The Heart of the Phoenix (29 page)

“I rather think the destination is the point,” Torin said. “Any place where my brother can’t find us will do.”

“He’ll come around... eventually.”

“He won’t, but King Brom is.” There was hope in his voice, an optimism that Flanna knew was doomed. King Brom, beloved of the people of Galatania, was old, and had died shortly after she had been born.

“Erasmus has convinced him that the Phoenix Girls are no threat to Galatania. He knows that an alliance is in everyone’s best interest. You keep the sepulcher gate safe from the barbarians of your world.”

“It’s not nice to call us barbarians, you know.”

“Not you, love,” Torin said. “Only everyone else.”

He reached out and stroked the crimson tattoo on her wrist, then lowered his hand to the plump dome of her belly.

“Or you, my son,” he said, and dodged a light slap Diana aimed at his hand.

“You don’t know it’s a boy,” Diana said. “What if we have a girl?”

“Then I shall give her with my whole heart,” he said, and Diana turned her attention back to the road.

“But it is a boy,” he said, and flashed a quick grin. “I have a special sense about these things.”

Whatever special senses he possessed, he did not feel the sudden sense of danger, of being watched, but her mother did, and so did Flanna.

“Torin, something...” Diana got no further in her warning, and the things that happened next were a jumble of violence, pain, darkness, and terror.

* * *

Penny sensed the danger as her mother did, nearly shouted a warning of her own as her mother spoke.

A shimmer just ahead, like a heat mirage, catching and reflecting the beams of the car’s headlights. She didn’t know what it was, but had experienced enough magic since her introduction to
The Secrets of the Phoenix Girls
at age eleven to know the signs.

She stepped on the brakes, barely keeping her old Mustang under control as it skidded, began to slide sideways, but she was not quick enough. The right front fender passed through the heat-haze shimmer and jerked violently upward, bringing the front of her car into the air. Then the whole car was airborne and spinning. It corkscrewed through the air, continuing to rise until it passed through the spell and came back down nose first.

Penny watched the pavement, bright under the Mustang’s headlight, rise to hit her, to kill her...

There was noise, grinding, twisting metal, screaming, but only darkness where there had been light. There was pain, her head, her chest, her abdomen, but the pain was muted, almost unimportant. There was motion, rolling, spinning, dizzying, making her think of the rides at the fair, the day she first met Torin as a member of the Traveling Reds, and how she had forgotten to breathe for a moment the first time he looked at her.

She couldn’t breathe now, as something was pressing into her chest.

Next to her, Torin screamed.

Darkness.

Awakening to the gentle rocking of the car around her. She was no longer sitting, and she recognized the thing squeezing her chest as the shoulder harness of her seat belt. She opened her eyes and saw light. One of the Mustang’s headlights was still working, but growing dimmer. She was upside down, and the car rocked, grinding gravel and wreckage beneath the collapsed hood. She turned to Torin, reached for him, and found his seat empty, the seatbelt hanging unlatched, the door torn from its hinges.

“
Torin
.” A whisper only, and she felt blood on her lips, warm, salty, wet.

A cramp in her belly, a contraction. A scream ripped from her throat.

The baby
!

Darkness.

She struggled with the belt, ran her hand along it until she found the latch, grabbed the wheel with her other hand to slow her fall, and released the latch.

Darkness.

She awoke on her back, her legs twisted around each other, the heel of her right foot caught on the steering wheel. Her right knee bent at an unnatural angle. Another contraction ripped through her, turning her belly to stone.

It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. The baby wasn’t ready.

“Torin,” she said, and was surprised to rediscover her voice. “Torin!”

No reply. Had he been ejected in the crash? Was he still alive?

She braced her palms against the roof of her car and pushed herself toward the open passenger door. Her right shoe slipped over her heel, and her feet slid free of the wheel. Her legs crashed down and she screamed, cursed, called for her husband again.

“Please excuse my brother,” came a voice she knew, a voice she had hoped not to hear again soon. “He’s alive, if that’s your concern, but in no condition to rescue anyone else.”

“You did this,” she said, and coughed. Blood sprayed from her mouth. She wiped it off her lips with the back of her hand.

“You have had an unfortunate accident,” Tynan said. “I do hope your child is unharmed.”

Diana did not reply. She pushed herself a few inches closer to the exit, then reached up for the glove box. Her wand was in there. Her finger brushed the release button, slipped off, and she fell to her back again.

There was another contraction, the worst yet.

Diana shrieked, and Penny shared her mother’s pain. All of it.

This is what dying feels like
.

Darkness.

She awoke and shoved herself closer to the door, closer to the glove box, reached up and pushed the button. A flood of paper, coins, and road snacks poured out. Her wand landed next to her.

“What are you doing in there, sister?” There was laughter in Tynan’s voice. This was the first time Diana had ever heard real humor in this man’s voice. His normal mode of speech was inflectionless, sharp, cold.

Diana ignored him, clutched her wand to her chest, braced her feet and pushed with them. There was no strength in the right, only pain, but her left was strong enough to propel her closer to the open air.

“
Torin
!” Fresh pain gave strength to her voice.

“Di!” She heard his voice, but at a distance.

She pushed for the exit again, again, and slid from the door. The shoulder where her car had finished up was rocky, the gravel pressing into her back was uncomfortable, but the fresh, cool air was good.

She took in a lung full and shouted, “
Where are you
?”

“Over here,” Tynan said.

Diana aimed at the sound of his voice, fired while she was still turning her head, and located Tynan just in time to see her spell ricochet off his shield.

Before she could try again, his return spell smashed into her hand, breaking her fingers. Her wand spun away into the darkness. A flurry of spells smashed into her car, and flames leapt from the exposed undercarriage.

She pushed, slid further from the burning car, screamed with another contraction.

Darkness.

She awoke with Tynan standing over her. The smile was gone, but he still looked amused.

“I believe your child’s time has come.” He knelt down beside her, lifted her dress up to her waist. “Time to put modesty aside,
Di
. If you’re going to do this now I suppose I’ll have to help.”

* * *

Flanna, in one of the strangest twists of fate she could have ever imagined, experienced her own birth from her mother’s perspective. She came into the world, silent, and for a second her mind raced with panic, but then Tynan cut her cord with a sharp swipe of his wand and lifted her by the feet. He pinched the flesh of her shoulder, and then she began to wail.

Diana held out her arms.

“Please,” she said. “My baby.”

“A healthy baby girl,” Tynan said, and produced his uncanny smile again. “You’re bleeding quite a lot. I don’t think you’re going to survive.”

* * *

Penny watched Tynan walk away with her sister in his arms, felt her mother’s cramp of grief and terror, then another contraction.

Another contraction?

Twins. She had twins.

She screamed with the fresh pain.

Tynan stopped to regard her, that cold smile on his face turning to a frown when he saw her body clench with another contraction.

And then Penny came, with a final scream and push, and...

Darkness.

She awoke and reached blindly for the second baby, and found her still, silent, lifeless.

“No,” a voice too weak for shouts now.

She pulled her baby onto her chest, hugged it, wept.

I was dead
, Penny realized.

Tynan crouched over her for a closer look at the dead infant in her arms, then slowly shook his head. “Torin will be distraught.”

Then he rose with baby Flanna in his arms and walked away, leaving Diana Sinclair Fuilrix to her fate.

“Tynan! Bring my baby back!”

There was no reply. Tynan was gone.

“Torin!”

No reply.

“Somebody help me!”

There was nobody. She was alone.

“Diana!” The voice of Torin’s old companion, Ronan. She hoped he had been careful roaming the night. If anyone saw him, it would surely mean trouble. Ronan did not blend well into this world.

“Ronan.” She tried to scream his name, but could only whisper. He found her anyway.

“Where is Torin?”

She shook her head.

“He took my baby... Tynan.” She felt like weeping again, but could not.

“Your child is here, Di. She’s... oh no.” She felt him lift the dead child from her arms.

“He took my other baby,” she said.

Ronan nodded his understanding.

“Save my baby, please.” She motioned weakly at the baby in his arms.

“There is nothing I can do,” Ronan said.

“Please,” she said, then darkness.

She awoke again and found Ronan holding the child, compressing its tiny chest with a large finger. He regarded his friend’s dying love. He saw the blood, felt her cool brow with his soft, furry hand.

At last he laid the infant back in her mother’s arms.

“What is her name?”

Diana thought for a moment, then said, “Penelope.”

Ronan knelt with them, the dying mother and the dead child.

He heard cars approaching from a long distance, but moving fast. He looked one last time at mother and child.

“Your friends have come,” he said. “I will try to find Torin and Tynan.”

He sprinted into the darkness, and the car arrived seconds later.

“Di!” Susan’s voice.

Diana clutched weakly at baby Penelope, but did not stir as Susan dropped to her knees next to her.

“Di!” Susan checked her pulse, felt her brow. Confident for the moment that her friend lived still, she turned her attention to the baby in Diana’s arms.

“
Oh no… no no
!” Susan bent down, resuming Ronan’s chest compressions and beginning CPR. She continued for a long time, then baby Penelope began to cry, to move in her mother’s arms.

Others arrived then, Tracy, Nancy, and Janet.

Nancy was wild with anger and grief, and Janet held her while Tracy dropped to her knees next to Diana. She bent down, whispered, put her forehead to Diana’s, and began to weep.

Diana’s arms fell to the ground, and Susan lifted Penny from her arms, also weeping as her best friend left her forever.

* * *

The memory ended, Flanna and Penny faced each other again, Flanna in Aurora Hollow, Penny from her reflection on the spinning, swelling doorway.

Flanna could not move, could not speak, could not breath under the weight of her rage, betrayal, and guilt.

Tynan had lied to her. He had used her. He had killed her mother. And Penny...

Penny was gone. The reflection staring back at Flanna was her own.

* * *

“Wake up!”

Penny came back to herself amid noise and panic, Torin’s hands gripping her shoulders, shaking her. Ronan stood guard over them, growling. There was a rumble from the earth around them, and the sound of breaking stone.

“Penny!” Torin shouted in her face as her eyes roamed unfocused about the room. It was still dark, still deep into night. The only light in the cell fell down from the hallway above.

“I’m awake,” she shouted back, and allowed him a brief, fierce hug before he lifted her to her feet. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Torin said, “but it doesn’t sound like anything good.”

“Something is coming through the wall,” Ronan said, and pointed into the darkness. “Something big enough to tear through solid bedrock.”

“Nope,” Penny said. “Not good at all.”

The rumbling continued, grew louder, the vibrations in the solid stone around them strengthened. Ronan herded them backward, until they bumped into the wall at their backs, and planted himself in front of them.

Groping in total blind blackness, Penny found her father beside him and grabbed his arm. He pulled her against his side.

“It’ll be okay,” Torin said, hardly sounding convinced of his own words.

“Will it?” If he had an explanation for the assurance, she wanted to hear it.

“No, probably not.”

“Quiet,” Ronan growled at them. “Whatever it is, it’s here.”

Penny heard a crash as something breached the stone, the clatter of rubble hitting the floor, and the stomping of many heavy feet.

And then there was light as something small and darting leapt through the huge hole in the solid stone wall. It held a torch over its head, and Penny saw the tunnel it had emerged from, ten feet around and going what looked like forever through the earth.

Another torchbearer leapt through, then a third. They spread out among their companions already inside the cell, illuminating the entire party.

Homunculi, a hundred maybe, all dressed in the same gray uniforms as the ones she’d seen in the citadel through Rocky’s eyes, but older, dirtier, ripped and threadbare. Their eyes were colorless, black as obsidian.

“Wild Homunculi,” Torin said. “Homunculi whose masters have died. I’ve heard stories about them, but I’ve never seen one.”

“Most die with their masters,” Ronan said. “The ones that don’t go feral and usually aren’t seen again.”