Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I woke late that afternoon and stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling for a moment before I remembered where I was — Rebecca’s safe house, the only refuge we could currently trust. My body ached in ways that had become grimly familiar over the past three days.
The little house was sparse and utilitarian at best, but at least it had an actual couch instead of cold stone.
Unfortunately, the constant awareness that Ben was miles away in DAPI custody made even the marginal comfort feel like a betrayal.
I should have been suffering along with him.
But I wasn’t the only one resting in the small, dim room.
The phoenix had settled near the cabin’s woodstove, its corrupted fire casting orange-and-shadow light across the worn floorboards.
How it had gotten there, I wasn’t sure, but I guessed it had somehow managed to follow Rebecca and me to our current hiding place.
She must have brought it in and made sure it was comfortable while I was still in a slumber that might as well have been a coma.
Even half-dead and contaminated, the phoenix radiated enough warmth to make the space bearable. From it, I sensed an exhaustion that matched my own — two wounded creatures hiding while our enemies regrouped.
I pushed myself upright and fought a wave of dizziness.
Although I’d regained some energy while I slept, I knew it wasn’t nearly enough, that I was maybe at forty-percent capacity at best. That might be sufficient for minor use without too much cost, like sensing electronics within my limited range.
It definitely wasn’t enough to mount a rescue operation against a fortified DAPI facility.
Not even close.
Rebecca had been in the kitchenette making tea, but she turned as soon as she heard me stir. “You’re awake.” She came over with a mug in each hand and gave one to me. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a tactical team.” As I’d thought, that was tea in the mug, not coffee. Probably better that way. Strong coffee would have been too much of a shock to my system. I drank some of the tea. Darjeeling, warm and welcoming in my throat. “How long was I out?”
“Almost twelve hours. It’s nearly seven.” She settled onto a chair near the couch where I’d slept, her expression grim in the phoenix’s firelight. “We need to talk about the situation.”
I nodded, bracing myself for the worst. The “situation,” as she called it, was that Ben was captured, the phoenix was dying, and I was too exhausted and wrung out to do anything meaningful about either problem.
“I have a contact inside DAPI,” Rebecca said.
Her tone was as clipped and cool as if she was delivering a report at FBI headquarters, but I thought maybe it was better that way.
If she’d been worried and overwrought rather than dispassionate, I might have been freaking out even more than I already was.
“He reached out two hours ago with some intel.”
“Contact?” This sounded like the first positive news I’d heard in a long while. “Who is it?”
She lifted her mug of tea to her lips and took a sip. “That’s not important. What’s important is that the artificial portal is already active.”
My stomach began to churn, and I wondered if drinking tea with nothing to buffer it had been such a good idea after all. “Active? As in, actually functioning?”
“As in siphoning energy from the global portal network. Every supernatural site on Earth is being affected.”
She leaned down and set her mug on the floor, then got up and crossed the room to her makeshift communications setup.
After retrieving the tablet she’d left there, she came back and sat down again, then tilted its screen toward me.
The charts I saw on the display were complex, and I could barely process them through the fog of exhaustion that still clung to me.
“My contact says the portal has about six hours of stable operation with the phoenix essence they’ve already harvested,” she went on. “After that, they have to shut down and let the natural network compensate.”
Six hours. Not a very long span of time, but certainly long enough to prove the technology worked.
And long enough to kill every natural portal on the planet if they kept pushing.
I had to know, even if it was news I wouldn’t like very much. “What about Ben?”
“He’s alive and being held in comfortable quarters while Rosenthal tries to recruit him.” Her expression softened slightly. “She’s giving him until tomorrow morning to decide. After that….”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence, but I did it for her anyway.
“Enhanced interrogation.” I closed my eyes and fought the surge of rage and fear that rose within me.
I wanted to hit something, wanted to scream, but I forced myself to breathe through it, to push the emotion down where it couldn’t cloud my thinking.
Ben would be subjected to DAPI’s methods because I’d been too weak to protect him, because I’d pushed my powers too hard and left myself useless when it mattered the most.
The phoenix trilled softly, a sound I’d come to recognize as concern. Through our bond, it sent me an image — Ben and me together, our electromagnetic signatures creating that soft golden glow they did when we were close.
Strength in partnership.
“Your contact,” I said as I opened my eyes. “Can he help us get Ben out?”
“He’s working on it. He told me he’ll create a system malfunction at two in the morning. That will give us eight minutes of security blackout.” She laid the tablet on the floor next to her half-drunk mug of tea and leaned forward. “Sidney, I know what you’re thinking. But in your current state — ”
“I can manage minor use of my abilities,” I broke in. “It’ll be enough to jam any emergency alerts and maybe disable a few cameras.” I met her worried gaze and tried to project more confidence than I was currently feeling. “But what I can’t do is leave Ben there.”
Her eyes were dark with worry. “Even if rescuing him means you won’t have enough power left for the phoenix cleansing?”
The question hung between us, heavy as stone. Because that was the real choice, wasn’t it? Use what little power I had left to rescue Ben, or conserve it for the final phoenix rebirth.
Choose the man I loved…or the duty the women of my family had shouldered for generations.
“There has to be another way,” I told her.
She responded at once, a sort of weary certainty in her voice.
“There isn’t.” A pause, and then she added, “You’re drained, Sidney.
Even with six more hours of rest, you’ll maybe recover enough for moderate use.
That’s not sufficient for both a rescue operation and a phoenix cleansing. You have to choose.”
I looked at the phoenix, the magnificent creature that was dying because DAPI had deliberately contaminated its rebirth cycle.
Its corruption had spread even further and was now probably past eighty percent or worse.
I could sense it through our connection, the shadow-taint eating away at its essence like cancer. Only hours left now, not days.
My grandmother had sent herself to the hospital trying to assist a creature like this, and my great-great-grandmother had allowed herself to be permanently scarred. Was I really going to let this phoenix die because I couldn’t bear to lose Ben?
But Ben had sacrificed himself to save me, had deliberately drawn DAPI’s attention so I could escape. How could I honor that sacrifice by abandoning him to Rosenthal’s custody?
The phoenix shifted, drawing closer. It wasn’t using our connection to send any images this time, was instead just a gentle pressure against my consciousness.
Warmth. Comfort. Understanding.
“I can’t choose,” I whispered. “Don’t ask me to choose between them.”
The phoenix sent me a new image. It wasn’t of Ben and me separately, but the two of us together, our electromagnetic signatures intertwined, creating something stronger than either of us alone.
Then it showed me attempting the final cleansing without him — my consciousness fragmenting, losing myself in the phoenix fire because I had no anchor to pull me back to humanity.
Partner gives you strength, the phoenix seemed to say. Incomplete without anchor.
“What is it showing you?” Morse asked. She spoke quietly, as if she was worried that too loud a tone might somehow disrupt the connection between the fiery creature and me.
“That I need Ben for the final cleansing.” The truth of that realization settled over me, and I pulled in a breath to steady myself.
“His electromagnetic signature resonates with mine. When we’re together, my abilities amplify by ten to twenty percent.
Without him….” I let the words trail off as the truth of our situation became horribly clear.
“Without him, I’m not strong enough to survive the final merge. The phoenix knows this.”
Rebecca absorbed that information. I could almost see the way her sharp, practical mind began to work through the problem. “So rescuing Ben isn’t just personal. It’s operationally necessary.”
“Yes.” Relief and dread warred within me. I didn’t have to choose — the phoenix itself was telling me I needed Ben. But that meant mounting a rescue operation I was barely strong enough to survive.
I couldn’t worry about that now, though. No, I had to focus everything I could on trying to figure out how to save the man I loved.
I lifted the mug of Darjeeling to my lips and took a bracing sip. Then I looked squarely at Rebecca Morse. “Tell me everything your contact said. I need to know what we’re up against.”