Raines of Fire: The Alexa Raines Chronicles (5 page)

“Now, I’m calling Andy and I don’t want to hear any arguments.” Alexa said, pulling out her phone from the pants she had dropped on the bedroom floor. 

“I don’t fucking want And
ie, whoever she is—“

“You’ll barely see her,” Alexa said.  “She’s good at being unseen—“

“I don’t want her here!” Screamed Felicia and violently threw a pillow at Alexa.

Felicia was feeling that Alexa was acting the same way that she always did, believing that she was some kind of fragile flower that would break from just being looked at. Alexa didn't know that Felicia was stronger than she gave her credit for, especially now after living through Alexa's death, and coming out on the other side still intact. This was not the same woman that Alexa had known so many years ago.  Felicia was more in control of her life, and able to make hard decisions on her own.

“
Andie won’t be here,” Alexa said, exasperated.  “She’ll be around, but trust me, if you see her, it’s because I told her to let you see her.  This woman is good at being invisible.  She’ll just watch over you, and protect you.  Okay?”

“I don’t need protection,” Felicia said.  She reached behind her back, and
with a glint of metal later, a knife—with an edge sharp enough to perform surgery, long enough to cut a man from ear-to-ear—materialized in her hand. 

“Do you know how to use that?”
  Alexa asked with a smirk on her face.

Felicia wavered.  Alexa sighed and pulled out her phone.  “And
ie, I need you to—Andie?” The silence on the other end of the phone didn’t
feel
right.  “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.  Gotta ditch, boss,” Andy’s voice said. 

“What’s the matter?”

“Got made.”

“You got made?  You never get made.”

She could practically hear And
ie’s shrug in the silence on the other end of the phone.  “Couldn’t find the guy, so I broke in as you said to do.  Everything was going right, and then these two guys—boss, it was weird.  They didn’t seem to mind that I’d broken in or was in the process of checking out Edgar.  When they found out I was working for you, they even seemed—well, happy.”

“You told them you were working for me?”

“Had me at gunpoint, told me to empty out my pockets.”  Alexa had to remind herself that Andie was her only field agent who didn’t have any defense skills. 
I gotta fix that soon
, she thought.  Andy continued, “Must have found a business card.  They gave me everything back, though.  Drove me around in circles for a while, dropped me off at some truck stop in the middle of nowhere, and told me not to come back.  And no, I can’t get to you, now.  I need to find a damned trucker or someone else that won’t try to rape me to take me back to the city.”

Alexa sighed.  “Right.  Get Michael on it.”  She hung up and turned back to Felicia, who was leaning against her kitchen counter, scowling.  “Looks like you lucked out,” she said.  “And
ie’s stuck in some backwater truck stop for the time being.” 

“So leave.”

“Can’t.  I’ve gotta keep an eye on you.”

Felicia clenched her teeth.  “I said, ‘Get out.’  Don’t make me call
the cops,” she snarled through clenched teeth.

Alexa adjusted her stance slightly, rising a fraction of an inch so that her weight was on the balls of her feet.  “Who’s going to make me?” she asked.  “You?”

Felicia hesitated.  “This is trespassing,” she said, her voice low knowing full well that she couldn't fight Alexa, but that didn't mean she couldn't make her position very clear.

“I’ll break every law in the book if it means I can watch over you,” Alexa said.

“How do you even know I’m next?” Felicia demanded. 

“I don’t,” Alexa said.  “But I’m pretty sure that Edgar—
“she stopped, uncertain of how to explain what it was, exactly that she’d felt about him.  “If he gets you, then he’ll use you to get me.”  Alexa knew that that was especially true now with how they had resumed their decade old relationship.

“You don’t even know
its Edgar!” Felicia cried, exasperated.   She grabbed Alexa’s hand and pulled.  “Come on, get out.”  She could be just as stubborn as Alexa, and she was showing her strength of character, not allowing Alexa to see just how scared she really was inside.

Alexa rooted herself to the floor.  She wasn’t budging.  Felicia sighed loudly, and pulled harder.  “What the
hell,” Felicia muttered, through gritted teeth.  “Alexa, please, I told you—“

“And I told you I’m not leaving, not until I’ve got someone I can trust on
watch over you.”

Felicia, out of frustration and anger, lashed out.  Or at least she tried to.  Alexa blocked the slap
with her forearm and grabbed her hand and twisted Felicia’s arm around hers.  “Good,” Alexa said, “for a beginner.” 

She pushed Felicia away and adjusted her stance again.  “Again,” she said.

Felicia blinked in confusion.  Then she rushed Alexa, flipping the switchblade open as she went.  Alexa wasn’t worried.  Like all amateurs, Felicia flinched as she went to make the cut, and Alexa slid out of the way of the blade easily enough, trapped Felicia’s forearm against her body, and stepped behind Felicia to wrap her arm around her throat.  “Now, you see,” she said, softly, “how little it would take to subdue you.”

She let Felicia go.  Felicia wheeled around, angry and humiliated, tears welling up in her eyes.   “What the
hell are you?” she shrieked. She still couldn't believe everything that she had witnessed, but now she could see the Alexa was a formidable opponent for anybody that stood in her path.

Alexa caught herself before she could lie, as was her habit whenever people asked her what she did
for a living.  She’d been an aerobics instructor, a trail guide, a translator for the few seconds that the question mattered.  But she had promised Felicia she would tell her everything.  “I’m an adjuster,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation. 

“What the hell is an adjuster?”

“I take care of situations that may or may not be legal,” she said, carefully.

“You kill people?”

“I have.”  She didn’t tell Felicia that she’d been killing people for four-thousand years.  “If it makes you feel better, it’s not my favorite thing to do.” 
Torturing bastards who deserve it, on the other hand
—but she didn’t finish the thought.  “And my lawyer hates it as well—he’s the one who’s got to deal with all of the legal ramifications.”

Felicia nodded stiffly.  “Okay, so that’s what you do. 
What
are you?”

“I’m—I’m a—“

And, like so many times before, Alexa couldn’t answer.  It wasn’t that she didn’t know—she was some kind of phoenix, who could be killed but would always come back to life.  It was that she couldn’t explain how that happened—or indeed, how any of her abilities—sensing other life signatures, her slightly superhuman speed and reflexes, her ability to use magic—had come about.  She only vaguely remembered her life after her transformation, being taken in by the witch, or faerie—whatever it was that taught her the secrets of the arcane.  There was only one thing that she still clearly remembered of that time—the feeling of her soul, electrified in agony and ecstasy, as she writhed in the bonds of fire.  Her life was not something that could be easily explained, even if they weren’t facing an unseen killer. 

“Does anybody else know?”

“I told Michael—he needed to know!” Alexa protested, before Felicia could explode with disbelief.  “Otherwise he wouldn’t know—“

“You’re a piece of shit,” Felicia snarled.  “Get out.  Now.”  Angry at being left out, as if she was a second thought, she just couldn't allow Alexa to think that she could be so easily manipulated with one more roll in the hay.

Alexa sighed.  “I’ll be on your balcony,” she said.  “Don’t let anybody in.”

Felicia scowled and stormed into her bedroom.  Alexa drifted out onto her balcony, and shut the door behind her.  The night was cold.  Alexa wasn’t really a smoker, but if there was any night that called for a cigarette, this would definitely be one.  She patted her pockets, hoping that maybe she might have a half-empty pack in one of her pockets.  She didn’t find a pack, but she did find a cancer stick that had been broken in half.  I am immortal, my body self-repairs. 
Ha-ha, cancer
, she thought, as she lit up.  The hit of nicotine sent a wave of calm through her. 

As she stood there, she remembered the legendary fights that
she and Felicia had gotten into, and how explosive the makeup had been. It made her light-headed to think of that body inside the apartment, and how easily it was to fall into the same bad habits.

The apartment complex was dark, and silent.  A few buildings away, someone was playing old jazz, and down below, a couple was arguing as they walked past her.  A cat jumped onto a garbage can, knocking off the lid.  It was so normal feeling that for a moment Alexa couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that anything bad could happen.  What could destroy the myth of the American Dream,
the idea that all people can have happy and successful lives if they work hard
?

As she took one final drag she thought maybe she should call Michael.  Or Lila.  Get someone over here to watch over Felicia so that she could hunt down Edgar, the imposter.  Whatever he was—it didn’t matter.  Alexa’s main concern was whether he could be killed.  Assuming, of course, that he was the killer.  But she didn’t see who else would be in a position to know, or care.  Ordinary members of the group would be like Felicia—unnerved by the killings, not knowing how to make sense of it.  But Edgar had been—

A scream cut through her thoughts.  Alexa swore and turned to head back inside the apartment—

The door was locked.  It took only a moment for her to ram her elbow through the glass, but it might as well have been an eternity for all the time it took
to re-enter the room and find that Felicia had disappeared.  Alexa could feel the strange, pretending-to-be-human presence lingering behind, meaning Edgar had been there, but she could no longer sense Felicia’s energy signature. 

It felt a little like playing
the child’s game of hot-and-cold—Alexa stepped, paused, focused, and the lingering sensation grew stronger or weaker depending on what direction she went in.  She was able to divine that Edgar had taken Felicia out the window of the bedroom, and (after running down the stairs and outside) they’d gone down the street. 

It was a trap, obviously.  A trap she couldn’t help but enter.  It was her
own damn fault for not having vetted this client more carefully.  She was the one who’d walked out on Felicia.  She should have known what Edgar was the moment she laid eyes on him.  Alexa had a lot of sins to atone for.  She followed the spectral trail, wondering when the moment of judgment would come.

Five miles later, in the middle of Brown County State Park, Alexa came upon a nineteenth century farmhouse.  The farmhouse itself was genuine, as it had belonged to
a family who’d been active in the Underground Railroad back in the 1800’s.  During the summer, the park service hired actors to play the family and the runaways for people to gawk at, and Alexa might have thought it cute but the recreations never did the time periods justice, for all the research the actors did.  Nothing like having firsthand experience, she sighed to herself.

The trai
l went cold here, so she knew Felicia had to be somewhere on the farm.  She tried to remember details of the scrying, but there weren’t that many details to be had.  Janet had been kept in a room with a dirt floor—but the barn was empty.  Alexa tried the farm house, but again there was nothing.

There were no other buildings, just the outhouse and the smokehouse, neither of which afforded the amount of space that she’d seen in the scrying.  Still, for the sake of completeness, Alexa went to the buildings and peeped inside each one.  The outhouse, thankfully, was no longer in use.  The smokehouse was still functional—the place smelled of burnt wood and bacon—but there was again, nothing to see.  There was, though, a good ham hock hanging from the rafter, and Alexa, feeling a bit hungry, went inside to cut a slice with her knife. 

Much to her surprise, her boots clunked heavily on wood.  A trap door—of course there would be a trap door.  Indiana was on the Underground Railroad, after all.  Alexa groaned at her own shortsightedness and lifted up the door.  There was a faint hint of blood in the cool air that rose out of the hole in the ground—and, in case there was any doubt of what was at the other end of the tunnel, she heard a faint, echoing scream.

Alexa loosened her
knives and unbuttoned her holster.  She didn’t know what Edgar was, and she didn’t know if knives and bullets alone could handle it, but she was certain that this would be one hell of a fight. 

The tunnel was dank and smelled of wet earth.  She kept close to the walls, all too aware of how little room there was to maneuver if someone did surprise her.  There had to be a door at some point—the scream she’d heard had been too muffled for it to have come directly down the tunnel—but the distance from the trapdoor unnerved her.
How could there be such a long tunnel?
  But mostly, she had to fight the urge to run headlong down the tunnel to rescue Felicia.  She was counting on Edgar wanting to take her alive, and only torturing Felicia to get her there faster.  But it didn’t make it any easier to listen to her scream.

At long last she came upon the door.  She was sure that she’d tripped some kind of
magical alarm, some charm or hex that alerted Edgar to her presence, so how she chose to enter was a moot point.  She took out her gun—a SIG—and burst through the door in a rain of splinters, instinctively firing a single shot into Edgar, even though she didn’t think it would do much good. 

Edgar, much to her surprise, went down like a normal person, and Alexa began to wonder if maybe she had been wrong about him, after all. 

Felicia had been stripped naked and suspended from the ceiling by her thumbs.  Her body was splotched with angry red welts where he’d whipped and beaten her, and there were third-degree burns all over her back.  Her nipples were raw and bloody, and as Alexa cut down Felicia and eased her to the floor, she could tell that Felicia had been sexually abused.  Anger rose in her, hot and fast.  

Felicia let out a wail.  Alexa was suddenly aware of Edgar’s presence again, and she dropped to the floor just as he cut the air where her neck had been.  Alexa swung her legs up and around, kicking Edgar’s hands but failing to trip him—he’d already begun to move away.  She stood up. Edgar rushed her.  Alexa dropped to one side—

And he moved with her, and slammed one fist into her jaw and another into her stomach.  Pain exploded in her head.  He grabbed her hair while she was reeling.  She tried to flip him, but he’d anticipated that, too, and moved away from her.  “Now, now,” he whispered.  His voice, once so bright and chipper, now sent chills down her spine.  “What are you doing, disrupting the fun Felicia and I were having?”

Alexa pulled out
the knife she had concealed in her boot and stabbed him in the gut, opening him from his balls to this throat.  Much to her surprise, though, there was no gushing of blood, no squelch of spilled guts.  Just a hiss, as though she’d popped a balloon.  She jumped away, horrified. 
What the fuck was this?

“You bitch,” he sputtered.  “Do you have any idea how much that
hurts
?”

“
Been there.  Done that.  So I can imagine,” she retorted, as she watched, to her horror, the cut slowly close.  He shook himself, and dropped into a fighter’s crouch again. 

“Bring it on, little bird. 
My companions and I would love to tenderize that sweet body of yours before we really get down to work—“

Alexa circled away from Felicia, her eyes never leaving
Edgar.  His eyes—they were now solid black and his tongue seemed obscenely long as he licked his thin—now almost nonexistent—lips.  Alexa sent her mind into a trance, of sorts, trying to dredge up the memories from the sorcerer-witch being she’d lived with, served, and studied under.  There were a few spells she could try, but there was no time to prepare them for use! Edgar rushed her again, catching her neatly and knocking her to the floor, pinning her down.  

“Do you know how long it’s been since I met someone who was actually a challenge?” he hissed. 

Thousands of years of survival had shown Alexa a dozen ways to get out from under someone, but that presumed that she had a limb free.  Somehow, Edgar had managed to pin down both her arms and legs.  “Hmm, you’re not as good as I thought you were,” he said, bringing his head down to sniff at her large breasts.  Alexa swallowed her indignation and waited until he moved up to lick her ear—

And slammed her forehead into his nose.  He
screamed and flailed, and she was on her feet in a flash.  This time she didn’t wait for him.  She went straight for his face again, kicked him in the stomach, the balls—though  she wasn’t sure it would do her much good, since he was clearly not human underneath.  He shied away from her blows, but she wasn’t
hurting
him. 

Edgar rushed her unexpectedly, using his weight against her, and pressed her against the wall, again, somehow contriving to pin her down so that she was rendered immobile.  “You’re good,” he whispered.  “And so hot.  How tight are you down there?  Have you ever—don’t even think about that,” he admonished her, as she tried to butt him in the head again. 

He pressed his lips against hers, slipping his tongue—far too long for it to be an actual human’s tongue—down her throat.  She gagged, and bit down.  He yelled, “You bitch!” and slapped her, but not before she’d gotten a taste of his blood—

A bowl, filled with ashes—and her
fiery blood.  A whiff of sage smoke in the air.  A hand on her shoulder.  Her own hands, saying the words as she added the sacred earth to the bowl, a lock of her hair, and the pure water from the silver pitcher.  Setting everything on the fire. Watching it all burn.  Feeling the flames in her blood.  Naming her secret name, whispering it to the flames
.

She was reminded of who she was.  She whispered her name to herself, and the flames in her blood grew and she herself began to burn.  Edgar’s face lit up.  “Yesssss!  I knew it!  You are one of
them
!”

She spoke words that came to her as they would from a dream, and she felt herself grow stronger and lighter, becoming a being of
incandescent fire and fury.  Edgar shed the skin he wore, revealing himself to be a sliver of pure darkness—a dark so complete it was a blistering cold.  He slid against her, bringing her back to her human body, freezing it, killing her slowly. 
There’s nothing you can do
,
sweet bird
. She wasn’t sure if he spoke the words, or if she only thought them. 

It wasn’t until he was freezing the last breath from her body that he realized his mistake—in taking her flame, he’d consumed her—and she was a phoenix. She would rise again, and now that she knew her true name—

“I obliterate the darkness with my light,” she murmured, remembering the oath she’d taken.  Inside Edgar, nothing could live for very long, but just a spark was enough—a spark of flame shattered the darkness, brought something into the void—and before she died again, she heard his agonized screams. 

When
Alexa came to again, she was on the floor, almost completely drained of energy.  This was odd to her—she’d never resurrected so quickly before, but then she heard Felicia’s death rattle, and she knew what’d happened:  her body, searching for the energy she needed to live had forcefully taken everything it could from Felicia, which had already been draining away since the start.  “No,” Alexa croaked.  She had not fought off a demon and died just to lose Felicia forever.  But Alexa couldn’t move.  Her own limbs were still cold and stiff from having been kissed by whatever the hell Edgar was.  She did the only thing she could—she opened her heart to Felicia, and poured her life giving fire into her.