Tala Phoenix and the School of Secrets

by Gabby Fawkes

Not when my PV’s fav motto was Burn them all, and I still had no clue how to control my powers.

  My PV wasn’t helping either. Similar to Axel, its MO was to yell at me, usually such choice phrases as:

  Try, fool, try!

  Shame. This is what I feel, and,

  Please, do us a favor and fling yourself off the highest cliff you can find.

  “Remember,” Axel said, breaking my reverie, “another few minutes and it’ll be our private session.”

  Damnit, I never should’ve admitted that I wasn’t really trying, or that I was afraid of hurting my friends. This morning, he’d basically blackmailed me into a ‘compromise.’ That for the morning, I’d sit here and watch my friends practice, and then later I’d get a private shifting session with him.

  So basically, I was getting punished twice. Some compromise. Although the thought of me and him alone was worrisome not just because of the shifting part…

  “Looking forward to it,” I said in a kill-me-now voice.

  “Yeah, well…” Axel fell silent.

  I followed his gaze to the hill, where someone was approaching.

  Some blue-haired brutally handsome someone.

  “H,” Axel said in a guarded tone. “What brings you?”

  The god’s voice was as cold as an arctic wind. “Ares. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t happy to see your best friend.”

  “I’ve changed, as you must’ve heard,” Axel said shortly.

  “Oh, I’ve heard.” Stopping beside Axel, H wrapped a powerful, white-clad arm around his shoulders as he turned to regard us. “Ares here used to be quite the legend. Back in the day, we got up to all sorts of mischief.”

  “Like what?” Kian said, coming over, carrying the log.

  Clearly now it was destined to be another talisman of her latest success. So far, her room was crammed with such things – twigs, a few pebbles, some blades of grass Demi kept trying to sneak back outside.

  “Oh, you know,” H said with an unsettling smile. Why did he have a letter for a name anyway? “The killing and maiming kind. Starting wars, fighting in them. The usual.”

  “But don’t you…” I began. I mean, this H guy was Hades, right?

  “Run the underworld.” He smiled again, and again it wasn’t really a smile. More a void. “Indeed, I do. All the more reason for me to work on populating it. You know what they say: the more the merrier.”

  Axel pulled himself free of Hades’ grip, looking distinctly uncomfortable. I couldn’t blame him.

  Lately, as more and more gods relayed how much of a vicious, dangerous monster Axel/Ares had been, it was getting harder to keep things in perspective. To not be a little afraid of him and what he was capable of. If only it lessened my attraction for the jerk…

  “Your hair.” Kian squinted at Hades’ cyan blue hair, which was standing on end.

  “Yes, he was a fan of that Disney aberration, Hercules,” Dionysus said as he passed by, carrying a big golden goblet of something. “I got us wine, by the way.”

  “I suppose that the movie portraying you as a fat, maroon-skinned drunkard didn’t bias you against it at all,” Hades said smoothly.

  Dion sipped at his wine, pretending he hadn’t heard him.

  “Dion,” Axel said flatly. “How many times do I have to tell you that we don’t need wine? We’re training.”

  “And how many times do I have to tell you that if you overwork the girls, then their powers will be stifled under the stress?” Dion replied firmly, holding up the wineskin.

  “They’re doing fine as is.”

  “Really?” Dion’s gaze pointedly went my way. “All of them?”

  “Ah, this is she? The dragon shifter?” Hades’ coal-black eyes had turned my way and the sensation wasn’t pleasant.

  I glared at Ares. “Thought you weren’t going to tell…”

  “A lucky guess.” Hades’ also blue brows rose, then fell. “Evidently a right one, too.”

  “H,” Axel said sharply. “You can’t-”

  “Tell Hera, who despises me almost as much as she does her own husband?” Hades let out a short, barking laugh. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  He took a few leisurely steps forward. “You don’t have to worry about secrecy from me… only, may I have a little chat with Tala? In private?”

  His look was like a physical stroke, one that already knew me. I shivered. From anyone else, it would’ve sounded like a light question. But from Hades, it felt anything but.

  Axel’s hands clasped together into one fist.

  “Ares….” Hades said in a good humor I sensed masked a warning.

  “Fine,” Axel grunted. “But nearby.”

  “Of course,” Hades said pleasantly, as if he were just about to sell me some tasty girl scout cookies.

  “I’ll come too,” Kian said, stepping forward, face firm.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Never had I been more thankful for having a feisty best friend. No way did I want to talk to this creepy god of the underworld alone.

  Hades lifted a pallid hand, blue flames sprouting out of the tips. “No need. I wouldn’t want to put you in a coma to get the privacy I so politely asked for.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” I yelled, both my hands going up as I stepped in front of Kian. My arms were burning, as my PV hissed He who threatens friends…

  Meanwhile, Dion had snapped “H!” as he and Axel moved to block Kian too.

  Hades’ laughter sounded like the kind taught to someone who didn’t know how.

  “Only kidding.” He flung out a veiny arm in the direction of the hill as his gaze settled on me. “Shall we?”

  Breathe in, breathe out – just breathing, no burning, I told myself.

  “Fine,” I said tersely.

  If the other option was me going all flame-thrower crazy on him, then I’d take my chances with having ‘a little chat.’ Even if the prospect was making me break out in chills.

  “I came here with my wife Persephone, you know.” Hades indicated, off in the distance, where I saw a curly-haired blonde talking to Demi. “Your friend’s daughter. Only – how odd, now your friend is the younger one!”

  He chuckled some more, as we ventured down the hill and came to a stop at the end. Turning up, the hill led to a cliff, one I’d never been to before. A cliff that, if I fell off…

  “Fear not,” Hades said, his breath dank on my ear. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d only have to touch…” He laughed again as I flinched away. “Not any touch, mind you. I at least have control over that.”

  He sat down with his legs dangling off, and patted the space next to him.

  I didn’t move. “I’m fine right here, thanks.”

  He sighed in the way of someone much put-upon. “Don’t make me make you.”

  I took a step forward, then stopped. Screw that. Apart from him threatening my friends, I wasn’t scared of this creepy Hades guy. Much.

  He sighed again, although he looked almost pleased as he said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  As his amused gaze bore into my skull – how had I not noticed his eyes were the same bright blue as his fiery hair? – I took another step forward.

  My gaze dropped, shocked, to my feet. When exactly had I told them to move?

  I dug my feet into the ground, then let up. Clearly, resisting was pointless – I was just putting off the inevitable. I might as well go and sit on the deathly cliff, and find out why Hades so badly wanted to talk to me. He had threatened to mind-control me, after all.

  Next thing I knew, I was sitting beside him.

  “There,” he said, all smiles. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

  Damnit, so he had mind-controlled me! Only it had felt so… natural. Reasonable. Like I’d just decided to change my mind myself.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Hades said. “We always work with the minds, not against them…”

  I said nothing. By ‘we’ did he mean all the gods? That wa
s a point for Axel, then, that he’d never used that mind control thing against me. At least that I knew of.

  “Yes, about working with…” Hades was saying. “I hear you’re having trouble accessing your powers?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Understandable. Transforming into a dragon won’t be comfortable or, I daresay, pleasant.”

  “Transforming into a what?!” I practically yelled.

  Hades started cracking up, while I grabbed at the rock ground, wanting some to crumple.

  “You’re lying,” I said weakly.

  “He hasn’t told you,” H said thoughtfully. “Now, I wonder why that is…”

  He rubbed his chin. “Probably afraid.”

  I glared at him helplessly.

  “Ah, but child,” he said. “What did you think a dragon shifter did?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe just channel the dragon’s powers or something? Only transforming if they wanted to.”

  “Which you don’t.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Your greatest power comes only with your dragon form.”

  Truthfully, even though Axel had tactfully avoided mentioning this, this had been my greatest fear. Not just losing control to my PV and the powerful rage that coursed through me – but becoming something else. Something that wasn’t myself. Something that was so remote from me that it could wreak horrendous damage without me having an iota of control over it.

  I was pissed off now too. Pissed that Axel hadn’t just out and said it – the whole me becoming a dragon thing. Maybe he’d been planning to tonight, but hell, what if I’d turned right there in the middle of the field, with my friends? What the hell had he been thinking – dragon first, answers later?

  The blue-haired one is less of a fool than most… my PV purred.

  -Oh shut up, you.

  Of course my PV would drool over the evillest god I’ve met yet.

  Hades turned to me with a smile. “She’s there now, isn’t she? Your dragon force?”

  “I don’t want my greatest power,” I said, through gritted teeth, choosing to ignore what he’d just said.

  “You can’t put it off forever,” he said pleasantly. “Only stifle it, while it grows sullen and contorted.”

  How accurately he describes the deplorable state I find myself, day in, day out.

  -I said shut up.

  Hrumph.

  “Perhaps he’s worried that the darkness will beckon to you,” Hades continued. “As it did me – and him, for a time.”

  His legs were swishing back and forth off the ledge in a childish way that was unnerving.

  “What does that even mean… the darkness will beckon to me?” I asked.

  A half-smile. “Light and dark, some would say, are two oppositions. Can never coexist. Others, like me, think of things as not so black and white, recognize the usefulness of the dark. Ares thought that way once.”

  I shivered. Add that to the mounting Axel is a Coldblooded Mofo evidence pile.

  Hades’ agreeably-voiced spiel sounded an awful lot like the part where the bad guy divulges, ‘And this, of course, is why killing newborn babies is necessary.’

  Too bad I wasn’t interested in a word he had to say, no matter how convincing a case Mr. Blue Hair Don’t Care made.

  “Naturally, you are suspicious,” he said easily. “That’s to be expected. Only… there is something that might interest you.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Something that could protect your friends, while honing your particular… skills. A place where you could be free to practice at your leisure – and their protection.”

  “You mean coming with you to the Underworld,” I said quietly.

  “All right, that’s enough.” Axel was standing behind us, holding me out a hand. Judging by the way he’d just poof and appeared, he’d done the whole god fast-moving thing. I didn’t feel like looking at him.

  “Tala, let’s go,” he said.

  I got to my feet myself and stalked past him. “When exactly were you planning on telling me about the whole shifting into a dragon thing?”

  “Tonight,” he said. His face hadn’t decided whether to be annoyed or edgy. “I was going to go over all the details with you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Figured you might’ve known already, and if you hadn’t then there was no point in frightening you unnecessarily.”

  “That’s it?” I demanded, rounding on him. “Just have some crazy go at me turning into a dragon? What if I’d lost control? What if I’d hurt my friends?”

  “I wouldn’t have let that happen,” he said.

  “It might not have been up to you,” I said, wrenching back around.

  I stormed up the rest of the hill. I was through with training today. Through with Axel too, for that matter. Through with today – all of it. Demi was embracing her daughter in the field and Kian and Dion were chatting, and I just wanted to be alone right now.

  As I made my way back to my timple (Kian’s nickname for our tiny temples), I couldn’t get Hades’ damned let’s-go-to-the-Underworld suggestion out of my head. It really did seem logical.

  Genuinely, too. I was too far away for him to be using his mind-compelling thing, I was pretty sure.

  Yep, the idea was hella tempting. Not the part where I was stuck away from my friends in the likely gloomy Underworld. Just the part where I got to practice my powers without potentially hurting those I loved.

  When I’d blasted the btsan with flames, I’d had zero control over it. I’d just felt anger, then a release… If I tried using my powers again, how could I ensure my flames would hit what I wanted them to? Or that my dragon form would only attack my enemies?

  No trust in me, she has, PV grumbled. Not a fig.

  A few minutes after getting into bed, I heard Axel calling my name. I kept my eyes firmly shut, feigning sleep.

  I didn’t want to think about today, let alone talk about it. Mostly though, I didn’t want to talk to Axel.

  Soon real sleep came.

  This time, when Axel said my name, my eyes opened.

  His voice was sharp, insistent. “Tala – we have to go.”

  “Wha?” I asked blearily.

  “There’s been another attack.” His strong arms got me to my feet.

  “But I thought…” I said.

  “Change of plans,” Axel said, in a voice that clearly didn’t like what it was saying. “Apollo says we’re all going.”

  Speed-walking out, we met up with two women, one whose dark-skinned form I made out as Artemis, and a striking blonde who looked like she’d smelled something rancid. Dion, Apollo, Kian and Demi were just up ahead.

  “Stay out of the fighting,” Axel told me in a low tone. “Without a good handle on your powers-”

  “I could inadvertently kill everyone I love, I know,” I said dully. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “It’s not that.” Even in the early morning non-light, I could see that Axel’s face was clouded, pained. “You could really hurt yourself too.” He drew closer, scowling right in my face. “Just don’t go being an idiot, okay?”

  And before I could respond, he’d stalked ahead to keep pace with Apollo.

  “I’ll do my best,” I called after him sarcastically.

  “Typical Asshole Axel,” Kian said with a sigh, she and Demi having slowed to join me. “What’s the attack, though?”

  “There’s some bear shifter creature destroying in Times Square,” Artemis told us.

  By now, we’d reached where we apparently were heading: a fountain with a dismal-looking beheaded cherub statue. Apollo and Axel were already standing in its waters, while Artemis immediately stepped onto the ledge.

  “What do you mean by bear shifter?” I asked, stepping onto the ledge myself.

  From this vantage point I saw that a door in the bottom of it had opened, and Apollo and Ares were swimming in.

  “Come on,” Artemis said. She performed a tidy shallow dive a
nd was underwater.

  “Uh, they do know we can’t magically breathe underwater, right?” Demi whispered as we watched Artemis disappear in the door.

  Behind us, the blond woman was tapping her foot.

  “We gotta go,” I said.

  The best I could do was step into the cool fountain water, which reached up to my ribcage.

  “You ladies need help?” Dion asked from behind us.

  “We’ll be fine,” Kian said, taking Demi’s and my hands and tugging us underwater.

  As the seaweed- flecked water invaded my vision, I tried to get the ‘you’ll be fine’ memo to my legs, which were straining to propel me upwards.

  Water is murder, PV was spitting. My rage flared, then fizzled. Looked like it really was murder – at least for my dragon capabilities. And, if we weren’t careful, it would be murder in the literal sense too.

  But now I was being pulled into the fountain door’s passage. My lungs clenched for air. The water ahead of me began spinning. I kept a death grip on my friends’ hands as I was thrashed around.

  Just hold on, was all I could think as I drowned. Just hold on, and everything will be all right.

  21

  Next thing I knew, I was being yanked up, up and out.

  Gasping, I drank in the air greedily, taking several full gasps before I was tugged out by one of my friends.

  I squeezed their hands.

  “We never let go,” Demi said happily.

  “What the hell was that?” Kian sputtered, completely drenched.

  “No time,” Artemis said, giving us a tug. We slopped out of the fountain. I had just enough time to twist back to see the fountain filled with coins and eager jets of water we’d come out of, before we were barrelling through the rotating door of the building.

  Outside, the tallest buildings I’d ever seen hulked overhead, while we battled against crowds that were rushing… the opposite way. Away from the roars, screams and noises of what sounded like metal crunching.

  Yep, running away seemed about right to me.

  “We’re almost there,” Apollo was yelling back to us. Apparently, they hadn’t been as far ahead as I’d thought. “Be careful. The creature is said to be enraged, lethal.”

  Less than a minute later, we were there. And any need to warn us to ‘be careful’ was pointless. One look at our opponent, and my breath left me. Along with every scrap of courage I thought I possessed.