Firefighter Phoenix

by Zoe Chant

  “Yes!” Rose shouted in triumph, as the magic holding her abruptly disappeared. “Yes!”

  She’d gambled everything, based on a single, newly-recovered memory. A recollection of a gun, swinging up to point at her…and the Phoenix, exploding out of his cell in response.

  And she’d been right.

  Nothing could stop a shifter from protecting his mate.

  Chaos erupted as Hugh flung the witch’s limp body aside. Warlocks scattered in all directions, desperate to escape the rampaging unicorn. The black binding around its foreleg had completely vanished. Its horn flashed like a blade, sparks trailing behind it. Ivy shifted into her wyvern form again, fighting back-to-back with her mate.

  “No!” the warlock next to Griff howled as a couple of acolytes tried to grab Ivy’s wing. “That’s a mated pair! Don’t try to bind them, you fools!”

  “Hit them with everything you’ve got!” Dragonfire swirled around a warlock’s upraised hands. Dai snarled in rage and pain, clutching at the runes around his wrist, but he clearly couldn’t stop the man from drawing power from him. “All of us, together, on the count of three!”

  John’s knees buckled as his warlock summoned a crackling ball of lightning. Griff writhed like a cat trying to escape a harness as his warlock too drew power from him.

  “One!” Dai’s warlock shouted. All three took aim at Ivy and Hugh. “Two! Thr—”

  Virginia, Hayley and Neridia stepped between the warlocks and their targets. The women linked hands, forming a human shield.

  Griff’s warlock’s eyes widened as he realized he was threatening his shifter’s mate. “Oh, sh—”

  He didn’t get to finish the sentence. The griffin’s gleaming golden beak snapped shut, silencing him forever.

  And suddenly the courtyard was very, very full of dragon.

  John’s huge, finned tail swept his warlock, a dozen acolytes, and quite a lot of the nearest wall into oblivion. Dai vaporized his own warlock with a single, precise blast of fire, then ducked his head. Virginia scrambled up onto the dragon’s neck, clinging onto his curving horns. John picked up his own mate, cradling her protectively in webbed feet.

  “Chase!” Rose shouted, looking around frantically. “We have to find Chase!”

  Connie was already running, awkwardly, arms supporting her pregnant belly. Leaving the dragons to finish destroying the last few warlocks, Rose pelted after her. They ran down the row of cages.

  “You!” Connie yelled in fury. “Get off my mate!”

  A warlock was frantically clutching at Chase’s mane, trying to scramble up onto the pegasus’s back. At Connie’s shout, he fell off. Chase danced away, snorting, black hooves striking sparks on the flagstones.

  The warlock scrambled to his feet, making a grabbing motion at thin air. Chase bucked and twisted, as though caught on an invisible leash.

  “He’s mine,” the warlock gabbled. His hands were upraised defensively, but no magic snapped around his fingers. “I know who you are, I know how this works. As long as I don’t touch you, he can’t break free. And you can’t touch me, or he’ll die. You’ve got no choice but to let me go.“

  Rose hesitated…but Connie didn’t.

  Without breaking stride, Connie kicked the man squarely in the balls. As he folded over, she shoved past him. Her hand touched Chase’s gleaming hide.

  The runes around the pegasus’s foreleg flared—and vanished.

  Chase kicked the warlock too. Only this time, in the head. The man flew ten feet through the air and hit a wall with a very final-sounding crunch.

  Rose’s breath whooshed out of her lungs in relief. “How did you know that would work?”

  “I didn’t,” Connie gasped. She wrapped her arms around the pegasus’s neck, burying her face in the sweeping black mane. “Oh Chase, Chase.”

  The pegasus shimmered, shrinking into human shape. Chase enfolded his mate in a fierce hug, leaning his forehead on the top of her head.

  “I’m all right.” His voice was hoarse and rasping. “The others?”

  “We’re here,” Hugh said from behind Rose. “Except Ash.”

  She turned, and saw him limping toward them, Ivy at his side. All the others were there too. John and Griff were back in human form, holding hands with their mates. Dai was still in his dragon shape, alert for any danger.

  “Come here so I can heal that,” Hugh said to Chase. The unicorn shifter looked exhausted, but he still reached for Chase’s wounded arm. “I’ve already fixed up everyone else. You and Griff have to fly our mates out of here, the rest of us will try to free—”

  Dai roared a warning. They all ducked, the men instinctively grabbing for their mates, as the red dragon’s wings swept protectively around them.

  Fire exploded against the tough crimson webbing. The dragon roared again, this time in pain. For the flames to burn through even his scales…it could only mean one thing.

  “It’s Corbin and Ash!” Rose hurled herself to the front of the group, spreading her arms wide. “Everyone get behind me!”

  “What-?” Griff started.

  “No time to explain, just do it!” Virginia hammered her fist against her mate’s armored scales. “Shift, Dai! You’re too big a target!”

  Dai shrank back into human form, just in time. Another fireball blasted through the space his head had just been. Both his arms were blistered and burned. Hugh grabbed him, his hands lighting up with a silvery glow to heal the wounds.

  John tried to step in front of Rose, his knightly oaths no doubt demanding that he shield them all with his own body, but Neridia pulled him back. All the women were yanking at their confused mates, hauling them into a corner of the courtyard and forcing them to crouch down.

  Left alone at the front, Rose spread her arms wide, trying to make herself as big as possible. All around, the menagerie was burning. Fire leaped from shattered timbers and licked along tangled, overgrown creepers. Heat washed across her face, but she held firm.

  In the shifting orange light from the inferno, she faced down Corbin.

  The warlock was still backlit by the fading glow of a portal. His left hand gripped Ash’s right wrist, fingers spread, digging cruelly into the black runes of the binding.

  Ash was on his knees, one hand braced against the ground, the other painfully twisted up by the warlock’s iron grasp. Blood poured down his right arm. Rose knew he was fighting Corbin with every ounce of will, but he couldn’t stop the warlock from drawing on his power.

  Hellfire snaked around Corbin’s tattooed runes. The warlock raised his free hand, searing flames gathering around his clenched fist. The seething red light illuminated Corbin’s twisted, outraged face. It was the expression of a man watching all his plans crumble into ash, a man with nothing left to lose. Hand crackling with power, he stared straight at her.

  Rose met his hate-filled eyes without flinching.

  Yes, she silently willed him. Do it.

  She wouldn’t be able to get out of the way, she knew. If Corbin threw that incandescent fireball at her, it was possible that not even the Phoenix’s power could call it back.

  But whatever happened to her…Ash would be free.

  With a snarl, Corbin opened his hand—but not to attack her. Instead, he swept his arm round in a wide, horizontal arc. A wall of fire cut between them, leaping up to shield the warlock and his familiar. Through the roaring flames, Rose caught a glimpse of him turning away, starting to sketch glowing lines in mid-air.

  A portal.

  “He’s going to get away!” Hayley cried out.

  Virginia caught Dai as he tried to surge forward. “No! It’s too hot, you won’t make it!”

  The magical fire burned white-hot, so intense that their shadows stood out stark and black behind them. The flames curled and writhed like a nest of snakes. They stretched unnaturally, forming a dome, completely enclosing Ash and Corbin.

  For a moment, Rose saw Ash’s face through the inferno. He was looking right at her, as if nothing else e
xisted in the world.

  He was her mate. And she knew, knew, that he would never hurt her.

  “Rose, no!” Connie screamed.

  Too late. She was already running, flat out, dodging their attempts to grab her.

  Without hesitation, she hurled herself into the flames.

  Chapter 24

  Time slowed. Through the inferno and the red agony hazing his vision, he saw Rose leap. She seemed to hang in mid-air, as if taking flight. Her expression was as serene as her swan, calm and still and utterly unafraid.

  Her eyes locked onto his. He could look through them straight into her soul. Perfect love, perfect trust. Even after everything he’d done.

  They were mates, and nothing could ever keep them apart.

  He threw himself against the binding, barely feeling the bite of the runes. The flow of power reversed, surging back into his veins.

  “No!” Corbin howled.

  The binding was just a fraying thread around his soul. Distantly, he could sense Corbin pulling frantically at it, but the warlock’s leash was powerless in the face of the mate bond.

  Ash reached out. His love wrapped around Rose, shielding her from the fire. The flames rippled around her, parting easily, harmlessly.

  He caught her outstretched hands. Her fingers intertwined through his.

  The binding stretched, strained…and held.

  Rose stared down at the blood-streaked runes, mouth opening in horror. She gripped his hands harder, as though she could physically yank him out of the warlock’s power. He could sense her trying to reach him down the mate bond…but there was nothing for her to grasp. Just cold ash, where there should have been a link between their souls.

  He could enfold her in his power, but she couldn’t reach him in return. And without her power, her strength, he couldn’t break free of the binding.

  Behind him, Corbin started to laugh. “Oh, you fools. You poor, poor fools. Now you’re both mine.”

  Corbin made a swirling gesture with one finger. A glowing collar appeared around Rose’s neck. Her hands flew to her throat, eyes widening in panic.

  Fire rose in his soul—but the warlock’s will clamped tighter around him. Though the binding was frayed almost to the point of breaking, it still held him. He fought as hard as he could, but the moment of shock had shattered his control. Power drained away from him, gathering in Corbin’s hands.

  “That’s better,” Corbin crooned, sounding amused. The warlock turned away, raising his hands again to sketch the lines of a portal. “I’m not hurting her. I’m just bringing her along…as surety for your good behavior.”

  Distantly, Ash was aware of roars and shouts coming from outside the dome of fire covering the three of them. Shadows moved on the far side of the flames—Dai, Chase, Griff, John, Hugh, all desperately trying to find a way through. But they had no equipment, no gear, nothing to protect them from the intense heat.

  He couldn’t make a path through the fire for them as he had for Rose. Though she’d loosened the binding almost to the point of breaking, he couldn’t calm himself enough to calm the flames. Not when she was in such terrible danger…

  The Phoenix raged in his soul. His chest was filled with its incandescent fury, so strong that the strained binding could barely constrain him. If he could just stretch it a little further, enough to burn Corbin—

  He couldn’t. Even the weakened binding wouldn’t let him harm the warlock. It trapped his fire within the confines of his body.

  And he realized there was one thing he could burn.

  Please, Rose desperately begged her own innermost heart. We have to reach him, we have to save him, please!

  But still her swan keened, in denial and despair. Not our mate!

  Ash had been right. It didn’t matter that she knew he had been her mate. It didn’t matter how desperate she was to save him. It didn’t even matter how much she loved him. No matter how her mind screamed yes, the deep, animal center of her heart knew the truth.

  He wasn’t her mate.

  She couldn’t free him.

  She’d failed.

  Ash raised his head. His jaw had been clenched as he fought Corbin’s will, but now his agonized expression relaxed. He looked strangely relieved, as though he’d finally put down an unimaginable burden. His eyes were deep and clear as he gazed into her own.

  His mouth shaped three final words.

  I love you.

  Then he collapsed.

  “NO!”

  Corbin’s shriek echoed her own. The pulsing light around the warlock’s hands went out like a blown candle. The fiery shield covering them spluttered and faded.

  The warlock’s magic had died…along with his familiar.

  She was barely aware of Alpha Team bursting through the dwindling flames. In all the world, the only thing that mattered was Ash’s still, silent body.

  He lay utterly motionless. All the lines of care and worry were finally smoothed away. His face held the slight, faint trace of a smile.

  To save her, he’d burned the only thing he could. The last thing remaining to him.

  His own life.

  Her knees hit cold stone. She couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to breathe. Her lungs burned, but how could she draw in air, when he never would again?

  A dark-clad form crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. She gasped, time starting again. Corbin’s frantic, contorted face was mere inches from her own. Somewhere, someone was shouting, dragons were roaring—but she knew in a sudden moment of icy clarity that they weren’t going to reach her in time.

  Corbin’s cold, bony hand clawed at her wrist.

  And then—

  The Phoenix rose.

  Unbound from mortal flesh, it was invisible, the pure essence of fire. Untouched, untouchable, it soared upward, outward.

  Free, free at last! It blazed brighter than the rising sun, rejoicing.

  But no fire could burn without fuel. The spirit that had fed it for so long was dwindling now, drifting away like smoke. The Phoenix gripped that fading spark in incandescent talons, refusing to let the soul slip away just yet.

  It needed that soul to sustain its immortal flame for a little while longer. Just until it found a new host, a new spirit to fuel its own. Then, and only then, could it release the ashes of the old to finally find rest.

  It was time to be reborn.

  The Phoenix spread its spectral wings wide, encircling the world. Souls flared in answer, shining like scattered stars. Bright souls, strong souls. Age, race, gender—such things were irrelevant. It was the deepest essence that mattered. A steadfast will, a true heart.

  A thousand worthy souls beckoned to the Phoenix.

  It chose.

  —Fire filled her.

  It struck through her like white lightning. The flame poured into her, until she felt that she must blaze with it, shining like the sun.

  Corbin shrieked, recoiling, his hands burned and blistered. He tried to scrabble away, but now it was her turn to hold fast.

  The force inside her knew the warlock. It burned with a deep, powerful emotion. Not rage, or hatred, but something pure and bright and utterly without mercy.

  Justice.

  He had brought pain and suffering to countless lives. He should not exist.

  And so, as easy as thought, he didn’t.

  She unmade him, burning him right down to component particles. Wordless satisfaction radiated from that foreign force in her soul as the smoke drifted away. In a million ways, a million lives, the atoms that had once been the warlock would find new purpose. All matter danced in the endless cycle, constantly changing, eternally reborn.

  Just like the Phoenix.

  There was still a tiny spot of blackness in the blazing whiteness within her. Her swan nestled in the heart of the inferno, dwarfed by the fiery wings enfolding it. Yet it opened its own ebony wings wide in a welcoming embrace.

  Oh! her swan called out fiercely. Oh, at last, at last! You came back, as we knew you wou
ld, at last you are back!

  Her swan knew the incandescent power filling them. Knew him.

  “Rose!” Virginia seized her shoulders, ashen with terror. “Are you all right? Did Corbin hurt you?”

  “No,” Rose said. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. Some part of her expected it to be much deeper. “I’m fine.” A pure, delighted laugh bubbled up from the center of her being. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Rose…” Virginia swallowed, hesitating. “Ash is, is…Hugh’s working on him now. But it’s not looking good.”

  Rose put her hand on Virginia’s, squeezing it. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Virginia was still eying her worriedly, as though concerned she had gone mad with shock. Rose wished she could reassure her, but time was running short.

  Very carefully, she stood up. Walking with the Phoenix inside her felt a bit like trying to balance a tray of full, brimming pint glasses. Power threatened to spill out with every movement.

  She heard Connie suck in a gasp. “Her feet. Look at her feet!”

  The scent of scorched rock rose in her wake. Dai put out a hand—to support her, to stop her, she couldn’t tell—but snatched it back. The red dragon shifter stared at his burnt fingers.

  “Hugh,“ she said softly. “Stop.”

  The unicorn didn’t move. Its forelegs were bent, whole body bowed low, every muscle tense. The silver radiance of its horn was too bright to look at directly. The sharp point rested directly over Ash’s heart.

  Yet his chest stayed still. Despite the healing power pouring into him, there was no flicker of life. His open eyes gazed into eternity, empty and peaceful.

  “Hugh,” Rose said again. She held out a hand, moving closer. “It’s all right. You can stop now.”

  The unicorn flinched from her burning aura. It stumbled back, head hanging in exhaustion. With a shimmer of light, it shrank back into Hugh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. Ivy hurried to support him, wrapping comforting arms around her mate. “There’s nothing I can do. He’s gone.”

  “I know.” Rose sank to her knees next to Ash’s body. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”