Chapter 19

Iclutched at Fred's fingers as tightly as I could without hurting him. "Say it again. Please."

He smiled at me, his face wrinkling. "Good news is worth hearing twice, I agree. Your daughter survived. Killian took her and Bear and fled to Europe. I don't even know her name. He kept it all as hushed as he could."

I couldn't move. I lowered my head to the table and let the tears flow. My baby . . . I hadn't been allowed to grieve her, so I had pushed all thoughts of her down deep, and now she was alive? She'd be a year old.

Maybe she'd be walking? Had she said her first word? "She won't know me," I whimpered. I fucking whimpered but I didn't care. Pain lanced through me. Bad enough that I'd been taken from Bear again, another year together swept away on the tides of fate. But he'd known I would come for him. He believed in me.

What did my girl have of me? Nothing, no memory, no connection.

Rage began to boil through my blood, tempering the grief, hardening it into a killing steel.

I slowly raised my head as the tears dried on my cheeks.

Fred gave me a tight smile. "That is the Phoenix we have all feared. You will destroy them now?"

"Every last one of those feathered motherfuckers." I stood and paced the room. "Is there another way out of here?"

Change of plans. I would go to the Empire State Building now.

He watched me. "There is. Are you going to Rio first? He's the only one left with connections."

I nodded. "Not first. But I'll go to him. Then I'll be back for Cowboy. Either to bury him or take him with me."

Fred sighed. "I wish you wouldn't leave me with an injured half-demon. They can be . . . difficult when they wake up in an unfamiliar place."

He went to his medicine cabinet and dug through it. "Here, take these with you. Rio asked for them, last I heard. You can be my delivery girl."

I arched my eyebrows at the three small stones. "What are they?"

He grinned. "Ah, I'll let you ask him. That would be worth seeing from a distance." He plucked a piece of paper from a drawer and scribbled down an address. "Here. He has an ability with the dead, so be careful. He is not strong like the others, but he has numbers now that he is the only one left."

"Is he a dick?"

Fred tipped his head and let out a breath. "Yes. And no. He will see reason, I think."

And if Rio didn't see reason, I would find someone who did. He would either play by my rules or he'd be ousted from the game.

"Well, you don't mean to stay, do you? Let me show you the back door. It goes into another souvenir shop, so mind your manners." Ruby gave a soft whine and I paused at the door. She sat.

"Good idea, you watch over Cowboy," I said and she gave a soft chuffing woof and shook her big head. "Stay."

She whined again, and I pointed. "Stay."

A low rumble slid from her and I snapped my fingers and pointed again, but all she did was step forward. So much for her obedience.

"Take the dog," Fred said. "She'll just get in my way."

I doubted it, but I wasn't going to argue. "Fine. Ruby," I barely said her name and she was glued to my side, her one good eye looking up at me. The scars on her face were etched in deep, but she hadn't given up.

And neither would I.

Learning about my daughter had made me more determined to end this thing. If I hadn't been all in before, I was a thousand percent done with these bastards now.

The stairs that led up and out of Fred's lair were nearly vertical. I climbed to the top, pushed open the hidden door, and looked back. Ruby sat at the bottom, took a beat, then shot up and past me and out the trap door. I climbed the rest of the way and stepped out into a storage room. Fred hadn't been kidding. There were souvenirs everywhere. The boxes were stacked high and close together and I had to worm my way through the maze to the back door.

I opened it and an alarm went off. I didn't hurry; the worst thing to do was move as if you had a reason to run. A snap of my fingers brought Ruby back to my side and we started down the back alley, avoiding the puddles of accumulated filth off the shops.

The address Fred had given me was in the warehouse district, near the docks. That would be easy enough to find. But I doubted there would be a welcome sign on the door.

Still, that wasn't my first stop.

Empire State Building first. I didn't know for sure that the old building would be a nesting ground. It wasn't the highest, but it was iconic and stately, and for lack of a better word, it felt like it would be the place a fallen angel would haunt.

It felt right, and that was enough for me.

I could have gotten on the subway or taken a cab, but I wanted to walk. The distance would take me thirty minutes at best, and I needed the movement more than anything else.

"So . . . you gonna talk to me?" Dinah asked.

"About what? How we're going to burn them to the ground and salt the ashes?"

She shook a little. "No, I figured that was a given. I was thinking more about the fact that your girl had survived. I didn't want to ask before, but I assumed the worst since you only spoke about Bear. By the way, I did know you were pregnant when you gave me to Easter. I could hear her heartbeat when you put me on your hip. Why didn't you just tell me?"

I crossed the road, dodging traffic, before I spoke again. "I didn't want you to worry. You deserved to find your daughter too, Bea."

"Don't call me that," she said, her voice softer than ever. Beatrice had been her name before, when she'd been . . . alive? I wasn't even sure how to say it. Before her soul had been placed into the gun.

Diego cleared his throat. "So you two really were sisters?"

"Half," Dinah said. "Same asshole father."

I strode down the sidewalk, and the people who caught sight of my face under the brim of my cap scooted to put additional distance between us. A cop car rolled past me, the cop on my side gave me a quick eyeball and then looked away.

Twenty minutes passed and I was closing in on the building, making my plans as to just how I was going to do this thing. It all depended on whether or not the fallen was where I thought he would be.

"Diego, get ready with a sedative round," I said as I took one last corner and the iconic building came fully into view.

I didn't slow my steps as I went through the large double doors. I dutifully paid for my ticket, said that Ruby was a support dog which, while I got the side eye, they didn't argue overly much, and went to the elevator where I stood next to a group of tourists also waiting for their ride up into the clouds. Dinah snickered. "Goody two shoes."

The man closest to me turned and shot me a look and did a double take of Ruby standing quietly next to me. She showed him her teeth, just a quick flash of white not even followed up by a growl.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" His accent was thick, German by the sound of it. I locked my eyes on his, pinning him with a stare that had him swallowing hard and scuttling backward, muttering under his breath.

When the doors to the elevator opened, I stepped in first, turned and faced the tourists. Ruby let out a low rumble. "Room for one."

The German man bobbed his head and put his hand on one of the women with him, holding her back. "Yes, I think that would be best."

I tipped my head ever so slightly to him as the doors closed. The music in the elevator was soft and meant to be soothing as the ornate box chugged its way to the top. Ruby lay at my feet and put her head on her paws, for all the world looking like she was going to take a nap.

"You really think you'll find one of the fallen here?" Diego asked. "I mean, how can you know?"

"Because," I said, not really wanting to give my secrets away to him.

"Oh, just tell him," Dinah said. "I want him to stay so I have someone to talk to."

She didn't wrap that up with "in case we get stuffed into a box again." Which was what I'd done with my guns when I'd left the life of an assassin so many years ago.

"That won't happen again, Dinah. I will never put my guns down," I said.

She shivered. "Good. Now, tell him how you know the fallen will be here. He's too dumb to realize that you've done this a time or two."

I checked the elevator; we were about halfway up. "Where would you go if you were the fallen, cast out of heaven for some reason? When you hunt, you have to put yourself into the shoes of your prey. This is where I would go, if it were me," I said.

The elevator binged and the doors slid open. I stepped out and snapped my fingers so Ruby stuck close. Not that I was terribly worried. She didn't seem inclined to leave my side. I made my way past the tourist shop full of tchotchkes and T-shirts emblazoned with NY and Empire State Building. I moved to the outer balcony that was caged in to keep people from jumping off.

A blast of hot air slid around me as I left the cool interior of the building. I went to the edge of the balcony and wrapped my fingers around the metal grating as I stared out over the city I knew inside and out. I dropped my hand to the top of Ruby's head, centering myself.

Here, this had been my hunting grounds for so many years, and there were very few parts of it I hadn't been in, that I hadn't killed in.

I stilled my body and waited, breathing in the summer air that was a mixture of heat and smog. My mind wandered and I found myself sliding into the meditation that had allowed me to mentally escape the facility. No longer cutting myself off from my real self, the world beyond the one I could touch opened and I saw Bear. He stared at me, his face a little more healed, but his eyes wary.

"Look for Anita. I sent her," I said. "Be safe, keep your sister safe."

His eyes widened and he nodded and then was gone. Why the wide eyes though? Because I knew? Or had something more happened?

My hands began to cramp as I stood there and the time slid by. The day passed and the tourists began to thin as the closing hours approached. I made myself move, stepping away from the view and making my way around the circular balcony as the employees did a pass looking for stray tourists.

It was not difficult to avoid them seeing as they were too busy flirting with one another to notice they were being outpaced by me and Ruby, and they quickly went back inside, grabbing at each other as they went.

Idiots.

"What about the cameras?" Dinah asked, snapping me back to the moment.

I moved to stand right under a camera and settled my back against the stone wall, and the dog again lay at my feet, her one good eye closed, totally relaxed. "Happy?" I asked Dinah.

"Better. I mean, you're all about going undetected and here you are right in front of the cameras like a diva," she bitched at me, and I smiled.

"Thanks. I was watching those two getting cozy. Love is a dangerous game, one that too many people lose at. It boggles the mind that anyone plays it anymore," I said, thinking about Killian. I'd taken a chance on love twice. Once with Bear's father, and he turned out to be the biggest liar of them all; I'd had to kill him to keep not only myself but our son safe. Killian had . . . he'd shown me what it was to have a real partner, one who stood by you. I touched my head, my memories of the night I'd given birth raw and unsteady. I wanted to believe that he had let me go because he'd thought me dead. And not because he'd made a deal that they'd take me and he'd be free. Even that I could be okay with if it was for my children.

My heart still clenched, though, and I hated the emotion. Emotions would get one killed faster than anything else and I drove them all down deep.

A boom of thunder in the distance turned my head. Storm clouds thick and gray rolled toward us with an unnatural speed, darkening the already dimming light of the evening.

"Here we go," I said.

I didn't move so much as a muscle twitch as the rolling clouds settled around the top of the building, slowed and then parted. A figure dropped out of the clouds and landed in a crouch at the corner across from me. I stared, trying to piece together what I was seeing.

She stood, but that wasn't quite right. Her back was stooped and her body was rail thin. Wings that looked tattered and bruised were tucked in tightly to her body and seemed too small to support her slight weight. Brilliantly white hair was pulled back from her face in a single braid that hung long over one shoulder with a few tendrils escaping their bonds. It was tied off with a series of daisies that had wilted.

Bright blue eyes peered at me. "You found me awfully quick."

I didn't move from my place. "Ornias gave me the clue."

She snorted and shuffled a few feet closer, a walking stick appearing out of nowhere. She gripped it hard and leaned heavily on it. "He was always a right bastard, that one. You know, I stuffed him in that church all those years ago. I found it amusing to throw it in their faces that a demon could survive in one of their sacred buildings." She pointed to the sky with her stick and there was a distinct twinkle in those blue eyes.

This was not what I'd expected. "The fallen are—"

She waved her stick at me. "I know. They are also right bastards and need to be stopped."

Dinah wiggled. "Is this for real?"

That was my question, but again, I stayed where I was. "Yes. They are hunting abnormals to extinction."

The fallen one looked at me. "Might as well be slaughtering their own children."

Her words sent a whispered chill through me and I tensed, which brought Ruby to her feet. "What?"

"You think that abnormals are just an aberrant mutation of the human genome? Please. They are a product of the fallen fucking about with humans. I mean that in the most literal of senses." She smiled, and her grin was one of unrepentance and fuckery. I really didn't want to like her, yet her smile echoed something in me.

"I need to stop them," I said. "I need to find a way to stop Gardreel and whatever plan he's got going on." I used his name because he was the one I figured might be at the top of the food chain.

She tapped her walking stick on the stone, the way I would sometimes tap my finger while thinking. "Yes, I realize that. You will need a powerful weapon to stop him."

"She's got two," Diego said from my back, and the fallen smiled.

"Yes, special like those two you carry. You didn't think they came into your possession for no reason, did you? This moment, you standing between the world of the abnormals and the fallen has been predestined since your birth. You are the Phoenix, the one that burns, the one that rises on wings of fire." Her smile widened and her blue eyes locked on my own. "I should know. I helped name you."

Sweat broke out along the back of my neck and trickled down my spine as the clouds above us rumbled and rain began to fall. "What do you mean?" I asked even though I was beginning to understand where the pieces slid together.

Her smile widened.

Her blue eyes twinkled. "I was a badass too, so I suppose you come by it honestly." The pause between her words was long enough that I wasn't sure I wasn't hearing things.

"Granddaughter."