that mean Strike was here? No, I didn’t think that was the case. Gut feeling, this was someone else.

  I turned away from the creature making its way in and grabbed the headboard of the bed. Padded and stitched. I ran my hands over it.

  Nothing.

  Wrong way, you are going the wrong way!

  “Martin, it’s about damn time!” I yelled. But it was too late, we were in the room and rather trapped.

  It took me a long time to find it. His cool breeze tugged at me, pulling me forward.

  I had no words for the frustration that poured through me. The door creaked again and I spun, yanked Dinah from her holster, and fired into the spindly finger claws that wrapped around the edge. The thing on the other side howled as we took off two pieces of him.

  The injury would either slow it down, or hurry it up.

  I was banking on slowing it down.

  I was wrong.

  19

  The roar of the beast on the other side of the door told me everything I needed to know. There would be no more time to try and work my way out of this problem. I had to kill whatever it was, and then Martin could show me where the ruby ring was.

  A voice called out to me. “Dear sister, you’ve wounded my pet.”

  “Daniel.” Dinah breathed his name.

  The beast on the other side of the door roared again and threw itself with renewed vigor against it.

  “Dinah,” I said softly as I stepped away from the bed and moved so my back was to the open French doors that led onto a small balcony. “We’re going to kill him. We have to.”

  The thing was, Daniel had been Bea’s favorite brother. She’d been kind to him, and treated him better than she’d treated anyone else.

  “I don’t want to,” she whispered.

  “Well, he’s going to kill me if I don’t kill him.” I kept the words calm even though they were the truth. “He’s not here to play tiddlywinks.”

  She choked a sob. “Use the other gun then. I don’t want to do it.”

  Fuck, this was not what I needed, but I would do what I could to keep her out of this. I jammed her into her holster and pulled out my backup gun. Eleanor would have had no problem shooting Daniel.

  I didn’t say it out loud, but the words and truth were there in the air. The real re
ason I’d always chosen Eleanor to kill over Dinah was that I’d known deep down that despite her bluster, Dinah didn’t like the deaths she caused. It made sense now; Bianca had been in her day the most squeamish of us.

  The door shattered in half, and the creature stuck the upper part of its body inside. Built just like the gremlins on the plane, the body was lanky and yet heavily muscled with wings that protruded out both sides and a mouth that gaped wide as if the jaw was unhinged. I pulled Dinah back out and aimed her at the beastie. “Smoke bomb.”

  “Please don’t use me to kill him!”

  “DO it!” I snarled.

  “Not until you swear not to hurt him!” she screamed at me and I bared my teeth and shot at the oversized gremlin with the other gun. The bullets just seemed to irritate him more than anything.

  “Fine! I swear I will do all I can not to hurt him.”

  Dinah’s inner workings shifted and I squeezed the trigger as the giant gremlin launched across the dresser at me. Dinah shot straight down into his mouth. He clamped his teeth shut around the smoke bomb and it exploded inside. Teeth went flying in every direction and the smoke burst out around his head, blinding him as his eyeballs were pushed out with the pressure.

  I ran toward the creature as it flailed and roared blindly, finding my last reserves of strength and clinging to them. At the final second, I leapt up on top of the dresser, stood, and spun into a roundhouse. I slammed my foot into the side of the gremlin’s head, toppling it over. Its claws reached for me, swiping across my right arm from shoulder to hand. The burning lines ran hot with blood. I didn’t stop, just hopped off the dresser and stalked down the hall.

  I saw only one thing, one person standing on the landing of the stairs.

  Daniel.

  “Bea wants me to let you live,” I said. “Why the fuck, I will never know.”

  “Because he is like you, Nix,” she said softly. “Broken before you ever really knew what being whole was.”

  His eyes widened and then narrowed rapidly. “She’s not alive.”

  I smiled, and let the smile turn into a smirk tainted with my anger. “She’s alive. She asked me not to kill you. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.” The words were doing their magic, throwing him off his game.

  Dinah gasped but I didn’t care. He was going to die. I would shoot him with the other gun. But if that was the case, why the sudden need to talk to him?

  I didn’t need him to talk. I didn’t need information from him, so why was I stalling? I should have just shot him in the head right there. Killed him and been done with it. I had the aim for it even without Dinah. There was no magic bullet needed to end his life. One ordinary one would do the job.

  An image of the child in Hector’s arms, the child I’d not meant to kill, swept up through me and I knew in that split second why I didn’t want to kill him. In his own way, it was not his fault he was a monster. In his own way, there was an innocence about Daniel, maybe about all of us Romano kids. Because none of us had been raised to be anything but killers, to be monsters in our own right, tools to be used so our father could further his rule.

  Tears caught me off guard but I let them come because I understood suddenly what Dinah meant about Daniel being like me.

  I lowered the gun and stared at him. “I wish our family wasn’t so fucked up.”

  If I thought I’d confused him before, it was nothing to what that line did. He frowned at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. Maybe I was the fool for not just blowing his brains out and ending this right here.

  I was at the top of the stairs looking down at him. His monster still snarled and roared in the other room, crashing through everything in an attempt to get away from the smoke and to find a way to see. I took a step down.

  “I wish I’d played tag with you when we were little, that we’d wrestled and fought like normal siblings. I wish we’d played in the forest, pretending to be the monsters instead of actually becoming them.”

  Dinah let out a soft cry. I went on as I took one step after another. “Daniel, we never had a chance to be normal. Even being abnormal we never had a chance living in that house, with monsters surrounding us. We either became like them, or were eaten by them. I didn’t want to be eaten, so I became one of them.”

  His eyes were wide with something akin to fear which I didn’t understand. I was in the middle of the stairs now. “Bea was kind to you. I never knew why,” I said.

  “Because Gabe raped me.” His words seemed to slip out of him, surprising him as much as me.

  Gabe, the first brother I’d killed, the one who’d been there at the time of my own rape. If I let myself, I could see him over my thirteen-year-old body laughing at me as he tried to kiss me.

  My whole body seized up and I stared at Daniel, my own body trembling as if the ghosts of the Magelores had come back. I said words I’d never spoken out loud, that I’d never allowed myself to admit to.

  “Me too.”

  He swallowed hard and our eyes locked. Understanding that probably neither of us could have found anywhere else flowed between us. And then he shook his head, breaking the momentary spell. “Father wants you with him. He’ll reward me. I have to take you to him. But I don’t want to be the bottom of the pack. Which means I have to kill you.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I want him dead. He stole my son, he destroyed my life. He destroyed all our lives. Tommy knew it. Bea knew it. I know it. I don’t really want to kill you, Daniel, but I will.”

  Daniel trembled on the spot as he shook his head harder and harder as if fighting something only he could hear. Finally, he put his hands to his head. “No. No, I won’t go back to being afraid!”

  “You don’t have to.” I took another couple steps. “You don’t have to, Danny.” I used his childhood name for the first time in years, and he staggered as if I’d hit him. “We can look out for each other. That’s what siblings do. Tommy . . . he’s gone after Romano.”

  “He’ll never stop coming for us, you know that.” Daniel lifted his eyes and I saw the denial in them, the fear, and the need to feel safe. I couldn’t fix any of those things.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I said.

  Daniel shook his head harder and then I saw the ring on his finger. The ruby ring that kept him safe from the guardians’ control. I pointed to it. “Give me the ring and I will kill Romano. You’ll be free. We’ll both be free and safe.”

  “Danny, please,” Dinah said. “Please listen to her.”

  Daniel’s eyes shot to my holster. “Who . . . who is she?”

  I gave him just her name because I wasn’t sure he could handle anything else. “Bianca.”

  His eyes rolled and then closed and he pressed his hands into the sockets. “I tried to find her body, to bring her back. I could have raised her but not without her soul. Why the fuck would you put her in a gun?” He launched himself at me and I stepped to the side, avoiding him easily. Without thought, I raised Dinah and put her to the back of his head.

  She sobbed. “No, no, you promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”

  I drew a slow breath and let it out, all the tension in my body going with it. “This was her choice. A way to escape Romano.”

  He took a deep breath that turned into a shudder. I went on. “Danny, there are two ways to never be afraid again. You can help me and we can face him together, we can free ourselves. Or I can end things for you right here, right now. There can be no in between. I can’t risk my son. I won’t risk him being raised like we were by Romano.”

  Daniel turned to look at me, tears streaming down his face. “You must love your boy very much.”

  “More than anything,” I said softly. “More than my own life or anything that scares me.”

  He swallowed hard. “I can’t help you, Nix. But I . . . I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

  Dinah was crying and my own face was wet with tears. “This would be easier if you kept fighting,” I said.

  He gave me a lop
sided grin, and for a flash, I saw the boy who’d been my brother. The quiet one who’d hidden in the library, the one who’d slumped whenever our father came in. He slid off the ruby ring and handed it to me.

  “The other ring is here somewhere. The original one, but it’s hidden better than anyone could have guessed,” he said. “Don’t bother with it.”

  I stuffed the ring into my pocket, feeling it and knowing it wasn’t the ring we needed. Yes, it was one of the rings, but the moment he said the original ring was here I knew . . . that was the one we needed. “Daniel. Are you sure?”

  He slumped on the stairs. “I couldn’t do it myself. Strike kept me from ending it. He sent me after you, you know. Father made him. I don’t think Strike wanted to come after you.”

  My jaw ticked as I went to my knees beside him. “I believe you.”

  I moved to lower Dinah and she trembled in my hand. “No. I can do it. I can do this much for him.”

  I reached out for Daniel and he fell into my arms. I hugged him tightly, wishing I could do something else other than end it for him. My lower lip trembled as I raised Dinah and rested her on the edge of his ear. I closed my eyes.

  “Brother, find your peace, wherever it may be.”

  He sucked in a deep shaking breath. “Find your boy, Nix. Keep him safe the way no one ever kept us safe.”

  I couldn’t speak around the lump in my throat. The pain in my heart was something I didn’t fully understand. To discover one of my siblings like this, so broken that death would be the only peace he could understand, shattered something deep in me that I didn’t realize was still there. A bit of hope that somehow, I could find a way to bring some of my family back together.

  Foolish, a child’s hope that had been buried so deeply, I didn’t even realize I still held onto it, yet there it was.

  I squeezed the trigger and Dinah cried out as the bullet left her.

  A splatter of blood hit my face as Daniel slumped against my one arm. I let him slide to the floor, his body limp.