Chapter 4
FOUR
PHOENIX
I dozed off last night in the plump, worn chair that looked like it was covered more in blankets than any of the original upholstery, which had been worn down to bare seams long ago.
Not the most comfortable place to sleep, but I wasn’t about to climb in beside my patient, and the dirt floor looked a little too hard-packed for my liking.
Something startles me awake and I leap to my feet, all senses on alert. Immediately, I look toward the bed, but Layden’s not there.
Then I take in the noise that woke me. Outside the window, there’s a rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwacking noise.
Frowning, I get low and move in a crouch for the window and then stand full to my feet when I see Layden, shirtless in the morning fog that settles over the dewy ground, chopping wood.
And he’s, uh… different, to say the least.
It’s as if some magical transformation has taken over him.
He’s not skin and bones anymore.
Instead, as he lifts the ax high overhead, large muscles bulge as he swings down with incredible force, splitting a huge log he’s got set up on an even bigger stump.
My eyes travel down his body. His pecs are round and firm, leading to a six-pack of abs.
The muscles in his shoulders ripple in the dancing morning light, but I also catch a glimpse of the stumps still sticking out his back—unchanged amidst the rest of his transformation.
His hot skin steams as he stands up after splitting another log into pieces.
I head to the door and push it open, wanting to demand to know what’s going on, at the same time realizing that he didn’t use his newfound strength to leave when he obviously could have.
But he stayed. He stayed, and he’s chopping wood.
I blink when I get to the bottom of the cottage stairs, looking up at him. He’s taller than me, I realize for the first time. Before, he was always bent over, as I had to all but carry him.
But now I see that, no, he’s tall. He stands about a head over me, in fact. I can only blink at him, my mouth dropping open when it hits me—his new physique isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
He’s shaved his beard and combed his wild hair back.
I can finally see his face.
And he’s absolutely stunning. A face like a chiseled god’s.
When he sets the ax down and looks at me, I’m completely dumbfounded. I’d had something on my mind to say to him, to ask him, but I suddenly can’t conjure a single thought. I’m completely ridiculous, but I can’t help but just stand there.
“I apologize,” he says, “but I smelled the meat you had cooking all night and came out earlier. And I, well, I finally felt really hungry, so I ate it all.”
I blink out of my momentary stupor and look toward the rudimentary iron smoker beside the cabin where I laid out the deer meat last night and set it smoking. “Oh.” And then I really hear his words, and my head snaps back to him. “You ate all of it?”
His cheeks are already ruddy from the wood-chopping and cold morning air, but I swear they get a little pinker. “I didn’t mean to, I was just so hungry—”
“No, no, it’s totally fine. We can always get more. It’s great that your appetite is back. And it’s obviously helped.” I gesture vaguely at his chest. “You look… um. Different.”
He glances down at himself and, as if only then realizing his bare chest is exposed, reaches for a flannel shirt he tossed near the big stack of chopped wood and tugs it on, quickly stabbing a few buttons through holes. “I heal fast.”
I scoff at that as I walk toward him. “Yeah. Understatement. Apparently, you needed meat and a lot of it. Come here; your buttons are all out of whack.”
I reach to undo the few he’d managed, line the sides of the shirt up correctly, and start to button it again. I only realize that my knuckles are occasionally brushing against the skin of his abdomen when I hear little hisses of air escape his mouth.
Which makes me suddenly hyperaware of how close we’re standing.
And that this man… or whatever he is… is most definitely no longer some convalescing patient I can pretend I’m Florence Nightingale for.
“What now?” I whisper after I have his buttons done correctly all the way up to his collarbone. And why am I still holding onto his shirt? I make myself let go and step back, then force a smile I don’t feel. I guess he’ll go his way, and I’ll go mine, is what I expect him to say.
But instead, he says, “First, I’ve got to get you another buck to replace the one I just ate.”
“Oh.” I laugh with surprise. “Well, it was mostly for you.”
“But you need to eat.” He looks deadly serious as he says this.
I shrug. “I’ll just go hunt another deer. It’s not a big deal.”
He shakes his head. “I ate your deer. I should go hunt the next one.”
I laugh at his bravado. “You’re barely on your feet again.” But I can already see the next protest on his lips.
I’m about to cut him off, but his suggestion surprises me. “Why don’t we do it together?”
I blink, a little taken aback. I’m not a together type of person. I don’t do things with people. But I also see the determination in his eyes.
“Fine.” I frown and start striding ahead. At least then you’ll see why it makes sense for me to do the hunting.”
I glance over my shoulder only once to see if he’s following and keeping up. His clear, gray eyes are inquisitive, but he nods and starts jogging after me.
For someone I’ve only seen in bed for days, it’s astonishing to see him up and moving again.
Half of me hoped that the wood chopping would have laid him out enough that he’d turn back once he saw the pace I was setting.
But he easily keeps up with me. I even get the feeling he could go at much greater speeds, which annoys me.
I decide to speed up. I was taking it easy on him.
Still, he matches me. So I go even faster, all but flying through the woods now while still being careful to make minimal sound.
He’s still right there beside me.
When I finally stop and look at him, I struggle not to drop my jaw in shock. He’s told me what he is, but I wasn’t quite sure I believed it. I mean, all I saw was a man with stumps at his shoulders and some sparks at his hands, which could have been a magician’s trick for all I knew.
But we just moved at supernatural speed, and he didn’t even look winded.
Instead, he just motions with his fingers as if he thinks we’re upwind from the deer and need to position ourselves better.
I want to smack him or tell him that, duh, I know. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m a hunter in a far more primal meaning of the word. And now that I’ve locked onto my prey…
I close my eyes and lock in on the heartbeat of the beast. I can also feel Layden beside me, impatient and sure that I’m doing this all wrong.
Oh, ye of little faith. I can’t help the small smile from quirking my lips.
This surprises me because it’s been a long, long time since any of my power brought me much joy at all.
But I think it might actually be fun to watch the look on his face as…
I stretch outwards beyond my body, listening and feeling for the heartbeats hiding in the woods. There are so many, many living things. I even feel the slight pulse of the sap in the ancient trees; everything is so alive out here. It can be overwhelming if I focus on it too long.
Then again, I’m used to hunting in cities, where the chaotic, discordant pounding of human heartbeats all but chokes me.
Here, it’s far more harmonious and easier to separate the large beating hearts from the small. For instance, I can feel four beating hearts in the herd of deer nearby and easily pick out the largest.
My eyes fall closed, and silently, I call to it.
Sometimes, I think of myself as a siren of the blood. For when I call, they come. Leaving family and any others behind, willingly, any and all will walk to their doom.
I can feel Layden’s astonishment as the buck walks out of the woods, antlers briefly catching on a bush before he shakes free to come to us. He walks right up to us as if he would eat out of our hands and then lays himself at my feet, head bowed.
I bend down beside him and murmur thanks for his sacrifice. “Thank you, my beautiful one.”
He snorts in response, a low chuff. I run my fingers through his fur, and he snuggles closer to my thighs. They all love me right before the end.
“That’s right,” I murmur. “You’ve done well, my beautiful one. Now you can rest.”
Then, I slit his throat with the knife I had hidden up my sleeve. Soundlessly, his head drops to the forest, his wise eyes looking up at me lovingly as the life drains out of them.
Only once the creature goes entirely limp do I sigh and stand, readying myself to dress the meat.
It’s then that I remember the other beating heart beside me and look up to see Layden watching me. For the first time since I’ve met him, his eyes are wide. And wary.
“Does it only work on animals?” he asks.
Ah. So he’s not just pretty. He’s smart, too.
I stand with my shoulders held high as I tell him the truth. “It works on anything with a beating heart.”
I sense he’s about to step back, but he stands still. Dammit. He’s brave, too. “Did you do that to me when we first met?”
I stare him straight in the eye. “I tried. It didn’t work. I told you to stay, and you didn’t stay.”
Since I’m looking at him, I can see the moment his lips tip up and his whole demeanor lightens. “Good,” is all he says, and then he reaches down for the hind legs of the buck to help me string him up and dress him.
We walk back to the cabin, Layden dragging the buck by the legs.
We’re walking slow, like we’re just out taking a stroll in the woods.
If it weren’t for the lingering scent of blood that always has my teeth on edge, it might almost be romantic.
Blood is such an old smell to me. The first one I ever knew, it feels like.
My oldest memory. I try to shake it off and focus on the forest around me, the mid-morning light filtering down through the tall branches above.
“How did you learn how to do that?” Layden asks. “Or is it something you could always do?”
“I could always do it.”
“How?”
“I just could.”
“I mean. . .” He waves a hand. “What are you?”
I sigh. Of course it was going to come to this. But what I am comes with too complicated a history to explain. Right now or maybe ever.
“I have an affinity for blood,” I say instead, holding back some branches so he can walk past. “It calls to me, and like I said, anyone with a beating heart, I can…”
“Control,” he says.
“Coerce,” I supply instead.
“Can you make people do things they don’t want to do?”
I shrug, looking ahead. “They want to do whatever I ask.” Quieter, I add, “Just because I’ve asked it.”
“You said you weren’t turned. But… do you drink blood?”
“No. And what is this? Twenty questions?”
When I look back at him, he looks a little confused. “Do I only get twenty? Why?”
It’s such an absurd question I can only bust out laughing.
He hurries forward. “It’s just that I want to know everything about you.”
I frown, looking at him over my shoulder. Was I wrong about the compulsion? Did it just take a little while to take effect on him?
“Stay there, and don’t follow me anymore,” I order.
He pauses, looking confused, and for a second, my heart cinches up in fear. Oh no, it’s true. Whatever kind of being he is, it just took longer for it to work, and now he’s just as mindless as everyone else I’m surrounded by—
I start to hurry away from him, frustrated and infuriated by the tears suddenly biting at my eyes. What the fuck? I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in fourteen years, and now twice in a week?
“You didn’t actually think that would work, did you?” His voice comes from far closer than I would have thought.
I jump and spin around. Layden is there, somehow able to move even more silently through the woods than I usually do. “How did you—?”
“I don’t envy you,” he says, his words soft and those damn eyes of his seeing far more than they should. “It must be hard living in a world where you can’t trust people’s motives for even wanting to be around you.”
I swing back away from him. Did he see the almost tears in my eyes? I feel too many things I can’t sort out at once, and I don’t want him to be able to see my face while I try. And why the hell am I so happy that my compulsion didn’t work on him after all?
This man is nothing to me. What the hell am I doing?
Playing in the woods and pretending my real life isn’t behind me, ready and waiting for the second I leave this forest?
This isn’t real. This man might as well not be real for as much as he could ever fit into my life.
A thought which appalls me. Was I really even considering that there could be a place for him?
Was I actually fucking stupid enough to start wanting something? Wanting him?
I swallow hard against all these unfamiliar, conflicting feelings. I saw where wanting got me the first time. So, I force my voice to be strong. “It seems like you’re back to full strength. Where will you go after this? What’s next for you?”
Silence is his only reply.
I don’t look back at him, just keep walking. I can’t hear him, but the occasional swish of a leaf or bush behind me tells me he’s still following.
“Layden?” I finally ask as the small cabin comes back into view. Still, I don’t turn my head. “Did you hear me? What will you do now that you’re strong again?”
“I think I still need a few days of rest,” he finally says. “To get my feet under me and plan what comes next.”
I nod, relieved that he won’t leave immediately. Because I’m a hypocrite, wanting what I can’t have.