Fury of a Phoenix (The Nix Series Book 1)

by Shannon Mayer

  “Why tomorrow?”

  I kept walking, forcing him to keep up if he wanted to hear my words. A power play on my part. “I like to sleep on business deals. And I am not the only one you’d be dealing with.”

  Half-truths, but they would keep him from guessing what I was up to. Because if he knew I was going to kill my father, there would be no way he’d be okay with it. Not when he wanted money out of the miserable bastard.

  I could see the cement walkway that swept out of the park when the branches creaking above my head turned into the snap of wood pulling away from tree trunks. I broke into a run, not daring to even look behind me.

  That sound of wood being ripped apart followed, and I turned on the speed, arms pumping and heart pounding with adrenaline.

  The Stick Man slid from the trees ahead of us, spread his arms wide and opened his mouth impossibly wide. Teeth made of sharp spikes of wood pointed at me and Abe. The Stick Man drew in a breath, his body widening, prepping for what?

  “I suggest you move.” A hand touched my arm and I spun on my foot, rolling my body as if I were playing basketball with Bear and he’d tried to put a pick on me.

  Abe went with me. Simon lost his hold on me, and the Stick Man breathed out, shooting his wicked slivers through the air where I’d been.

  I pulled Dinah and Eleanor as I planted my opposite foot and spun back to face the Stick Man. I had the girls up and firing before I was fully stopped, the bullets ripping through the Stick Man’s head.

  The wood splintered and exploded with each successive hit, but his body repaired itself, closing over the metal.

  “Dinah, switch it out. Detonating rounds!” I yelled as I kept moving around the Stick Man, keeping out of reach, but keeping the bullets going.

  Beauty of magic weapons was, these two didn’t run out of ammo.

  “On it!” She shivered and her inner chambers twisted, rumbling against my palm.

  The next time I shot with her, she bucked so hard I fought the momentum to be thrown back.

  Her bullet hit the Stick Man in his belly and exploded on impact, blowing his top half away from his bottom.

  He screeched and clawed across the ground toward me and I squeezed Dinah again, much to her delight. The second bullet exploded between his eyes and his upper body stopped its clawing crawl toward me. That would slow him down, though not for long. While I hoped that the Stick Man was dead, I doubted it. Rose said I needed blood fire to finish him off. Exploding was all well and good, but not the final blow. I was sure of it.

  My hearing came back slowly.

  Simon was gone.

  Abe and I were alone.

  Sirens were coming.

  Time to go.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I took a cab back to our motel room, but not right away. I needed to catch my breath, and I didn’t want to lead the Stick Man back to my motel room.

  I ran my hands over Abe, checking to make sure he hadn’t picked up any stray slivers. He trembled from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. That had been the first really bad abnormal he’d ever dealt with.

  And the Stick Man was one of the worst.

  I patted my lap and he dropped his head onto it and I rubbed his ears.

  “Where you headed?” the cabbie asked, the air around him shifting, for lack of a better word. Damn it, abnormals everywhere. When I’d been hunting them, there had seemed so few. And now every other person seemed to have magic in their blood.

  “Just take us for a tour of the city. I’ve not been here in a long time,” I said. Time. I needed time and yet I could feel it ticking down.

  The cabbie gave me a nod and pulled into traffic. He didn’t say a word about Abe, or the whimpering that slid through him.

  When my heart finally started to slow in its wild adrenaline-filled pace, I gave the cabbie directions back to the motel room.

  He pulled over to the curb and I handed him cash with a heavy tip. “Thanks.”

  He gave me thumbs up. “Anytime.”

  Banter that covered up the fact that I smelled like gunpowder and my eyes were wild when I’d gotten into the cab. As an abnormal, maybe he was better at blocking out the weird of the world.

  As I stepped into the narrow alley between the building where we were staying and the one next to it, I froze.

  The back door that opened to the rickety stairs had been kicked open, the deadbolt and hinges hanging limply, the sand I’d placed and smoothed disturbed. I bent and unleashed Abe. “Fuss.”

  He glued himself to my leg, his body tense with only the slightest tremor of leftover fear from the Stick Man, as he picked up on my energy.

  I pulled Eleanor from my back, and settled into a crouch as we crept up the stairs. She was quiet, as I knew she would be. Dinah would have been whispering questions.

  There was no doubt which room would be burglarized. I was no fool. Simon might have made himself known to me for his own reasons. But that still left the arsonist, who was also Bradley’s killer, who I strongly suspected was Noah.

  A man I’d once called a friend, a man who I would probably end up killing at some point.

  Abe crouched lower and lower until his belly scraped along the staircase and I kept my back to the wall, creeping up sideways. We neared the top and I put one hand out, signaling for Abe to wait. I went up the last couple of steps myself, peering into my room. The door had also been kicked in. This guy was not going for subtle. I waited where I was, listening. There was no sound of rustling papers, or the crackle of another fire being started.

  There was no creak of wood, no sign that somehow the Stick Man had not only put himself back together, but had found us too.

  Not that it meant the arsonist wasn’t still in the room. He could be waiting behind the door, or in the tiny bathroom. I took a breath, held it, let it out slowly and prepped myself.

  I lunged forward, hip checking the door to fling it wide. I sidestepped with the gun held high, scanning the room in a matter of seconds. “Abe.”

  The dog shot into the room, but there was no low growling from him, and no indication that anyone else was with us.

  I shivered and lowered Eleanor. This was not going as I’d planned, not at all. I didn’t put Eleanor away, but kept her out as I checked the bathroom. The closet too, even though I knew it was too small to hide someone, but there was no chance I wasn’t going to make very sure of things. The black bag with my obvious stash was gone.

  I flipped open the hiding spot in the closet. Still full, and the coded papers were right on top. A smile slid over my lips. If it was Noah, and he was FBI, I doubted he worked for the feds anymore.

  “Pretty fucking sloppy, Noah.” I shook my head.

  I took stock of the room. The bed sheets had been flipped off, and my clothes had been rustled through, but my hiding spot for my weapons, money, and information hadn’t been found.

  I propped my door closed with a chair—the best I could do for now, but it didn’t matter. No matter what tonight brought, I wasn’t staying here any longer than it took to get ready for this job. It was far too compromised.

  I’d been found by Simon. I’d been found by Noah, and the Stick Man was hot on my ass. Time to move.

  I went to the tiny closet and popped the floor open again.

  “Time to get to work, Abe.”

  I pulled out everything I had and laid it on the bed. The guns I put from smallest to largest, all seven, one after the other with their respective ammunition.

  Two HK 45 (.45ACP) tactical handguns.

  My third Beretta.

  A double-barreled shotgun with under-barrel grenade launcher.

  Ruger precision rifle .243.

  And of course, Eleanor and Dinah.

  Next came the different clothing I had to choose from.

  From business causal to jeans, sweat pants, and a goth rocker outfit, not to mention my frilly party dress from the other night, I’d covered most possibilities. But it was the skin-tight black pants made of L
ycra and spandex along with the matching black top that I found myself staring at. I’d stuffed the outfit into the bottom of my bag, hiding it under my weapons before I left the ranch.

  There were two spots stitched into it, one in the belly of the shirt, and one in the right thigh of the pants legs. The two shots that had brought me to fully understand how bad my family was.

  “One more time,” I whispered as I set the clothes aside and threw the rest except for a pair of jeans and T-shirt into the closet.

  I took a box of hair dye from my stash—jet black—and went to the bathroom. The dye job was a tedious thing, but I wanted my father to know exactly who killed him. I wanted him to see my face and know without a doubt that I had come for him.

  And why I’d come for him.

  There could be no doubt on his part that it was his daughter on the other end of the gun.

  The fucker was going to have a heart attack right before I put a bullet between his eyes. The thought made me smile, which set me to laughing. My head was upside down in the tub as I laughed till I cried. Cried until there was nothing left in me once more.

  The emotions floored me and I struggled to put them once more into the tiny box where they belonged.

  I’d killed Stephen Demetris, the man who’d pulled the hit off and done the dirty work of killing Justin and Bear. Someone else . . . perhaps Noah? . . . had killed Peters who’d set the death myst magic under the truck.

  Now, I would kill the man who’d called it in—the man who’d decided that my life would be torn apart again.

  The miserable bastard was never going to see this coming.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I waited quietly in the room while the day faded and darkness slowly crept over the city that never slept. I sat on the edge of the bed, going through my slow breathing meditations that helped me stay calm. A job was never a simple thing, and there was always some element of excitement and adrenaline.

  This one more so than any other. Death of a tyrant. Death of a father.

  Shortly before five, I went down to the payphone and dialed up La Bella Cuisina.

  “Hello, this is Luca Romano’s secretary. He asked me to check his reservation for tonight?”

  “Ah, yes, of course! It’s here, set for an even dozen for nine ‘o’clock.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else. I’d confirmed my father’s appearance, and that was all I needed. This was coming together smoothly, which was a good sign. And which also made me nervous.

  I had never had a single job go off without some sort of hitch. That was the truth of dealing with people. People were animals, and animals were unpredictable.

  I went to a local food mart after I used the payphone. I grabbed some hot dogs for Abe, and a small bottle of tequila for me. It caught my eye, and made me think of Justin. He’d wanted to take me to Mexico for our honeymoon. I’d refused, afraid someone in the airlines would tip off my father.

  Instead, Justin had bought tequila in a rather large quantity, bags of tortilla chips, an extra hot salsa, and a sombrero. We’d gotten roaring drunk, and ended up making love on a bed covered in the chips. I tightened my hold on the tequila bottle, my throat tightening.

  Damn you, Justin. You should have trusted me. You should have told me what you were up to and I would have . . . I would have stopped this before we lost our boy. Then again, maybe if I’d trusted him with my secret of who I really was, we wouldn’t have lost each other, or our boy. Shit, I didn’t not need this train of thought right now.

  I rubbed my hands over my face, went to the front and paid the bill.

  Once more back in my room, I fed Abe the hot dogs which he happily gulped down in two bites each.

  I held a glass of tequila up to the light. “To you, Justin. You pissed off the wrong man, and it cost more than you probably could ever have imagined. But I still love you, and you stood by me through the years. I love you, even if you were an idiot.” I threw the shot back in a single gulp.

  The alcohol burned all the way down and made me gasp, made my eyes water, set fire to the inside of my chest. The flames licked up my throat and I held the heat as long as I could inside me. I was the Phoenix, meant to burn from the inside out.

  Coughing, I wiped away the tears.

  Not enough alcohol that it would affect my aim, but enough to burn off some of the nerves. Besides, Dinah and Eleanor corrected what off moments I had with my aim.

  For the first time in years, my nerves were acting up. As if this were my first hit instead my one hundredth. I suppose that’s what I got for going after Luca Romano. Never again would I call him my father, he lost that title. I didn’t care that he’d had no idea that it was my son, that it was me whose life he destroyed when he set a mark on Justin’s back. The reality was, it could have been any family. Any mother who lost her child.

  That didn’t make what had happened any better. The difference was I had the ability and the means to make it right. To call him to account for his actions.

  I stood and gathered my bag of weapons, leaving behind all the clothes except the extra pair of jeans and T-shirt stuffed in the bottom of my bag. On the off chance I made it through this alive, I would want to change out of the black cat suit.

  Where would I go if I succeeded and did make it out alive? The thought bounced around in my head, a question I had no answer for. The last few months had been all about finding my boys’ killer or killers, taking my revenge on them and having that closure. Now that I was this close to it, the reality was I had not thought past this moment.

  Nor did I want to.

  Maybe I would go back to Wyoming, to the farm. Maybe I would rebuild.

  Maybe I’d keep running.

  I shook my head as if that alone would clear my mind. Down the steps, out the back, and around the corner to where the truck I’d stolen from the airport in Jackson Hole waited for me still. I had another week before the time stamp was up. Plenty of time to dump it and get something else. Again, that was assuming I would make it out of this alive.

  I wore my black suit, tall black boots that rose to my knees, and a loose dark blue sweater over the black skin-tight top. The sweater had been one of Noah’s I’d taken from his apartment and it held a whiff of his cologne, the same cologne Justin had always worn. For a moment, I could believe he was with me, the scent of him just on the edge of my peripheral.

  I shook it off. This was not the time for emotional reruns.

  Abe lay across the bench seat of the truck and put his muzzle on my thigh as I drove us to what I would use as our drop-off point. Two blocks from La Bella Cuisina, I parked on a side street that had far too many streetlights for my liking, but that could be easily handled.

  I pulled Dinah out, the silencer already on her, muffling her voice as she grumbled about only being used for grunt work.

  I stepped out of the truck and went to a crouch, taking out the four streetlights around my parking spot in a matter of seconds. No dogs barked, no alarms went off. I let myself back into the truck and checked the time. Nine thirty, which meant my father would be well into his cups by now, his senses dulled.

  I needed his senses dulled. He was not an abnormal, but he’d made a deal with the devil, and that had given him abilities that even I didn’t fully understand.

  I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. The dye job had taken me quite literally back to my roots. I slid a hand over my hair. There was no way he wouldn’t recognize me.

  Perfect.

  I slipped out of the blue sweater and folded it up on the seat. I rolled both windows all the way down, enough that Abe would be able to get out if he had to. As it was, I wanted to make sure he wasn’t trapped in the truck if I didn’t come back. I pitied anyone who tried to take the truck with him in it.

  I wrapped an arm around his neck and gave him a tight hug, breathing in his scent, and then kissing him on the nose. “Be good.”

  I stepped out
once more, and grabbed my bag of gear. I slung it over my back and rubbed Abe’s ears, then pointed at the truck. “Bewache.”

  He gave me a soft woof. I leaned in and made sure the wires were set to go under the wheel. A quick escape is what I’d need if I made this thing happen.

  Shutting the door behind me, I walked away and down the side street, weaving my way between buildings until I was behind the restaurant. Standing next to the ground floor office window, I checked to either side of me before I pulled a baton from my bag. A quick thump against the glass and my hand was through the narrow opening, and I unlocked the window latch.

  I pushed up the old frame and climbed through easily.

  How many times had I warned my father about this place? That this restaurant was too easily accessible, that he was too predictable going here as much as he did?

  The abnormals who ran it were not high powered. Their gifts lay in their ability to manipulate food and flavor. A few could create magic. Not one of them could protect worth shit.

  His lack of care, his belief that he was above being truly targeted, was something I was grateful for now. The office was dark and I crept through, avoiding the chairs. I put my bag on the desk and opened it. I pulled out two flash bangs first. Then I set my weapons of choice into their holsters on my thighs for easy access. Dinah and Eleanor were silent as I slid them in.

  “Like a gunslinger,” I said softly, repeating my father’s words to me the first time he’d seen me heading out on a job. All in black, holsters on my thighs, black lace mask covering the upper half of my face leaving nothing but shadows of my eyes and mouth visible.

  I pulled a similar mask up and adjusted it. I didn’t really care if it came off, but it was the initial shock value I was going for as much as anything.

  I wanted him to be afraid the way I’d been afraid for Bear.

  I wanted him to know he was about to die, the way I’d known Bear was dying in front of me.

  I wanted him to feel every one of his last breaths and know that his daughter, the one he’d thought would come to nothing, the one he’d been the cruelest to, would be the one to end his life.