I couldn’t hear the rest of Dad’s sentence as his hand reached out and drew Kieran close, but as I watched, Kieran’s eyes grew wide and his skin paled.
“Are we understood?”
Kieran stared at me again for a moment, his eyes burning deep gold and his face lined with regret. “We are.”
“Good. Well, go get packed. You’ll meet your wife again on the plane.”
Kieran offered one more stolen glance in my direction and then left without a word.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“I need you to trust me,” Dad said as he led me into the biggest building in the area.
“I do.”
“Good. Then don’t ask questions. Some things are too hard to understand until all of your memories have returned or I’ve been able to explain things to you in more detail. We don’t have time for that here. I expect your brother will be along soon to check-in with the seductress who had you under her spell. We need to leave him be when he does—his head is filled with lies and he’s not ready to listen to the truth.”
“Why can’t we just talk to him? You can show him the newspaper articles you showed me.”
“It won’t work. He’s too far under her spell. He actually believes she’s innocent in it all. I thought you might be as well, but thankfully you see the truth now.”
“So what do we do?”
He showed me into a room in the back. “We lie low for a few days, and then when he’s gone back out to the river, we get on a flight. The only way to save him now is to finish what we’ve started and kill the phoenix.”
The gun at the base of my spine weighed more than it had during the whole journey as I nodded. “Consider it done.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OVER THE NEXT day, Dad gave me a secure satellite phone to stay in contact with him at all times. I wasn’t to wander around the camp in case any of the phoenix’s spies were around. Then he introduced me to Terry and another couple of people who were apparently banding together to fight the phoenix. The strategy meetings started almost the instant everyone arrived and introductions were made. The things they spoke of went far over my head because I was still trying to figure out who I was, and the things they spoke about—monsters and death—were more than a little insane.
Despite the craziness of it all, I couldn’t deny the truth in their words. The world was dangerous, and for good or bad, I had been tapped to help make it safer.
Two days after we arrived back at the base camp, the man who was my brother—Ethan, I’d been told—arrived just as Dad had said he would. I snuck looks at the guy through the crack in the door to the office I was in. Although Dad had warned me not to go near Ethan, curiosity compelled me to find out more. I might have trusted Dad and his friends, but that didn’t mean I was going to blindly follow them without making up my own mind.
Besides, Dad wasn’t around to stop me. He’d been gone since early in the morning.
Pushing the door open, I edged slightly forward to listen to Ethan’s conversation.
He ran his hand over his hair and hung his head. “Since then I haven’t been able to find him. I ran after him, but it’s like he’s covering his tracks and using all of his knowledge of moving around undetected on me.”
I rushed back into the office and then pressed my back against the door. His words were all the proof I’d needed that Dad was right. Ethan had been hunting me. The fact that he was reporting his failure back to the person at the other end of the line was further proof that he was doing it at their bidding. I could only assume it was the phoenix that he’d called.
Through the gap in the door, I watched as Ethan left. His shoulders curled downward, showing his defeat. If the words of the seductress were enough to destroy his will so thoroughly, what power must her voice hold?
Nearly an hour later, Dad came back.
“I saw Ethan,” I admitted. “I watched him talking on the phone.”
Dad’s eyes pinched as he pursed his lips. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t?”
“I don’t have my memory to rely on. I don’t have anything but what I see and what I feel. I had to see for my own eyes.”
His hand moved to his hip, hovering over his weapon.
Did he think I’d been infected again?
“And?” he asked.
“And everything I saw confirmed what you said. He’s hunting for me under her direction. She needs to die to save him.”
Dad’s stance instantly relaxed. “I’m glad you can see the truth of how evil she is.”
“I won’t let her hurt my family any more than she already has.”
Terry came into the office and placed a piece of paper on the desk.
“What’s that?” Dad snapped. Despite Terry being on our side, Dad treated him with constant disdain. Terry didn’t seem to notice though, following Dad along like a lap dog.
“You asked for the details of anyone who called for your boys.”
Dad practically jumped toward the piece of paper. “Was it her?”
“I think so.”
“Good, good,” Dad said as he tucked the piece of paper into his pocket.
Had the enchantress called to firm up her hold on Ethan? Something twisted in the pit of my stomach, calling to me and making my fingers twitch as I thought about getting my hands on that number. It would be a risk to talk to her, I wasn’t sure whether she could enchant me again over the phone, but I needed to talk to her. Just like with Ethan, I needed to figure some things out on my own.
One of Dad’s other contacts raced into the office. “The púca escaped.”
Dad spun instantly. “What?”
While he and the other person talked about some creature called a púca and the creature’s wife escaping, I crept closer to Dad. My fingers closed around the edge of the paper that poked out of his pocket.
Being careful not to let Dad catch me, I drew the sheet of paper out.
“That’s settled then.” Dad spun back to me. “We’ll leave here in the morning. We need to get you into training again so we can end this threat as soon as possible.”
I shoved the piece of paper deep into my pocket as I nodded.
“Get some sleep. It’s going to be a long journey home.”
“Yes, sir.” I kept my hand in my pocket so he didn’t suspect I’d put anything in there. I couldn’t explain the desire I had to hold on to the number—or the instinct that told me to hide it from Dad—but that didn’t stop me from curling the edge of the paper around my fingers.
After heading to bed, I couldn’t sleep. Despite every intention to try, I couldn’t turn off my thoughts long enough. So many things ran through my head—questions I might never get the answers to.
The number I’d stolen from Dad made me burn with curiosity. Was the seductress so fierce she could ensnare me over the phone? Why did I want to risk it?
I called the number and was stunned into silence by a soft, feminine, “Hello.”
It was impossible to respond as I considered that at the other end of the line was the reason I’d lost my memory and the woman who’d trapped my brother and had him try to kill me.
Despite that, I listened with rapt attention as she said, “Hello,” again.
My stomach flipped at the sound and the same feeling I’d had each time she was mentioned built again. It was almost a compulsion to run to her side. To fall at her feet and worship her. It was proof of the danger in her powers, danger that was only strengthened by the sound of her voice.
As I held the phone to my ear, Dad entered the room. He didn’t say anything, but watched me carefully. The way I was resting meant he couldn’t see the phone, and I didn’t want to draw his attention to it or alert him to the fact that I was on an open call. I could only imagine what he might say if he discovered that I had risked our operation by trying to find out more about the evil I was facing.
“Clay?” she said eventually, and I couldn’t believe my ears.
She knows my na
me? In some ways, it made sense. If she had used me for her own purposes, it was only logical that she would have learned the basics about me. But how could she know it was me?
“Is that you Clay? If it is, please say something.”
Part of me wanted to answer her, but I still didn’t want Dad to learn that I’d made the call. He seemed to have a plan and wanted me to stick to it to the letter. Without my memories or anything outside of instinct to guide me, it was impossible to come up with a contradictory plan. He clearly had my best interests at heart; he’d done nothing to indicate otherwise—unlike the seductress phoenix, whose trail of destruction was clear.
The woman broke the silence that stretched between us again, this time with an angered shout. “If this is someone’s idea of a sick joke, you’ve picked the wrong girl! I am not someone you should mess with!”
Her words cemented what I’d just been thinking, and I disconnected the call before I could jeopardize Dad’s plan.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his frown still firmly in place
“Peachy.” I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling, willing myself to fall asleep and forget the cadence of the voice on the other end of the call. The same one that echoed endlessly through my head, providing further evidence of her hold over me.
It was before dawn the following morning when Dad woke me so we could meet our flight. I didn’t question why we needed to leave so early. The sooner we left, the sooner I could do what I had to in order to have my memories returned.
When we left Alaska, Dad told me we were headed to New York. Apparently he had an acquaintance there who would house us to give us a vantage point to try to get our family back together. As we traveled, Dad gave me books about the phoenix and ran me through everything he knew about her. We also discussed possible ways to return my brother and sister to us, including the use of the water that had cured me.
Despite everything Dad told me during the journey, I found myself wanting to hear the phoenix’s voice again. Each time we stopped, I would call her and listen silently until she grew frustrated enough to shout out an insult and hang up. I tried to convince myself that the only pleasure I derived from the call was the irritation I was causing, but that wasn’t the case.
The truth was her voice was like silk against my ears, wrapping her words with almost magical properties that made them sink under my skin and permeate into my mind. Even as she growled in anger and spoke words not really fitting of a lady, the cadence of her words drew me in. It tugged at my stomach and made me want to push the timeline Dad had set for her destruction. Once she was gone, I wouldn’t have to worry about her holding me tight. The worry that I was becoming accustomed to hearing her voice wasn’t enough to stop me from calling though.
When we arrived in New York, Dad introduced me to Abraham. To my surprise, he pulled me into an embrace and told me how happy he was that I’d been able to escape the influence of evil creatures. Then the pair rushed me to a suburban house in the Clinton Township in New Jersey. Underneath the almost new colonial-style house was a basement stocked with an assortment of weaponry and a range to practice with them.
“You need to hone your skills before you can go into battle,” Dad said. “But we don’t have long.”
For the rest of that day, I shot at a variety of targets in the makeshift gun range in the basement, training with everything from firearms to crossbow bolts. When it started to irritate my skin as I sweated, I twisted off the ring that rested on my left hand and placed it on the table.
Between my sessions in the training room, Dad showed me things that I needed to know like driving, stealth, and ways to capture, tie, and torture someone. It was surprising how easily my body took to the tasks—as though I’d done every one of them hundreds of times before.
After dinner on the second night, Dad tossed me a sword and we sparred before tossing our weapons aside and trying some hand to hand. Although I’d worried I wouldn’t be able to do any of it—that losing my memories would somehow render me useless, or that I’d maybe never had the skills in the first place—each new weapon I attempted posed little challenge. It was all natural, as though my body had performed the same actions a thousand times over.
“Very good,” Dad said as he landed on his ass for the fourth time in our sparring session. “Tomorrow, we’ll do it again. For now, study these case notes. They might come in handy.”
He gave me a file that detailed the last mission to take out the phoenix. The dates in it seemed wrong—around a quarter of a century earlier—but he assured me it was the same vicious woman.
“She has a magic that can renew her body. We need to kill her in a way that stops that from happening.”
He gave me a few more books that went into further detail about the evils of a phoenix. By the time I’d finished reading it all, there was only one question I had. “When do I get to take her out?”
“Soon. First, we’ll start surveillance. Abraham is already watching her street, but you can take over that role just as soon as we can be sure you won’t fall back under her spell.”
Even as he said the words, I wondered if that was what was happening to me. Was that why I itched to hear her voice each night? There was no doubt in my mind her delicate tones were part of her power. Could she use it to weave words to draw men under her spell? Was that what had happened to my brother? What had happened to me until Dad rescued me? It was dangerous to talk to her, and impossible not to. Surely the very fact that I was unable to go more than a day without calling her was proof of her entrapment.
Despite my worries, later that night, when the twisting in my stomach compelled me into action, I dialed the number and listened in without giving her anything in return just like I had almost every night since getting her number. Each new contact was like a little hit, sending a rush of adrenaline through me like a junkie getting their high. The call went the same way as always—first she would say hello, then call my name, and then threaten me for calling her. It all provided evidence to me regarding her nature.
And more reasons I needed her gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A WEEK AFTER I’d been washed clean by the waters, I was in the car with Abe running surveillance. Dad had been impressed with how quickly I’d proven my skills with the weapons and fighting, but I hadn’t thought anything of it. I wasn’t bringing anything to the party mentally—it was as if my hands and body just knew what to do.
Still, it was a relief to be doing something to actively work toward our end goal. And it became that much more important a goal during my first stakeout. A layer of protection surrounded the Phoenix’s house in the form of a number of guards all surrounded by the same blue light that signified her spell. The biggest issue though was that they weren’t human. Each one sported a set of wings that rose from between their shoulder blades.
Fae Abe called them.
The actual number of guards changed from day to day, but there were never fewer than three or seemingly more than seven.
The longer I spent on the stakeout with Abe though, the more I could see he was unfit for duty. I wasn’t sure if it was age or incompetence, but he needed me to point out the guards each time, and claimed he couldn’t see the faint light echoing from a spot just inside the forest down one side of the house.
By day nine, Dad had agreed to let me run the surveillance by myself, on the proviso I checked in with him every two hours to ensure I hadn’t fallen under the spell again. One thing we’d ascertained from the stakeout was that three times a day, the fae guards around her house changed over. It was always at random times, but when it happened, the incoming greeted the ones leaving and there was a window of five to ten minutes where everyone showed a little less caution.
“Don’t let her talk to you alone,” Dad had said as I was about to leave the house. “We can’t risk her getting in your head.”
“I won’t let her get in my head.”
Dad gave me a sad smile and rested his hand on my
shoulder. “That’s what I thought last time. Now, I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Then come with me.”
“I wish I could, son, but you have to do this. Not only am I blind to the filthy creatures protecting her, but I don’t want her to warn your siblings that I’m so close to rescuing you all. If something goes wrong, I need to be on the outside so I can rescue you again. Besides, if she thinks you’re coming back to her, you might be able to break through the defenses.”
“Won’t my arrival be a warning?”
“Not if you kill her quickly, before she has a chance to do anything. Wait for the opportune moment and take her down before the fae can do anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Besides the contingent of guards though, there was nothing to see. The phoenix hadn’t come out of her house once in the days that I’d been watching her.
Day ten, I finally caught my first glimpse of her. From my position down the road, I couldn’t see the front door, so I didn’t see her getting into the massive SUV, but I caught sight of her features as she reversed out of her driveway. Even though her hair was up, the red, gold, and copper that Dad had instructed me to look for all shone in the muted sunlight pouring through the sunroof in the car. Surrounding her body like a film was a bright, shining light that seemed to shimmer like flames dancing in a fireplace.
When she pulled the SUV onto the road, I was certain to follow at a safe distance behind her. Her eyes locked onto my car briefly in the rearview mirror, but she was more focused on the license plate than she was on me. In that moment, I had a chance to watch her eyes scan over the details in her mirror. She was exactly what Dad had told me she would be—every detail from the multi-hued hair to her lilac irises, but what caught me off guard was her exceeding beauty.
Even though I’d seen the photos from the files, none of them had prepared me for what I could see in person. It was as if she was a deity disguised in a human shell, or a demon walking among us. The more I thought about it, the less it surprised me. Dad had said she was a seductress—it seemed unlikely that one of those would be unattractive.
Living with Embers: (Son of Rain #4) Page 11