[Nix 03.0] Rise of a Phoenix Read online

  Rise of a Phoenix

  shannon mayer

  Contents

  Rise of a Phoenix

  Acknowledgments

  1. Phoenix

  Chapter 2

  3. Bear

  4. Phoenix

  5. Bear

  6. Phoenix

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  10. Bear

  11. Phoenix

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  16. Bear

  17. Phoenix

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Bear

  22. Phoenix

  Chapter 23

  24. Bear

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  27. Bear

  Chapter 28

  Afterword

  Rise of a Phoenix

  The Nix Series, Book 3

  Shannon Mayer

  Acknowledgments

  To my laser eye surgeon. Thanks for telling me my eyes would only take ten days to heal when it ended up taking a solid two months. My readers could have had this book a month earlier.

  Get ready to be mobbed by irate readers. ;)

  1

  Phoenix

  The helicopter blades whooshed over our heads as we flew away from the banks of the Cumberland River, away from Nashville, away from the place where the Ikimono myst had been created and nearly brought to fruition, only moments from being released on the world. A myst that took a creature, human or abnormal, and made them into a monster that could be controlled—a veritable army ready to be unleashed on unsuspecting humans.

  More than that, though, we flew away from where I’d lost my son, Bear, again. I clutched at the small diary in my one hand, the leather warm against my skin, the edges of the book rough against my fingers. The diary belonged to my dead sister and held secrets that could help me bring Luca Romano to his knees so I could put a bullet between his ears and in doing so protect both my son and myself. And it had been laid in my hand by the man sitting across from me.

  In my other hand, I held my left gun, Eleanor, pointing her at Mancini. She trembled, anger vibrating from her into me. “Let me kill him,” she said, her words more felt than heard. The swoosh of the helicopter’s rotor blades swept them away.

  “Not yet. He’s going to answer some questions,” I replied and she calmed somewhat, her shaking slowing.

  Mancini sat across from me, an abnormal, the head of the Collective. I’d never met anyone else in the group that held the most powerful abnormals in the world. Powerhouses who were supposed to be the checks and balances between humans and abnormals. I hoped I never did meet any of them. As far as I was concerned they were all pussies, unable to keep chaos in the abnormal world from spreading, which meant they were useless to me.

  Mancini, though, was the one man who hated my father almost as much as I did. Powerful and deadly, no one truly knew what he was—or what he could do. An abnormal, yes, but what kind, or with what skill set? He’d offered to help me bring my father down. But his help had come with a price I’d not known when I’d accepted working with him, a price I would have never had agreed to if I had known. Mancini had his man Simon kill my mentor Zee, which had then forced me to kill Simon. Someone I’d begun to trust as a friend, someone I thought was going to help me find my son.

  I would not make that mistake again. I would not trust those around me fully.

  “Start talking, or I’ll just kill you now and throw your body into the river.” I yelled the words to be heard over the rotors. I stood in the helicopter, my body swaying with the movement as our pilot swept us away from the chaos below. A massive eruption blew behind us, the flames reaching high into the sky as the last of the detonators we’d set went off within the prison-turned-laboratory that had held the Ikimono myst. At least that venue was gone and the world was safe for a little longer.

  Mancini smiled at me, the irises of his strange eyes dancing and jigging as if to a tune only they heard. I stared him down, his fucked-up pupils not bothering me in the slightest. There was no false threat in my words and he knew it. In that, we understood one another. There was no bluff in either of us.

  We were both killers, through and through, and a threat was more of a promise when we spoke words of death.

  He slowly held up a pair of headphones and slipped them on. Killian stood beside me on my left; my older brother Tommy sat on my right. Killian held another headset up and slid them over my head so I didn’t have to lower Eleanor.

  I wanted to ask Eleanor what she thought about all this, but I would have to wait on that question. She shivered in my hand as if she had something to say too. I’d talk to both her and Dinah as soon as I could. They might look like guns, but the truth was they were souls trapped inside the weapons. Weapons that could fire indefinitely, and that helped my already dead-on aim be perfect. At one time in my life, I’d thought they were neutral in their chaos, that they would work for anyone who held them. But more and more, I realized they were my guns even though they’d belonged to my sister Bianca first. They wanted only to be used by me and didn’t like anyone else touching them.

  Which begged the question, whose souls were trapped within them?

  The headset settled on my ears and Mancini’s voice clicked through.

  “What do you want to know first?” he asked as calmly as if asking what I took in my coffee.

  If I thought for one second that he would truly come clean completely, I’d be stupid and would deserve whatever death took me. But I would take what he gave for now and know that it was likely only a partial truth. Partial or not, it could help me get Bear back.

  “You said my mother named me Phoenix for a reason. Spill what you know about what exactly I am.” I braced my body as the helicopter tipped to the left.

  Mancini nodded. “Your mother was like you, Phoenix. She was a survivor. An Ascendant. A name so unheard that it means nothing to the majority of abnormals. But she never fully realized her strength, which is why she died.” He paused and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Your ability is twofold. The first is the survival aspect. From a young age, you have been placed in impossible situations. Your family being the first hurdle, your rape when you were but a child,” beside me I felt Killian stiffen, “your inducement into the world of assassination, your survival against other abnormals—”

  “I’m an abnormal, I get it,” I said. Something I’d only just learned and admittedly was still figuring out how to handle. As a hunter of abnormals for years, I had very little respect for them. But that was changing, albeit slowly.

  Mancini nodded. “Agreed, but your abilities were in a sense hidden by your natural talent to kill. The reality is it was always there, always pushing you toward certain decisions. I’d lay a bet that you saw it as gut instinct to make certain choices when others thought you were crazy.”

  I didn’t so much as blink my agreement, but he went on as if I had. I’d already heard some of this from a Magelore named Vivian. This bit of info was not new to me, although I had to admit I more readily believed Mancini over that bitch Vivian.

  “So, that is the first part. Surviving. We’ll call that your defensive abilities. Most abnormals only have one or the other, defensive or offensive. Only the strongest have both. Your offensive abilities are unique. Not only can you produce your own type of myst, but there is another part to it as well.” He lifted an eyebrow, and I nodded again but didn’t tell him about the blue and purple flames I’d only just discovered were a part of me.

  “What else?” Killian asked, his voice coming through the headset. He must
have put a third one on.

  Mancini glanced at him. “She can absorb another abnormal’s ability and hold it, saving it for a later date. That will likely only come in time and with much training. The only other Ascendant I knew who could pull it off killed himself trying to take on too much of another’s power.”

  Neither Killian nor I informed Mancini that I’d already managed to do just that. No need to hand over all my secrets at once. Killian’s ability was that he could use the power of electricity and lightning, something all those descended from the Irish carried. I’d absorbed his lightning more than once and held it, then released it when needed.

  “What has this got to do with my mother?” I asked, and Eleanor shivered in my hand.

  I ran my thumb down her stock to calm her.

  Mancini tipped his head to the side. “She was like you, but not so strong because there was no training. The more you train your body and mind to be a fighter, the more the power of a phoenix will rise. Your mother was a survivor in many ways, but I don’t think she ever learned how to harness her offensive abilities. I believe her heart was too gentle for that.”

  Eleanor twitched once and then went still. Mancini’s eyes flicked to her as if he’d seen her movement.

  I lowered Eleanor and tucked her into her holster, but I never took my eyes from Mancini. “You’re saying the more I train, the stronger my abnormal ability is?”

  “That is part of it, yes. The more danger you are in, the more expressive your ability becomes. Your myst is doing all it can to protect you, and so it grows stronger with each threat thrown at you.” Mancini’s eyes narrowed. “It makes me wonder if that isn’t what your father is trying to do. The more he pushes you, the stronger you become, the better tool you are to him when he grabs hold of you once more.”

  “Stupid on his part then,” Killian said. “If she becomes much stronger, she’ll wipe him and all his people out.”

  A chill rippled down my spine and I let my legs unlock as I slid to a seat. “He means to push me to the brink of my ability and then what? Control me? But that doesn’t make sense. He never knew I had any abilities. I’m not sure he thinks I do now even.” And he never would have let me go so easily all those years ago. Those words I kept to myself.

  Mancini seemed to read my mind and I didn’t like it. “He didn’t exactly let you go, though, did he? In fact, he hunted for you for the last twelve years, and then killed your husband and stole your son, which threw you back into action with more fury than ever before. It sounds to me as if he knew all along what and who you were and has been playing the long game. It would make the most sense, agreed?”

  I swayed where I was even though I was sitting, not with the motion of the helicopter but the strength of his convictions and the feeling that he might be right. Abe, my Malinois dog, pressed himself against my leg. Maybe to give me support, but maybe because he too could feel the tension that came with Mancini’s words. For my father to be playing the long game, to have known all along what I was . . . I wasn’t sure I believed it. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. It would mean he’d planned to kill Justin, to kill Bear long before I’d ever had either in my life. He’d known that if anyone came into my life they could be used against me.

  I couldn’t do much more than stare at the man in front of me. I didn’t want him to be right—not because of any residual feelings for my father or family, but because it meant I’d been duped all those years into thinking I was safe. That the safety I’d felt had been nothing but an illusion. I hated secrets. I hated lies. I hated deceptions. I wanted reality, no matter how cold or hard it was.

  I’d rather hate my life than believe it was not the truth.

  Mancini laced his fingers and set them around his right knee. His voice scratched through the headset. “The more I consider it, the more I think that might be the answer to what is happening here. It won’t matter to your father if you kill all three of his guardians. He may in fact want that to happen. If you kill all three, it will spike your own abilities, making you more dangerous than the three of them put together. And because he is still immortal, you won’t be able to kill him. Then he has your son under his thumb, a perfect form of leverage to control you and your newfound strength.”

  I glanced at Killian, needing to see his reaction to this. Because Mancini was hard for me to get a read on. His eyes being part of the difficulty, but there was almost zero energy flowing from him. I believed this was truth, but around Mancini, I didn’t fully trust my own feelings.

  Liars fidgeted and all but danced in their seats, their energy spiking with each word as they worked to make you believe them. Even the best liars had tells. Looking back, I could pick out Simon’s, now that he was dead and gone. Though they were subtle, they were there.

  Mancini had none of the tells. If what he said was the truth, then I had more to deal with than I’d ever before considered.

  Killian’s green eyes were thoughtful as he turned to me. “It makes a wicked sort of sense, lass. But I do have one question.” He turned to face Mancini. “Why would he need someone stronger than three guardians of Hell to protect him if he’s immortal?”

  Mancini shrugged. “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  A lie, that one I picked up on and a zip of glee shot through me. The acrid tang of the lie floated to me before being swept away on the wind rushing through us. “Tommy, you still have my pack?”

  Tommy jerked as if I’d slapped him. “Yeah, what do you need?”

  I turned so my body sheltered what I was doing. Tommy laid the pack between us and from it I pulled out the red paste I’d used on Tommy. If smeared on any injury and then lit on fire, it healed wounds and infections that would otherwise kill in seconds. But that was not what I wanted. Before Simon died, he’d put something else in my pack. The sleepy as a lamb fairy dust shit that he thought might be useful. I found the small jar with the sparkling bits and rolled it into my palm, thanking him silently. He might have been an asshole, but this stuff was going to help.

  “What are you doing?” Mancini asked.

  “You’re lying to me.” I spun around as I pressed my thumb against the edge of the jar’s lid and spun it open. A gust of wind whipped the twinkling dust right into Mancini’s face, and he sucked in a deep breath. I spun the lid closed and jammed it back in the pack as Mancini slumped forward to his knees, the rest of the fairy dust settling in his hair and on his face. Like he’d been glitter bombed. The thought made me smile for a moment, then the smile was gone.

  “Dirty pool.” He slurred the words through the headset, his body going slack against the wall behind him.

  I knelt over him, careful not to touch any of the twinkling bits that had attached to his gray strands. Even as I watched, they melted into his skin and hair, sinking deeper into him. I waited until they were completely gone and then I reached out and grabbed the top of his head and yanked it back so I could stare into his face. “You are going to answer some questions now, Mr. Mancini.”

  He licked his lips, the tip of his tongue darting out, but he didn’t say anything.

  I tightened my hold on his hair. “What would my father need me to be stronger than his three guardians for?”

  “Oh, that’s simple. He wants to have all the perks of his deal with the devil, and none of the drawbacks. He wants you or your brat to be his personal guardian against the demon he made the deal with. That won’t save him, though.” The words slid from him in a rush, so fast they blurred together.

  I didn’t let go of his hair, just tightened my grip. “How can you be sure?”

  “I know things.” And then he giggled. Fuck, if he went too deep, he was going to be useless as tits on a bull.

  I tried a different direction. “You had Zee killed, you tried to set me against Killian by telling me he’d killed Barron, and you have not yet fulfilled your promise of helping me against my father. Why are you helping me? Why did you give me the diary? Who gave it to you?”

  He grinned
up at me, his eyes at half-mast as if he were deep in his cups. “All so you can kill your father. That’s what you want, right? And I got the diary from a friend of mine.”

  I grinned right back at him, ice forming around any emotions I might have left. My name might have been a creature of fire and flame, but the cold of death and killing had served me for a very long time.

  “How were Eleanor and Dinah made?”

  His eyes fluttered closed. “They are souls ripped from their bodies at the point of death and shoved into the guns. Brikoff made the guns. He was the only one who could. Tricky, and I must say I’ve always been impressed that it was done not once, but twice.”

  My guts clenched and I fought not to reach and touch the two girls. Two women trapped inside my guns . . . not just sentience given to them as I’d once thought. For years, I’d assumed their ability to talk and think was a part of the myst that had created the two weapons, even as I’d wondered if there was something more.

  I let go of his hair and ripped my own headset off. I needed to speak without having Mancini hear me. And I wanted to pace. I needed to move, and yet in the small confines of the helicopter that was open on one side, there really was no room. My mind and thoughts were on fire. My guns had souls trapped in them. My father had likely known what I was all along and I’d fallen into his trap time and time again which had only served to make me stronger so he could use me. There was not a lot of new information here. Unless we got back to the deal my father made, and the demons he thought I should protect him from.