Phoenix Feather (28 page)

Bryan glanced at them and shook his head. The Russian was dead. “Are you two all right?”

Aidan nodded, dazed. She looked at Trent to see if he was okay. He was staring at her with that same look of confusion, and possibly fear.

“I saw him put your hand in the fire,” he said.

“What?” Bryan exclaimed.

Both of Aidan’s hands were visible and obviously unhurt. She had the strong urge to deny it, to say Trent had gotten to her just in time, but she didn’t want to lie to him. She felt her heart break at the new way he looked at her. All her hopes and dreams shattered in that moment.

“Oh jeez,” Bryan muttered. “You’re hit.”

Aidan closed her eyes, not wanting to witness this anymore. She felt the trickle of a blood trail down her arm, but the gash from the bullet’s graze had already healed. She had no idea what she would do now, with her life, but in this moment she wanted nothing more than to bare her soul completely for the first and only time. She shook her head at herself even as she lifted the remainder of her sleeve to reveal smooth skin and the lightest pink scar that physical bodies always carried away as a souvenir.

She could feel their eyes boring into her. No one spoke.

“You’re not going to ask?” she finally said, unable to stand the silence anymore.

“I really don’t know what question to choose first,” Trent said. His voice came out strained.

“What is that?” Bryan asked, but he was looking past her, at the encased feather on the table.

Aidan felt rage well up within her. She grabbed the case and flung it into the fireplace. When the glass shattered, the fire surged with a roar as it consumed its sister flame.

“That was evidence!” Bryan shouted.

“That should never have been found!” Aidan felt hot, feverish. The stress threatened to be too much. It had been bad enough facing the terror of that man; the rescue wasn’t playing out all that bearable either.

“So he was looking for someone,” Bryan murmured in dawning comprehension.

“What?” Trent asked.

“The pattern over the past eighty, ninety years—it just seemed to suggest a search method, the way the geography and ages changed.”

“He’s been killing that long?” Aidan gasped. She had caused an obsession in a man that turned him into a serial murderer, and one that had passed to his son! She sank to the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“Aidan.” Trent knelt next to her. “What…? Can you explain any of this?”

“Make it quick,” Bryan said. “Backup will be here any minute, and I suggest you leave such things as that feather and getting shot out of your statements when I take them.”

Aidan looked at Trent. “Do you believe mythology started in fact?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “What?”

“What one creature do you know of who lives for a hundred years before bursting into fire and being born again?” She couldn’t keep the bite from her tone.

He narrowed his eyes. “I thought it was a thousand years.”

“Well, if I lived that long, someone would notice,” she retorted.

Trent stared at her as though he thought her crazy. She knew it was too wild to accept, but also that he had seen too much not to.

“That’s why the fire didn’t burn me.” She nodded to the dead man in the corner. “He knew that. He was testing me, to make sure I was what he was looking for.”

Bryan rubbed his chin, and Aidan could see that all the pieces of his case were finally falling into place. Oddly, he seemed to be having less of a hard time accepting it. Sirens grew louder in the distance.

“I’m going to take your statements now,” Bryan interrupted. “And then, Trent, take her home.”

Aidan told them everything that had happened from the time she left the restaurant to waking up chained to the wall. She told them exactly what the Russian had said to her, though left out her own part in the conversation. His words were just the ramblings of a psychotic without context. She told them he cut off her sleeve so he could see her arm burn in the fireplace, and that’s when Trent arrived. It was rather easy after that: since the suspect was dead, their conversation afterwards wasn’t part of the crime and didn’t need to be accounted for. A paramedic came in to look her over, but she explained away the blood on her arm as a bloody nose.

Since the killer drove Aidan’s car, it needed to be processed by the Crime Scene Unit, so she got in Trent’s car for him to take them back to the city. They remained quiet for most of the drive.

“Phoenix, huh?” he finally mumbled.

“I wanted to live as a human. There’s no place for the mythical bird in this world.”

“I could have spent the rest of my life with you and never really known who you are?”

Aidan swallowed the lump gathering in her throat. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“Amnesia,” he threw out.

“I took the form of an eleven-year-old. There was nothing before that to remember.” She looked over at him. “You have to understand that no one would believe me if I ever did tell the truth.”

Trent jerked the wheel and pulled over to the side of the road. His knuckles turned white in the vise-like grip he held on the wheel. “Yeah, I’m having a hard time with it myself.” He looked at her and shook his head. “But I know what I saw back there.”

“I meant it when I said that you were the best thing that has ever happened to me.” She wanted to reach out and touch him, but feared he’d recoil. “
Ever
. You’ve come the closest to truly knowing
me
.”

“Because I learned your secret?”

“No! Before that. I told you I loved dancing and you listened. I want to teach history, but before I met you, it was just a career to pass the time of this life.
You
made me see that it’s a part of who I am, that it could give me purpose. Two thousand years I’ve lived as a human and I couldn’t figure that out for myself?” Aidan shook her head. “The red bird is just a body. This,” she gestured to herself, “is just a body. Whether it’s this form or that one, I’m still these likes and dislikes, these feelings. I love Phoebe and Chris, and watching him die is tearing me apart. Yet, at the same time, being with you has given me a happiness I didn’t think possible. And I love you, more than—”

Trent reached over and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into him. He stopped her mouth with his. At first, she wanted to resist, wary of the thoughts running through his head as he pressed his lips hard against hers, almost to the point of pain, but she melted into him as she realized his embrace hadn’t changed, that his intensity was pure. He had been truly terrified of losing her back there. His touch didn’t feel anything like the frantic possessiveness of the Russian.

“I love you,” he breathed, and reached up to cradle her face in his hands. His gentle touch contrasted starkly with the ferociousness of his need.

Aidan let out a breath. “I’m not too freakish for you?”

“No.” He stroked her cheek tenderly. “I fell in love with the person you described. Knowing your secret just explains all those little mysteries about you, while at the same time opening up a bunch more.” He smiled at her. “I love the mysteries too.”

Aidan pulled him into a tight hug. “Thank you for rescuing me.”

Trent sighed. “If we’re going to bare secrets, I guess I should tell you that Bryan suspected you would become a target of a serial killer, and I was checking up on you this morning when you got off work.”

Aidan laughed and kissed him again. They lingered there for a moment, their lips barely touching, breathing in the scent of each other. “Every animal fears a cage,” she whispered. “But today, I feared lying to you more, because it would mean I am truly alone. Telling you and Bryan could have been the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but right then I wanted it more than anything, damned the consequences.”

“He won’t tell,” Trent said, his voice husky. He leaned his forehead against hers. He smelled of smoke, as always.

“I know.” She clutched part of his shirt in her fist. She breathed him in deeply, trying to calm the racing of her pulse. She wasn’t alone anymore. Trent’s heavy breathing matched hers. She wanted to complete the union, to truly become one with him, for their souls to mate. It took all her effort to lean away from him. “Can we go home please?” she whispered.

Trent nodded and squeezed her hand before putting the car into drive and pulling back out onto the road. He drove to Aidan’s apartment so she could get a new shirt and wash off the blood that had dried on her arm. Trent followed her upstairs and waited while she washed and changed.

Aidan couldn’t foresee all the implications of telling her secret. She moved around her bathroom restlessly, her mind feeling buzzed, her skin tingling as though she was plugged into an electrical outlet. Her brush with the fire seemed to have awakened her innate power, which normally receded into dormancy as she fully surrendered to a mortal way of life. The voices of the flames still rang in her ears and vibrated throughout her blood. The sensation was euphoric—and unusual, since the only other time her phoenix and human form crossed in such a way was her transformations, and then her energies were so depleted that it left her feeling weak and distinctly human.

She came back out and saw Trent holding the compass sundial Bryan had gotten her for Christmas.

“So it’s not just that they’re pieces of the past,” he mused. “They’re pieces of your past?”

Aidan nodded.

“And you remember it so well because you were there?”

She nodded again.

Trent put the compass down. “So you’ve already done everything, traveled everywhere.”

Aidan frowned and walked closer to him. “You make it all new again.” She reached up to touch his cheek. “Sharing it with you, seeing it through your eyes makes everything a new experience.”

He nodded as if he understood. “That’ll just take some getting used to.” He gestured to the phone and the blinking red light on the machine. “You have messages.”

Aidan pushed the playback button.

“Aidan, where are you?” came Phoebe’s panicked voice. “Your cell phone is off, and I can’t reach Trent. I know you were supposed to be together. You
need
to call me. Chris is in the hospital, and the doctors say it’s the end stage. I can’t do this. Where are you!” The message ended with a beep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Aidan half jogged down the hospital hallway in search of room 332. Trent was close on her heels. They had run to his car as soon as the answering message had finished, and Aidan had called Phoebe from the road. Aidan didn’t tell her why they had been unreachable or what had happened back in Edmonds.

Chris had collapsed again, only this time it wasn’t the flu. Phoebe had called an ambulance, and he had been admitted to the hospital’s ICU. The doctors said declines like this ended quickly. Aidan couldn’t form a coherent thought beyond that of finding the room he was in and wrapping Phoebe in her arms.

Trent grabbed her elbow and veered her to the left. There was the room; she could see Chris through a glass wall. He was hooked up to several monitors and IV lines, and had an oxygen mask over his face. He looked white, like he had gone swimming in the arctic, and Aidan had a hard time fathoming the drastic change that he had undergone so quickly.

She stumbled into the room. “Phoebe.”

Phoebe sat in the chair next to Chris, but jumped up and ran to Aidan. They wrapped each other in a hug, and Phoebe started crying.

“This is it,” she sobbed into Aidan’s shoulder.

After everything that had happened that morning, Aidan didn’t think she had it in her to endure another heart wrenching moment, especially not this one. She felt Trent’s arm under hers, and he led them both to the chairs to sit. He held each of their hands, and Phoebe wept until her tear ducts ran dry.

Aidan held onto Phoebe’s hand tightly and looked at Chris lying so still and soundless in the bed except for the steady beeping of his monitors. She could still hear the ringing in her ears. As she looked at Chris, the panic and despair drew back like a curtain, giving her a moment to think. The idea came like an epiphany, a clear whisper from somewhere else speaking through the vibrating chords inside her. Like the rays of sun breaking through rain clouds, it retreated just as quickly, and Aidan felt the weight of the decision that lay before her. An hour ago she had been faced with losing everything she loved, and now she faced giving it up willingly. She looked at Chris again, and then at Phoebe, eyes swollen and red, now heaving dry sobs.

Aidan shook Phoebe’s hand gently. “Hey. There’s a bathroom down the hall. Why don’t you wash your face with some cold water, okay? You’re not going to be able to see anything soon.”

Phoebe lifted her head and nodded slowly. Trent helped her stand, and Phoebe walked off like a ghost gliding aimlessly. Aidan waited until she had drifted around the corner and turned to Trent.

“I need your help.”

“With what?”

Aidan didn’t know how she was going to say it, how she would make him understand. “Chris doesn’t have to die. I can save him.”