Phoenix Blood (Old School Book 1) Read online

  “They’ll track it.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She sighed for the hassle of the data stored on her phone that she’d lose. “It’s turned off at the moment, but can you stop a moment? I need to destroy it.” The important numbers she had memorized.

  He pulled to the side of the road and held out his hand for her phone.

  She passed it across, taking care that her fingers didn’t touch his.

  He murmured under his breath and the plastic casing of the phone cracked. Smoke issued acridly from inside. “Next stop, we’ll throw it in a trash can.” He dropped it into the cup holder between their seats and resumed driving, winding down the windows for a short distance till the smoke was gone.

  “What sort of magic do you have?” She couldn’t help her curiosity.

  “Telekinetic.”

  She hooked a knee up, heel to the edge of the seat, and rested her cheek against her knee, staring at him. “Back when I told you about my finder’s talent, you were incredulous.”

  “I didn’t know about magic, then.” His profile was stern, all angles and shadows.

  “So when did you discover that you could move things with a thought?”

  He raked a hand through his short, black hair. “Three days before I last saw you.”

  Three days. It had been three days without hearing from him, without a message, nothing, before his startling, shocking public repudiation of her. “Did discovering your ability to do magic freak you that much?” She’d been going for irony, perhaps a touch of scorn with her question.

  He answered with utter gravity. “It destroyed my life.”

  Chapter 2

  The forested national park gave way to open roads and brightly lit motels and hotels. Marcus chose a standard motel chain and parked out front of its office. He could see a man inside at the reception desk. “I’ll get us one room, separate beds,” he said to Sadie and got out of the truck before she could protest, if she’d been going to.

  She was scared. She’d admitted that was the only reason she was with him: he could keep her safe. It would be easier to do so if they were in the same motel room.

  He returned to the truck with the room key and directions to it. He drove around back, glad to be out of sight of the road. The truck was warded to evade surveillance, but extra precautions never hurt.

  Sadie fidgeted, running her fingers along her thighs.

  They’d picked up food at a twenty four hour drive-thru. Now, he needed sleep. “I’m not going to touch you,” he said to her. “I’m your bodyguard. We’ll catch a few hours’ sleep before heading for Memphis.”

  “We could keep driving. Take it in turns.”

  “The back seat’s too short for me to sleep and I need to sleep.” Sleep would beat back the fire in his blood. When he was exhausted, it burned him. He needed a cold shower and sleep. “Unless you have a deadline to be in Los Angeles?”

  She shook her head and opened the passenger door. “No. I should sleep. I know driving tired is playing Russian roulette with our lives and strangers’ lives.” She got out and collected her duffel bag from the back seat.

  He picked up the bird and his backpack, and walked the few steps to their motel room. Its door opened to a smell of harsh chemical cleaners and tired fabrics. But it had two beds, as requested. He placed his backpack at the foot of the one nearest the door, and the sleepy bird shuffled onto it.

  The bird was so young. He worried what damage he was doing to its growth through sheer ignorance. As so often, his best wasn’t good enough. He got out the expensive bird seed he’d bought back in Boston, as well as food and water bowls, and filled both.

  “I guess I’ll have a shower.” Sadie hesitated by the bathroom door.

  He nodded and sat on the bed to unlace his boots.

  The bathroom door closed.

  His head dropped forward and, elbows resting on his knees, he stared at the worn carpet. Its gray weave was flecked with a rusty brown, too much like dried blood. His own blood sizzled in his veins. He had to hold on for one week, and he would. Then, he could die.

  A feverish shiver shook him. He swore silently and finished removing his boots.

  When Sadie emerged from the bathroom, he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. He could smell the scent of soap and clean woman, and he could imagine her face flushed from the steamy shower, her skin soft and rosy. He’d seen her face night after night in dreams that left him aching and terrified.

  But she was safe.

  He had kept her safe for nine years, and he’d leave her safe.

  The bathroom was faintly foggy. He turned the shower on cold, stripped and stood under the stream of water. He turned his face into it. The water ran over old scars and down a body he’d honed to a fighter’s form.

  Sadie had asked if he’d become a doctor.

  The only cure he gave people was certain death.

  The fever in his blood cooled as the water poured over him. He dried off and pulled on boxers. He hadn’t anticipated company on this road trip, so no pajamas. He switched the bathroom light off before opening the door and let darkness hide him from Sadie. His own night vision was excellent. He saw the outline of her figure under the quilt on the far bed. Her back was to him.

  The bird had left its perch on his backpack and roosted on the nightstand between their beds. It was a better guardian than Sadie could ever suspect.

  Marcus stretched out on the sagging motel mattress and extended his senses, searching for other magic. He didn’t expect to detect any, and he didn’t. Reassured, he closed his eyes and let exhaustion drag him under.

  Five hours later a sharp beak gently stroked his face.

  “Do you need to go out?” It was stupid to talk to a bird, but the habit had started a week ago.

  Soft feathers fluttered, barely stirring the air. Marcus sat up, holding out a hand, and the bird climbed onto his fist.

  “Is your bird toilet trained?”

  Sadie’s voice, sleepy and bemused, curled around his heart, waking old echoes of loving and being loved.

  He had to clear his throat. “She likes to go outside.” He opened the door and walked out into the cold of a spring dawn.

  The bird flew a short distance to a pine tree.

  He stood and watched it. If she decided to fly away, he wouldn’t be able to catch her. However, since hatching, she’d shown no inclination to leave him. The dawn light caught the gleaming black of her body and the flaring gold of her tail.

  With birds of paradise, it was the males who had the gaudy plumage, but all knowledge and commonsense to the contrary, he knew she was female. Mundane reality didn’t apply to birds such as her.

  Aware that a man standing outside in his boxers would be noticed sooner rather than later, he raised his arm. The bird returned, flying in as he opened the motel room’s door, and landing on his backpack before hopping down to investigate her food bowl.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Sadie was out of bed and, for all her earlier sleepiness, fully dressed. She was combing her brown hair back into a casual ponytail. Her gaze flickered to him and away.

  He pulled on his jeans. “The cold wakes me up.” It was an excuse. In real cold, his body temperature dipped to nearly normal. If he’d thought he’d live long enough, he’d head for Alaska. A man might be able to find peace in the wilderness.

  They ate breakfast at the café attached to the motel before beginning their long day on the road. The I-40 would take them all the way to California and near enough to his original destination that he wondered if Sadie would accept a short detour.

  She drove his truck with casual assurance. She’d found his ball cap in the side pocket of the driver’s door and wore it. Its visor partly obscured her face from anyone driving by. As the sun strengthened, she pushed up the sleeves of her green sweater. A sturdy watch on her left wrist glinted. She didn’t wear a ring.

  He didn’t want to admit how much that mattered to him. Like her, when they’d parted, he’d sworn he
wouldn’t follow what happened to her, and he’d kept that vow. His reasons for staying away from her had changed, but they remained powerful.

  But he’d noted that she hadn’t desperately tried to let someone know that she was on the run, headed for LA with a former lover. Was there no man in her life?

  Despite the fact that he had no right to ask, he had to know. “Did you ever marry?”

  She glanced at her left hand on the steering wheel, then glared at him. “No. I have trust issues.” Your fault, her glare said.

  He should have been sorry. Perhaps he should even have felt guilt that she was alone. But Marcus had given up lying to himself years ago. His response was one of relief and satisfaction. Possessiveness. Nine years, a lifetime of bitter experience, and he still wanted her.

  He changed the subject. “The Stag mercenaries will have checked the flight lists and found that you’re not on them. They’ll start watching the roads.”

  “And the I-40 is the obvious route.” Her posture remained anxious, but her voice relaxed at the change of subject. “Do we need to take side roads, instead?”

  “The truck is warded.” He’d told her that before, but perhaps she hadn’t taken in what it meant. “Scanning for us magically or with technology, we won’t blip on their radar. Nor will you, personally, when you’re in the truck. Danger points will be when you exit. If they’re scanning at that moment, they’ll have a chance of locating you.”

  “So I stay in the truck. Great.”

  He was relieved that she sounded frustrated rather than scared. “You can get out, but those times are when we need to be extra-vigilant. If you sense anything wrong—”

  “My magic is finding things. It’s not like I can find a threat to me, that’s too vague a target.”

  “We all have instincts,” he said calmly. He’d developed and trusted his own. “When we stop for the night I’ll ward our room.”

  The truck wobbled a moment in its lane as she twitched the steering wheel. “Oops.” She concentrated on the highway. The traffic was steady. The room for error marginal. “You said your magic is telekinetic. How can you set a ward?”

  The bird chirruped from its perch on the cup holder. Marcus pulled a bag of sunflower seeds out of his pocket and spilled a few into his hand, holding it out to the bird. Soft crunchings were a comfortable sound. He put the bag away, again. He didn’t want to talk about how fear and necessity had pushed him to develop his magic.

  He thought Sadie had taken the hint and let the matter drop. He was content to watch her from the corner of his eye. Her face had lost the hint of plumpness she’d had at eighteen. Now, it was a woman’s face, elegant, oval. Thoughtful.

  A few miles later she surprised him.

  She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, not impatiently, but as if listening to music. “You knew the two men at the bar were Stag mercenaries, but you didn’t recognize their faces, did you? You recognized their magic.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s three magic talents: telekinesis, identifying magical signatures, and setting protective wards.”

  One was his natural talent. The latter two were defensive.

  “People only have one talent,” she said.

  “I was always an over-achiever.”

  “Yeah. I can see that.” Her glance took in his worn jeans, the truck itself, his aloneness. “Oh fudge. Sorry. Marcus, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  He’d deserved the snide comment. His own had been borderline rude. But he needed her to stop with her questions. For Sadie to learn about his life for the last decade would serve no purpose. “How about we forget the past?”

  “We can’t,” she said flatly. “It sits between us like that bird.”

  The bird chirruped and tilted its head, staring at her. The sunflower seeds were gone.

  Marcus wiped his hand on his jeans. “Birds fly away. Our past can do the same. In a couple of days, you’ll be in LA. Will you be safe when you get there?”

  “I have friends,” she said briefly. “Marcus, you can’t expect me to simply ignore the mystery of how much you’ve changed.”

  “I can.” He put finality into his tone. “You get safety from me. You don’t get my soul.”

  Sadie gripped the steering wheel to the point where it ought to have creaked and shattered. However, strangling a steering wheel was preferable to screaming at the man beside her. “I don’t want your soul. I want a few answers. You’re the last person I ever expected to see in a biker bar. The Stag mercenaries scared me, but you’ve knocked my whole world off-balance.”

  “Only for a couple of days,” he said steadily. “Then I’m gone. For good.”

  His bird hopped from the cup holder onto his thigh and settled down to a snooze. Marcus stroked the feathered body. His fingers were long and scarred.

  She remembered his hands on her body. They’d been beautiful hands. She’d thought them perfect for a doctor.

  There were scars on his hand as if something had chewed on it.

  She had hated him—and hated her own naivety for loving him so utterly, without limit, without any self-protection. She’d tried not to think of him, but when she had, she’d imagined he’d been living the life he’d been destined for: wealth, privilege, respected, married to a gorgeous woman, two perfect children, even a perfect dog… “Moose would be ten, now. Do you still have him or—?”

  Marcus’s long fingers curled into a fist.

  The puppy had been the weirdest mish-mash of breeds, still growing into his massive paws when she’d met Marcus and Moose for the first time. Moose had escaped Marcus and dashed through the park, playing and pouncing, his leash dragging on the ground. She’d caught Moose and as the puppy had licked her face and wriggled, she’d looked up and seen Marcus smiling down at them.

  It had been love at first sight.

  “Moose died.”

  “I’m sorry.” But Marcus’s tone was so weird, she had to ask. “When?” Had it been recently? Was the bird a replacement pet?

  Silence stretched between them, filled with the noises of road travel: the rush of wind, the whine of tires on asphalt, and, the sound of other cars passing them. Sadie realized she’d lifted her foot off the accelerator. She pressed it down. “When?”

  “The day before we broke up.”

  Despite the speed she was driving at, she peeped at him.

  He stared straight ahead, his profile severe, and whatever emotions his eyes held, she couldn’t see them.

  “I didn’t know.” Had he been experiencing some sort of emotional problem when he’d broken up with her so brutally? Am I really trying to make excuses for him? But it had been one of the things she’d added to the list of Marcus’s crimes: that she hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye to the puppy. It was a minor thing compared to the other ways he’d broken her heart, but it had mattered.

  “You should name your bird.” She changed the subject to something less emotional, less personal.

  “No.”

  “It’s obviously bonded with you.” The bird rubbed its beak against Marcus’s fingers. “You can’t keep calling it ‘the bird’.”

  No response.

  “Fine. I’ll name it. Is it a boy or girl?”

  “She’s a she.”

  Sadie smiled. “Do you hear how awkward that sentence is? She definitely needs a name. Chirpie? Cherry? Bella? Goldie? Summer?”

  “Are you going to keep offering names until I pick one?” Reluctant amusement lightened his voice.

  “Polly? Angelica? Happy? Kiddo?”

  “Karma.”

  Okay, her names had been ridiculous, but “Karma” seemed weighted with heavy emotions. What came around, went around. Old sins. A burden of regrets.

  Sadie shook her shoulders. She was being too pessimistic. Karma could be good things. “Karma, it is.”

  The bird—Karma—chirruped.

  Chapter 3

  They swapped driving responsibilities mid-morning. Karma chose not t
o perch on Sadie’s knee, but roosted on the back seat. Sadie kicked off her shoes and curled her toes. Remembering Marcus’s statement that she was safe and undetectable only inside the warded truck, she’d resisted her usual habit on long road trips of getting the blood flowing with a walk, even a run. Instead, she pressed her palms to the roof of the cabin and stretched.

  Marcus glanced at her and back to the road.

  It was such a swift glance to suddenly make her self-conscious. She straightened up and folded her arms. Then unfolded them. Fidgeted. Ran her fingers along the outer seam of her jeans. “Do you really think we can make it to LA without encountering Stag mercenaries?”

  “Probably not.”

  She stared at him. “You don’t sound worried.”

  He didn’t answer. Presumably because he wasn’t worried.

  She hooked a finger under the silver chain that hung around her neck and pulled the amulet out from where it nestled between her breasts. “They want this.”

  Marcus continued to watch the road. The solid truck zoomed along steadily, pushing the speed limit but not exceeding it by much. Despite the temptation of the ward that prevented surveillance, Marcus wasn’t apparently a law breaker. Or perhaps keeping her safe meant keeping to sane laws.

  “The amulet is for a friend.” She wasn’t sure why she wanted to tell him about the amulet or the trouble it had unexpectedly brought her. She could claim that the information might help him keep her, him and Karma safe. The truth was, silence between them gave her too much time to think. It gave her the space to realize how aware she was of him. “Naomi is a marine biologist. We went to school together. Now she’s working on Catalina Island, studying the animal life there. She suspects there are fantastical creatures, but to see them, she needs to be able to see through their glamour. That’s what the amulet does. It lets the wearer see through glamour.”