Phoenix Rising (3 page)

She closed her eyes as the echo of his words whispered in her head.

Within that year—in so many ways both the best and worst year of her life—she had started working toward Phoenix Inc. She began showing herself and the world, albeit a small part of it, that paras could and would be a force for good.

But they would not be used.
Not anymore.

Mirroring Miles, in her own way. Her enterprise went a step further than his—offering not only sanctuary—but purpose. Purpose that she knew she was using to assuage her guilt. Not that it would ever be enough. Not for her.

And certainly not for Miles.

Miles hadn’t said anything tonight she hadn’t deserved. And much less than he could have. Betrayal was something he couldn’t forgive, she'd always known that.

Kelsey hadn’t answered his question earlier, about whether she had dreamed of him coming back. But she had.

Of course she
had.

Sometimes it'd been merely reliving the past; laughing together under a star-strewn sky on a blanket Miles had covered with cabbage rose petals just because she'd told him they were her favorite. Drinking wine lying on his bed, listening to the fire crackle, arguing about art and politics and nonsense. Nights that always ended like when he’d let her see inside his head for that brief, searing moment tonight; the two of them tangled together, his skin at her fingertips, his strong hands cupping her bare ass, his mouth hot on her throat as he drove inside of her, filling her until all she could do was scream for him. Dreams that had her waking with tears on her cheeks, her body aching, the scent of roses and him filling her room.

But there had been other dreams, too.

Awful ones. Miles as she had only seen him once. They'd been leaving the hospital one night, after Miles had made what she teasingly called his weekly 'rounds'; a combination of visiting, inspecting and generally just keeping his finger on the pulse of things in the shade community. He chatted up patients, doctors and family; astounding her with the amount of information he could glean from a few ten-minute conversations. By the time they left, he would know exactly what shade neighborhoods were getting hit up by human gangs and needed protection. Conversely, he also learned when a shade or two was getting out of control and needed to be reined in…or put down. Miles was ruthless, efficient and knew seemingly everything that happened in Paris, down to the damn mood of the rats in the sewers.

He pulled the strings and kept the peace as best he could. She was giving him a hard time about it when they left, about the wisdom and sanity of voluntarily shouldering such a load, but secretly feeling ill. This was one of the many reasons the Cleaners had targeted him. Miles was one of the only forms of authority the shades answered to.

They were passing an alley just a block or so from the hospital when he stopped so abruptly she crashed into his side as he turned.

"Go back into the hospital, Kels.
Now."
She didn't want to obey him, but that wasn't a voice you argued with. A cold, guttural snarl that made her insides curl up tight. Kelsey had backed away, but not before she caught a glimpse of an old woman on her knees. Some kind of were by the looks of her, but too frail and sick, or afraid, to shift completely. Her long hair was scraggly and white, bits of matching fur on her cheeks and forearms, her hands transformed into wrinkled claws. She was surrounded by three men, two with baseball bats and one with a long heavy chain wrapped around his fist. The links clattered along the alley floor as he drew it back to strike, but he never got the chance.

She'd
never
forget the way Miles had looked that night.

Terrifying. A lethal, black shadow with gleaming teeth and eyes that glowed white-hot blue. The blood on his lips, dripping from his fingers. She'd had dreams of him like that, too. Coming for her.

His hands on her skin in those ones brought screams, too. Screams that were born of both fear and a terrible need.

Her nails were digging into the fine finish of what remained of her desk, but Kelsey was concentrating hard on the ceiling fan, the mesmerizing play of the blades easing the burning in her eyes. Miles hadn't killed those men that night, but he'd made them wish he had. Sometimes, the very dark times, she wished he'd come for her like that, too. Then maybe she wouldn't have had to bear so much guilt all these years.

Kelsey had always known it would be death that brought Miles back into her life. Violent death.

Alain’s broken body had been in one of those awful glossies.

The man who had tossed her from Miles’ life as if she were nothing. His triumph in leaving her on that Parisian street at Miles’ order had shown in his eyes, though he hadn’t lowered himself to speaking it aloud. There had been no need, she had been so obviously broken, and he had clearly enjoyed seeing her that way.

Kelsey couldn’t mourn Alain, not even for Miles. The man had been one of Miles’ closest friends, though, and he had been gutted and thrown into the sun to char like a piece of dead pine.

So she could and
would
find his killer.

For Miles. Because she loved him, had never stopped loving him and if he killed her in the end….

Well, she’d chance it, goddamn it.

She left her office and made her way down the hallway, slowly at first,          night swallowed her whole.

Deep in the darkness, high, cold laughter followed her.

Somewhere outside New Orleans, Louisiana, 20 years previously

Kelsey shifted her freshly painted pink toes away from the painfully skinny boy slapping his worn sneakers into the mud, sending a fine spray of swamp muck into the already heavy air. It wasn’t enough she had been taken from her parents, her school and her friends. No, they'd had to ship her
here
. Where it smelled gross, it was sticky, hot and everything was damp
all
the time, even her hair.

For what? Why had the Cleaners taken them here?

Did it even matter? It wasn’t as if they gave a rat’s ass about her, only what she could
do.

Kelsey sighed and twisted her mane of dark hair off her sweaty neck, glaring at the black kid as he continued to kick. He had to be older than her and she was nearly 14, but sometimes Jules Gentry acted like a grade schooler.

She caught a flash of a self-satisfied grin from under the messiest set of dreads she'd ever seen in her life.

‘Course Indiana wasn't really the place to become an expert on dreads, she reflected. She caught that glint of bright teeth again as the filthy droplets rained within an inch of her bare legs-and her pedicure. Time to let this swamp brat know that she wasn't some pansy-ass white girl he could mess with.

"Cut it out. Aren't you a little old to be playing in mud puddles?"

He shrugged, more of a heave of too-thin, but very broad shoulders and continued to kick.

"Aren't you a little stupid to wear flip-flops to the bayou, white girl? Want a snake to nibble off one of them pretty toes?"

She tensed, ticked off he thought she'd be scared of something as mundane as a stupid
snake
. He laughed at her expression and Kelsey fumed.

Without thinking, she bent and picked up a handful of the ooze at her feet quick as a flash and tossed it into his grinning face. Within a minute, half the other kids joined in, then the rest. Soon they were all muddy and splashing and laughing and free of fear for the first time in weeks.

It was glorious.

For the short while it lasted.

A cool voice, watery and high, cut through the cottony haze of the day.

"Kelsey, Jules! What is this nonsense? Stop it at once!"

That voice froze them all where they stood. Reegan. He knew who had started it. He always knew, always. Reegan was the worst of them.

The absolute worst.

It was with a surge of horror Kelsey saw the latest handful of swamp goop leave her hand, saw it arc through the shimmeringly hot air and land with a wet squelch on the Coordinator’s pale bald head. Thick greenish streams of water and muck flowed down his face and drops quivered off his jowls as the small crowd around them tittered just once like a breeze rifling the tops of trees. But no one dared to say a word outright.

"Crap.” She saw Jules mouth silently at her. Hysteria had her smothering a giggle until Reegan's blue eyes rested on her. She felt a chill skitter down her spine and settle in her gut. The pasty-skinned Coordinator made her insides shake like rubbery old jelly. She feared him. They all feared him.

Fear was necessary. If you wanted to survive here.

Kelsey intended to survive. She had promised her mother, after all.

But she had a feeling she'd just made that a whole lot harder.

‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust; like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.’

~John Webster

Miles stepped out of the shower as dusk breathed cold against the windows of his Fairmont suite. Naked, he grabbed a plush towel from the rack, his lithe body taut as he stalked into the bedroom area. The hot shower had done nothing to relax him, and his sleep….

Well, for one of the dead, he sure as hell hadn’t slept like one.

He toweled off with brisk, almost vicious swipes, looking out into the darkening Chicago sky. His mood was darker yet. He was angry at himself over last night, over how he had handled the meeting with Kelsey. Or rather
not
handled it.

It didn't help that he hadn’t fed. That he hadn’t
allowed
himself to. He was painfully aware that releasing the bloodlust in such proximity to Kelsey would be unwise.

Yet, it was a catch-22, because the longer he waited, the more his control thinned. Even he could and
would
snap, and he would be better to be home when he did. He was going back to France. His plan
had
been for immediately. He'd made the arrangements in a fine temper before settling in last night.

Miles glanced at his phone and cursed softly. It lay on the plush grey carpet where he’d thrown it after waking and seeing her message.

Kelsey had texted him while he was sleeping. She had something already. Something she said was too sensitive for anything but a face to face. Since he was well aware being in the same room with him was just as much an ordeal for her as it was for him, he knew it must be important.

Putain!

Miles sat down on the edge of the bed with the damp towel slung low on his lean hips and stared out into the sky. Stars were starting to stab into the satin blackness. Like the hunger stabbing deep into his veins, running through them like a thousand slicing knives. Going to her like this was a bad idea.

Such a
very
bad idea.

As much as he wanted and needed to find his old friend’s killer, a part of him longed to just let it go. Just ignore her text
and go
, for god’s sake.

Step away from Kelsey before he did something he would regret.

The only question was
which
would he regret, killing her….

Or
not
killing her?

Phoenix Incorporated was vast and quiet as Kelsey locked up her office. Being alone in the complex after hours usually made her feel centered and calm. She got much of her best work done when she was alone here.

Tonight, however, the vast weight of all that empty silence made her skin itch. It was like reverse claustrophobia. It was too big. Too open. She felt like a bug pinned to a huge white board, unable to get to someplace safe and small and snug.

Miles hadn’t answered her text. He hadn’t called. Nothing. She had texted him promptly at dusk, it was now past midnight. She didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved. There was no way she could message him the details of her concerns, because what she suspected utterly terrified her.

The Cleaners couldn’t be back.
He
couldn’t be back. He just couldn’t.

They had killed him.

Jules had said so. Jules never lied to her. Not
ever
. If she couldn’t trust Jules, there was no point to anything.

He could have been wrong though. He'd admitted as much today when they had seen the results from Sammy’s photo scans. Kelsey didn’t want to face it, but the grisly pictures in Miles’ folder kept dancing in front of her eyes.

Sammy had put them through a battery of his special custom enhancements today, and that’s when she'd noticed something she'd thought never to see again.

Kels shivered and walked a little faster past the electronic security desk, anxious to be out of the huge glass and steel building that seemed to hover threateningly over her head.

More likely it was her old fear of the Cleaners and the memory of Miles being here so recently that was making her so squirrelly, but knowing the psychology behind the feeling didn’t make it any less uncomfortable. Kelsey blew out a sigh of relief as she walked out the doors.

And promptly sucked it back in again when she saw who was waiting for her.

11 years ago

Minneapolis, MN

'I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat…'

Kel smiled, amused for once by the morbid Artaud. Sounds like he may have known Reegan. Unfortunate man. She put her finger in the page and sighed, her smile fading.

She shouldn't even
think
such things. Her power didn't extend to
him
. Reegan was a black hole where psych paras were concerned, no one shut him out, not even her. His power was unassailable. She couldn't be allowed to have secrets.

Not from
them
.

Which was why Reegan was her Coordinator. He was the only one who could penetrate her defenses — and vice versa. It had stunned Reegan when they'd tested her. Stunned and frightened. She'd sensed it.

Jules said that's why Reegan hated her. Kelsey wasn’t sure if that was the only reason, but the hate was real enough. Reegan despised most of the paras he trained, but he reserved a special loathing for her.

For once though, Reegan was not tops on her list of concerns. Not tonight.

It was time. Her first job on her own. Her first without Jules.

She shivered and closed the book carefully, ignoring the slight trembling in her fingers.

Miles Rousseau. The Marquis of
Saintonge.
Lord Miles de Rousseau.
Over 600 years old. Brilliant, reclusive and absolutely lethal.
He was a legend, a vampire like no other on earth.

Dear god, was she really going to
do
this?

Vampires were her special fear, the one shade she couldn’t face without a cold knot in her belly.

If Jules’ terrifying stories of the night his family had been wiped out by a vicious coven outside of Baton Rouge hadn’t been enough, she’d also been bitten once. Five years ago, back in the old Louisiana training grounds.

It had been just twilight, a steamy gloom of grey and green…

She could still taste the smell in the back of her throat, moss and swamp water, copper and mold. The tepid, black water up to her waist and the vampire slithering from behind her faster and deadlier than any damn snake. His fangs had grazed two, long shallow grooves down the side of her neck and into her shoulder before Jules dropped on them from above.

Kelsey could remember the dark water closing over her head, the hellfire burn of the wounds, the awful fear twisting her gut for days afterward.

She hadn’t been
turned,
of course, not from a mere scratch.

The nightmares for weeks afterward gave her a taste of what could have been. Waking so terribly, terribly thirsty. A thirst that no amount of water could ever quench.

Kelsey shuddered.

"So, our ghost girl is afraid?" Reegan's dissonant voice nearly made her jump, but she caught herself just in time, taking a slow breath and managing to look over her shoulder coolly.

He’d slipped into the room behind her, slinking always, like the pale worm he was. Kelsey smothered the thought, but too late. She saw his lips thin and his eyes gleam. Not in anger, but triumph.

He relished her lapses.

Reegan was dressed in his flowing black pants and embroidered red caftan. The harsh colors only intensified his pasty thickness. Her lip curled despite herself. Ghost Girl, the name the other paras had for her. They called her it—mostly in respectful tones—as her particular gift was incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that Reegan himself was the only other pysch para with similar talents ever known.

There were a few paras though, that used her nickname as he did now, mockingly and looking for a rise.

A rise she wouldn't give him.

“Of course.” Forcing herself, Kelsey turned her back to Reegan’s watery eyes. She disliked having him behind her, but she refused to show it.

“That's good.” His voice trilled with just a hint of glee. “He’ll probably kill you, you know. Or turn you even. Just so he can torture you properly.”

Cold sweat broke out down Kelsey’s spine. She bit her lip, but shrugged, making her body loose and casual. “I doubt he’ll ever know. That is the plan, isn't it?”

“Miles Rousseau is the strongest vampire in the world, maybe the strongest who ever lived.” Reegan moved in front of her now, smiling into her wide eyes, his strangely hot flinty breath tainting the air. “He’ll know.”

She got to her feet in quiet fury, her spine locking vertebrae by vertebrae, her face an inch from his. “Do you
want
the plan to fail, Reegan? Are you a traitor then?”

He blinked. She saw his eyes dart almost imperceptibly from side to side, as his mouth closed with a snap. She smiled into his silence. It was almost as good as having the last word. There were lines even Reegan dared not cross.

Then his soft whisper skittered into her mind.

“I long only for
you
to fail, so I can be the one to send you screaming into the daylight once he has turned you. I will watch you burn, Ghost Girl. And I will laugh.”

With a tip of his bald head as he saw the silent words slide home, he spoke aloud for the microphones that were everywhere.

“Not at all, child. I only speak to prepare you. We will succeed in Paris. We are destined to.
Death to the shades.
”

Reegan swept from the room, but Kelsey could swear the chill remained.