Chapter 5 #2
I could sense the creature’s mounting terror as it seemed to detect the tactical teams approaching the facility. The electromagnetic interference from their equipment was making the corruption worse, destabilizing what little control the phoenix had left over its fire.
“Ben,” I gasped. “The phoenix is losing it. The interference from DAPI’s equipment — it’s making the corruption spread faster.”
“Can it escape?”
I reached deeper through our connection, feeling the phoenix’s desperation as if it were my own. It was still mobile, still capable of flight despite the corruption. But it was disoriented, struggling to find a direction that felt safe.
“It’s trying to,” I said. “But it doesn’t know where to go. The interference is everywhere.”
I closed my eyes and tried to send the phoenix a mental image of the forest, which offered at least a spurious sense of safety, since I had no idea exactly where we were going, only that we planned to take refuge in there somewhere.
My depleted state made the effort agonizing, and fresh blood poured from my nose.
But I felt the message reach the creature.
Understanding. Recognition. Hope.
“It’s coming to us,” I whispered. “Following the connection.”
A moment later, I sensed it — the phoenix launching itself into the air, its contaminated fire flaring as it struggled to stay aloft. Behind it, I could feel DAPI’s confusion as their target suddenly escaped.
But the phoenix’s flight was erratic, and the surge of corrupted fire it had released to propel itself into the air was having consequences. Dimensional energy spiked at the facility, wrong and twisted and hungry.
The explosion hit like a physical wave, even from two miles away.
I felt it through my electromagnetic senses first — a massive surge of dimensional energy as the phoenix’s corrupted fire punched a temporary breach between our world and somewhere else.
Then the shockwave reached us, a pulse of heat that rattled the SUV’s windows and sent a flock of birds erupting from the trees.
Ben fought to keep us on course as the ground trembled and the big Suburban lurched from side to side. “What the hell was that?”
“Dimensional breach. The phoenix’s fire surge opened a temporary rift.” I cut off as my senses picked up new signatures. Not human…and definitely not natural. “Oh, shit.”
Ben’s voice tightened with worry. “Sidney? What now?”
“Shadow creatures. The breach is pulling them through.” I gripped the dashboard, although I wasn’t sure that would be enough to keep me upright. “Ben, we need to keep moving. The phoenix escaped, but it left chaos behind.”
“Will it find us?”
At least I thought I had some confidence in answering that question. “Yes. It’s following our connection. But we need to get as far away as we can before DAPI regroups.”
He was right that I was in no condition to help. I was useless right then, barely able to sense beyond a few hundred yards, my abilities pushed so far past their limits that even breathing took concentration.
But the phoenix was coming, and shadow creatures were manifesting in the forest near the facility. DAPI was probably getting exactly the crisis they’d engineered.
The SUV lurched to a stop. Ben killed the engine and the lights, plunging us into darkness broken only by faint starlight filtering through the canopy.
“Why are we stopping?” I whispered.
“Because I thought I heard something.” He pulled a flashlight from his pack but didn’t turn it on. “Movement. Large…close.”
I reached out with my senses and immediately wished I hadn’t. The effort sent fresh blood flowing from my nose and made my vision blur again. But I found what Ben had heard.
Something was approaching through the trees. Something that radiated clean, pure electromagnetic energy — so different from the corrupted signals I’d been tracking that it felt like cool water after hours in the desert.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know this signature.”
The unicorn stepped into the small clearing where we’d stopped, and even in my depleted state, its presence made me want to weep.
The creature was exactly the same as I remembered from weeks ago — white coat that seemed to generate its own light, silver horn that hummed with dimensional energy, eyes that held intelligence and purpose and something like compassion.
Ben sat very still beside me. “That’s a unicorn.”
“That’s the unicorn. The one that drew you to Silver Hollow.” I opened the door and climbed out on shaking legs. “The one that brought us together.”
The unicorn approached slowly, its hooves silent on the forest floor. When it reached me, it lowered its head and pressed its horn gently against my forehead.
Clean energy flooded my system at once, not exactly healing the damage I’d done to myself, but stabilizing it. My vision cleared. The trembling in my hands eased, and the splitting headache that had been building since the drone incident faded to a manageable throb.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The unicorn pulled back and looked at me with those ancient dark eyes. Then it turned and knelt, a clear invitation.
“It wants you to ride,” Ben said from behind me. He’d gotten out of the SUV and was watching our interchange with open wonder. “Sidney, I think it’s offering to take you somewhere safe.”
I looked back at the SUV, then at the distant glow of fires from the facility, and finally at the unicorn patiently kneeling before me.
“What about you?” I asked. The unicorn was tough, but it didn’t seem quite sturdy enough to carry two full-grown adults.
“I’ll drive,” he said. “But the unicorn showed up for a reason, and I don’t think we should ignore it.”
He was right. The luminous creature had saved us from Victor Maplehurst, had appeared during the shadow stalker crisis to help us. Whatever its reasons now, it was clearly on our side.
I climbed onto the unicorn’s back, and its coat was warm beneath me, almost hot, like its body was generating more heat than normal biology would allow.
The moment I settled into place, I felt our electromagnetic fields synchronize — not the way Ben and I resonated, but something that felt far older, infinitely reassuring.
The unicorn rose smoothly to its feet and looked back at Ben.
“I’ll follow,” he said. “Just — keep her safe.”
Then we were moving, and the unicorn’s gait was so smooth that I barely felt the motion. It wove through the trees with impossible grace, avoiding obstacles I couldn’t see, navigating by senses I couldn’t begin to comprehend.
Behind us, I heard the SUV’s engine start up as Ben began to follow. But the unicorn was faster, and within minutes, we’d pulled ahead, moving deeper into old-growth forest where the trees grew so thick that starlight couldn’t penetrate.
I stretched my senses outward, checking for threats.
The tactical teams were still near the facility, dealing with the dimensional breach and the shadow creatures that had manifested there.
Rebecca Morse’s signature had moved several miles south — she was creating the diversion she’d promised, drawing attention away from our escape route.
And the phoenix —
The phoenix was dying faster now. The dimensional breach had accelerated the corruption, and I could feel its consciousness starting to fragment. Maybe twelve hours left.
Maybe less.
The unicorn must have sensed my distress, because it slowed and turned its head to look back at me. In the darkness, its horn glowed faintly silver, and I felt a pulse of reassurance through our connection.
Safe. Protected. Rest.
But I couldn’t rest. Not while the phoenix was dying, not while DAPI was hunting us. Not while —
The unicorn stopped in a clearing I didn’t recognize.
Trees formed a perfect circle here, their branches woven together overhead to create a living dome of fresh green leaves.
In the center of the clearing, a spring bubbled up from the ground, its water catching starlight and throwing it back in silver ripples.
“Where are we?” I asked.
The unicorn knelt again, and I slid from its back. The moment my feet touched the ground, I felt it — this place was saturated with dimensional energy. Clean energy, not corrupted, the kind that made my abilities sing instead of scream.
The SUV appeared at the edge of the clearing, Ben driving carefully over the rough terrain. He parked and climbed out, then looked in all directions so he could take in the circle of trees and the glowing spring.
“This is a sacred site,” he said in a murmur as he approached me. “Sidney, this is like the portal clearing. Dimensionally significant.”
The unicorn moved to the spring and lowered its head to drink. When it raised its muzzle, water dripped from its lips and seemed to evaporate into silver mist.
“It brought us here for a reason,” I said.
Ben pulled out his EMF reader and checked the displays. “The dimensional energy readings are off the charts, but it all seems stable. This place has been here for a very long time.”
I knelt beside the spring and cupped water in my hands. It was cold enough to make my fingers ache a little, and when I drank, I tasted something I couldn’t name — mineral and magic, ancient and alive.
The exhaustion that had been dragging at me began to ease immediately. No, it wasn’t gone or anywhere close to healed, but it was manageable.
“The water’s helping,” I said. “Ben, try it.”
He knelt beside me and drank, and I watched his expression shift from skepticism to wonder.
“It’s amplifying my electromagnetic sensitivity,” he said. “I can feel the dimensional barriers from here. See how thin they are, how close the other world is.”
The unicorn moved to stand between us and the clearing’s entrance, its body positioned like a guard. Through our connection, I was able to read its purpose.
It was protecting us, creating a space where we could rest and recover, could prepare for what came next.
The shadow creatures manifesting at the facility wouldn’t come here — this place was too saturated with clean dimensional energy.
And DAPI’s tactical teams wouldn’t find us because the electromagnetic interference from the spring would mask our signatures.
For a few hours at least, we were safe.
I sat heavily on a fallen log, and Ben moved immediately to examine me in the spring’s faint light.
“Your pupils are still uneven,” he said. “And you’re still bleeding.” He gently wiped blood from under my nose with his sleeve. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a semi and then run over a few more times for good measure.” I leaned against him, too tired to sit upright. “But I’m alive. We’re alive. That’s more than I expected an hour ago.”
His arm came around my shoulders, and our electromagnetic fields synchronized again. With the spring’s clean energy amplifying the effect, the resonance between us was stronger than ever.
“Lewis said the phoenix needs an anchor,” Ben said. Something about his tone was almost hushed, as if he thought we were in a holy place.
Maybe we were.
“Someone who can maintain the connection through the entire rebirth cycle,” he continued. “That’s going to be you.”
Don’t tease me with a good time, passed through my mind, and despite everything, I couldn’t help smiling a little. “I know.”
“And Lewis also said that your grandmother tried this once and spent three days unconscious afterward. She was at full strength when she attempted it.”
Was this Ben’s way of trying to dissuade me from doing what needed to be done? If that was the case, he needed to get ready for disappointment.
“I know that, too,” I replied. I closed my eyes.
The phoenix’s weakening heartbeat traveled to me across the miles, thready and uneven.
“But I don’t have a choice. If the phoenix dies while we’re still linked, the psychic backlash will shatter my mind.
And if it dies before completing the rebirth, the portal destabilizes.
My mother and grandmother will be cut off forever. ”
Ben shifted next to me, although I could tell he was being careful not to disturb my head where it lay against his shoulder. “There has to be another way.”
“If there is, we haven’t found it.” I opened my eyes and gazed at him, at the worry in his shadowed eyes and the tense set of his mouth. “And we’re running out of time to look.”
The unicorn made a soft sound, almost like a sigh. When I looked at it, I saw understanding in those ancient eyes. It knew what I was facing. It knew the cost.
And it was here to help me survive it.
“The spring,” I said, a sudden thought occurring to me. “Ben, what if the spring’s energy could help anchor me? Maybe provide stability during the rebirth process?”
He was quiet for a moment, considering the question.
“Lewis said the anchor needs electromagnetic sensitivity and the ability to hold the pattern of what the phoenix should be. You have both. But the strain of maintaining that connection for hours — ” He shook his head.
“The spring’s energy might help. But it won’t be enough. Not when you’re already this drained.”
I knew he was right. I could feel it in my bones, in the way my hands still trembled despite the spring’s restorative effects.
I was going to attempt something that had nearly killed my grandmother when she was at full strength. And I was going to do it while already nearly wiped out, already damaged, already pushed past every safe limit.
The odds weren’t good.
But when I reached out with my senses and felt the phoenix’s dying heartbeat, when I thought about my mother and grandmother trapped on the other side of the portal…when I looked at Ben’s face and saw the fear he was trying to hide —
The odds didn’t matter.
“We should rest while we can,” I told him. “Because once we start this, there’s no stopping until it’s finished.”
He nodded and pulled me closer. The unicorn settled near the spring, its body a warm presence in the darkness.
And there, in that ancient grove saturated with clean dimensional energy, with shadow creatures manifesting miles away and DAPI closing in and a phoenix dying slowly through our connection —
I needed to let myself rest.
Just for a few hours.
Just enough to face the impossible one more time.