Ignited (36 page)

I can’t do it. I can’t murder him in cold blood. There has to be another way.

The fighting continued around me as I knelt by Franc’s side. Torn between my fear and my conscience, I hesitated a moment longer. When Franc’s lungs seized on a breath, I stretched a hand toward him, still undecided.

I heard the gunfire a split second before the bullet slammed into my stomach. The force of it sent me sprawling to my back, and I lay there, listening to the shot echo over and over and over again. No, that wasn’t an echo. That was another shot. Alcais stood over Franc, and I watched blood pool around my grandfather’s body. I stared into his eyes until they lost focus.

Alcais knelt, clasping his head with the gun still in his hand. A keening sound ripped out of him, and he rocked back and forth. Some distant part of me realized that he’d reached the edge of a cliff and jumped over. He had nothing to hold on to, and no home to return to.

“Talk to me, Remy,” Gabe pleaded. “Please.”

My head rolled to the side as I searched for him, but everywhere I looked bodies lashed out at each other. No Gabe.
The earpiece,
I remembered.

“Gabe? Alcais shot me.” I touched my stomach and warm liquid coated my fingers and spilled over my side.
I’m bleeding out.

“Heal yourself, sweetheart.”

I drifted for a second, unable to focus.

“Stay with me, Remy.” His voice cracked, and the panic in his voice pierced the lethargy settling over me. Then he was shouting again. “Asher! Somebody! Help her!”

Asher appeared beside me, his head hovering over mine. I almost didn’t hurt anymore, and I drifted away again until he whispered, “It’s bad, Remy. I’m afraid I’ll lose control. Are you sure you want to do this?”

His face drained of color, and I snapped to awareness again. I’d known Franc or one of the others would hurt me. If they hadn’t, I would have forced their hand. And when they did, Asher would be there to help me heal my injuries. With his powers only just returned, everyone would believe that he could lose control. That he would slip up and steal enough of my energy to take my power. After all, it was what we had feared when we’d first met. And if everyone saw it happening, I would be useless to my grandfather and the Protectors. They would no longer have a reason to chase me or to use my family against me. We just had to put on an act.

My teeth chattered, and I gave his trembling fingers a weak squeeze. “I’m sure.”

He looked away, shaking his head. When I’d told him about this plan, he’d been worried. The reason people would believe he could lose control was because it was a very real possibility. He was scared that he wouldn’t be able to pull away in time.

I lifted a heavy arm to touch my fingers to his jaw. “I trust you, Asher.”

His lips tightened into a determined line. His defenses snapped down, and his energy flooded through me.

It was too much. I hadn’t considered how the bullet wound had weakened me, or how stealing Erin’s energy had changed me. The monster inside me latched on to his power with a greedy roar, ten times worse than what I had done to Seamus. A fire blazed to life inside me, melting the ice that had formed. I sensed Asher trying to retreat, but it was too late. I would take everything he had and kill him. The monster wanted all of it—all of that heat to fill the icy tundra left by my injuries.

“Remy, help me!” Asher pleaded, his green eyes narrowing in pain.

I couldn’t speak, locked in a struggle inside myself. The Healer side of me fought to heal Asher. The Protector side wanted to steal his energy. The two halves of me splintered. Give. Take. Push. Pull. Healer. Protector. Fire and ice collided, and the pain that shattered through me nearly broke me. Asher cried out as my control slipped a little more, and I gritted my teeth.

I am a Healer. I heal who I can, when I can.

I am a Protector. I protect the people I care about.

It struck me that these two things were the same. Not two halves warring against each other but complementary elements adding up to the same thing—someone strong and fierce who would do anything for love. Not this monster who would kill a loved one to live.

I am a Phoenix, born from the ashes of my charred body.

At once, I pushed Asher’s energy away and pulled inside myself.

My eyes opened. “Let go, Asher. Now,” I ordered.

Suddenly released from the monster’s hold, he shoved backward and I was alone in a storm. Fire rained down, scorching the air. Ice touched the blaze and turned it to ash. I’d been fighting both sides of myself for so long that I’d caused this chaos. No more fighting.

I gave in to the storm.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

O
uch.

T
hat was the first thing that popped into my mind as I drifted back to awareness. The fire and ice had dissipated, leaving behind a warm ball of energy in my belly. The energy flexed through me, bending and moving at my will, healing the wounds on my stomach, face, and torso instantly. There was no hypothermia afterward, and I instinctively knew that there never would be again. For the first time in my life, I did not fear my powers. They could no longer control me. I had hijacked the energy of both Protectors and a Healer. This is what separated me from Edith and the others Seamus protected—those women might live with Protectors, but they had never met a pure Healer like Erin or taken her life force. The two halves of me had melded and formed me into something new, the whole process ignited by the energy I’d stolen from both sides.

I am a Phoenix, born from the ashes.

With awareness, my senses returned. I opened my eyes and recognized Seamus’s sitting room. I was lying on the couch, and Gabe sat on the floor beside me, his forehead pressed to my arm almost as if he was praying. The musty scent of an old room filled with books, and the pleasant acrid smell of burning wood filled my nostrils. The heat of that fire warmed my skin through my jeans. Gabe’s hand pressed against my stomach, where I felt the liquid warmth of blood that had seeped from an injury that was no longer there.

Gabe’s face turned toward mine. The silky strands of his hair slipped through my fingers when I smoothed it away from his forehead.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He turned his cheek to kiss my palm. “Anything interesting happen since I saw you last?”

I appreciated him trying to keep the moment light. “Oh, you know. People trying to kill me. The usual.”

All pretense of forced humor faded as he sat up in a jerky movement. Gabe’s arms wrapped around my waist and he dragged me off the couch, twisting so that he cradled me in his lap on the floor. He held me so tight that I struggled to breathe, as he buried his head against my chest to listen to my heartbeat. His body trembled against mine, and I could only embrace him.

“I thought I lost you for a minute there,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I answered.

“Remy?”

I glanced up. Asher gripped the back of the couch with white knuckles. Seamus and Edith appeared behind him with expressions ranging from shock to disbelief, but I ignored them as Asher jumped over the back of the couch to land on a cushion behind Gabe and me. I raised my mental walls to protect Asher before I reached for him with one hand. He wrapped both of his hands around mine.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he said. “I thought I killed you.” His green eyes still looked haunted by the thought, as he gave my fingers a last squeeze and let me go.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I guess our plan didn’t work, after all.”

“What are you talking about?” Gabe asked with a frown.

“Remy’s idea to trick the others into thinking I lost control and stole her powers,” Asher told his brother. To me, he said, “It worked. Just not like we planned.” At my confusion, he added, “Remy, they think you’re dead. Alcais saw me ‘kill’ you.”

“But I didn’t die,” I said.

“Um, actually you did for all of thirty seconds,” Asher said. “Your heart stopped and you weren’t breathing. I cried over your body and everything. Someone should give me an Oscar.”

He gave a flippant shrug, but I could tell that he’d been scared. He wasn’t nearly as relaxed as he pretended. “I’ll buy you a trophy. How did you bring me back to life?”

“I didn’t. That was all you.” He tipped his head as if trying to sense me. “Something’s different. You’re different.”

Seamus walked over and dropped into an armchair. He eyed me for a moment, and I wondered if he understood what happened to me. He’d been a Protector of the Phoenix, after all. If anyone would know, he would. A stray bit of energy waved in the air, and I shoved it away without thinking. A small, satisfied smile curved Seamus’s mouth, and I guessed he did know what happened, after all. Or at least, suspected. For some reason, he was choosing not to out me to the others.

“How are you feeling?” Seamus asked.

“Surprisingly good,” I told him. It was true. I felt great.

I used the moment to change the subject.

“Where are my dad and Lucy? Are they okay?”

“They’re in a bedroom down the hall. Brita and Ursula are working on your father,” Seamus answered. “He was in bad shape. They don’t know that you were hurt.” He shrugged. “I guess there’s no reason to tell them now.”

I swallowed the impatience to be with them. “What about your people, Seamus? How is everyone?”

He grimaced. “We lost two of my men, and four others were hurt. Edith has already seen to the injured.”

“Sean?” I asked Edith, my voice low with concern.

She smiled. “He is okay. He stayed behind to cover any evidence that we were involved. He will make sure that the police do not know about you.”

I didn’t even want to know how he would accomplish that. Both the museum and the car park had to have security cameras. Maybe he had a way to erase the footage, but at the very least the police would investigate reports of gunfire.

“Xavier and Mark?” I asked.

Gabe scowled. “Xavier’s dead, but Mark got away.”

“For now,” Seamus said in a calm voice. “He has much to answer for, and we will be speaking with him.”

I thought he intended to do more than speak to him, but I felt no compassion for Mark. And perhaps it made me a bad person, but I wasn’t sorry to hear that Xavier was dead. He’d caused us so much pain, and he’d done it gleefully.

“What about Alcais?” I asked.

Seamus shook his head. “Ben said that Alcais had already decided to let him go before we arrived. I think he only stuck around in the garage because he wanted to hurt you, Remy. After he saw you ‘die,’ he ran off. Asher told us to let him go.”

“I figure he’ll go back to his family or to the Morrisseys. Either way, it only helps us if he tells everyone that he saw you die,” Asher said.

That hadn’t been the plan. We’d wanted him to see that I was powerless, but this was better. I was useless to them now, and that meant my family and friends would no longer be collateral to be used against me. They were free. Elation and overwhelming sadness hit me at once. Happiness because they were free, and sadness because my “death” meant they had to be free of me in order to move on. Some small part of me had hoped I could find a way to stay in their lives, even if we couldn’t live together.

I tuned back in to the conversation as Seamus explained that the police would find my grandfather and the gun that Alcais had used to kill Franc. At the thought of Franc, I did not feel grief. Once I had wanted to love him, but he’d destroyed that emotion.

“I want to see my father now,” I told Gabe.

He helped me stand and placed a hand on my lower back to pull me close. “Not yet, sweetheart. You need to clean up, or you’ll worry him.”

I glanced down at my shirt and shuddered at the dark crimson stains on my stomach and torso. He was right. First, I would shower, and then I would I go to my father. He might not want to see me, but that was a chance I’d have to take.

Once I’d showered, Gabe led me to my father’s room. I caught a look in his eye when he watched me, but his thoughts stayed hidden. Then all of my focus shifted to my family and the heartache that would come.

At the door, I paused. “I have to go in there alone,” I told him.

I was terrified that I’d hurt his feelings, but Gabe smiled and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Go ahead. I’ll be around if you need me.”

I hugged him in gratitude. Then I entered my father’s room, closing the door behind me with the sense that I was closing a cell door. There was no way this was going to be easy. Franc had destroyed my family because of what I was. The last time I’d seen my father, he’d just learned that I was something more than human. What had Franc’s people told him about me?

My eyes adjusted to the dim light in the room. My father appeared to be sleeping, tucked into the middle of the oversized bed, while Lucy crashed in a chair on the other side of the room. My father’s black hair stood out in stark relief against the white pillow beneath his head. The perpetual tan he’d always sported had faded, but he almost looked like the handsome man who’d brought me to his home and given me a family. All traces of his torture at Franc’s hands had been wiped clean by Brita and Ursula, but that didn’t change what had been done to him. Lines around his eyes and mouth remained, a testament to what he’d been through these last months.

Nerves clumped and knotted in my stomach as all of my old fears resurfaced. Would he hate me for everything that had happened? Would he be disgusted by what I was? Blame me for Laura’s death and for the things Franc had done to him?
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Remy. You’ve done the best you could.

My attention turned to my sister. She looked exhausted and peaceful even in her sleep. I walked around the bed and knelt by her chair. “Lucy?” I whispered. I rubbed her arm.

She woke instantly, fear flooding her features until she recognized me. Then she fell into my arms, knocking me off balance. We both laughed and then we were crying, too.