Fire And Ash (10 page)

She leaves the decision up to me and I tell the doctor that I want to leave.

The sun is coming up by the time I am finally released.

“Derek told Cassie and I about you at the hospital.” Mrs. Jensen glances at me in the rearview mirror as she drives.

“Oh,” I say.
 

I look at Cassie at the same time she turns her head to look at me from the other side of the backseat. “Derek explained everything and the vow he forced you to make and the reason he was able to force it,” she says.
 

“I understand if you’re mad at me, and if you don’t want to be friends anymore,” I tell her. I won’t like it. But I really will understand.

She frowns at me. “We’ve been friends so far. It would be stupid to stop now just because of what my family is and what yours is. You are the first real friend I’ve had. Ever. I’m not giving that up. And my mother as a hunter so you can’t all be that bad.”

She nudges me with her shoulder and I smile. She smiles too.

“You two sound like such
girls,
” Derek says in disgust from the front seat.

We both shoot him a scowl and tell him to shut up at the same time.

“Does your family know where you were?” Mrs. Jensen asks as we near Laurel Springs’ city limits.

I tell her they don’t because they are not home. When I tell her they have been consumed with the abductions from Highland Village, a look crosses her face that I don’t miss.
 

“Is that why you were in Red Creek last night?”

“Yes. No. They won’t let me help but I decided to go to the park on my own.”

She gives me a stern look that would give Grandma’s a run for its money. “Stay away from Red Creek Ash. Especially by yourself.”

“Derek was there?” I realize how whiny it comes across when he snorts.

“Derek is special,” Mrs. Jensen tells me calmly. “And not in the obnoxious, arrogant way my son likes to pretend he is. Derek is actually special. He isn’t the average phoenix. His father trained him to hunt and kill those of us who…still like to prey on humans.”

That explains why he was in the woods tonight. If he was with the other Phoenix, he wouldn’t have killed them, and from the way I saw him move when he fought them, he could have killed me as easily as he killed them. Not just tonight. At anytime. And yet, he hasn’t.
 

Why?
I wonder.

Because maybe what he says is really true. Maybe he and his family just want to live their lives and be left alone,
I answer myself back.

“And anyway it is over now,” Mrs. Jensen’s voice breaks through me talking to myself. “Derek got the last of the group of phoenix that were behind the abductions last night. There should be no one else going missing.”

******

Mrs. Jensen insists that I spend the remainder of the day at their house. When I tell her that I feel okay, only a slight headache remains, she insists that I stay anyway just to be safe and confines me to the
 
bed in their guest room.

“
You
almost put an cross bolt in
my
chest and you get the royal treatment,” Derek grumbles as he hands me the third meal today that his mother has made him bring me.
 

I taste the homemade chicken noodle soup and almost groan. I’ve never had soup that didn’t come out of a can before. Who knew it could be so good? There are pieces of fresh celery, carrots, and onion and tender chunks of chicken breast in it.
 

“If she had succeeded, it would have been well deserved,” Cassie smirks. She is sitting crosslegged on the bed beside me. She has not left my side since we got to her house.

“What she said.” It’s the best I can do. The ibuprofen is starting to wear off but I have another hour to go before I can take more. My headache is increasing from dull to splitting.
 

“Whatever. Cass, Mom says to take Ash home whenever she’s ready. I have to go meet with the Council in Highland Village.”

Derek looks from Cass to me. “Mom is going to follow me there so I can drive your car back. I’ll drop it off to you later tonight. You’re welcome by the way. And you owe me. I figure since it is going to take three weeks to repair the Mustang you should volunteer to be my personal chauffeur. It is your fault it was nearly totaled.”

“How is it her fault?” Cassie argues with him for me.

“Because it was her ass I was trying to save when I ran. Otherwise, I would have stayed and fought.”

“
She
says
you
can
kiss
her
ass
.” The seven words cost me a thudding pound in my head for each one I say, but they are worth it.
 

“Derek!” His mom hollers from downstairs. “Get out of the guest room and stop antagonizing Ash. All I asked you to do was take her the soup and tell Cass to drive her home when she’s ready.”

“I swear it’s you who is her child and not me,” Derek mumbles as he leaves the room.

“I wouldn’t mind swapping the two of you out,” Cassie says loud enough for him to hear down the hallway.
 

 
I hear heavy footsteps, I hear a voice, I hear shouting. I bury my head beneath the blanket. The shouting is coming from the same source that it usually does. My parents. They are fighting again. The footsteps thud down the stairs. A door slams and tires screech out of the driveway. Lighter footsteps pad down the stairs sometime later. They wake me up and I want to go to my mother now that we are alone again. Kiss the sadness off her face that I know will be there, just like I’ll do with Dad when he comes home again before the sun rises. I love both of my parents and I don’t blame either of them for their constant fighting. Even at six I understand that they are different people, moving in different directions, with different desires. Mom is not a hunter. She knew the life she was signing up for when she married Dad, but she can no longer bear the weight of it. She hasn’t been able to for two years now. Not since my cousins’ mother, her closest friend, was killed on a hunt in the park. She doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Dad or to me someday. But Dad has sworn a duty and Mom doesn’t understand why he feels so compelled to uphold it. She often yells at him that if he loves us he will leave. Dad yells back that he can’t. I wait for the footsteps to come back up the stairs. When they never do, I assume that she is sitting in the leather recliner, staring bleakly into nothingness with swollen, puffy eyes. I go in search of her and the recliner is empty. Our back door sits ajar. Our back door is never ajar. It and the front door and the basement door are always triple bolted. Especially at night when only her and I are inside. Something crawls over me warning me against going into the backyard. It whispers to go back upstairs and get back into bed. I ignore it because I know my mother is beyond that door and go outside anyway. I see something. Something that I know I shouldn’t be seeing. But my brain can’t make sense of the image. It’s fuzzy and shrouded in darkness. Then the darkness envelopes the entire scene…
and
everything is about to start all over again but the urgent whisper of my name jerks me awake.
 

My knee comes up in automatic defense to connect with something hard as my elbow does the same.
 

A body presses its weight down on me so it can restrict my movements long enough to pinion my limbs to the bed.

I head butt the shadowy outline of a face.
 

“What the fuck?!” The familiar voice is followed by an equally familiar grunt.

“Derek?!” I shriek in surprise. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the sharp ankles and thick lashes of his face come into focus. “What are you doing here?! And get the hell off of me!” I hiss.

When I buck my hips against him to throw him off, I feel the heat of his body press into mine and promptly still my movements. I become too keenly aware that I kicked the sheets off when they got too uncomfortably warm and that underneath them I was wearing nothing but a thin cotton tank and my underwear.
 

His body goes as taut as mine. “I’m dropping your car and your keys off,” he says after a beat.

“And it is not at all creepish that you didn’t knock on the door to do that.”
 

 
I’d told him no one would be home. Aunt Farrah texted me earlier and said they would be back in the morning. News broke of the boy’s body being found in the park shortly after we’d gotten back to Derek and Cass’ house.
   

“Get the hell off of me?!” I shriek again. But I don’t dare buck to try and throw him off.

Derek peers down at me through his dark lashes. “Hmm. I don’t think I will just yet. It’s kind of amusing how uncomfortable this is making you.”

“Derek don’t make me stab you,” I tell him in a perfectly clear and level-headed tone.
See. I’m being normal me. I’m not uncomfortable at all.
 

“
You can try,” he snorts but finally eases his weight off of me. I almost stab him off of principle.
 

“How did you even get in?” I ask incredulously as I sit up in my bed. I figure it’s a more dignified position than lying down.

He dangles my key chain that includes my car key
and
my house key on it in front of me.
That’s right. I’d had to enter the house through the garage’s keyless entry feature because I gave him my keys to go back and get my car
.

“Did you go joyriding or something?” I say snatching them from him. I glance at the clock beside my bed. “It’s like two a.m.”
 

“In a Jetta? Be serious. I was making sure the rogue phoenix that were behind the killings were really all taken care of.”

“And are they?”

“The one I caught and dragged to the Council so they could persuade the whereabouts of the rest of his group out of him claims there are none left.”

“And do you believe him?”

Derek sighs giving me my answer. “No. But all I can do is wait and see.”

“Why do you call them that?
Rogue phoenix.
”

The corner of my bed that Derek sits on dips down a little. Him being on my bed with me in it makes a weird feeling ripple through my stomach. It reminds me that I’m not wearing anything but a tank top and boy shorts. I snatch at the sheets lying haphazardly beside me and jerk them over my bottom half.

His lips twitch. I pretend like I don’t realize the source of his amusement.

“Like I told you before, most of us phoenix don’t prey on human lives. A lot of us used to but when the Council was formed to oversee us and police our actions so that we would not expose ourselves to the larger human population, Collecting was outlawed. That’s what we call it when phoenix take a human life to add to their number of lives. The Council has been around for generations now. Long enough for the practice of Collecting to nearly have died out entirely. There are still a few of us who persist. We call them Rogue Phoenix. They are tracked down and taken out by the Council’s Enforcers.”

“So that means you are an Enforcer?” I ask making the connection from the things his mom had said as we drove to their house from the hospital.

He doesn’t immediately answer. As if considering what to tell me and what not to tell me. “I am,” Derek finally says. “My Dad was an Enforcer and he trained me to be one as well. When he died I had to step up and take over his job prematurely.”

“I’m sorry about your Dad,” I say uncomfortably. I feel like it’s the right thing to say but I feel weird for expressing it.
 

Shadows cloud his eyes, changing them from a deep ebony shade to almost onyx. “Are you really?” He spits the question at me. “My dad was a phoenix and hunters killed him after all. That’s exactly what you’ve been trained to do too.”

I open my mouth to defend myself then close it without saying anything because he is right. That is exactly what I have been trained to do. It is what I took a vow to do. To rid the world of one less monster who preys on humans. But what if what Derek says is true? What if they are not all like the one that killed my mother? What if his family represents the norm and not the exception to the rule? I think of how nice and warm and inviting his mother is. I can’t imagine her ever hurting even a fly. Then I think about what he told me in his car. How hunters killed his Dad and sister who was pregnant. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and me questioning everything I have ever known as true.
 

“If he was like yo-, your mom,” I correct myself, “then yes. I am honestly sorry.”

“Well that makes two of us,” he says dryly.
 

For the briefest of moments, raw pain flashes in his eyes at the admission. It is a pain that I used to feel all too keenly myself but has dulled over the years. Still, I understand it.
 

We stare at each other for a long moment.
 

It gets easier,
my eyes say.

Does it?”
His say back.

Yes, with time.

We don’t have the kind of relationship to have the conversation out loud. We are not friends, we are technically enemies, and we certainly do not like each other.

“Your car is parked out front,” he says standing abruptly from the bed.
 

I stand too so that I can follow him downstairs and lock the door behind him. My bare feet hitting the floor reminds me that my legs are bare too
because I am only wearing underwear!
 

“Um..thanks,” I say awkwardly tugging the hem of my tank top down. “Just let yourself out. I’ll come behind you and lock the door.”

The movement of my hands attracts Derek’s attention.
 

“It’s a little too late to be modest. I already saw a
nice
eyeful before you snatched up the sheets.” He pointedly smirks down at my boy shorts. “I hadn’t pegged you for the type to wear panties covered in purple bows, but it’s a good look on you.” His smirk turns into a teasing smile. “You’re cute in them.”