CHAPTER 11

“Phoenix!” Patrice finished for me.

That didn’t make any sense. But dragons did? Ghosts did? The realm of possibilities had already been blown wide open a decade ago. We just had to adapt to them and keep the human race going one day at a time. Sense didn’t have anything to do with it, not when it was burning right in front of me and my crew, piercing its beak into the leviathan’s belly.

A phoenix. Shit, I guess it was. The bird was covered entirely in yellow flames. Even its predatory eyes were like bonfires curling toward the sky. Where a cluster of feathers would have been blowing in the wind, instead it was flickering flame. When the bird spread its enormous wings, they became sheets of flight-giving combustion.

The leviathan tried to fight back, snarling and snapping at its attacker. But the phoenix shoved one of its talons in the scaly’s face, holding it down as it ate the dragon alive. Poor sea serpent didn’t ever have a chance, not against something three times bigger and constructed almost completely of fire. Then, as casually as if it had been a twig, the phoenix snapped the leviathan’s neck.

Instantly, the dragon caught fire and turned to ash. Just like the other leviathan. Just like the smaug.

Afu swallowed, his shaking, armored hand jangling against the side of Cannon 15. “Do… do we kill it.”

“Get your hand off the truck,” I whispered to Afu through gritted teeth. “It’s making too much noise.”

He did as he was told. “And if we do, won’t it just resurrect? That’s what they do, right?”

I tried to slow my breathing down. I was shaking, too. “We won’t kill it if we can get it back to the propellerheads alive. They can study it so we won’t get caught with our pants down if there are others. Patrice?”

No answer.

I turned toward my driver. Her mouth hung open, eyes glued to the phoenix.

“Patrice!”

She flinched and whispered, “Sorry, Cap.” “Get the Sandman trained on the bird,” I said. “Go as slow and quietly as you can.” I knocked knuckles against the dragon skull emblem on her power suit. “Sink or swim.”

“Sink or swim, baby,” she said, but it lacked her usual enthusiasm.

I radioed the propellerheads and requested Jet 1 for an immediate airborne attack – extra foam if they could swing it. They gave me a thirty-minute ETA.

All that was left of the leviathan was a pile of yellow, glowing embers which the phoenix began scooping into its beak. With each swallow the bird grew in size. The flames of its wings crackled as they burned bigger and brighter. Hotter. By the time it had finished eating, it would be double its original height and width. And it was already two stories tall.

It wasn’t that farfetched. The behemoth we’d fought not long ago was an apex predator dragon, feeding off its own kind. But this was different. The phoenix turned scalies into coal for its anatomical furnace.

“What do you want me to do?” Afu asked beside me. “I don’t know what to do!”

I looked into his big brown eyes, and for some goddamned reason I was so happy to be here with him. There was nowhere else I’d rather be. Then, I could have slapped myself. Afu and I were over and there was an inferno bird just a few feet away.

“We need to focus,” I said, too sternly, more to myself than him. That was always my flaw; I projected my own shit onto other people, people I loved.

Used to love!

There was a slight pout to Afu’s lips, even though he was trying hard to keep his head in the game. “I’m doing my best, Captain.”

Pointing to the phoenix, I said, “We’ll surround it, hold it off until Patrice can put it to sleep. Something starts going south, I’ll focus on its flames with my foam. Grab a shield from the truck, and use your laser sword as a last resort. And I mean that, Afu. Don’t kill it unless you absolutely have to.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, raising a defensive hand. “No more monster killing.”

Patrice spoke through my helmet radio. “Cannon is in position, T.”

As Afu and I stepped lightly to either side of the phoenix, the air smelled cleaner than I could ever remember, absent of the funk that dragons and wraiths brought with them. I guess that’s what happens when everything is incinerated. Fuck, I could imagine what this bird could do to a city. My city. We couldn’t let this flying cataclysm escape. Not on my watch. Too many people had died already; stupid people who’d done it to themselves, but still.

Finishing its meal of dragon coal, the phoenix chirped like a satisfied sparrow, which was weird for something the size of a jumbo jet to do. It turned its head to Afu and then me, unconcerned. Flapping its fire wings, the phoenix lifted into the air.

“Patrice, now!” I shouted.

Cannon 15’s Sandman sang as it fired the tranq laser across the horizon. It hit the phoenix under its right wing. And then, in the most fabulous way…

…Not a fucking thing happened.

“It didn’t work!” Afu said.

Thanks, Smokie Obvious.

It wasn’t true that nothing happened. The phoenix got pretty pissed, shrieking and flapping faster to hover just above us. If it had seen our presence before as random spectators, we’d just upgraded ourselves to prime enemies.

“We can’t kill it,” I yelled to remind Afu.

Instinctually, I power jumped and blasted the phoenix’s nearest wing with a foam stream. The flames sizzled and died down when the foam made contact, causing the phoenix to zero in on me. But a few seconds later the wing was back to its full blaze.

“Oh shit,” I said. “Patrice, we need the chain net.”

“Hold it off for a second,” she said. “I need time to crank the gun.”

We didn’t have a second.

The phoenix aimed for me, cutting through the air like a hot knife. I dove out of the way, but at the last second, the bird flicked its wing and batted me in the side. I stumbled, but landed on my feet just fine. My power suit, however, was on fire.

“Oh, goddamn it!” I slapped at the flames rising from my suit’s armpit, but it was doing as much as a one-legged droid in a foot race.

I blasted the fire with my foam, but the white suds only sizzled away no matter how much I dumped onto it. The fire wasn’t going away.

“Afu, help!”

I was freaking out. Normally, I would have kept my cool and figured something out, but this was beyond my capacity to understand, to get a handle on. And I was so damned exhausted already.

Afu power-jumped over to me as the phoenix, half a mile away, swooped around to come back for a rematch. “Get out of the suit,” he said.

Out of the suit? That was suicide.

The phoenix’s oncoming shriek quickly changed my mind. I hit the latch in the front of my suit and fell to the ground. Afu heaved me onto my feet and we ran for the truck.

I felt the heat at my back and knew the phoenix was right on top of us. The bird’s shriek came next, stabbing my ears so badly I had to cover them with my hands and lose speed – not that my running was doing shit to save me. Then I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder.

The phoenix’s talons were spread open, ready to snag me and Afu. It wouldn’t even have to bite us to finish the job; the flames would do us in way before that.

A loud phloom shot through the air as Patrice fired the chain net out of the cannon. It struck the phoenix, enveloping the bird and cinching around it with quick, magnetic ease. It spiraled through the air away from me and Afu, then thudded through the dusty ashes on the ground, continually squawking.

When the netted phoenix came to a rest, I marched toward my power suit that was still burning and cracked it open like a discarded oyster.

“We should stay back, T,” Afu said. “Yeah? Wait till backup arrives?”

“You’re probably right, Afu, but I’ve got to do this.”

I kept walking. This bird had officially pissed me off. I wasn’t going to kill it, but I was going to make it very uncomfortable. The flames on my power suit had died down, but I had to kick ashes onto the foam arm so I could grab it and drag the suit toward the phoenix. I didn’t need to get that close, not for what I had in mind. Maybe just ten or fifteen feet away.

“What are you doing?” asked Afu.

Huffing from the strain, I kneeled and aimed my power suit’s foam arm toward the phoenix. It stared at me with those flaming eyes. For a second I hesitated, because the bird wasn’t looking at me like it wanted to eat me or burn me to smithereens, it looked worried. Scared.

I wondered how scared Harold and his guys felt when they were blasted fifty feet into the air.

I jabbed the foam button on my suit and soaked the phoenix with the white goop. It always worked like a charm with dragon breath. The phoenix fire, though, was too damn hot and unkillable. The foam was useless, but dousing the bastard was making me feel better, so there was that.

The phoenix gargled all high-pitched against the foam, and I was careful not to accidentally drown the thing. It sounded like a cappuccino machine frothing up steamed milk.

Then it switched to the sound of a tea kettle about to blow.

“I don’t like this, Tamerica.” Afu only said my full first name when he got serious, and that was close to never.

I dropped my power suit’s arm and looked back at him. He was in a full run, headed my way, as if he was going to tackle me. Behind me, the phoenix trembled faster and faster, fire flashing like a strobe light.

Then Afu did tackle me.

It was just in time. He’d seen something I couldn’t – not while I was neck deep in my rage-fueled birdie bathing. The phoenix exploded, firing molten pieces of chain net like bullets. They scattered everywhere, pinging against Afu’s power armor as he covered me, some dinged off my helmet that I’d thankfully left on. But one of the pieces of shrapnel caught me in the arm.

I screamed into Afu’s ear, and it was a credit to his composure he didn’t roll off me and leave me to the mercy of the flying hot metal.

When the last of the explosion had subsided, Afu sat up and hissed at the sight of my arm.

“What?” I said, voice hoarse. “It’s not that big of a deal. Just a scratch.”

But I hadn’t seen it yet. It hurt like a motherfucker, but so did a paper cut. Dropping my head to the injury… well, there it was. My arm was pouring blood. If there was a metal piece in the gaping gash of my flesh, I didn’t see it. My head got dizzy and the surroundings seemed farther away, both in sight and sound. I felt hungry and in desperate need of a nap.

“Stay with me, T.” Afu took out a rapid tourniquet and slipped it above the gash that was steadily spewing blood. He hit a button and the strap cinched tight.

I screamed. But I wasn’t bleeding to death anymore.

“Patrice,” Afu called through his helmet. “Get the medical bag.”

“You know,” I said, sitting up in the ashes. “You always had the prettiest eyes.”

What the fuck was I saying!?

“Then focus on my eyes,” said Afu. And he focused his on mine.

“Wait,” I said, snapping out of my delirium. “That fucking bird.”

I jumped to my feet, wobbling like a drunk. Afu tried to sit me back down, but I shoved him away. The net that Patrice had snagged the phoenix with was gone, completely melted and shattered into bits. The phoenix had cremated itself. All that was left of the bird was a pile of glowing, neon-yellow ashes.

My anger returned. This fucking thing couldn’t even stay alive while we were trying to keep it that way. I swung a foot into the ashes, scattering the glowing mess across the ground. I was stomping on them, kicking them. I fell back, too weak to stand.

Afu caught me in his arms, always there for me, even when I’d been such a shit to him. “What the hell are you doing?” He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. “The thing is dead. Gone. There’s no point kicking its ash.”

“Hey,” Patrice said, walking over hefting our truck’s medical bag. “But that’s just what we are, boo. We’re ash kickers.”

Jet 1’s engines filled the air as it crested the horizon. Afu took the lead and told them we’d taken care of things, but needed immediate evacuation for me. He must have gotten the message in too late, though, because when Jet 1 was directly overhead, they dumped a fuck ton of foam on top of us.

All of us looked like we’d been shit on by a very big bird. I looked at Afu and spat out a wad of foam before saying, “I don’t know who’s flying that plane, but theirs is the only ash I want to kick right now.”