SEVEN
“Impossible!” Someone shouted amidst the turmoil in the room.
Phoenyx fought every instinct she had not to roll her eyes, as the councilmen of The Order of the Flame broke out into fits of hysteria over the news she’d just thrown at them. Hutton glanced tensely over at Phoenyx as he tried to calm everyone down. His expression was one of, ‘I told you so.’
Smug bastard. She couldn’t help but smirk inwardly as he tried to settle the men down. He looked like a kindergarten teacher trying to get his students to calm themselves after a particularly wild classroom break. She bit her lip, trying not to laugh at him.
“Gentlemen,” Hutton shouted over the cacophony. “Settle down so that we can discuss this like rational adults.”
“Settle down?” Edwin Perth stammered. He was the eldest on the council, and the most prone to indignancy. “Grimshaw, we have been exposed!”
“Gentlemen.” Phoenyx snapped, leaning casually against the doorjamb of the council’s headquarters. “Please, allow Mr. Grimshaw to continue.”
“Well, I never.” Perth sputtered, eyes darting around the table with distaste.
John Rutherford, the only man on the council Phoenyx could stomach, stood pensively in the corner and pinned her with an inquisitive stare. “I would rather hear it come from you, Phoenyx.”
Twenty pairs of analytical male eyes burned a hole through her forehead, which consequently, was still throbbing from the little light show she and that vampire had put on in her apartment.
She pressed her fingers to her temple and pursed her lips. “Okay.”
Pushing off the wall, she strutted to the head of the long, oak table and focused her gaze down the length of it at each and every council member. Leaning over, she lay her palms flat against the hardwood and took a deep breath. “Tonight, someone––or something, tried to have me assassinated.”
The council broke out into a cacophonous uproar once again, while Hutton tried helplessly to quiet everyone down. Watching him struggle to maintain order was infuriating. She knew how much respect Hutton deserved, and this was beyond disrespectful.
Phoenyx held up her hand and watched with hot eyes as silence fell over the room almost immediately. When she was satisfied there would be no further interruption, she spoke. “He’s an ancient. We believe him to be around two thousand years old.”
“How do you know this?” Edwin spat.
“One of her attackers came clean before she killed him,” Hutton offered smugly, before nodding back at Phoenyx to continue. “Go on.”
“It was a setup. Someone leaked false information to one of my informants, knowing I would take his cue and head to that warehouse tonight.” Phoenyx pressed her lips together in a firm line at the memory. “Three deadheads jumped me. Fledglings. They tried to take me out. Obviously, they didn’t succeed.”
“And this ancient?” John pressed.
Nodding at John in acknowledgement, Phoenyx pushed off the table to stand as straight as her aching back would allow her. “I don’t have a name. He wore a mask to retain anonymity. There were promises of grandeur and recognition made to the fledglings, if they were to take me. He has big plans. As of now, who he is, or what those plans are, remain unknown.”
“Grimshaw,” Jacob Dorset murmured. “We haven’t dealt with an ancient since––”
“I’m well aware,” Hutton replied briskly. Phoenyx eyed him curiously. “We’re working on gathering more information before we proceed.”
Suddenly, the door to the council room swung open, just as they were getting into the thick of it. Phoenyx felt a chill run up her spine as Ian Rutherford, John’s only son, came strolling into the room like he owned the damn place. His father looked extremely displeased, and quite rightfully, embarrassed as Ian sauntered to the opposite end of the long table and sat casually in one of the leather chairs there. Phoenyx never pegged him for a sloucher, and yet, he proved her wrong.
“Gentlemen,” Ian smirked, his cold, blue eyes empty pools. Devoid of emotion. Soulless.
John marched to his son’s side and crouched down beside him. The council did a bad job pretending not to notice the heated exchange as John whispered in fevered, hushed tones to Ian, who kept a shit-eating grin plastered to his face.
Phoenyx bristled as his eyes traveled obnoxiously over her body. Instead of cringing and shrinking away, Phoenyx widened her stance and arched a brow in his direction. Prick.
“Are you quite done, Father?” Ian said with a light laugh.
The look on John’s face told her he would have words with his son later, away from the crowd. He stood slowly and walked away. With his back turned, he couldn’t see how Ian had dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
Steepling his fingers beneath his chin, Ian smiled. “What’s the topic tonight fellows?”
“This is the council’s concern,” Phoenyx snapped, having had enough of the drama. John strolled past her stoically, to stand beside Hutton. She turned flaming eyes on Ian and her lips curled. “Last I checked––you’re not on it.”
Ian leaned forward and drummed his fingers annoyingly on the surface of the table, the smile never leaving his face. “Not yet.”
There were some things in Phoenyx’s life she couldn’t quite explain: How they got those tiny boats in the bottles, how many licks it really did take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop, the vampire sleeping in her bed––and why she couldn’t, in that very moment, read, or feel, Ian Rutherford.
You see––Ian’s emotional imprint was a very distinct one. He ran simply on three things: jealousy, hatred and lust. As of that moment, he was just a blank page. He may as well have been a vampire himself. With quick, catlike reflexes, Phoenyx jumped onto the oak table, marched purposefully down its length until she was standing over Ian’s smug frame and pressed the heel of her boot into his neck, just beneath his chin. He chuckled with mild surprise.
“Leave. Now,” She growled. “Before I pop your dim-witted head off your neck like a cork.”
“Is that the only thing you’d like to pop, darling?” He said tightly.
The sexual connotation in the question he’d asked didn’t go unnoticed, and she felt her blood boiling to new levels––volcanic in nature. Phoenyx pressed harder until his neck was neatly sandwiched between her heel and the headrest of the chair. “Get up, apologize to your father for embarrassing him with your mere existence, and get the fuck out.”
Ian swallowed against the pressure of her heel and eyed her narrowly, obvious embarrassment and anger written all over his face. His ice blue eyes circled the room before landing on his father, who stood beside Hutton. Phoenyx kept her thigh tight and her leg straight, ready to make that fateful twist should she need to.
“Are you fucking deaf?” She snapped, pushing harder until Ian slammed his chair back and stood up.
“Look at the lot of you,” Ian sneered. “Do you really think this bitch can protect you from the dark things that go bump in the night? What will you do when she chooses? Who will protect you then?”
The men on the council eyed Ian wearily as he backed away to the door. Phoenyx found herself staring him down from the platform of the boardroom table, slightly confused by his cryptic message. He looked like a man hell-bent on taking over. A wild need to be in control surrounded him like a black aura. Vengeance radiated from every poor of his body, and for the first time since Ian Rutherford had walked into the room, Phoenyx felt it rush through her molecules like a plague.
She pinned him with her eyes, a burning hatred for him pouring out across the room. “I wouldn’t attempt anything stupid, Ian. You can’t ever come back from stupid.” Her emotions were beginning to boil dangerously close to the surface, and she could feel Hutton’s anxiety rising from across the room.
“You don’t even know what you are,” Ian sneered, his icy blue eyes flashing as they ate her up from head to foot. “But Hutton does. That fine, knowledgeable councilman––he knows exactly who and what you are, isn’t that right, Grimshaw? Who’s the stupid one now, Phoenyx?”
She blinked hard and he was gone. Quietly, she turned to face the sullen men who sat huddled, muttering around the council table she had stood before since she was a small child. This room felt more like home to her than her own apartment did. These men, though sometimes inelegant, were her family––Hutton being the closest thing to a father she had ever had.
Her eyes met with his and he shamefully looked away.
Ian was right, she didn’t know what she was––or who she was. Yes, she was an empath, there was no doubt in that, but Phoenyx also knew she was something more. The mystery of who she was had haunted her all her life and her mother had died before she could learn more.
Her father called her a demon. Her mother called her an angel. These men––they called her, hero.
Deep down inside, she felt like a freak. Taking a deep breath, Phoenyx stepped down from the boardroom table and placed her feet firmly on the ground. She closed her eyes tightly to gather herself, and then opened them slowly before turning around to face the men before her. There were more pressing things to worry about, and her origins weren’t one of them. That would come in time.
She straightened her back and lifted her chin proudly. “This ancient vampire seems to want to get his hands on me. For whatever reason, I’m his goal. What I know is this––I will not go down without a fight. Whoever this Ancient is, we, The Order of the Flame, will defeat him. I will not go lightly.”
Then, she turned to Hutton, who had a look of deep and immense pride on his face, and repeated herself for his ears. “I won’t go lightly.”
“Where do we begin?” Edwin grumbled, chewing on something that wasn’t there.
Hutton tore his eyes away from Phoenyx and reached for a stack of papers he had held off to the side as part of the initial presentation. “We know that Spider and his crew were hired to either kill, or apprehend her. Here––I have the blueprints to Spider’s Clubhouse compound,” he said, handing the papers to the council members. “Phoenyx, you will go tonight and infiltrate them. Hopefully, you’ll find Spider and make him talk. Make him tell you where this Ancient is hiding. Once we know his whereabouts, we make a definitive, concrete plan to confront and kill him.”
“It won’t be easy,” Phoenyx whispered. “You know my history with him.”
Hutton nodded. “I do, which is why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt you will not be merciful. You will get answers.”
John wiped a hand across his forehead, incredulous at the thought. “You can’t send her in there alone, Hutton. Are you mad, man?”
“Why not?” Phoenyx asked, masking her insecurity with bravado. Taking the blueprints from Hutton’s hands, she rolled them up and walked purposefully toward the door. “I’ve taken down hordes of vampires on my own before. What’s one little biker?”
***
“Fucking cunt!” Ian screeched, hammering his fist repeatedly into the wall behind the bathroom stall. His knuckles had gone numb long ago, but the rage he felt at the center of his being hadn’t dimmed. He’d shatter every bone in his hand before that happened.
He turned sharply and leaned against the cold cement wall of the public bathroom, banging his head once, and then twice, to shake his vision free of the immense anger he felt toward the rancid little bitch.
For years, he’d trained by her side, given the opportunity to grow up as sister and brother, within the confines of The Order’s walls, yet she shunned him. Even as a child she had an air of superiority over him that he could never get past, but not anymore. He wasn’t going to keep the Hutton Grimshaw’s dirty little secrets anymore. He’d heard him talking to his father over the years, and slowly, as time went on, Ian had pieced together the puzzle.
It was going to happen any day now. She was the caterpillar about erupt from the cocoon as another creature, nothing like it’s former shape and size, and she had no idea it was about to happen. But he did. He knew all the secrets her body held. He knew exactly what the transformation entailed. Ian also knew that if she turned into something other than the butterfly those stuffy old bastards were expecting, they wouldn’t have any inkling of what to do, or where to run.
Phoenyx came from a bloodline that far surpassed any of theirs, even those linking them to the royals. No, her blood was––ancient.
He jumped only a little when his cell phone went off in his pocket. Reaching inside, he brought it to his ear with shaky fingers. “Hello?”
“Did you do it?” The smooth voice on the other end asked.
Ian stared at the ceiling, ice blue eyes glittering maliciously as he smiled from ear to ear. “Of course, darling.”
“Excellent. Now we wait. Are you prepared for what comes next?”
The smile on his face faltered only slightly. “Oh, I’ve been preparing for this my entire life.”
“Good. I’ll make sure everything is in place. Now you just go on home and wait. I’ll be in touch.”
The cell phone slowly slid down the side of his face, as his mind drifted off to what was to come. All the training, all the lessons in paranormal activity, all of The Order’s secrets––tonight, they culminated.
Turning slowly, Ian took a long, deep breath and resumed hammering the bathroom wall with his already bloody knuckles. He punched and punched until he felt something crunch. Grimacing, he stood back and admired the bloody mess he’d left, imagining Phoenyx’s face in place of the wall.
Smiling, he turned on his heel and quickly strode from the building.