I didn’t lower my gun. “Talk to me, Mary-Ellen.”
“Your father owned me,” she whispered. “If I had known it was you, I’d have turned you in for the money years ago. It would have bought my freedom completely.”
My father. Damn my soul to hell. It always came back to him.
“He would have killed you and we both know it,” I snapped. “Don’t be stupid. If my father owned you, and you ran from him, he would kill you if you went back no matter the prize you offered.”
Her eyes filled and spilled over with tears. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Dinah screamed a warning as Mary-Ellen lifted her but I saw it coming. I aimed down Eleanor’s sight and squeezed the trigger.
Mary-Ellen’s head snapped back as a bullet wound appeared in the middle of her forehead, right between her eyes.
The silence after the last gunshot was deafening. “Thanks, Dinah.” I bent and pried her out of Mary-Ellen’s fingers.
“No problem. Maybe you can let me kill someone next?”
I nodded. “For saving my life, you got it.”
I left Mary-Ellen there and did a search of the house. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for, if anything at all. It would not be the first time Zee had sent me to an abnormal that he felt needed killing.
But I didn’t believe that was the case here. Something about Mary-Ellen had tipped him off. I only had to find out what.
I wove my way through the house. Mary-Ellen’s husband, Hank, worked the day shift at the local hospital as a cleaner. I had a few hours yet.
I was in the back bedroom when I heard the knock on the front door, and the click of the latch opening. I froze where I was.
“Miss Mary-Ellen, it’s the missionaries. We thought we’d bring back your container. We ate the cookies already.”
Well, this was a twist I hadn’t been counting on. “Leave it on the floor. I’m indisposed,” I called out in my best high pitched Mary-Ellen voice.
The door clicked shut and I went back to searching the room. Again, I should have known better.
There were no missionaries at the door, but I had to admit later that it was a perfect ruse to make me let my guard down.
Because who would think of two Mormon missionary boys as supernatural creatures protecting their bird queen?
Not me.
The creak of the floor behind me was the split-second warning I got. I spun and dropped to one knee, snapping both Dinah and Eleanor up in unison though my shoulder and back screamed in protest. Life was something I would fight for, even if it hurt me.
“Oh, yeah, baby,” Dinah whispered. “Let’s blow them to bits.”
The two boys were no longer in their suits and ties. They’d shifted to the same kind of bird-lizard thing Mary-Ellen had been. Only they were significantly smaller than her oversized legs. More like baby lizard-birds.
“What are you?”
“Kagusta,” the one on the right said. The name meant nothing to me. I kept Dinah on him, Eleanor on the other. “You killed Mary-Ellen?”
I didn’t answer at first. I stood slowly, working my way around the oversized bed to the pane glass window. “She wouldn’t answer my questions. You going to be that stupid?”
They looked at each other and then shook their feather-crested heads in unison. Their plumage was far brighter than Mary-Ellen’s. The colors of their feathers were neon shades of blue, green and orange.
Fucking gaudy if you asked me, but I never did understand why magic created things the way it did. I wondered if it were an entity. If it was it just having a good belly laugh as it slapped shit together and gave it life and legs to walk around on.
“No, we’ll answer you,” the one on the right said. His bird eyes blinked in that same unnerving way Mary-Ellen’s had.
“Any special abilities besides duplicating your image?” I asked.
They shook their heads again.
“Why was she in hiding?” I was all the way around the bed now, and my back was to the big pane glass window. An escape route. I didn’t trust them any further than I could throw them when it came to telling me the truth about their abilities.
“Luca Romano was hunting her,” one of them said. “That’s all we know.”
Hearing my father’s name out loud was unnerving. “Why?”
“We don’t know. She told us he’d send the Phoenix after her eventually. That’s why she trained us.”
“I’m not wanting to kill you,” I said. “But I will if you so much as take one step toward me.”
They nodded once more. Like they were a couple of bobble-heads. My body hurt. I was bleeding across my belly and I hadn’t learned shit here. And I’d killed Mary-Ellen.
I should have felt bad about that last bit, but my training was thorough regarding that. If someone tried to kill me, they died first. End of story.
“Boys, this has been lovely, but I’m leaving now.” Announcing my departure was a test. Were they going to let me go, or force my guns on them?
They looked at each other and I knew the answer before they even turned their heads back.
Guns it was.
Chapter Nine
Behind me, Mary-Ellen’s home burned in bright blazing streaks that lit the afternoon sky. Gasoline was an excellent accelerant, but nothing burned like blood full of magic. Not that abnormals were any more combustible than the average Joe, but once they were dead something in their blood changed and it was like liquid fire.
I glanced in the rearview mirror only once to make sure the place was indeed engulfed and then continued on my way back to the ranch.
As I drove, I tried to figure out what the whole point of that visit had been. Just a test of my skills against an abnormal? Zee wasn’t wasteful like that, so I didn’t think that was the case.
But I’d found nothing other than the connection to my father, something that unfortunately many abnormals had. They went to him for money, for jobs, and when they tried to screw him over, I was sent in to deal with them.
“Did you enjoy that, Dinah?” I asked. I’d killed both Kagusta with her.
“Yeah, it was good. Thanks, Nix.”
I flinched, not because she called me by my name, but because the two guns rarely spoke to me using my name at all.
At least not until just before I’d had to put them away. Right before I’d met Justin.
“No,” I said. “Don’t go there, Dinah.”
“Calling you by your name isn’t . . . bad,” Eleanor said, her voice carefully emotionless. “We never called her by her name and she still died.”
Her. Bianca, my sister.
I shook my head, and clenched the steering wheel. This was not the time to think about Bianca killing herself. From what I could gather from Dinah and Eleanor, one of them had done it at her request. “Zee doesn’t want me to get too comfortable with you two, and I know why. I was at my darkest hour when you spoke to me like that before.”
“Are you not at your darkest hour again?” Eleanor asked.
I didn’t answer her, because she wasn’t far off. The two guns would see me through this as no one else could, and all three of us knew it.
An hour later, I was back at the house. Walking up the front steps, I could feel every ache, every jarring motion to my back and the skin on my belly.
I was going to look like I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me. Which I hadn’t. But also, I kind of had.
I let myself into the house and went straight to my room and the master bath. I ran a steaming hot tub full of water and put in a large amount of Epsom salts and Himalayan pink salt. Both would draw out the soreness and any potential leftover toxicity from Mary-Ellen’s talons.
I laid Dinah and Eleanor onto the side of the tub, stripped and slid into the blistering hot water with a hiss of air. Leaning back, I let my head rest against the edge, thinking.
I went over the scene with Mary-Ellen again and again.
The only thing that made sense was that Zee was try
ing to prove to me that I’d lost my edge. That I wasn’t as aware as I’d been even ten years ago. I rubbed a hand over my face and let my mind go to a blank space. White noise, emptiness.
It was a refuge from a world filled with emotions.
I soaked in the tub until the water cooled. With effort, I pulled myself out, and thought the salts had helped with the pain through my body. I wasn’t a fool. This was not going to be an easy bounce back.
“Shit.” I couldn’t afford for Zee to be right. I could not afford to not be at the level I needed to be in order to find justice for my boys.
I dressed, strapped the two guns onto my lower back and made my way through the house once more. Abe was sound asleep on the couch, snoring. I snapped my fingers at him and he flipped over, his head whipping around before he saw me.
“Come on, let’s go find Zee.”
With Abe at my side we headed out back. I could see Zee down at the barn, mucking out the paddocks.
I reached the fence around the enclosures and leaned on it, raising a foot and setting it on the bottom rail. “I killed her. Is that what you wanted? Or you got something else for me?”
Zee stopped with the motion of manure fork to wheelbarrow and leaned on it, mimicking me.
“Did you have to kill her?”
I grimaced. “She attacked me, tried to kill me. You know it’s a hard line on that.”
“I do. What did you learn?” His eyes were on my face, watching for the nuances that would give away my thoughts. I closed my face down.
“That you don’t think I’m capable,” I said. “That you think I don’t realize how hard this is going to be, that I’m not ready for it.”
He snorted. “Yes and no. You’ve got to understand you aren’t that kid anymore, whose whole life has been death and fighting and magic. You aren’t that hardened bitch, Phoenix. I’m not sure that you ever truly were.”
I stared at him. “She was a Kagusta. That mean anything to you?”
He frowned. “Kind of bird-lizard shifter?”
“Bingo. She knew my father. Thought he’d sent me after her.”
“Not an uncommon story.”
I narrowed my eyes. “But maybe that’s the thing. Not uncommon, but how strange that I would end up in the same place she did?” I shook my head. “Don’t answer that. I’m ready to go to New York, and I know you are, too, so let’s go. Neither of us needs more training—”
“I’m not going,” he said and I froze mid step. Sore, aching, and tired through to my bones, I was sure I heard him wrong. I had to have heard him wrong. There was no way he’d back down from this fight.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going. To Hide us both at this point would be too much for my magic,” he gestured at the deep scars on his arms and face, “and I’m slower, too. I’ll end up getting you killed.”
I frowned. “That wasn’t the plan. And since when have you been slower than me?”
“You got Abe, take him. He’s better, and you and I both know he’d die for you. You’ve got the ladies.”
Dinah laughed softly and Eleanor joined her. “Ladies? That’s the nicest thing he’s ever called us.”
“That’s not the point.” I took a step closer, ignoring my guns. “What do you mean it’s too much for your magic? What’s really going on, Zee?”
“I got the shakes.” He held his hand out flat and it was shaking. “Doctor says it’s progressing faster than normal, probably because I’ve had so many head injuries. He doesn’t understand what I am.”
I stared at him, freezing rain pouring down around us. The shakes were common with Hiders who used their ability too freely. Like a conduit whose wiring starts to short. “The shakes. You’re sure?”
He gave me a quick nod. “Besides. You need someone here to take care of the horses.”
His words were slow to sink in, because to me he’d always been invincible.
I held my hand up, stopping him. “I’ve already lined up sales for all of them. The house is next.”
He shrugged. “No need to sell the house, not yet. The life insurance from Justin will cover things for a while. I can manage all that while you’re gone.”
I knew he wouldn’t want comfort, but I didn’t know how to react to this news of his. So, I bulled forward. “The house is going. The realtor knows I won’t be around. She will stage it if necessary.”
He shook his head. “That’s a mistake. You don’t need the money.”
That much, he was right about. I did not need the money from the house.
I just knew I couldn’t live there with the memories that followed me. The whisper of my boy’s feet on the hardwood, the sound of Justin’s laughter, the love and family I’d finally found was here. I couldn’t live with the ghosts of what could have been.
No, the house had to go.
“You’re running again,” Zee said. “You aren’t a child anymore, Nix. Don’t run just because this scares you. This is your home. Bear would want you to stay.”
Zee frowned. “I’m done here. We can go back to the house and talk.”
I waited for him to put the wheelbarrow and fork away. He would not want help, and I wasn’t about to cross that line. He stepped out of the barn and together we started up the slight slope toward the house. I kept up with him easily, for the first time noticing how careful he was with each step, with each movement. How he was doing everything he could to control the muscle tremors through his body.
Damn it, I’d been so wrapped up in my own preparations, in my own anger, I’d not seen his decline. A decline that probably had started far before the accident if I was honest with myself, and pushed the instant guilt away. While he’d Hidden Bear and I, he’d been worked nearly to death by my father, and whoever it was he’d worked for before that. A Hider’s abilities were at a premium, but the cost was high. Eventually the kick back from the magic would kill him, but not before it ate away at his body bit by bit.
“Any luck with the coding on the papers?” The question from him was not unwarranted. I’d been trying to break the code every night since I’d found the damn papers, but with the glyphs and letters moving and shifting, it had been near impossible. I’d work at it until the pages blurred. I’d just start to make strides forward—or think I was—only to find there was another language thrown in, and the pattern I’d been following was gone once more. Code breaking was not a strong point of mine.
Particularly when magic was involved.
“No.”
“Unbreakable?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve got someone in mind. You remember little Mick? He’s a genius at shit like this.” I opened the back door and let Zee in first. So, when he didn’t take a step forward, I knew something was wrong.
Beside me, Abe let out a snarl and lunged forward. I caught him by the collar at the last second.
Zee carefully stepped into the house. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I kept my hand on Abe, and slid the other to Eleanor.
Slowly, I stepped to the left of Zee. “Abe, platz.” I gave him the command and he dropped to the floor beside me. I kept my eyes on the man in front of us. He was wearing black from head to foot, gloves covered his hands, and the lower half of his face was covered with a black bandana. But his eyes . . . I knew them. From where was the only question.
His voice was muffled, but I heard his words just fine. “I came to give you a warning . . . Phoenix.”
Nothing else he could have said would have set me off like that. He knew who I was. I had Eleanor out and pointed at him in a flash.
“You’d better talk fast, my fingers are twitchy,” I said.
I got the impression he smiled under his facial covering. “I know who you are. I know you’ve been hiding all these years. I could have told your father, but I didn’t. I let you live in peace, remember that.”
This was not the man who’d tossed the house. He was too thin. His feet too small.
Ab
e continued his low snarling, the sound echoing through the room.
“Bully for you,” I said, my words icy. “Why are you here?”
“A warning. Like I said. Do not step back into your old world. They don’t know you’re alive, but if you go after them, I won’t have a choice but to tell them where you hid to save my own life. Burning Mary-Ellen’s house like that was a perfect beacon to them. You shouldn’t have done it.”
He spread his hands wide and dropped a flash bang that exploded with a burst of light, the sound blinding me even as the smoke filled the room. I flattened myself to the floor to try and see through the smoke and Abe lay beside me, shaking hard.
“Abe, fass!” The words were inside my head with the ringing in my ears from the flash bang, and I hoped he heard me.
He hesitated, and I repeated the command. Finally, on the third shout from me, he left my side which meant he’d indeed heard me. But he would be as blind as me, and I wasn’t sure he’d be able to find anything with his nose through the heavy smoke.
“Fucking goddamn it!” Zee roared, slammed into something and went down. My eyes watered and I fought to clear them.
“Who was it?” I spit the words out as Abe made his way back to me. I crept to the back door and pushed it open. The breeze cleared the smoke in a matter of minutes, but Zee hadn’t answered me.
“Zee, did you know him?”
“It’s my fault he’s here.” He sat on the floor with his back against the island. “I called in a favor and asked around. Tried to see if there was anything big going down with Mancini.”
I shook my head. “He slipped in here. There’s only one airport in and out.” I grabbed the keys off the counter, my shoulder holster still holding Eleanor and Dinah, and slid them over my shoulders. “You coming?”
Zee nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
I tossed him the keys. “I’m a better shot.”
He grunted. “Only because I taught you.”
“How about us?” Dinah whined. “We help.”
Seconds later we were in the truck, Abe with us in the backseat. His eyes were intent as Zee hit the gas, chasing down the asshole who’d walked into my house and tried to intimidate me. He might know who I was in theory, but he was about to get a lesson in practice on who not to mess with.
Fury of a Phoenix (The Nix Series Book 1) Page 11