Phoenix held her breath, restraining the knee-jerk reaction to lash out. She couldn’t hurt the woman again; there had to be another way. If she could just –
A loud “CAW” sounded before her view of the demon was broken in an explosion of black feathers. Wings beat furiously as a large crow latched its talons on to the demon, its razor-sharp beak striking the soft flesh of the eyes.
The demon roared and moved away from Phoenix as it fought to hold off the unexpected attack. Human limbs and feathers mixed in a confusing blur, but the crow allowed no leeway as it swarmed the demon.
Stunned, Phoenix stood frozen to the spot, unsure of what to do.
A rush of wind from her left was the only indication that Ethan was up and moving before he dived for the demon’s legs. Already distracted by the crow’s determined attack, the impact knocked the demon off balance and into the railings. Everything moved in slow motion and, for a split second, the demon got the upper hand on the crow as it tore the black wings away.
Furious red eyes met hers. “They’re coming,” it hissed, and an insane laugh wracked the woman’s body.
With that parting sentence, the demon gripped the top of the railing, tore itself free of Ethan’s grip, and launched the woman’s body into the murky waters of the River Liffey below.
A silent scream froze in Phoenix’s throat, but her outstretched hand was met with only air. She ran to Ethan’s side and scanned the waters in desperation, but there was no sight of the woman. The water was eerily calm, like a mirror reflecting the night back at them.
Phoenix was shaking as she rested her head against the hard metal of the railings. She closed her eyes to block out the image of the woman’s falling body, but it was no use. She’d been aware. The woman had still been alive.
Another “caw” drew her attention back to the bridge, and she turned to find the large crow watching them. From its perch on top of the railings, Phoenix could now appreciate the full size of the bird. Almost two feet in height, it was covered in silky feathers that reflected a miasma of colours back at them. What had initially appeared to be inky black, now shone with ever changing blues, greens, and purples. Eyes like rubies showcased a keen intelligence, and a strange sense of déjà vu washed over Phoenix. She’d seen those eyes before …
With one more squawk, the crow took flight and left Phoenix and Ethan staring in confusion at the now empty railings.
Ethan let out a long breath. “I think we should call it a night.”
She wanted nothing more than to agree, but Phoenix suddenly remembered the old man the demon had been attacking. She turned towards the arch of the bridge and her gaze met wide, shocked eyes. Huddled in a pool of urine, the old man clung to the railings for dear life as he stared at them. Phoenix sighed.
Ethan paced the length of his living room, unable to sit still with the adrenaline still flowing through his veins.
A fucking demon.
He blew out a breath and looked again at Phoenix to reassure himself she was in one piece. She’d fallen quiet and retreated into herself on the way back to his apartment. The cuts on her face were healing quickly thanks to a balm Lily had applied, and her own healing abilities, but he could tell she was shaken. Hell, he was too.
“And you’re sure it was a demon?” Lily asked for the third time as she looked up from the large tome she was scouring.
“As sure as I can be.” Ethan ran a hand through his hair, trying to remember any important detail from the night.
“I didn’t think demons could cross into this world,” Phoenix said, finally breaking her silence.
“They shouldn’t be able to,” Ethan agreed. “The Council reinforced the barrier between their world and ours in order to maintain the balance. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Actually …” Nate looked up from his laptop as all eyes turned to him. “It might.”
He flipped the laptop around to face the room and pointed to a block of text he’d highlighted. “I’ve found some references to the prophecy in Council archives –”
“The Council archives, how the hell did you –”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Nate grinned and held up a hand. “Anyway, there’s a reference to a tear in the fabric, a kind of ‘End of Days’. Seems a little overdramatic, but given current events …”
Shade let out a low whistle.
Phoenix cleared her throat and squirmed in her chair as she raised a hand. “Not to ask a stupid question, but tear in what fabric? You mean the barrier between worlds?”
Nate nodded, all humour gone from his face.
“But that would mean …” Phoenix paled.
“More demons.”
Ethan felt the fight leave him in a breath. The demon they’d faced tonight was only a minor demon; if it had been any stronger, it would have taken possession of a Supe rather than a human. Or worse, it would have been able to take form on its own. It had taken so little for the demon to overpower him, and even less to stop Phoenix in her tracks. How could they fight something that was stronger and harder to kill than they were?
“Have we any idea how to separate a demon from its host?” Ethan directed his question to Lily, shivering as he remembered the woman’s body disappearing into the black depths of the river.
“I’ve found a spell …” Lily said.
Green eyes met his, and he knew there was a but coming.
“… but it’s not enough to separate the demon. We need to be able to banish it too or it will just find another victim.”
Another innocent to leech the life out of. Things had been complicated enough when they just had to protect humans from the Lore. Now this?
“You said the Council played a part in banishing them the first time around?” Phoenix looked at him for confirmation. “Who’d be strong enough to breach the Council’s wards?”
Ethan didn’t manage to stop the surprise from showing on his face, which earned him an annoyed glare from Phoenix. It was a bloody good question and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to them already.
“The Dublin coven?” Ethan looked at Lily, who shook her head.
“They’d never be strong enough by themselves.”
“So, maybe they’re not by themselves,” Shade said, staring pointedly at Phoenix.
Too tired to go around in circles any longer, Ethan decided it was time to call it a night. He ushered everyone to the door and found himself once more standing alone in the apartment with Phoenix as she held back from the others.
“She was alive, Ethan. The woman. She was still in there. If we could have just restrained her …” Haunted eyes met his as she pulled her coat tightly around herself.
“We wouldn’t have known what to do anyway.”
Phoenix poured every ounce of frustration and every bit of confusion into the punch, viciously punishing the hard leather for the feelings of weakness and ineptitude that had been dredged up by the previous night’s patrol. The punchbag merely clunked on its chain, indifferent to her inner turmoil.
“Don’t take it personally, the whole gym’s been rigged to withstand our strength.” Ethan’s tone was teasing as he dropped a 500kg bar back on the rack and strolled over to her. “I’m sure you don’t really punch like a girl.”
The gym really was impressive, and she’d jumped at the chance to test it out. Comprising the whole bottom floor of the converted warehouse that housed Ethan’s apartment, the walls and ceiling were reinforced with thick steel beams to support the heavier weights and frames in the lifting area. Combat weapons of all kinds lined the walls, and one half of the room was dedicated purely to martial arts training. It was Phoenix’s idea of heaven.
“C’mon, how about taking some of that frustration out on me?” Ethan started walking towards the training mats without waiting for her answer.
What an arrogant sod, Phoenix thought, stubbornly refusing to follow him and his presumptuous arse. Although, she did feel an irritating need to redeem herself after their first training session.
He’d walked away from that fight without a clear win. Sure, he might argue differently, but he hadn’t pinned her. The competitor in her needed a clear winner, even if that meant getting her arse handed to her on a plate.
“What do I get out of it?” she echoed the question she’d once asked him, back before life had turned completely upside down.
“Tell you what …” He turned back to look at her appraisingly. “Best of three. Winner of each round gets to ask a question of their choice. Honest answers only.”
Well, that made her stop.
He was definitely stronger than her, and a more experienced fighter, but vamp trumped wolf in speed. If she could use that to her advantage …
“Unless you’re afraid of losing again?” Ethan’s voice was innocent, but his eyes taunted and dared her to prove him wrong.
Screw that! She could lose with the best of them. She smiled a saccharine smile, sashayed to the mat, and threw her towel and water bottle to the side.
“No weapons. External or otherwise,” she said, and pointedly looked at Ethan’s hands. It had been hard enough explaining the residual scratches from the demon attack to Abi. She didn’t want to explain claw marks a second time.
He gave her a boy scout salute, though she doubted he’d ever been one in his life.
They started easy. A light jab here, a snap kick there; testing each other’s defences in a harmless warm-up dance. Speed and strength were kept to human levels as they flowed through locks and releases, making no real attempt to attack.
As her muscles loosened and the blood began to flow, Phoenix started testing the limits of her speed. She made Ethan work harder for his strikes and managed to stay just barely ahead of him each step of the way, waiting for an opening.
A feint to the head allowed her the moment of distraction she needed to drop low and sweep his legs from under him. She turned into his stumbling body and wrapped her legs firmly around his upper arm. With a sharp tug, she pulled his arm into a lock that forced him to face-plant the mat.
And led to her winning round one.
She waited until he acknowledged her win with a tap before she released the lock and jumped up, feeling quietly pleased with herself. Accepting her offered hand, Ethan followed her to standing and cracked his neck as he waited expectantly for her first question.
So many thoughts were running through her mind, but there was one that had plagued her ever since their first training session. “How did you get involved with the prophecy?” she asked as she thought back to the change in his demeanour when she’d asked why he cared.
Again, something clouded his eyes that she couldn’t quite identify. Ethan grabbed his towel and bottle from the edge of the mat. He wiped the back of his neck and took a large gulp of water before answering.
“It wasn’t intentional, believe me.” He sighed. “I’d left the pack and was moving around, trying to find my feet. But it seemed like everywhere I went, weird shit followed me.”
She raised her eyebrows in feigned disbelief, which caused him to laugh.
“I knew I’d been sheltered by the pack, but what I saw just didn’t seem right to me. Surely the Council wouldn’t tolerate the level of bloodlust I was seeing in the vamps. And the wolves … their behaviour wasn’t normal. So, I started looking into it a bit, asking a few questions.”
Phoenix watched silently as he threw his towel around his neck and rubbed his hair absently with it. There were a million questions going through her mind and she was itching to interrupt, but something about his tone told her to stay quiet.
“At this point I’d been gone a while and my dad wanted me home. He sent our Omega, Sean, to talk sense into me. Only, he never got the chance. The night he caught up with me in Belfast, we stumbled on a vamp feeding.” A muscle jumped at the side of his jaw. “The baby couldn’t have been more than a few months old. Its mother had been discarded in a heap on the ground, still reaching for her baby even –”
Ethan shuddered, his voice becoming void of emotion. “We fought the vamp, but Sean was killed and the vamp got away. I’ve been trying to track it since.”
“And now, if you walk away from the prophecy, he’ll have died for nothing,” she said quietly.
He nodded, looking in surprise at the water bottle he held in his hand – now crushed.
Phoenix took a shuddery breath, needing to break the tension. “Okay, you ready to get your arse whooped again?”
He grinned, seeming to shake off the horrors of his story. Without another word, he threw his towel aside and lunged at her, almost knocking her off balance.
Mentally chastising herself, she slipped his grasp and moved behind him before throwing in a sly kidney jab. With each strike, they grew more familiar with each other’s movements. Soon, they were moving at such speed that they would have been a blur to the human eye.
Just as quickly, Ethan got the upper hand and trapped her in a chokehold from behind. Without a second thought, she dropped her weight and flipped the solid lump of muscle over her shoulder. Ethan’s surprise at finding himself on his back gave her just enough time to pin him, and she threw in a little wink for good measure.
She slid off him so he could sit up, but decided to save her energy by staying seated on the ground for question two. “What were you running from?”
Ethan’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Why did you leave? You said you don’t change at the full moon without your pack. It sounds to me like you’re punishing yourself for something.”
Ethan rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed a hand over his face. “I guess I set the terms, didn’t I?” He paused. “My pack is in Donegal. My father is the Alpha. And I’m the first-born.”
“So … that would make you next in line for Alpha,” she said as she dug deep into the recesses of her mind for the limited knowledge she had on Lore traditions.
He grimaced. “A fact I resented for a very long time. I love my pack, and my family, but growing up, it was always about the responsibility. I guess I just needed a break from it all. So I left.”
“I didn’t think wolves did well without their pack?” Phoenix eyed him with growing curiosity.
“They don’t, generally. Stronger the wolf, easier it is. A relief even. At least for a while.”
Before she could probe any further, he jumped to his feet and extended a hand to help her up. “I think it’s time for me to reclaim my dignity,” he said with a grin.
She snorted and adjusted her hair back into a tight ponytail. “Good luck with that.”
Round three began. It was much the same as the previous rounds, with sweat making their skin slick. However, it ended with one important difference: Phoenix found herself flat on her back, not quite sure how she got there, and wondering numbly if the two previous rounds had all been a set up.
Ignoring Ethan’s offered hand, she got to her feet and wrapped her arms around herself in a vain attempt to protect from whatever difficult truth he would force her to divulge.
“How have you managed to stay off the radar for so long?”
His question startled her. It was one he’d asked before, back in the bar. Why was it even relevant enough to waste his question?
“My parents were banished by their families for their relationship.” She forced her voice to remain neutral. “As you can imagine, they didn’t want much to do with the Lore after that. When they found out my mother was pregnant” – she shrugged – “they didn’t want to chance my safety.”
“So, you’ve been living amongst humans your whole life?” Ethan’s eyebrows raised in surprise as he looked at her.
Phoenix hesitated for a second before shaking her head, reluctant to share too much, but unable to stomach a lie.
“My parents went missing when I was fifteen. I spent some time with a vampire clan until I was old enough to fend for myself.”
“Did they know what you were?”
“Only the head of the clan, and a few of his top security. I was kept sepa
rate from the others so that no one would suspect anything.”
He seemed to digest the information for some time before he finally looked at her again. “It sounds very lonely.”
Not able to face his pity, she simply shrugged and walked off the mat. “It was fun sparring with you,” she said over her shoulder, not quite sure if it was the truth.
The biting wind carried a strong, ever present, threat of rain as Ethan strolled down Grafton Street with Phoenix at his side. The late hour had transformed their surroundings to a pale representation of its daytime persona. Shop fronts were dark and uninviting. The street was empty of music and the life it attracted. Small groups of volunteers had set up makeshift tables and were working tirelessly to dole out the last of their offerings to the homeless. The queue of people in need was an even more depressing sight on the cold winter night.
Beside him, Phoenix’s terrifyingly pointy stiletto boots clacked on the cobblestones. The shadows of the night did little to blunt the fiery red of her hair, and her green eyes almost glowed as they adjusted to the dim light. He had to admit that she pulled off the badass look pretty well, though he knew now it was all a front.
Though things had been quiet the past few nights, they continued their patrols, keeping an eye out for any clues or a chance to prevent attacks from rogue Supes. If he was honest, he was also looking for an opportunity to test Phoenix. She’d held her own quite well in hand to hand combat, but he’d yet to see her use her powers aside from the night he’d first met her. It worried him, especially since there had been rumours of further demon possessions.
“Abi’s starting to get suspicious about me being out all night,” she said, breaking the comfortable silence as they veered down one of the dark side-streets.
Ethan smiled at the mention of the bubbly human bartender. He could well imagine her curiosity being piqued.
3 Minutes to Midnight: Urban Fantasy Midnight Trilogy Book 1 Page 10