Chapter 16

The quiet of the abyss in my mind sucked me down in a rapid pull. I dove through the turbulent waters of my rage and went deeper yet. Thinking about Vivian, the Magelore I'd fought and thought I'd killed. That was enough to make the rage swirl hotter. But behind that rage was something else, the sense of a touch I knew all too well.

Fucking Eligor, just couldn't keep himself in one damn body. What would make him follow me deeper? Because it looked like it was time to finally deal with him.

Emotions had always been something he'd clung to, particularly the softer ones.

I let my heart open a little, feeling the pain of losing Bear, of being separated from my children. And while that pain flowed, I focused on what was in my mind.

I had a plan, though I wasn't sure that Vivian would want to play the game. I needed as many abnormals, as strong as I could get them to fight once the time came.

Because already I could see that we were being pushed toward the night of the bleeding stars. Whatever was going to happen, would happen then. Three days. Fuck.

If we got her out, if we cleared out the facility and I could convince her to stand with us . . . I stopped my deep dive into that place of limbo and really thought about what I was doing.

"She's not going to work with you, fool," I whispered to myself and rubbed a hand over my face. "She'd as soon kill you as work with you!" That last was a shout into the void.

Hope.

Fear.

Desperation.

The emotions sunk into me, pushed into me by an outside touch.

Eligor had followed. The push from something inside my head—something that was trying very hard not to be seen or felt. I went still, letting the fingers inside my mind soften before I grabbed them and yanked them through into the ether with me, dragging what was connected to them.

Eligor tumbled out of nowhere, in what I assumed was his original form. Big sweeping white wings, blond hair, chiseled jaw and baby blues. He was model gorgeous, and yet he shrunk away from me like a child afraid to be beaten. Though in this case, he was more likely to be killed rather than just beaten.

"I didn't mean for you to feel any of that." He held up both hands and I stared hard at him, not saying a word. "Phoenix, I do want to help, you were in pain and I'm trying to in the only way I know." I kept staring and he kept on digging his early grave. "I thought that if you would feel some fear for your own life, that maybe you wouldn't put yourself in so much danger."

I held up a single finger and he tracked it with his eyes, not so much as moving his body an inch. "Eligor."

"Yes."

"I don't need you to survive all of this. I could burn you out of Cowboy's body and send you back to Gardreel to suffer at his hands." I held up a second finger. "I could burn you away into nothing. Ending your miserable fucking existence." I held up a third finger. "Or I could give you and Cowboy to Gardreel as a nice little present. I really don't give a single shit about you, Eligor."

Which begged the question why didn't I just burn him right out? Because something inside me said he was a tool, a useful tool, and I didn't throw weapons away unless they were broken.

"But you care about this boy whose body I share now," he whispered. "You don't know him; you don't know the filth he thinks about."

I didn't so much as blink. "Eligor. The world is about to be cleansed by Gardreel if we don't stop him. My son and daughter are in this world and so I will fight for it with all I have. And I will damn well mow down anyone who gets in my way or tries to slow me from doing my job! I don't give a shit if that boy thinks only about fucking me up the ass in front of a cheering audience as long as he does his job!"

He blinked up at me. "Then why are you going to save Vivian?"

"I'm not," I said, deadly quiet. "I'll go in there and kill her. She won't side with us."

He blanched. "But you said that you were going to need her? And then you were afraid for your children! That's what your thoughts were putting out to me! That you needed her more than anything to help save them, and I couldn't understand why . . ."

"And look what happened." I gave him a slow smile. "I put bait in the water and the fish bit down hard, hooking himself."

His jaw flapped open, just like said fish. "I . . . you knew I'd . . ."

I reached over and pulled him so that we were touching noses. "My grandmother hunted the fallen, Eligor. You know her?"

He bobbed his head. "Yes."

"Then understand that killing you is in my blood, and sensing when you're up to something makes my skin itch. And fearing me is in yours. I suggest that you remember that the next time you try to fuck with me. The next time you try to push me in a direction as you see fit."

I held him a little tighter and called up the fire that was in my blood, pushing it down my arm and into him. "I think it's time you went back to Gardreel."

"I can help you," he whispered. "I can still help you. Please."

"I have a demon to help me." I locked eyes with him.

"I . . .I can help you at the facility. Please." He was on his knees, begging, tears streaking his face.

If he could actually help, it would be worth keeping him around. My guts tightened with the thought of going into a facility again. Willingly.

"Last chance." I said. "Last fucking chance."

He blinked up at me. "Thank you."

"Whine at me again and I'll give you an up close introduction to Dinah," I said and shoved him away from me.

Bullshit dealt with, I calmed my breathing and imagined Vivian as I'd last seen her. Though if she'd been tortured, I doubted that she'd look the same now.

It took all of ten seconds.

A rasping laugh behind me put every hair I had standing on end. Pete was a Magelore. But he was not a Magelore the way that Vivian was. Like the difference between a common housecat and a tiger. Both had claws and sharp teeth. Both could kill, but on vastly different scales.

"Vivian." I spoke her name as I turned.

Here,she looked as I remembered. Beautiful, dangerous, and ready to kill just for the sake of the thrill. Her smile showed off brilliant white teeth, all sharper than a box full of needles. "Ah, Phoenix. How am I not surprised to find you still alive when I am stuffed into this . . . place?" She waved a hand and for a moment her image wavered, showing me a body stuffed literally into a small square box. There was just skin, a bit of hair. No visible limbs. Streaks of blood. The box was too small for a body, and yet there she was.

I raised a brow as she sighed and flipped her long red skirt, hiding the truth of what was happening to her right then. "They're going to break you."

"Pete, yes? I contacted him, believing he was connected to you now." She rolled her eyes. "I'd heard you had a Magelore working with you. There were not many that would see you as a friend. Most of us would have killed you. Pete was always soft."

My blood cooled. "You told him they were going to break you?"

Her smile was ruined only by the flick of her tongue. Nerves. "They will try. I won't give them the spell they want."

I had to ask. "Why not? It would mean the end of your suffering and you could kill a fuck ton of people if you did it."

"Because I will not let the filthy asshole win!" she screamed. Her rage reverberated around me, shaking the quiet of this place. "I will not give him the satisfaction! It's mine!"

And there it was, the truth. It was her spell, and she would not give it up. Even if she herself couldn't use it. Magelores were . . . strange. Hoarding things that they believed were their own in a way that other abnormals did not. They were the dragons of our world.

"Then why—"

"Because as I'm sure you already know, I need to die," she said. "And you could do it. Burn me up with your flames, Phoenix. Burn the entire facility if you must. It is better for all those within it to die, than to continue to be consumed by this madness. To be told that they are nothing but human."

"They are children," I said, my voice cold even to my own ears. "You want me to burn them up?"

She spit to the side, her lips curled. "Those children, who would care for them if you got them out? They have been told that they are not the monsters they know themselves to be. Kill me and kill them. It will be a mercy and seeing as it is what you were designed to do, I would think it would not matter much to you either way."

That she was pleading with me for death . . . an abnormal that I'd have killed a hundred times over without blinking, had me hesitating. Not that I couldn't do it. The kids were another thing.

"I don't have that much fire." I held a hand up, stopping her as her mouth dropped open. "But I will kill you. And if I must, I will kill the others if I cannot get them out."

My gut knotted but I didn't move. Bear would be better off dead than in Gardreel's hands. I knew that. And I knew that it was true of these kids too.

She snorted. "The fire is inside of you, fool. Whatever blocks they put on you, whatever you think you can't do, you're wrong. You are the one. You are the Phoenix." She didn't move and yet she was right there in front of me, the way I'd pulled Eligor to me. Her breath fluttered my hair as she whispered into my ear. "You will be the one to stop them. And they know it. I hear it in their nightmares, you scare them the way you used to scare the abnormals. And now the abnormals whisper in their dreams that you will be our hero."

Her laughter was soft, seductive. The laugh that had pulled so many to their graves.

Something warm trickled down my cheek. Not my own tear, but hers. I stared up at her, keeping my own feelings in check. Watching her with detachment.

She laughed as the tears fell. "The monster has become the hero! Ah, the irony is not lost on me, Phoenix. Not a drop of it goes to waste as I feel my body being crushed moment by moment. You, YOU will be our hero." She rolled her eyes, like a shark before it bit down, as the laughter took her again, bending her at the waist.

This was more like the Vivian I knew. I waited her out. There was no time in this place. Not really.

Time ticked, her laughter faded into gasping gulps of air and finally, Vivian sighed and stood upright. She brushed a hand through her hair. "Your father was so very wrong about you, and yet . . . you are who you are because of him. Because of the beast he became. Let your flames burn, Phoenix. Stop damping them down. In a way you are like a young Magelore, unaware of the depth of your abilities."

"I'm not damping anything down—"

"If you are not, then why are you finding everything you can before you face the demon?"

I stared hard at her. "Do you know the spell I need to stop Gardreel? If you know I have to call up that fucker, then you know I need it."

She shook her head. "Only one person does. She has two major spells, and I have only one. And you know what you must do to take the information from a mostly dead woman. Someone who can talk to the dead." Her face twisted up and she hissed, arching her back so far that she reached her heels with her fingertips and then she began to be folded up in front of me, bit by bit until she was crushed into a box.

I blinked and she was gone, and I pulled myself up out of the fog feeling more tired than before. Fuck.

"We're almost there," Pete said.

Vivian's words echoed in my head. Was I running from facing Bazixal? Hell, I had no desire to face down the demon again, to feel the fires of hell licking around my face. Just the thought had me tensing.

Killian noticed. "Lass, what is it?"

"Vivian." I bit her name out. He nodded.

"We don't have to go after her."

But we did. Because if not for her, then for the kids. She might not give up the spell, but damn it, there was a chance he could take it from her forcibly.

And we couldn't take that gamble that she'd break.

So much for sending Gardreel in the other direction as we pretty much just walked right the fuck into his house.

As the car slowed, I looked out at what we had for cover. There was nothing but trees around us. Trees that made up a rather thin forest. "Pull over, let's hide the car."

Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to go into that facility to kill Vivian? Because she'd told me I was to be the abnormals' hero?

Never in my life had I felt so indecisive about killing someone. Certainly not a Magelore. Certainly not abnormals.

"They are looking for us," Carlos said suddenly. He'd been quiet all this time, working his ability to keep us Hidden. And the strain showed. Sweat glowed along the edge of his hairline, catching the light. His eyes had bags under them, and his one hand was clutched around a set of wooden rosary beads. "They are . . . using another Hider. I don't know how, but they are very strong. The closer we get, the harder they are attacking my own Hidings."

My jaw ticked and I forced myself out of the car. The fresh air and the sound of creatures just living their lives, oblivious to what we were facing, did not help the rage that was slowly growing.

Easter wasn't going to push me to go into the facility, and neither was Pete, despite what he'd said.

"This is fucking stupid!" I snapped. "She could be lying. There might not be a single kid in there."

And yet I felt the pull toward the facility now, strong, decisive. It felt as though I were tied to someone in the facility. Probably Vivian herself. I thought about the way her tear had warmed against my cheek. Had it been a way to tie herself to me?

Dinah had been rather quiet until then. "Then why are you even considering it?"

"Because there is something in there that we will need." The words burst out of me. "I don't know what it is, or if it's a who, but we need them. If we can kill Vivian and stop the spell from getting to Gardreel, that's a bonus."

You will need someone who can talk to the dead. Vivian's words.

He's looking for a death talker. Lorn's words.

"A death talker," I said. "There is a death talker in there." The certainty crept over me. "That's why Vivian brought us here. Not for her."

Pete startled. "You don't think she wants to be rescued?"

Killian snorted. "You mean put out of her misery?"

The Magelore shrugged. "Whatever. You know that there is a fight coming. Right? We could use her. She'd be strong."

Easter was already shaking her head. "That's assuming that she didn't turn at the last second and attack us behind our own lines."

There was a moment that I thought Pete would argue, but he just nodded. "Yeah, I know."

They kept on talking, their words flowing over me. The agitation had me all but bouncing on the soles of my feet. Now that we were this close, the sensation of needing to get in there was a tangible thing across my skin.

Killian let himself out of the car and came to stand near me, leaning against a tree. "I'll follow you anywhere, lass. You know that. Even into one of those joints."

I closed my eyes. "I can't explain it. It feels like. . . like Bear is in there."

Killian jerked as if I'd punched him in the gut. "Is he?"

"No. No he's not." I was mostly sure of it. "But that's what it feels like." I rubbed a hand over my face.

Eligor carefully slid out of the car, his body language that of a kicked dog looking for scraps. Ruby jumped out after him, gave him a quick sniff and a snarl and then circled around me. Not exactly keeping Eligor away, but also warning him off with a huff here and there. I looked at her, at the scars etched into her skin, knowing that I had my own share inside and out.

"What if it's another kid?" Dinah whispered suddenly. "What if you're feeling someone else you're related to?"

Her words clicked and I realized that was it. Someone in there was related to me. Maybe even the person that was the death talker. "Fuck."

"It could be her," Dinah said, and I knew who she meant. So did Killian. "It could be Emerald."

Emerald, the daughter that she'd had before her soul had been stuffed into the gun. She'd have been a powerful abnormal because of her father. A creature of death.

Easter was looking around. "I . . . this isn't far from where I was taken."

And she'd been on the hunt for Emerald. Her words were all that it took to push me into action.

"We're going in."