I reached for him and as I did, the space between us widened until there was nothing but air between our fingers.
“Bear, hold on!” I reached for my knife, but there was no knife, only one of my guns. Eleanor’s grip was hot under my palm and I shook as I brought her out, the black matte of her muzzle dulled in the light.
Her voice was sad. “Kill him, Phoenix. It is better than living a half-life. It is better than the pain and suffering he will have as your son. Better than drowning in blood and becoming one of the monsters. You don’t want that for him, do you?”
I screamed, my body jerking against the things that held me down, against the memories and nightmares. My mind fought desperately to wake me from the dream that held me so tightly, I couldn’t so much as open my eyes. I couldn’t watch my boy die again, not again.
I refused.
A cold nose jammed itself under my chin, startling me awake. I sat up, my heart pounding and my adrenaline rattling hard and fast as if I were in mid-fight. I reached for Abe and the big Malinois whined softly and then licked my cheek. He might have been trained as a guard dog, but with me, he was about as soft as any family pet. I was his entire world now, his pack and alpha, and he was the closest thing to family I had left after losing Bear and Justin.
I blew out a big breath that was shakier than I liked hearing from my own mouth. The ceiling of the car was a blank, light gray slate, and I let my eyes just stare as my heart rate and breathing settled into a semblance of normal. The rumble of tires on the I-5 as we headed north, the soft intake of breathing from Simon as he took his turn driving, the music low on the radio.
Normal, all of this was normal, and I was here, and not in the past where the flames and the water tried burning and drowning me. I was not in the past where I would have to watch Bear die again, where I could do nothing to save him.
A tremor rippled through me, a sob fighting to escape, and I closed my eyes as tears filled the edges. The dreams were the worst when they came because he looked so real. As if I could reach out and touch him, as if I still had a chance to save him. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep the sobs at bay. Giving in to the grief was not an option, not when I had so much work left to do to bring his killer to justice. To make them pay for his death.
Romano had been the one to call the hit in on my husband, Justin, and Bear had been caught in the trap meant for him. I’d lost them both in an accident that was anything but. I’d survived and now I was doing all I could to make Romano suffer. To take his power, to wipe out his business, and then at the end, and only at the end when he was stripped of everything, would I kill him.
I adjusted my seat and immediately groaned. My body had taken a beating that was only a day and a half old. I’d faced down the first of Luca Romano’s three guardians from Hell, and had, with barely the edge of my skin intact, survived. The Stick Man might not sound like a terrible threat, but I’d felt the poison from his splinters, and the sheer fact that he was nearly impossible to kill meant he’d kept on coming no matter what damage I’d done to him. I ran a hand over my hair, forgetting for a moment that I’d cut it all off. I turned and caught my reflection in the side window.
There were bruises under my green eyes and along my cheekbones, a bite wound in my shoulder that had been stitched but throbbed every time I so much as twitched, and then there were the spots where the fire had caught me. The singed tips of my black hair were invisible but I could smell them, and various parts of my body had first and second degree burns. That was what I got for having to strip down naked and run through the flames in order to get away from the Stick Man.
“Hey, at least we’re alive,” Simon said from the front seat as I touched a gash on my cheek. I was too tired to even glare at him. After the fight in the warehouse, and shutting down Romano’s illegal magic dispensary, taking all his money, and killing more than a few of his cronies—including one of my brothers—I was spent. The adrenaline had faded and I knew I needed to let my body heal. I was a normal, and that meant there was no way around the healing process taking however long it wanted to.
Simon grinned back at me. Despite his wounds, he’d already healed. Perk to being an abnormal, I suppose. They could take more damage and still come out grinning on the flip side, ready to go again after very little down time.
I shifted my body to a more comfortable position and reached out to lay my hand on Abe’s head. The Belgian Malinois had been with me since the beginning of this, before I’d lost Bear and Justin, and he was my last connection to my previous life.
“Alive, yes,” I finally agreed with Simon. My voice was raspy from sleep and I dug around in my bag at my feet until I found a bottle of water. Lukewarm and stale from being in the bottle too long, but I didn’t care. It would soothe my throat and I gulped it down.
“So . . . where are we going?” Simon asked. “I mean, we can take I-5 all the way to the border if you want, or we can take a right-hand turn and head toward New York. Which is my vote if you want to know.”
I shook my head. “Where are we now?”
“Medford, Oregon, is coming up.” Simon tossed a folded map back to me. I flipped it open. Medford was about halfway between Hollywood and Seattle.
“We’ll stop at Medford,” I said.
He gave me a wink and I closed my eyes. Simon thought he was quite the ladies’ man, and his charm would’ve made it easier to deal with him if not for one thing. He was an abnormal, a hired assassin not unlike myself.
But I didn’t fuck abnormals.
I killed them.
Abe lay down with his front legs and head across my lap. I rubbed him behind his ears as my mind fully woke up. Seattle was my destination, and I was looking for a specific person, and that was about the only reason I still had Simon with me, though I wasn’t sure he’d make it all the way there for the simple reason that he irritated the shit out of me. His ability as an abnormal was in finding people, and that was what I needed. I could do it on my own, but Simon could speed the process up in finding Talia Lovstark.
She was a code breaker who dealt in magic, and I had a set of coded papers. They were twisted with magic so tightly, I’d not been able to make even a dent in them. The papers had belonged to my late husband, Justin, and his partner Noah Black, or should I say, Noah Lancaster. They’d been prepping a big score against my father, Luca Romano, and thought they could blackmail the miserable bastard. Only Romano had caught wind of what they were doing and had struck first.
The papers were the key to the reason Justin had been killed, and I intended to use them to bring Romano down. Thoughts of Romano led me to thoughts of my son.
I had to work to keep my breathing even as I thought about Bear, about how young he’d been, and how he’d not deserved to have his life cut short. Instead I focused on how grief had turned into a rage I used to keep moving, to propel me forward. Taking out a single factory and stealing a few million dollars from Romano was not even close to being enough to make him pay for what he’d done.
The coded papers were key in my plans; at least, that was what I was banking on. The papers were valuable enough that Noah had burned my house down to keep them safe. The bastard had also shot and killed my dog Abigail, and had shot Abe, almost killing him, too, in order to stop anyone from finding the papers. To say Noah was on my shit list was an understatement.