Flight of the Phoenix (2 page)

“I have this.” Bryn held up a huge emerald. Fenix recognized it as the
Coeur de Flamme
, a dark green gem with a fiery ruby red heart. “Unfortunately, Priest drained it of its power. Look, there is no flame inside of it anymore.”

Fenix took the stone and turned it over and over in her hand, searching for the fire at its heart. It was gone. “How could this happen? Can we still use the stone to find him? It must have made some kind of connection to him.”

“Perhaps. But I think Priest used it up in his transformation. Either that or the dagger stole its power. If that's the case, the dagger is the strongest talisman of power on the earth and we must find it.”

Fenix knew Bryn had a plan. Her sister usually disregarded her and rarely took her into her confidence. Fenix was tired of being excluded. Her time was now. Thanks to Lazarus, she possessed power greater than her sister's. She knew that, but it would take showing Bryn to get her sister to believe.

“Do you think the witch doctor took his village back to Africa by using the power of the dagger?” Fenix asked.

Bryn took a bite of her croissant and chewed thoughtfully. “Yes, but where in Africa? We must perform a scrying, find him and then follow him. It would be stupid to just travel to Africa without knowing where he is.”

“I will perform the scrying,” Fenix said.

Bryn brushed crumbs off her fingers and wiped her mouth. “No, my dearest one, you are too weak. Sam and I will do it this morning. Sam has a feather from the witch doctor's headdress and I have a branch of herbs given to me by one of his wives. She was pregnant and the witch doctor promised she would have her child at home, in Africa. With these two items we should be able to find Kivunjo. Even though he protects himself with the power of the dagger, the dagger itself may give him away.”

Anger filled Fenix with energy. She leaped to her feet. “You cannot deny me the right to participate.”

Bryn's eyes flew open with surprise. “We would never do such a thing. It's just you're so tired and worn from your ordeal. Don't you think you'd be better off resting? When you're stronger, of course we will include you in everything we do.”

“I alone was touched by the dagger.” She closed her eyes and Lazarus appeared to her. He smiled and winked and she returned the smile. “I'm sure I can locate its power signature anywhere in the world.”

Bryn wrapped one arm around Fenix's shoulders. “I'm sure you can, dear one, but eat something. You must be famished and then you really should rest and recuperate your strength.”

Fenix recognized the patronizing tone of Bryn's voice. Until she proved herself otherwise, Bryn was going to treat her as a child. She closed her eyes and summoned Lazarus. He immediately appeared to her. “Where is the dagger?” she asked him.

Lazarus grinned. “Your sister is treating you callously my love?”

Fenix smiled. “She does not know how to change.”

“Then you must show her. The dagger is with Kivunjo in the Mountains of the Moon.”

“I know where the witch doctor went,” Fenix said to Bryn.

Bryn smiled. “Of course you do, dearest sister. Tell me after you've eaten something and rested.”

“Stop treating me like I'm a child!” Fenix shoved Bryn's arm away. “The dagger is with Kivunjo in the Mountains of the Moon. You know where those mountains are, Bryn. We've both been there many, many years ago.”

“The Belgian Congo,” Bryn whispered. “That's a very frightening place. How do you know he's there?”

Fenix had no desire to tell Bryn Lazarus was communicating with her. Her sister already thought she was crazy. “I saw it in a dream,” she said instead.

Bryn shook her head. “That's quite a journey to undertake just because you had a dream. What did you see in this dream?”

Fenix closed her eyes and saw Lazarus smile and open his hands to show her a huge waterfall, a long lake and a village at the end of the lake with snow-capped peaks behind it.

“I saw a waterfall leading to a long lake. At the end of the lake, I saw Kivunjo's village filled with his people and a snow-capped mountain behind it.”

Bryn sat down. “That could be Lake Albert and the Mountains of the Moon. But it could also be Lake Victoria and Mt. Kilimanjaro.”

“It's the headwaters of the Nile,” Fenix said. “King Solomon's mines were rumored to be there. I saw King Solomon in the dream.”

Fenix made that up, but what else could she do? Bryn was not going to believe anything she said.

“We'll still do a scrying,” Bryn said. “I'm not going to the Congo without a positive location. It would be beyond stupid.” She patted Fenix's arm absently. “Between your dream and the scrying, we should be able to pinpoint Kivunjo's exact location.”

Bryn didn't like Fenix's new-found air of authority or her insistence on being included. She'd been caring for her sister for centuries. Fenix often acted like an adult for a time but invariably returned to childish behavior. She was immature; she had never been allowed to age long enough to mature in any of her incarnations. But her sister seemed so positive of the whereabouts of the witch doctor. She shrugged. It mattered not. The scrying would reveal all.

Samantha entered the breakfast parlor at that moment and sat down. As usual, she wore a rubber apron and had thick goggles on top of her head. These were of a new design with brass rims, a leather strap and an additional lens on a small lever set into the rubber on the left side. Sam eyed Fenix as she selected a slice of bread and buttered it. “I would kill for a beignet.”

“Coffee or chocolate?” Bryn asked. “Or if I ring for Babbette, I think she could produce tea.”

“Coffee is fine though it would taste so much better chasing a sugary beignet.”

“When you leave one world behind, you embrace the new one,” Fenix said. “New Orleans is gone. We left it and all it represents behind. We are now Parisians and we lives as such. Good morning, Sam.”

Sam's mouth fell open. “Fenix! How are you feeling today? You went through a very trying experience.”

“I did indeed, but I'm feeling very strong today. You might even say powerful.”

Sam shot Bryn a questioning look and Bryn shrugged. “When you're finished eating, Sam, I wish to do a scrying. Can you prepare the chamber in the basement?”

“Of course. I assume we search for the dagger and the offensive witch doctor. I'll get my feather.”

Quinn erupted into the breakfast room at that moment followed by Tomlinson who was charged with excitement. “Sam,” he exclaimed. “There's a Titan Airship at the Exposition. We must get a look at it before it leaves.”

“No! I can't believe it.” Sam leaped to her feet. “A Titan? Really? I've longed to examine one this age. By all means. Let us leave at once.”

“Sam! We must perform the scrying first.”

Sam grabbed Bryn's hands across the table. “Oh my goodness, Bryn, you have no idea. The Titan Airship is the most modern aircraft of the century. It can travel at an amazing fifty knots and holds twenty people. I heard the engine is very light and the fuel they use is revolutionary. You know I've been looking for a new fuel for the aircraft Arthur and I are building.”

Bryn sighed. “I do know, Samantha, but this is so important.”

“Please Bryn.”

Bryn rolled her eyes. “Fine, if indeed you must.”

Sam grinned and her round eyes widened. “I knew you'd understand.” She leaped to her feet and thrust the feather from Kivunjo's headdress into Bryn's hand. “I love you,” she said.

“And I you,” Bryn returned. Sam's impish face split in a wide grin causing her freckles to dance across her pug nose. “This is going to be so amazing.” She kissed Bryn's cheek and charged out of the room with Tomlinson right behind her.

Stunned by Sam's defection, Bryn turned to see Fenix smirking. “Now there is only me, dear sister. We will do the scrying and find Kivunjo. And we will find him just where I said he will be. Let's do it now.”

Fenix led the way down the steep stairs to the basement, home of Sam's lab. She crossed the lab and entered a small room connected to the lab by a narrow corridor. It was shaped from the living rock into a circle with a pentagram, a five-sided star, etched into the floor. At the center of the star a small altar supported a huge crystal. It was a foot tall and as clear as spring water.

Bryn took Sam's feather and her bundle of strange smelling herbs out of the pocket of her split skirt and placed them on the altar in front of the crystal. Fenix stood on one side of the altar and Bryn on the other. They placed their hands on the crystal and closed their eyes. Bryn's eyes immediately flew open. The crystal was on fire. Usually as cool as rain water, the huge stone was lit from within by a bonfire. The flames leapt toward the top. Suddenly Kivunjo danced into view as he gyrated around the fire shaking a lion's tail switch and Lazarus's dagger.

“Do you see him?”

“Yes, and he is visible because of me,” Fenix said. “I called him.”

Bryn snorted. “He is visible because of the crystal.”

Fenix ignored this. “See the mountain behind him?”

Bryn peered into the crystal and saw a snow-capped peak rising behind Kivunjo. The witch doctor danced around the fire and she saw the village perched on the shores of a large body of water. The water could be any lake or river, but the mountain was clearly Jino Mkubwa, the Great Tooth. It was a peak in the Mountains of the Moon with a terrible reputation as being haunted by evil spirits. “It's the Tooth.”

Fenix smiled. “The village will be easy to find. We've been on the Tooth before.”

They had, as teenagers. Fleeing from the pharaoh who killed their parents, they had traveled into the African interior completely alone, relying on their magical powers. A group of Bedouins had taken them into the desert and tried to sell them. They'd escaped the Bedouins and taken shelter with a tribe of Tuaregs who kept them for many years while they matured. During that time, they traveled to the head waters of the Nile and climbed the Mountains of the Moon as the Tuareg tribe searched for their roots. When the Tuareg queen, Tin Hinan, tried to marry them off to her relatives, they once again fled, this time to Europe.

“Getting there will be very difficult,” Bryn said.

“We can fly in that airship of Sam's.”

Bryn was about to answer when she heard a rustling sound, like dry leaves being brushed by the wind. She turned to look at the door as Fenix snatched her hands off the crystal and screamed. “Snakes!”

Bryn leaped to her feet. Five huge black snakes slithered through cracks under the door from Sam's lab and attacked. Bryn barely had time to put up her palm and stop the snake flying toward her with its jaws open, fangs dripping with poison. Fenix then did something that made Bryn's blood freeze. Moving at a speed Bryn could never duplicate, Fenix caught all four remaining snakes with one hand, held them by their necks, and tore each snake's head from its body one at a time.

* * * *

Draak Priest smoothed thick black hair away from his brow and frowned. His snakes had entered Bryn's house and found her, but the red-headed witch had captured four and beheaded them before he could catch more than a brief glimpse of what was inside the crystal. As she held them in her hand, he'd seen a mountain inside the crystal, a vaguely familiar mountain, through one of his pet snake's eyes. He'd also seen the hideous witch doctor dancing around a fire.

After checking to see if anyone was watching, he slipped out of the alley next to Bryn's house, flagged a cab and told the hack driver to take him to the docks. The witch doctor was somewhere in Africa; it looked like the Mountains of the Moon. It was a large range and would be difficult to reach, but the reward would be well worth the hardships needed to acquire it. He wanted the dagger Kivunjo had stolen from him during his ritual of change, but more than that, he knew Bryn needed Lazarus's dagger to end her curse and he wanted her. She would follow the dagger and then the luscious Bryn and her equally delicious sister would be his.

Protecting herself and Fenix in Paris, where she'd lived on and off for centuries, was easy for Bryn. She had eyes in place and a safety net of spies and spells. In Africa, she would be alone and on her own, her and her sister ripe for the picking. As the cab clattered along the cobbled streets, Priest rubbed his hands together. Thinking about the two women had him hard as a tree limb. He rubbed his aching crotch and smiled. Youth was under-rated. He'd only had it restored for two days and already lost count of the number of women he'd claimed.

He tapped on the window and told the driver to take him to Madam Daphne's establishment on the waterfront. He would satisfy his needs with one, no perhaps two, young women before putting his new plan into action.

These delicious thoughts were suddenly and horribly interrupted. “After you futter the women, we will kill them.”

Priest jerked upright. “Who's that?” The voice had seemed to come from inside his head.

And then he heard a dry chuckle also inside his head. “Did you think I had no power?” The disembodied voice asked. “Did you think you could use my bones, my skull, with no consequences?”

“Who are you?” Priest whispered.

“No need to speak. I hear all of your thoughts. As dark and delicious as they are, I prefer killing women to lifting their skirts. You have much to learn about true pleasure.”

“Cardinal Malenfant?”

“No other,” the evil voice giggled. “You have resurrected me. I live inside you. Oh, my son, together we will commit so many sinful acts I shall be condemned for two eternities not just one.”

“I won't do it,” Priest vocalized. “I love to stick my cock into women, many, many women, but not kill them.”

“If I recall correctly, you have killed plenty of women, strangling them with your rosary beads after which you hacked off their breasts and violated them with your knife. I found all those memories delightful to peruse, but together we will make many more.”