Wildfire Phoenix by Zoe Chant

Chapter 2

Raging infernos and giant demonic snakes, Blaise could handle.

Thiswas way outside her comfort zone.

The transformation was abrupt. One moment, Zephyr was all calm confidence, as though he woke up every morning to find a stranger setting fire to his bed. The next, the color drained from his face. He stared at his own hands like he’d never seen them before.

“Whoa!” She jumped to intercept him as he lurched up from the bed. “Steady there. Take it easy, okay?”

He ignored her, heading for the small window set into the far wall. With her fingertips still burning from their previous contact, she didn’t dare touch him again. She gave way, stepping back, though she took care to block the door just in case he made a sudden bolt for freedom.

Zephyr stumbled to the window, sheet trailing from his hips. His biceps bunched as he pressed a hand against the glass. For a guy who’d been in a coma for months, he had spectacular muscle tone.

In fact, his body was just flat-out spectacular. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he’d spent the last three months in the gym rather than unconscious in a hospital bed. Blaise found her gaze drifting down the corded muscles of his back to the edge of the sheet and hastily jerked her eyes back to safer zones.

She cleared her throat. “Uh, Zephyr? I really don’t think you should be walking yet.”

He didn’t respond. Leaning on the window to steady himself, he stared out. He didn’t so much as glance at the landscaped gardens surrounding the care facility, or the distant peaks of the mountains on the horizon. All his attention was fixed on the sky.

“Empty,” he said, in that dry, hoarse rasp. “Not even clouds.”

The guy had just woken up from the most traumatic event any shifter could experience, and he wanted to talk about the weather?

“Er, yeah.” She stayed tense, ready to lunge for him if he decided to pitch himself out the window in the mistaken belief that he still had wings. “Look, would you please get back into bed?”

He didn’t turn, still staring up into the blue. “How is this possible? What happened?”

Well, Zeph, for the past fifteen years you’ve been flying around as a giant, blank-eyed bird with a penchant for large scale arson. Okay, you were doing it to stop demons, but you also caused a hell of a lot of collateral damage, including coming damn close to killing me, my friends, and the only living member of your own family on more than one occasion.

But don’t worry! You aren’t going to lose your mind and try to zap us all again, because a few months ago your uncle shot you with a dart full of basilisk venom. Which put you in a coma and quite possibly has killed your inner animal for good. But hey, at least you’re awake now, and maybe even almost sane!

Of course, without your Thunderbird, it’s pretty likely that a horde of evil horned snake demons will come crawling out of hell to eat our faces this summer… but there’s nothing you can do about that now, so try not to worry about it.

Also, just FYI, you’re my one true mate.

Hi.

“Um,” Blaise said, cautiously. “Maybe you should tell me what you remember first.”

“I remember you.” He half turned, though his gaze stayed fixed on the sky. “You faced the Thunderbird. You stopped it, when no one else could. Not even me.”

Blaise flinched. That was a memory she kept very carefully locked away, down in the dark along with her animal. “Yeah, let’s not talk about that. So you do remember being the Thunderbird. We weren’t sure if you would.”

“I remember everything.” Zephyr’s fingers spread, then curled, like he was trying to grasp something. “But it’s like trying to make sense of a dream. I don’t understand. I’m here, and I’m alone… but I shouldn’t be. The work’s not done. Uncegila and her horned serpents are still a threat. Why would the Thunderbird let me go?”

“Well, it kinda didn’t have a choice. Your uncle shot you with a serum that, uh, suppresses a shifter’s inner animal.”

Zephyr shook his head, as though that didn’t make any sense. “But I’m not a shifter.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not one of your kind. I don’t share an animal’s soul.” He touched the center of his chest, as if rubbing an old scar, though his bronze skin was smooth and unmarked. “I’m just a channel.”

Okaaaaaaay. “A channel for what?”

“For the Wakinyan. Thunderbirds, in English. We call ourselves,” he said a word in what she assumed was Lakota. “Thunderkin would be the closest translation, though that loses a great deal of nuance. We can reach into the realm of the Wakinyan, making a path for their power to flow into this world.”

“So you weren’t born the Thunderbird? It… chose you, somehow?”

“Yes. I called down the lightning, and the storm took me where it willed.” He fell silent for a moment, a shadow passing across his face. “I thought I could control it. I was wrong.”

Blaise bit her lip, but she couldn’t help herself. Curiosity had gnawed at her ever since the crew had first encountered the Thunderbird. “Where were you? When you weren’t flying around Montana, I mean. You always just seemed to disappear into thin air.”

“Not air,” Zephyr said, so softly that even her shifter hearing could barely catch the words. “Dreams. The dream of the Thunderbird. The dreams of the world.”

Before she could ask what he meant by that, he looked at her at last. His eyes were so dark that they seemed all pupil, black on black. Once again, she felt that lightning-bright bolt of recognition, searing all the way to the center of her soul.

“I was lost.” His voice dropped, deep as distant thunder. “There should have been no way for me to return home. But I heard you, in my dream. You found me. You called me back.”

The back of her neck prickled. By his own admission, he wasn’t a shifter. He shouldn’t be able to feel the connection between them.

But the way he was looking at her…

She broke the eye contact, taking refuge in practical matters. “Look, will you please sit down? For my sake, if not your own. If Buck walks in here and finds that I’ve let you faceplant on the floor, he’ll fire my ass so fast it’ll leave a smoke trail.”

For the first time, Zephyr smiled. It was only a little quirk of his mouth, a slight spark in those midnight eyes, but it was like clouds clearing to reveal a sky full of stars. Blaise had an immediate urge to crack another joke, just to see him laugh.

Oh God, I’m turning into Joe. Kill me now.

“I suspect my uncle would sooner cut off his left arm,” Zephyr said. “He couldn’t afford to lose you. I’ve seen you in action, remember?”

That was the last thing Blaise wanted to do. She cleared her throat, rubbing her sweating palms down her jeans. “Yeah, well. I still have to look after you. I’m pretty sure people aren’t supposed to jump up from a coma and start wandering around. I really need to go find a doctor.”

Zephyr rotated his wrists experimentally, as though testing his range of motion. Blaise tried very hard not to stare at his flexing forearms, and failed miserably.

“I feel fine,” he said. “Physically, at least. How can that be possible, if I’ve been in a coma?”

“Well, it wasn’t a normal coma. Like I said, you got pumped full of anti-shift serum. Made from basilisk venom, mostly.” It was probably best not to tell him what else had gone into that hellish cocktail. Blaise definitely wouldn’t have wanted to know if someone had shot demon secretions into her veins. “It put you in some kind of suspended animation. We’ve seen something similar in shifters who were hit with the stuff, though it didn’t last so long. Are you sure you aren’t a shifter?”

“Yes.” Zephyr rolled one shoulder, then the other, still loosening his muscles. “Though I suppose thunderkin could be considered a distant cousin to your kind. Perhaps that’s why this serum affected me. Where did it come from?”

“Uncegila brewed it up, with the help of some of her minions. She meant to use it to stop the Thunderbird.”

Zephyr’s forehead creased. “I thought you said my uncle shot me.”

“He did. We thwarted Uncegila’s plan, but then Buck picked up the dart gun and shot you before anyone could stop him. He figured out that you were the Thunderbird, see, before any of the rest of us even suspected. He wanted to rescue you.”

“Yes,” Zephyr said softly. “He always does.”

“What?”

He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not important now. How long will this last? When will the Thunderbird return?”

Rattled as she was, the truth slipped out before she could stop herself. “Never.”

His only visible reaction was a long, slow exhale.

Oh shit. I’m doing this all wrong.

She’d always made fun of her friends for the way that they’d all lost their goddamn minds when they’d met their mates. At the moment, she would have been doing better if she’d whacked Zephyr over the head, shoved a baby unicorn at him, fallen off a fire watch tower and pretended to be her own identical twin. While stark naked.

“I mean, we aren’t totally sure,” she said, not sure whether he would find this reassuring, or the precise opposite. “But Uncegila designed that serum to kill the Thunderbird, and she seemed pretty convinced it would work. So far, we don’t have any evidence that it didn’t do exactly what she wanted.”

“So that’s why it’s so quiet,” Zephyr whispered. He closed his eyes, as though looking inward. “It’s strange. I never realized it, but the storm was always there, even before I transformed. Now I can’t hear it at all.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?” she said, desperate for his lost, shadowed expression to lighten. “You couldn’t come back, before. The Thunderbird wouldn’t let you go. Now it’s gone. You’re free at last. You’re home.”

“Home,” he echoed, as though the word had no meaning. “I don’t think that exists anymore.”

“Hey, you’ll be okay.” Almost, she reached out for him, but stopped herself at the last moment. “You still have people who care about you.”

“One person, at least.” Zephyr rubbed at his eyes. “What am I going to say to him?”

Blaise hadn’t just meant Buck, and there was no way in hell she was going to admit that. “You don’t have to say anything. He’ll just be happy you’re back.”

“But I failed him. Twice over, if the Thunderbird is truly gone.” He dropped his hand, revealing hollow, haunted eyes. Anyone would have thought he hadn’t slept for days. “I’ve failed everyone. Uncegila is rising, growing stronger. Without the Thunderbird to stop her—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Blaise said firmly. “The only thing you need to do now is rest and recover. Now lie down, or I swear I will throw you onto that bed.”

She had a sudden mental image of doing exactly that, and then following him down. Her face went as hot as her hands.

“I don’t doubt you could,” Zephyr murmured, his gaze lingering on her upper arms. Then he flushed too, angular cheekbones darkening. “That is, I know you’re strong. Not just physically. Even the Thunderbird respected your power.”

That was far too close to topics Blaise really didn’t want to discuss. She covered her discomfort by folding her arms and fixing him with a glare. “Believe me, I don’t need my animal’s help to put your ass anywhere I want it. I spend fourteen-hour days cutting line, two weeks at a time. So lie down and let me take care of you, or else.”

“Very well. Thank you…” Zephyr hesitated. He swept her with a long, thoughtful look that tingled across every inch of her skin. “I’m sorry. We’ve met many times, but I don’t know your name.”

“Well, it’s not like we’ve been formally introduced.” Out of sheer habit, Blaise stuck out a hand. “Blaise Swanmay, Thunder Mountain Hotshots.”

Slowly—as though it took conscious effort to remember what to do—he took her hand.

“Blaise,” he repeated, softly.

The way he said her name ran down her back like a caress. His skin was cooler than hers, yet fire lit in her blood.

Her breath stopped. Zephyr had gone perfectly still, as though his heart too had stuttered to a halt at the contact. His midnight eyes filled her world.

“Blaise,” he whispered again.

Then his forehead creased. “Is something burning?”

Shewas burning. Literally. She could smell smoke, curling up from the edge of her T-shirt.

With a gasp, she jerked back. “Don’t touch me!”

Zephyr let go instantly. He started to put both hands in the air, only to have to grab at his sheet as it threatened to part company with his hips.

“What was that?” He stared at his palm, then at her. His dark eyebrows drew together in sudden concern. “Blaise? Are you all right?”

“No!” Blaise yelped. “I mean, yes! It’s not you, it’s me. I just nearly, uh…”

Accidentally set you on firewere probably not reassuring words to hear from the person who’d just woken you up from a coma.

Her shoulder blades were still radiating heat. She must have two long scorch marks down the back of her Thunder Mountain Hotshots T-shirt. A heartbeat longer, and her wings would have unfurled…

“I have to go.” Back plastered against the wall, she scuttled for the exit, keeping as far away from Zephyr as she could. “Right now. I—I’ll find a doctor for you. Don’t move!”

“Blaise,” he started.

She was already out the door, slamming it behind her. A couple of passing nurses jumped at the crash, shooting her looks of alarmed disapproval.

“He’s awake.” Blaise backpedaled away from the medical staff. “Zephyr Frazer, in there. He’s awake. ”

Not waiting for a response, she ran down a side corridor. To her relief, there was a women’s bathroom marked at the end of the hallway. Hurrying inside, she locked the door, then fumbled for the faucet. The metal softened, sagging away from her touch.

“I’m in control.” She thrust her hands into the chilling stream. “I’ve got this. I’m in control.”

Black wings beat in her soul. The water gurgling down the drain began to boil.

She gritted her teeth. “I. Am. In. Control.”

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she couldn’t answer it. She held her hands in the water until her fingers were numb with cold; until she’d washed away even the memory of her mate’s touch. Until her animal sank back into the dark, ice closing over it once more.

With a sigh, Blaise sank down onto the toilet seat. She sat there for a moment, head between her knees, as her breathing steadied. Then she pulled out her phone and looked at the screen.

1 New Message

Is everything all right?

Her fingers were shaking too badly to text. She managed to send back a simple thumbs-up emoji.

A pause, then her phone beeped again.

I’m here if you need to talk. I love you.

“Love you too, Dad,” Blaise said out loud. “But believe me, this is not a conversation we need to have. Ever.”

Shoving her phone back into her pocket, she turned off the faucet. Twisting round, she examined the back of her crew T-shirt in the mirror over the sink. Thankfully, the black fabric hid the worst of the scorch marks. She should be able to make it back to her cabin without anyone asking awkward questions.

No one would have to know what had happened.

Not even Zephyr.

After all, he wasn’t a shifter. Even if his Thunderbird was still lurking around somewhere inside his skull, he wouldn’t have the same instincts as her. He didn’t know she was his mate.

Now, she just had to make sure he never found out.