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“What the hell did you just do?” Jacques said, sprinting over to her. “Katana, you have no idea what you’ve just started.”
Katana looked down at Ashley’s body, then back at Jacques. His eyes were wide with fear. Nothing scared this wolf so why did a dead nobody seem to terrify him?
“What do you mean?” she said, wiping her blade against her jodhpurs.
Jacques shook his head from side to side. “I told him this would all go wrong. Arrogant idiot.”
“Jacques, what are you talking about?”
Sighing, he sat down and pointed a white paw at Katana to do the same. “It’ll just be easier if you sit, wait, and watch.”
Katana frowned and sighed. She looked back at Altair to see if he’d finished drinking from her boot. When she noticed him nuzzling across the grassy floor, she took the opportunity to distance herself from Jacques and hobbled over to her boot.
Altair completely ignored her as he continued foraging for berries and nuts—his favourite snack.
Shaking the tarpaulin free of water, she folded it up and slipped her foot back in her boot. A broad grin crossed her face when she realised they hadn’t spilled any water in her boot today. If all she gained from today happened to be keeping her socks dry, then it was better than nothing.
After packing her tarpaulin away, Katana looked over at Jacques. She tried to ignore the deep ache in her heart when she took in the sad expression haunting his brown eyes.
Something troubled him deeply but Katana had no idea of his time as a pup with the witches. Perhaps he struggled with the process of transitioning from a wild animal to a domestic servant.
She sighed as she mused over the contemplations running through her mind. Jacques had always been a good friend as well as an ideal hunting partner, even if all they’d hunted up to now had been the werewolves kept on her family’s grounds for training.
If something about all these mysterious circumstances meant she could help him in some way, then Katana wanted to do that. She felt it was the least she owed him.
She patted Altair on the neck and hooked his drooping reins around the small horn on the front of the saddle, so he wouldn’t get his feet caught up in them.
Deciding to head back over to her forlorn looking friend, she turned around and started walking over. She’d barely taken three steps before a whooshing ball of flames sent her flying backwards, shrieking in surprise.
Altair snorted but barely moved. Some of the things he’d seen and heard during his ten years in this family would have given most horses a heart attack, but to Altair, they were just every day occurrences.
Jacques scurried back, licking at the few more singed hairs along his body.
Acting on instinct, Katana jumped to her feet and drew her tanto, unsure of any threat that may suddenly arise.
She then watched, in awe, as the most amazing thing she’d ever seen unfolded in front of her eyes.
The explosion settled into a circle of two-foot high burning orange flames that enclosed the area where Ashley had fallen.
Katana squinted her eyes, trying to make out Ashley’s body. It took her a few seconds to realise he wasn’t there. Her heart leaped. Where the hell had he gone?
From the centre of the circle rose a stunning yellow-orange bird. It flapped its huge wings slowly. As it rose higher and higher, a long-feathered tail followed, snaking from side to side.
By the time the arrow-shaped tip of its tail emerged from the flames, its head floated way up in the tree line, easily thirty feet high.
Then, as if someone had suddenly startled it, it gave one huge flap of its wings. A sharp clap, almost like a whip being cracked, echoed around the dull, evening sky. The bird then vanished up into the dying sunset.
Katana let her mouth fall wide open. She looked over at Jacques and said, “What the hell was that?”
“That was a phoenix.”
“But...oh my God.” She ran over to the circle, the flames now gone. All that remained of its existence was charred, smouldering grass. “Did you know that was going to happen?”
He blasted her with a look of stupidity. “What do you think?”
“I think you need to start talking.”
***
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Katana sat on the woodland floor with her back up against a tree, waiting for Ashley to arise from the dead.
Jacques had refused to say a word until ‘the show was over’ as he put it.
She sighed and tapped her fingers on her knee. Patience at a time like this was not something she wished to indulge in, however, she had little choice it seemed.
As if the universe answered her prayers, the ground in front of her started vibrating.
From the blackened ground, almost like something from beneath pushed it through, rose the body of the man she’d driven a knife into.
The flames returned in their heated might. Katana shuddered as the air around her changed, becoming charged with electricity. A rumble from overhead stole her attention to the skies.
She looked up to see the bird from earlier now divebombing at Ashely’s body. It moved at such a rate of knots, it resembled nothing but a yellow-orange streak of lightning.
When it hit his body, the flames went out with a whoosh, covering her in chills.
Ashley woke with a choking gasp, like he’d been electrocuted back to life. He took a second to glance around him and then gave Katana a big smile.
“So you do have what it takes after all. I’m impressed.”
“Excellent. Now maybe you can impress me and make my ‘pretty little head spin’ with all your secrets.”