Chapter Twenty-Five – Carter

 

“Tabitha,” I breathed into the phone as Lucy and I raced back down the three flights of stairs to my Jeep, “I think we have a problem.”

“Of course we do. Isn’t that what we sent you up to Shamrock to deal with?”

“Has Kris kept you up on everything, including the hitters that are in town besides me?”

“Yeah, some mischief of rats she’s been looking into for you. Working for some demon, or some river dragon out of Macao.”

“They’re not after a demon, though, or working for one,” I said as I rounded one of the rails and went running down after Lucy. “It’s not what we thought. Not at all. A phoenix. We think it’s a phoenix. And it’s hatching.”

Phoenixes have been gone for a long time. So long, the PRB barely does any kind of training on them at all. The only reason I knew about their existence, and their history, was because Col. Harrington had told me about them years ago, as an example of the wonders the world had lost. About how all creatures, even supernatural ones, had a risk of going extinct because of man.

They laid their eggs as they died, he explained, inside of host creatures and people that their last, dying flames burned. Magical eggs which would generate enough heat at their time of death, that multiple children of the same bird would be reborn from the ashes of red sulfur left behind. Gestation time? Twelve seasons, give or take, according to the tomes he’d helped to translate.

Or, in modern parlance, about three years.

Silence from our resident, in-house witch. “Excuse me?”

“You fucking heard me, Tabitha!” I shouted as I hopped over one of the rails, landed on the concrete landing a few feet below, and kept moving.

“They’re extinct, though! There hasn’t been one spotted in almost a thousand years!”

“Wrong. Three years ago. Here in Shamrock at a Christmas tree lighting, but the inspector didn’t believe the witnesses, so it never made it into the file. Maybe it thought the lights were a fire, or something? I don’t know, but it landed here, looking to lay its eggs, and it burned up, caught a bunch of people in the flames.”

“So all those people…? Wow. They were all phoenixes hatching?”

“Or trying to,” I said. “I don’t think they’ve all been spawning. Maybe something was wrong with them? Modern diets of humans?”

Lucy was down ahead of me, at the bottom of the final landing. She hit the emergency exit at a run, racing ahead of me into the daylight.

“Are there any left?” Tabitha asked. “Are there any we can save?”

“Save? Really?” I followed Lucy right out of the door and into the crowded lot. Together, we raced over to my Jeep. “I’m trying to save the girl the egg is still inside of!”

A horn blared loudly as car tires screeched, bringing a Lexus to a halt inches from my hip. “Hey!” the driver shouted. “Be careful out here!”

I turned and waved to the driver before disappearing into the thicket of cars parked in the lot, my eyes fixed on Lucy’s backside. “Can you do anything? Can we get the egg out of her somehow?”

“Oh, Carter,” she said, her voice distant and contemplative, “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got to look. How much longer do we think this girl has?”

I came to a stop beside my Jeep Wrangler, pulled my keys out, and began to fit the right one in the lock. “Well, considering that everyone else has gone up in the last month, I’m thinking not very fucking long.”

Tabitha sighed. “I can’t make any promises, but maybe I can do something. A binding spell? I don’t know. Something to hold it back, at least, till we can figure out a way to help her.”

I climbed into the driver’s side, leaned over, and unlocked Lucy’s door. “Okay. What do I need?”

“You?” Tabitha asked. “This is above your pay grade, mister. I’m going to have to come up there myself and perform this thing.”

“Tabitha, we don’t have time for that! You said yourself you’re going to have to figure this out. Then what? Drive all the way up here? This girl might not have any more time!”

“What’s she saying?” Lucy asked in a low voice as she climbed up into her seat and began to pull on her safety belt. “Can she help?”

I shrugged as I gave her a look.

“Bring her to me, then,” Tabitha said. “I’ll meet you at your cabin with everything I need, once I have it figured out.”

That wasn’t a much better plan, but it at least freed Tabitha up to spend more time working on her part. Even if she had a broom to fly up here, like Lucy had asked about the night before, she was still going to be eating up precious time by traveling to us.

“Yeah,” I said with a nod as I started up the Jeep. “Meet you at the cabin.”

“Call me if there’s any more problems, or if I can help any more, okay?” Off the phone in the background, there was a man’s voice. Was that Ryder’s? “Hold on, Carter, Ryder’s saying he needs to talk to you. Some info Kris gave him.”

“Kris gave to Ryder? What the hell? Where’s she at?”

“Not sure,” Tabitha replied. “Here he is.”

Cloth and hands rustled against the receiver, crackled in my ear, as I reversed the Jeep out of my parking spot and threw it into first. “Carter?” Ryder asked. “You there?”

“Yeah, buddy. I’m here. What’s up?”

“Kris gave me some info before she ghosted out of here, said to give it to you when you called.”

“Where’s she, anyways?” I asked as I pulled up to the street, looked both ways. “Figured this would be top priority for her.”

“Not a clue, man. Out running around with Hunter on some super secret squirrel mission.”

Running around with Hunter? But they hated each other! Or, at least, that’s how it had always seemed to me. Somewhere at the back of my mind, my interest was suddenly piqued, and my first inclination was to press Ryder for more details.

I shoved that back down, though. Office romances, or secret missions not in Shamrock, were for the back burner. “Well, what do you have for me, then?”

“Phillip Winters and Zoey? The mischief of rats? Turns out the third guy is Lazarus Jenkins.”

“Okay.”

“Zoey Mattis and Lazarus Jenkins, like you assumed, are partners. Close ones. But, here’s the weird part. They’re normally active in Africa and Europe as poachers. First time anyone’s seen them in North America, period, in nearly a decade.”

“Poachers?” I asked as I pulled up at a stoplight and, following Lucy’s gestured directions to the hospital, flicked on my blinker and waited to turn left. “You don’t say?”

“Used to work for a mercenary group, both ex-military, and they’re well trained, like you mentioned. And, they’re close. Maybe not romantically entangled, but two people don’t work freelance like that for as long as they have without something else being there. Definitely not the type to look at double-crossing each other.”

“Probably pulled in by Winters for this phoenix problem. Anything else?”

“Not that Kris told me, no. Just a short dossier she’d printed up.”

“Hear anything else, you let me know, all right?”

“Got it, Carter. Stay safe out there.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I closed my flip phone and stuffed it down between my thighs as I drove. “Get all that?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said after a deep breath. “I got it. At least we have an idea of what’s going on now, right?”

I nodded.

“How’s your witch sound about all this? Think she’ll be able to do something to help Amber?”

I didn’t say anything at first, just tried to figure out what I could say that might allay her fears. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily what was best for her. I needed to be as honest as I could about the likelihood.

“Turn right here,” she said when I didn’t reply at first.

I took the turn she’d indicated, my tires crying out, and the Jeep swaying to one side. “I don’t know,” I said as I straightened out the wheel. “I really don’t. But, I do know one thing. She’s going to try her damndest. I promise you that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

I put my hand on the center console, trying to keep my breathing in check.

We were so close to the hospital. Close enough that I could smell the antiseptic, acerbic tinge to the air that always seemed to hang over medical districts. As I drove, swerving around slower vehicles, and growling in frustration, I rested an arm on the center console. Tried to center myself and keep my road rage from building.

I had to remember: none of these people knew who I was, or what I was doing. None of them knew that the world they lived in contained magic, and demons, and werewolves, and vampires. They all just wanted to get home to their families, safe and in one piece.

But, as my right hand white-knuckled the center console, I felt something soft and warm cover it. Lucy’s hand.

“It’ll be okay,” she said, her voice nothing more than a whisper above the singing of my Jeep’s tires. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

I flipped my big paw around, and she interlinked her fingers with mine. I squeezed her hand a little, and she squeezed it right back.

And somehow, I just knew it was going to be all right. There was suddenly no doubt in my mind at all. We were going to get Amber, Tabitha was going to figure out a way to get that phoenix egg out of her, and we were all going to be just fine. She was going to be just perfect.

If only I wasn’t so wrong.