by Anne, Melody
“I can take it, Jayden, as long as I know he can’t hurt any of you,” Phoenix said.
“I’m the one who can’t take it. This will end, I promise you. I don’t know how or when, but I know it will end,” Jayden vowed.
“Sadie’s screams were so real. He’s gotten smarter,” Phoenix said, trembling at the memory.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked. He wanted to know, but he didn’t want her to have to relive it.
Phoenix explained the details of her nightmare. Jayden’s eyes narrowed as she talked of Vyco coming tauntingly near her.
“What made me realize it was a dream was when Sadie begged me not to let us die. Sadie would never join forces with him for any reason,” Phoenix said, having a hard time getting the words out.
“You’re very wise,” Jayden said.
“I stabbed him in the dream. Did I hurt him, like he hurts me?” she asked hopefully. Jayden tensed. She instantly became worried again.
“You stabbed him? How? Where?”
“He was trying to get me to take his hand and I grabbed his dagger and stabbed him through the heart. He was furious, but that’s when I called for you,” Phoenix whispered, her throat closed because of the tenseness of his body.
“You brave, brave, stubborn girl. You should’ve called me the second you realized you were in one of his nightmares,” Jayden admonished.
“I had to try to hurt him,” she said.
“I know you did,” he said.
“I didn’t faze him, did I?” she asked, afraid to hear him say she hadn’t.
“I honestly don’t know. It’s his dream world. It’s possible you could hurt him if he can hurt you, but no one’s tried before. Mere mortal weapons can’t hurt him, unless they take his head off, but you used his own dagger, one he created from the depths of hell. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is wounded,” Jayden said with wonder.
Phoenix lay against his chest, reveling in her small victory. She wanted to believe she’d done damage to the demon, maybe even managed to stop him for a while. Phoenix couldn’t fully go back to sleep. She started to drift off, only to jerk awake, too afraid of being pulled into Vyco’s realm again.
“I’m here, Phoenix. Sleep for a while. I’ll protect you,” Jayden whispered softly in her ear as he continued to stroke her hair. His finger brushed her neck, where a small welt had formed from Vyco’s fingernail. His touch soothed her. With his promise of protection, she finally managed to sleep again.
Her dreams were full of bright meadows, filled with blooming, colorful flowers. She ran through them, laughter spilling from her mouth, all of her loved ones by her side. Jayden was there, holding her hand, and their world was without war and monsters. It was the life she wanted, needed, had to have. Jayden stroked her hair and gazed at her smiling face, finding peace in her moment of relief.
She woke too soon as the morning light filtered in through the dusty window. Jayden hadn’t moved all night, and she stretched, her body pressed against his as she became fully awake.
“Good morning,” he said as his lips grazed her cheek and the corner of her mouth.
“Morning,” she mumbled back. She didn’t want to open her mouth, afraid she’d knock him out with morning breath. He laughed, making her question his mind-reading abilities again. He’d told her he couldn’t, but she wasn’t sure she believed him. He swished his tongue along her bottom lip, before bouncing from the bed.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to gather yourself together. We need to have breakfast and be on our way,” he said with a playful smile. Phoenix loved it when he flirted.
“Yes, sir,” she said as she saluted him. He gave her a mock frown before exiting the room. Phoenix was grateful the water still worked. She managed to endure a cold shower, though her skin turned blue, and she was shivering as she climbed out. At least she felt clean, which was worth the pain.
She dried off with a musty smelling towel. She scrunched her nose, hating to smell so horrible after finally getting clean. She opened the cabinet and almost fainted in happiness to find a bottle of peach lotion. She was shocked it still maintained its wonderful smell, though it was a bit thin in consistency. She slathered herself from neck to toe, sighing at the exquisite softness of her sweet-smelling skin. It wouldn’t last, but she’d feel like a lady for at least a few hours.
They’d found clothes that fit both girls the night before, so she grabbed her freshly washed panties, not even caring they weren’t quite dry yet, and slipped them on and then put on the old clothes. It felt odd to do it, but she got sick of wearing the same items every single day. She knew if someone stumbled into her old house, she’d want them to use her things if they could.
“Mmm, you smell delicious,” Jayden said as she joined them in the kitchen. He grabbed her in his arms and immediately brought his lips to hers, kissing her long enough that Brian finally cleared his throat. Phoenix blushed as she pulled away. Jayden sent Brian a glare.
“Come on, you’d do the same if I was kissing Sadie and making you watch,” Brian said with a shrug before he went back to eating his soup.
Both girls giggled when Sadie joined them. She’d had the same idea and showed up with slightly blue skin, but smelling like vanilla and wearing a huge grin.
“I can’t believe how heavenly a shower feels, even a cold one, when you’ve been sleeping in the wilderness forever,” Sadie said. Brian perked up when she brushed by him and her fragrance filled his nostrils. He grabbed her hand and knocked her off balance so she landed across his lap. He gave her a quick kiss before letting her go.
“We could hide in here all day,” Brian suggested, only half kidding.
“That would be nice, but we have a schedule to keep,” Jayden said, though his eyes turned to Phoenix wistfully.
“Jayden, how exactly is this going to work?” Sadie asked as they left the house and started moving closer to the military base. “I mean, there’s a locked gate, guards all over the place, and hundreds of them to our couple of dozen people.”
“It’s difficult to understand what we’re doing by simply looking at a piece of paper, but John really is a genius. I think it’s because of all those years he played Halo,” Brian said, jumping into the conversation.
“I know the plan sounds overwhelming, but if we each do our part, everything should go smoothly,” Jayden said, shaking his head in humor at Brian’s comment.
“Can we go over it again?” Phoenix asked. They’d reach the outside of the base before evening fell, and the closer they got, the more nervous the girls became.
“Doesn’t John think it’s dangerous to try to take them prisoner? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just blow them up or something?” Phoenix asked. She felt badly at how casually she talked of taking human lives.
“If they surrender, we have to accept. We can’t kill unarmed men. If we did, we’d be no better than they are,” Jayden chastised, which made Phoenix feel even lower.
“Hey,” he called gently and stopped to grab her chin. “Don’t feel guilty because you’re afraid. I know who you are, and if one of them surrendered, you wouldn’t pull the trigger.” She managed a small smile, thankful he knew her so well.
They reached a shaded area and Jayden pulled out a map, identical to those all of the team leaders carried. He laid it out on a flat rock and Sadie and Phoenix knelt down to look at it as he talked. There’d been so many people circled around the map when John talked about their plan the night before they left that she hadn’t seen it up close. Jayden pointed to an area with a red X.
“This is the main entrance to the base,” Jayden said. “John’s there rigging up devices. We’re going to the south end, where there’s another entrance. I have all the tools we need. We’re wiring explosive devices at all exits. We have poison darts to knock out the main guards. The less noise we initially make, the better. We’re going in at night, when most of them are sleeping. John will give them a chance to surrender first.
We have gas to knock them out, and other nonlethal weapons, but if any of our men or women are in danger, we’ll have to take them out.”
Phoenix shivered. She hoped they didn’t get to that point.
Jayden spent fifteen minutes going over the plan, every piece of information he relayed looking more deadly as he pointed it out on a map, making the entire situation much more real.
“Do you think there’s any chance they’ll surrender?” Sadie asked. Jayden and Brian exchanged a look that didn’t bode well.
“Honestly, I don’t believe they will. These men have been killing and torturing for years. I don’t think they have a lot of humanity left in them,” Jayden said. Phoenix’s shoulders sagged. She didn’t think they’d surrender either, but it would make the situation so much better if they did.
“Let’s get this over with. I’m done stalling,” Phoenix finally said. She slipped her backpack on her shoulders and waited while Sadie did the same. They walked along the path, stopped at houses, and slowly made their way to the base. They were all surprised no soldiers were anywhere else on the island. It was a ghost town. She knew the other teams were safe as they continued to communicate with Jayden over the radio.
They rounded a bend and got their first glimpse of the base. It was huge, with all sorts of military vehicles parked behind its fenced lot.
“What do you think happened to all our soldiers?” Sadie asked. She remembered the news of the men and women coming home from wars in the East, and parades with hundreds of men and women in uniform. How could all of them have been destroyed?
“I don’t know. That’s what puzzles me the most,” Brian answered.
“What you have to realize is this attack wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Jayden said. “The men who planned it did so over many, many years. They were smart, heinous, and motivated by what they believed to be right. There weren’t just a few of them out to make a point. They wanted to take over a nation. The attacks on different flights, nine eleven, and events you were never made aware of, were all practice runs to see how the United States would respond. They had men waiting, watching carefully, in key positions in business, the military, and government. Their spies were everywhere. There were tens of thousands of them in the first wave alone. You had no way to fight back — they made sure of it.”
Phoenix looked at him in shock. It was the first time she really believed he’d been with Vyco during the initial attacks. He’d sat by and watched as men, women, and children were murdered . . . and worse. There were more horrible things than death. She pulled away from him without realizing what she was doing until she saw the pain in his eyes.
“I screwed up, Phoenix. I don’t deserve your forgiveness or your love. If you had known who I was then, you’d have looked at me like I was a monster. I was one for a very long time,” he said, not even attempting to touch her. She was disgusted and didn’t know how to react. She knew that wasn’t who he was now, but he’d let so many die when he could’ve stopped it.
“What’s the next move?” Brian asked, trying to break the tension in the air. Phoenix took her eyes from Jayden and focused on Brian. It wasn’t the time to fall apart, and she certainly couldn’t stop trusting Jayden — they depended on him.
“We need to secure our area. Will you be okay, Phoenix?” Jayden asked, nothing showing in his expression. He’d managed to block emotion from his features, which gave Phoenix the strength to square her shoulders and nod. They had a mission to complete. When it was done, she’d have plenty of time to think about her future — if she still had a future.
“I tend to forget this began from our own internal battles and civil unrest,” she said quietly.
“That’s how all great battles begin,” Jayden said. “If you make each other fight, no one knows who the true enemy is. The most horrific part of it all is they tell us they are doing it exactly that way. We are so oblivious to it, we don’t believe it could possibly happen.”
Phoenix had been far too young to know what had been happening when the fighting began, but she’d never live in ignorance again. She was more knowledgeable than her eighteen years of age. It was so overwhelming. And in the end it didn’t matter how it began. When it was over they could analyze that and try to stop it from ever happening again.
Maybe it was time she started writing in her journal again. If future generations were aware of the mistakes they’d made, maybe history wouldn’t repeat itself. That was all she hoped for mankind.
The day was hot, unusually humid for Washington, and they had to stop often to rest and rehydrate. The last thing they needed was for one of them to become weak from lack of fluids. Of course Jayden would be fine — he didn’t even notice the miserable weather. He never complained about the number of breaks the rest of them needed, though. He did love her, and she needed to always remember that. He might have walked in darkness for a long time, but he’d more than made up for it since she’d known him.
“Team Bravo, are you in position and ready to secure your area at zero-one-hundred-hours?” John’s voice crackled over the radio.
“That’s a positive, Alpha. We’ll be fully prepared to commence our task at Yankee, Charlie, Echo at zero-one-hundred-hours,” Jayden replied. Phoenix and Sadie looked at him strangely.
“That stands for YCE, our gate position,” Brian told the girls. “We have to talk in code from this point on, so if for any reason the enemy is able to listen in on our conversations, they won’t know where we are. Hopefully, they won’t figure out we’re on the island. We don’t think they can break in because the connection is exceptionally secure, but we’re not taking any chances when we’re this close.”
“We really should’ve listened more,” Sadie whispered to Phoenix while Jayden talked to John for a few more minutes.
“I know,” Phoenix said, guilt already weighing her down without needing any further reasons to feel like a bad apple for the team. Jayden stopped talking and strode over to them.
“We have a long wait ahead of us, so we’ll go through our materials one final time to make sure we aren’t short anything, then we have nothing to do but sit and wait,” Jayden said, while he looked only at Phoenix.
“Sadie and I will make an early supper,” Phoenix volunteered. She pulled Sadie away to prepare their food, which wouldn’t take long since they couldn’t have a fire and were eating out of cans.
“What’s wrong, Phoenix?” Sadie asked as soon as they were out of earshot from the guys. Phoenix looked back — she knew Jayden could hear far better than any of the others could. She walked a little farther, far enough she felt she could talk.
“I’m overwhelmed with it all. The war, Jayden, who he used to be, my brother, our parents, all these lives counting on us. It’s so much to carry,” Phoenix said. Jayden was her biggest worry of all.
“We can’t predict what will happen, but no one can make us feel a certain way,” Sadie said. “If you want to be angry, then be angry; it’s good for you. If you don’t want to be with Jayden, don’t be with him. Don’t feel obligated to stay by his side. If his past is too much for you to handle, it can’t work. As for the rest — our families are fine, I have to believe that or I’m out here, completely miserable, for nothing.”
When Sadie put it that way, it frightened Phoenix. She didn’t want to leave Jayden, but she was having a hard time with the whole serving Vyco thing. She loved Jayden more than she’d imagined being able to love anyone.
“I think once we sit down and really talk, I’ll feel better. We haven’t talked a whole lot about important things since he returned. We’ve been too busy putting our lives in danger,” Phoenix said with a frown. “It scares me that people say you don’t really know if you’re in love when you’re with someone in a life-and-death situation. Since I’ve known Jayden, all we’ve done is fight for our lives. What if, after all of this is over, we find it was nothing more than adrenaline, and our love wasn’t real? Or, even worse, what if I love him,
and he wants nothing to do with me — or he decides to go back and serve Vyco?” Phoenix pushed out one sentence after the other.
Sadie had opened a floodgate, and she was close to panicking. There wasn’t time to panic, and she was sick of that too. She wanted the time to be able to throw a genuine fit — she felt she’d earned it.
“How about we get through tonight, then when we have the base secured and we’re safe and sound, we can go into detail about all of this. Right now, we need to get dinner ready then try to take a nap before all hell breaks loose,” Sadie said. For some reason, her words made Phoenix laugh. There was nothing like a best friend to tell you to suck it up and get busy.
“I’ll stop complaining now. Let’s eat,” Phoenix said. Sadie smiled before she gave Phoenix a much-needed warm embrace.
They pulled out the food, opened several cans, and called the guys over. Jayden sat by Phoenix, but continued to talk to Brian. They were in hunter mode, which was good. Their conversation kept the girls enthralled, and their minds off other concerns.
After they finished their meal, they watched the sun fade. Streaks of purple and pink dotted the horizon. Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Phoenix could hear her grandfather’s voice repeating the saying when she was a little girl. Her grandpa went on to explain that if the sky was red at night, it meant the sailors could count on a great day at sea, but if it was a red sky in the morning, they knew the waters would be rough. For some reason it made Phoenix think it was a sign from Josiah — as if he was telling them he was keeping an eye on them, and everything would work out.
She lay down on her thin blanket, the air still warm enough she didn’t need to cover herself. When Jayden came to lie beside her, he gently wrapped his arm around her waist and she didn’t protest. She wanted him with her. She snuggled closer and drifted to sleep, her mind at ease for at least a few hours.