Phoenix Burn (From the Ashes Trilogy Book 1)

by Karina Espinosa

  By the time we arrived at the café, breakfast turned out to be lunch. I scarfed down my food, rushing Tristan in the process so we could get to the Valley and catch my parents. They should already be home, although my brother and sister wouldn’t be there until later this evening.

  We parked the blacked-out SUV close to my preferred spot across the street, but a little further down so it wasn’t directly across from the house. I didn’t have to slouch or anything because of the tinted windows. The seats were wide and comfortable, and I stretched out as I watched the house. There wasn’t much to look at for the first hour. No one came in or out of the house.

  “So, how come you’re the only one who can walk around during the daytime?” I asked the question that had been burning a hole in my mind. “Maverick mentioned something about a talisman. Does he mean that necklace you wear?”

  “Maverick has a big mouth,” Tristan murmured. Then he pulled out the russet-colored chain from under his shirt and showed me a ruby nestled within an iron setting. “A witch spelled it, but I had to make a huge sacrifice in exchange for my freedom to move about during the day.”

  “Witches are real?” I nearly gasped.

  He nodded.

  I wanted to ask what he sacrificed, but the question felt a tad personal and I wasn’t sure we were at that level yet—if we ever would be.

  Just then, the front door opened and my dad stepped outside to get the mail.

  He held up his hand to block out the sun and waved at the neighbor across the street. They started an animated conversation from a distance.

  “You look like your father,” Tristan remarked, cutting into the silence.

  My smile was sad. “I used to get that a lot. But I have some features from my mom, too. It’s a good mix.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to tell me about them?”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my dad. Even though he looked happy on the outside, I saw an emptiness in his posture and the slump of his shoulders that I didn’t recognize. A void. It was so unlike him.

  “My dad is the life of the party. He is very charismatic and charming, whereas I lack in that department. My sister inherited that part of him. I’m more reserved, like my mom. My brother is a perfect blend of them both, but we all complement each other so well. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we fight. I remember when I told my sister I knew how to do a Brazilian Blowout and attempted to do hers. Well, within minutes her naturally curly hair turned into an afro big enough to warrant its own solar system. We didn’t speak for weeks.” I laughed at the memory.

  Tristan chuckled beside me until we both faded into silence. “You’ll see them again, Octavia,” he whispered beside me. “I promise.”

  This time I turned away from my dad and faced Tristan. “Why do you continue to call me Octavia when you know my real name is Camila?”

  His upper lip twitched. “Do you want me to call you Camila?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Really thought about it, then shook my head. “No. Camila died six months ago.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I twisted my mouth to the side. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I have my moments. But I know what it’s like to die and be reborn, so, I kinda figured.”

  Right … being a vampire and all. Duh.

  “You know you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. You don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be with them again.” I turned back to my dad, who had wrapped up his conversation with the neighbor and was heading back inside the house.

  “We may have a lead,” Tristan began. I whirled on him. “Echo is combing through the hard drives we found in Nick’s warehouse. I would have told you last night, but, well, you know how that ended up. Since we know the name of your killer is Murdoch, she found a couple of emails with his name on it. Echo is following the trail. She’ll call when she finds something.”

  Echo hadn’t mentioned anything last night when we stayed up talking. She was probably waiting for Tristan to tell me. Then again, her main goal last night was to distract me. Mission accomplished. If only she could distract me from everything else.

  “I know Murdoch is working for someone, and I also know he’s not the one sending me the dahlias. He doesn’t want me, but it sounds like whoever he’s working for, wants me alive.” I thought about my interaction with the hitman at NightCrawlers, remembering that he claimed he didn’t want to hurt me. “I think he knew I was a phoenix the night he killed me.”

  Tristan cocked his head. “Do you think killing you was a test? To confirm you were what they assumed you were?”

  I shrugged. “Possibly. But what would they want with me? You said phoenixes were hunted and persecuted almost to extinction. By whom?”

  His hands gripped the steering wheel and tightened, making the leather creak from the pressure. Tristan’s jaw clenched, but he remained silent.

  “Who, Tristan?” I repeated.

  Without meeting my eyes, he replied, “Vampires.”

  I gasped, flattening myself to the passenger door as if he would attack me outright. “Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”

  “Because I knew this would be your reaction and you wouldn’t trust me.”

  “I don’t trust you!” I yelled frantically. I needed to get out of the car, but if I did, someone might recognize me. I was stuck.

  Tristan looked at me. “I would never hurt you, Octavia. I’m trying to help you. Let me explain—”

  “Was this all a trap? An elaborate set-up?”

  “No! Just let me explain, Octavia!” he shouted. I straightened and kept my mouth shut. Tristan took a deep breath. A breath he didn’t need to take. “Vampires and phoenixes have a difficult past because we’re both somewhat immortal, with the only difference that a phoenix can easily kill a vampire. You set a vampire on fire and we’re done. That knowledge frightened the ancient vampires—a lot. But a phoenix can eventually die. The feathers of a phoenix represent their lives. Once they lose the last feather, that marks their last life and they can’t be reborn again. Millennia ago, the vampires commissioned a special collar from a powerful witch, which she endowed with certain spells. The vampires systematically hunted each phoenix and captured them, placing this collar around their neck as they kept them prisoner and killed them over and over again until their last life was extinguished. It’s why there are so few of you left. Honestly, I thought I’d never see one again.”

  “What does the collar do?” I croaked, my throat particularly dry.

  “The collar could control a phoenix and restrain its power. It was a very popular device back then and many copies were made, but now they’re very rare because of how rare your kind are.”

  I swallowed deeply and looked away before whispering, “Have you ever killed a phoenix?”

  “Never,” he answered without hesitation. “There was one, a long time ago, who was a dear friend of mine. One I couldn’t save.” Tristan’s eyes held an aching sadness I hadn’t seen since I met him, sadness laced with guilt. A whole lot of guilt.

  If what he was telling me was true, then I wasn’t just some random chick he found and wanted to help. I was his redemption.

  13

  I decided to believe Tristan. Call me a sucker, but besides that one time when he tried to bargain me over to the shifters, he hadn’t failed me. And, yeah, that part sucked, but I really felt we were at a different place now. I stared into his vibrant emerald eyes and saw a long history of misdeeds for which he was still punishing himself. Whether he blamed himself for not saving that other phoenix and was trying to make up for it with me, I didn’t know, but he seemed sincere. And if he was willing to keep me safe, I’d take it. Right now, safe was what I craved, because I had a feeling I wouldn’t be very soon.

  We left the Valley after receiving a text from Echo with a possible address for Murdoch. Tristan didn’t want me to go, but after much begging and insisting, I convinced him
I was better off by his side than alone somewhere else unprotected where I could get into all sorts of trouble on my own.

  The address led us to a hotel in Little Tokyo. The streets were crammed with people and the spicy aroma of food was overpowering. We parked the SUV several blocks from the hotel in the only parking spot we could find and backtracked to the hotel at a rapid pace, running on adrenaline and nerves.

  “We don’t have a last name or room number for Murdoch, so I’ll have to enchant the front desk clerk to give us the information,” Tristan relayed as we walked the bustling streets.

  “You said you enchanted my brother, but what does that really mean?” I asked as I tried to keep up with his longer strides. “I’ve also heard Maverick and Echo mention it before, but I don’t really understand what it entails.”

  “It’s a light form of mind manipulation. When I suggest something, the person does it,” Tristan said over his shoulder to me.

  My eyes widened. “Have you ever done that to me?”

  He snorted. “I tried to when we first met at Nightcrawlers. I tried to convince you to give me your real name, but it didn’t work. Now I know why.”

  “Why?” I frowned, sort of pissed that he’d tried to mess with my head.

  “Because you’re a phoenix. It won’t ever work on you. You’re immune to my charms.”

  Oh. I smiled slyly. That was good to know.

  After a few more minutes of weaving through crowds, Tristan reached for my hand and hauled me inside a small hotel and into its lobby.

  It turned out the address wasn’t exactly what we expected. It wasn’t necessarily a hotel, per se; it was more like an apartment complex with miniscule living spaces that were Japanese-themed on the outside. Even more disappointing, there was no front desk clerk to whom we could ask questions.

  We walked around aimlessly until we stumbled upon a maintenance worker who was busy mopping an area by an elaborate koi pond. Tristan grabbed the maintenance worker’s head in his hands, causing the man to drop his mop with a clatter against the flagstone while the man thrashed in his grip. In seconds, the man stopped moving and stared into Tristan’s darkened eyes blankly.

  “Do you know of a tenant named Murdoch?” Tristan asked, his voice smooth and calm.

  “No,” the maintenance man responded blankly.

  “Ask him if there’s a man who lives here with a dark beard and blue eyes. Maybe a smoker who wears a hoodie a lot,” I offered, since I was the only one between us who’d seen him.

  Tristan asked him and the man nodded. “Can you take us to his apartment?” Tristan asked.

  The man nodded again and turned mindlessly, leaving all his cleaning supplies scattered on the ground as he started walking toward the end of the building.

  When we reached the last apartment door, he pointed to it and Tristan whispered something to him I didn’t hear. In response, the maintenance man rushed away in a hurry.

  “What did you tell him?” I asked quietly, not wanting to alert Murdoch to our presence.

  “I told him to forget about us and get as far away from here as possible.”

  Before I could react, Tristan kicked in the front door and it clattered off its hinges with a resounding boom. I flinched and backed away as I allowed Tristan to storm the small apartment, which ended up being a studio. As the stale stench of cigarettes wafted outside, I knew we were in the right place. There was no one in the living area or kitchenette, but the water in the bathroom was running.

  “Get behind me,” Tristan commanded as he pulled me into the room and slammed me against the wall.

  We must have made a lot of noise, because the water shut off and I heard wet feet step out of the shower, along with the squelching sound of skin against bare tiles. We stood plastered against the wall, right by the entrance to the bathroom for ten long seconds before Murdoch walked out with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  Tristan was fast. Wrapping an unyielding arm around Murdoch’s neck, he placed my murderer into a headlock and turned him around to face me.

  “Happy to see me?” I quipped, my hands trembling behind my back. “I thought we should see each other—on my terms, this time.”

  “How’d you find me?” he gritted between his teeth, barely able to speak through Tristan’s crushing hold.

  “Don’t worry about the how,” I said, putting on a brave face. “Tell me who you work for.”

  Murdoch started to laugh, spittle flying from his mouth. “You’ll have to kill me.”

  “That can be arranged,” Tristan whispered in his ear and tightened his grip around his neck.

  “Why did you try to kill me?”

  “Try?” Murdoch choked out. “I did kill you.”

  “So, you knew what she was,” Tristan said, more of a statement than a question.

  Murdoch tried to swallow. “He had your great-great-great-great-grandmother or something like that … until she died.”

  My hand went for my neck as I tried to breathe, thinking of the bite of a spelled collar around my neck to control my every move. I couldn’t hide the shocked expression on my face.

  The moment she died must have been the moment the phoenix transferred to me.

  “H-How?” I stammered, all bravado gone. All I could think about was the story Tristan told me about the vampires keeping phoenixes prisoners and killing them over and over until they used their last feather. Was that what happened to her? Was that my fate?

  “Answer her!” Tristan yelled as he shook him.

  “She took her own life,” he finally said.

  I stumbled back, losing my balance as the world around me spun. I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I didn’t know that woman. She was nothing to me but a long-forgotten ancestor, yet we were connected. She gifted me a curse I was forced to endure, so what? I could live as she did?

  “How’d you find me?” I muttered, my gaze locked on the floor.

  “It wasn’t easy, but we uncovered her lineage and traced it back to your family. It was a gamble between you and your sister, but it was a lucky guess.”

  I gasped at the possibility of Carmen being dead because they mistakenly thought she was the phoenix. I never could have lived with myself if that had happened. I would have known it was my fault.

  A nameless anger stirred within me and I felt the answering warmth in my veins spread throughout my body. A ripple in my back made me shiver and I knew the phoenix had emerged as flames started to lick my skin from head to toe. I could barely see Tristan and Murdoch’s shimmering forms through the fire.

  “Oh my God,” Murdoch murmured. “You’re—”

  “You would have killed my sister,” I interrupted flatly, not recognizing the sonorous voice that left my lips.

  Tristan released Murdoch, throwing him at my feet. The phoenix flew around me and hovered above my prey, a menace wreathed in flame.

  “But I didn’t,” he said loudly. “I knew it was you.”

  I ignored him. “Who do you work for? Give me a name.”

  Murdoch clutched the towel around his waist as he knelt before me. I felt commanding and powerful, like I held his life in my hands.

  I did.

  “It doesn’t matter if I give you a name; you won’t find him! He’ll find you. Because if you kill me and he can’t find me, he’ll know. You don’t want him coming for you, Camila. Trust me. Let me take you to him. You won’t like the alternative.”

  “I’m not afraid of you!” my voice thundered in the small studio.

  Murdoch winced. “It’s not me you should be afraid of.”

  “That’s enough,” Tristan said, stepping forward to place himself between us. “Octavia—”

  “You’re right, it is enough.” I peered into Murdoch’s soulless blue eyes and glared, malice seething in my stare. “Burn in hell.” My phoenix let out a piercing squawk before blasting a blaze of fire in his direction, setting him aflame.

  “No!” Tristan yelled, but it was too late.

  Mur
doch screamed in pain, wailing pitifully as he flailed on the ground, his skin sizzling and bubbling. The air no longer smelled of cigarettes, but of charred meat. When he stopped screaming, the phoenix circled above him and doused the fire, then flew back to me and nestled into my back. The fire around me dissipated and the warmth in my veins turned cold. So very cold. I started to shiver.

  This was what I’d wanted. For six long months I’d searched for my killer. I dreamed about what I’d do when I finally came face-to-face with the man who had tormented my thoughts. I wanted to kill him for taking everything away from me, and I did. I killed him. But the rational part of me had just wanted to turn him in to the police to pay for his crimes.

  What have I done?

  It was over. Everything was over. But was it really?

  “Octavia?” Tristan whispered as he approached me like a feral animal.

  I peered up at him and licked my lips. They were salty, and I realized I was crying. My hands were out in front of me and I was holding them up as if they were dirty. And they were—I’d killed someone.

  “Talk to me, Octavia,” he said. “What’s running through that beautiful head of yours?”

  “W-What did I do?” I murmured.

  “It’s okay, everything will be okay.” He came closer and placed his hands on my upper arms. I flinched at his cold touch. Slowly, he pulled me closer to him and I crashed into his chest, a sob breaking from my throat. “Shhh.” Tristan stroked my hair, his motions gentle and soft. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We don’t want to get caught in here.”

  Tristan practically carried me out of the studio apartment. Walking through Little Tokyo was a blur until we reached the security of his SUV, where he placed me inside the passenger seat and buckled me in like a child. I was shaking all over and a coldness swept through me that I couldn’t seem to banish. My teeth chattered. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get warm.

  Tristan cranked up the heater and sped all the way home, sneaking concerned glances my way until we made it back to Marina del Rey, where he cradled me in his arms and carried me upstairs to his penthouse. In my dazed state I hadn’t paid attention to the time of day, but it must have been evening because Maverick and Echo were inside waiting for us. They stood immediately when they saw us.