Wildfire Phoenix by Zoe Chant
Chapter 25
Smoke poured from the burning building, stretching for the sky in a thick, ominous plume. Even as Blaise jumped off the fire engine, she knew that this was it. The big one. The kind of incident that every firefighter feared; the type of fire that would either make you a hero, or haunt your nightmares for the rest of your life.
Like it had haunted hers. She’d dreamed this, over and over, and she was dreaming now…
Her hands felt numb, frozen. All around, firefighters were unloading equipment and preparing for attack with practiced efficiency. She knew she should be pulling on her own breathing mask, yet she couldn’t make herself move. With icy certainty, she knew that if she entered that building, she wouldn’t come out again.
Not as the same person.
A gloved hand gripped her shoulder. Not Callum, or any firefighter that she recognized. She couldn’t read the markings on his helmet, or make out his face past the protective visor. His name hovered on the tip of her tongue, just out of reach. Some part of her mind kicked in protest, insisting that he shouldn’t be here, hadn’t been here, and yet, and yet…
You won’t know me, he’d told her, though she couldn’t quite remember when or why. It will be different when we’re in your dream rather than mine. But I will be there. I will help you, if you let me.
“You can do this.” His voice was deep and soft. He wasn’t speaking over the radio link, yet somehow she could hear him clearly, through all the shouting and sirens. “This is what you trained to do, what you were born to do. You’re afraid, but you’ll step into those flames anyway. This is who you are.”
She knew that touch. She knew him, though she couldn’t have said how. He was her partner, and she wouldn’t let him down.
“Blaise,” the dispatcher said in her ear, distorted a little by radio crackle. “Alpha Team is on the way to support, estimated ETA seven minutes. Commander Ash wants to know if you’re holding position or proceeding to attack.”
“One moment, Control. Still assessing the situation.” She didn’t bother to switch radio frequencies, instead reaching out with her mind. *Callum?*
*Three people trapped upstairs,*he sent back, his telepathic tone tight and terse. His hands never paused, busy unshipping the ladder from the fire engine. *None of them are moving. Blaise, I can barely sense them. They’re very weak.*
“Right,” Blaise said out loud. “Control, tell Commander Ash we can’t wait for Alpha team. I’m going in.”
She fitted her breathing mask over her nose and mouth, then locked her helmet visor down. With radio commands and hand signals, she directed her squad to start suppressing the fire, beating back the flames enough to allow entry.
“Stay close,” she instructed—damn it, what was his name? No time to worry about that now. “Callum, point me.”
Glimmering points of light shimmered in her mind’s eye. Callum’s talent couldn’t map out walls and stairs—more’s the pity—but he could at least give her an indication of direction and distance.
Blaise kicked in the door, plunging into a world of intense heat and choking darkness. Though no flames were visible, she could sense the fire in the walls, gnawing greedily through insulation and wires. Dark wings beat in her mind, stretching wide in frustrated longing.
No. She froze, though to stop in these circumstances was death. Her vision constricted, awareness tunneling down in panic. No, no, no, not again, not this, I can’t—
That hand on her shoulder again. He was still with her, close as her own shadow, close as her black, burning soul.
“They need you,” he said. “You’re the only one who can save them.”
She swallowed hard, and nodded. Staying low, she dashed up the stairs, heading for those faint pinpricks of life.
The first two were together, a man and a woman, still curled together in a bed. They must have been overwhelmed by rising smoke without even awakening. No time to drag them downstairs. Callum and the rest of her crew had already wrestled the ladder into position. She smashed a window, handing the first victim out into their waiting hands. As she turned back to get the woman, a crashing roar shook the building, making her stagger.
Her radio crackled in her ear. “Blaise, the stairs just collapsed!”
“I know.” She passed the woman out the window. “Nobody enter the structure. Get everyone down, but keep the ladder braced here. There’s still one more person to find.”
*Blaise,*Callum said in her mind. She could just make him out through the dense smoke, a dark silhouette at the top of the ladder. *The whole upper floor could flashover at any moment.*
“It’s going to be all right, Cal.” For all the searing heat, she felt strangely cool, calm. Her shadow was a steady presence at her back. “I’m going to save him.”
She had saved them, the whole family, that night. The fire hadn’t claimed any lives. But she nearly had. If Alpha Team hadn’t stopped her…
Back into the burning darkness, into ever-increasing heat. Sweat dripped down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She couldn’t wipe it off through the protective visor. Not that it mattered. Sight was useless now, as was her tenuous link to Callum’s mind. Forward, was all he could tell her, along with a sense of a heartbeat stuttering to a halt.
Even through her gloves, the wall was hot enough to sear her palm. She kept her hand against it anyway, her only point of reference in the thick smoke. Distantly, she could hear sirens; the long, up-down wail of approaching engines. The backup crews, her father’s among them.
They would be too late. They had been too late, to stop what happened next.
Burn
She could feel the fire rising. Through the house; through her veins. Time narrowed, racing to that needle-sharp point of no return.
Burn
Flashover—the thing that every firefighter dreaded, that they trained so hard to recognize and avoid. That murderous moment when there was enough heat in the air that fuel ignited without a spark; where fire didn’t race from surface to surface, but simply bloomed, everywhere, in one glorious, cataclysmic burst.
Burn
She was so close to it. And this was the point where she always broke, turning to search futilely for a way out. A way to avoid this, to make it not happen, not have happened—
But this time, when she turned, she found him blocking the way. Somehow, she could see him clearly, even though everything else was hidden.
“This isn’t what happened.” Pale smoke curled around him like fog; like the clouds between dreams. “You would never abandon someone in danger. You didn’t turn back.”
“I should have!” She shoved at him in desperation. “I should have known better, I should have been more careful. I won’t let it happen again.”
He held firm, not giving ground. “If you keep running from the fire, it will burn unchecked. To fight it, you have to face it.”
Her breath came in shallow rasps. Even with her breathing apparatus, she could taste the smoke.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Despite the choking smoke, he pulled off his helmet. Zephyr looked down at her, untouched by the searing heat, his dark eyes compassionate.
“I know,” he said gently. “That’s what makes you brave.”
Slowly, she reached up to her own helmet. Her hands were stiff and clumsy in the thick, fire-resistant gloves. It took her several attempts to undo the safety catches. With a hiss of escaping air, her helmet came free.
The heat caressed her exposed face like a lover. She took a deep breath, feeling warmth fill her lungs and spread out through her veins.
She turned around.
Burn!
Flashover. She felt it happen, just as it had happened before; the moment where the fire tried to erupt all around her, an apocalyptic explosion of flame. Just as she had done before, she reached out—not with her hands, but with her soul.
The part of her soul that had always been a frustrated, furious shadow. The part of her that had always yearned to burn.
Now, at last, it did.
She caught the fire before it could lash through the house. Impossible to contain or extinguish so much elemental force—but she could divert it. She took it, all that power and light and heat, and channeled it straight into her own heart.
The Black Phoenix rose.
It exploded into the sky with a scream of triumph and joy, shattering the roof like an egg. It took the fire with it, drawing it out of the house in a long, arcing tail. Black wings spread wide, every feather alight with blood-red flame.
But this time, she didn’t look down on the cold, charred ruin left in her wake. Instead, she looked up, into her own sun-bright eyes.
“No,” Blaise said to her animal.
Yes.
The Black Phoenix sank onto the shattered remnants of the house like a bird settling on a nest, wings still outstretched over their heads. It was the darkness of a burning oil spill; dense smoke wrapped around a heart of fire. Its feathers were the black of cooled magma. Whenever it moved, hot light bled from beneath them.
This is what we are,it said, in the voice of a volcano. This is what we were always supposed to be.
“Yes,” Zephyr whispered, his dark eyes filled with reflected flame. Though he stood in the burning shadow of those seething, apocalyptic wings, there was no fear in his face; only awestruck wonder. “Oh, yes.”
“No,” Blaise said again. She took a step forward, standing between her mate and the other half of her soul. “We can’t. Not like this.”
But this is what we want. This is what you want.
She could feel it, all that glorious power, burning in her chest like a star. It filled her veins like liquid light. All her life, part of her had been still and cold, imprisoned in darkness. Now, she could finally fly free, into the sun.
Bits of burning debris drifted through the air, tumbling in slow motion. The swirling lights of the fire trucks rose and fell in gentle, pulsing waves, washing frozen firefighters in alternating shades of blue and red. Somewhere below, she knew, a paramedic worked furiously to restart a stopped heart.
She knew the cost of her freedom. She wouldn’t steal this power, shouldn’t even be tempted. And yet… and yet…
“Yes,” she whispered. “I want this. No matter that I know I can’t have it. No matter that the cost is too high. I will always long to burn.”
The Black Phoenix looked down at her, its eyes the brightness of burning forests. There was no anger in that gaze, or hatred, or any human emotion at all. If you got in the way of wildfire, it would burn you. That was just what fire did.
Yes,it said. Always.
“It wasn’t your animal you were fighting,” Zephyr said softly. “It was your own desires.”
“It felt so good to burn.” She closed her eyes, feeling it now, that sense of utter rightness. “I hadn’t known how cold I was until I finally knew the touch of fire. It felt so good, to be whole.”
This is who we are. The Black Phoenix arched its wings, burning pinions spreading wide. This is what we were always meant to be.
“And this is why you couldn’t let yourself get too close to me,” Zephyr said. “Because that felt right too.”
Fire tingled in her fingertips. With a thought, she could unleash an inferno, or call it back. All that power, all that potential, all hers.
“Just like this did.” She lifted a hand, flames curling around her fingers. “When you touched me, when I felt that spark, it brought me right back to this moment. Where everything felt right. When I was so wrong. It’s all tangled up together. You make me feel whole. And that’s the one thing I can never be.”
The Black Phoenix hissed like lava hitting the sea. But we must burn. We cannot remain a shadow, weak and powerless. We must blaze bright to drive back the dark.
She shook her head. “Not like this. Never like this. This isn’t our power, no matter how much we long for it. We can’t do this. Not ever again.”
We must burn!The flames edging the Black Phoenix’s feathers brightened from dull red to angry, spitting orange. We must be a beacon in the night, to guide our mate home. We must save him!
“We will.” She stroked her animal’s neck, settling the incandescent feathers. “I will. I understand now. I know what I have to do.”
“Blaise.” Zephyr touched her shoulder, his expression troubled. “This is complex trauma. I know you’re strong, but this isn’t the sort of thing that can be overcome by one heroic act of willpower.”
“I know, Zephyr.” She covered his hand with her own, squeezing his fingers. “Trust me. You remember the first time you brought me into the dream world, and you showed me the link between us? Can you do that again?”
His eyes still betrayed his concern, but he nodded. He interlaced his fingers through hers, and the black bond flickered into view, linking her heart to his. It was thicker now, shot through with bright fire.
It will not be enough, her animal said.
Blaise already knew that. She turned, tracing the black, burning line of the half-formed mate bond. It didn’t end at her own body, but carried on until it vanished into fire-edged feathers. Her animal anchored that tether, binding her soul to Zephyr’s.
And there was another line, too.
A gossamer-fine thread, bright as spun sunlight. Fire ran down that bond, with the stuttering rhythm of a fading heartbeat. With every pulse, the glowing line dimmed, and the Black Phoenix’s flames licked higher.
She touched that flickering line. “I want to burn. But this isn’t my fire. I have to give it back.”
The Black Phoenix’s hooked beak bowed; maybe in acceptance, maybe in surrender. Its wings folded, the flames wreathing the vast pinions dying to wisps of smoke. Fire surged down the bond in an eye-searing rush, racing back to where it belonged—and then it was gone.
Not gone,her animal whispered in the sudden cold. Never entirely gone. That fire will always be there, and you will always be afraid of it. How can we reach out to our mate, when you have built a wall across our own soul? How can we give him our whole heart, when there is this one part that you insist we must always deny?
The link to her father still shone with a faint, firefly glimmer, the only light in the utter darkness. She closed her hands on that thin, fragile line, feeling its warmth through her gloves. Not a fierce, searing heat, but a gentle, comforting touch, like a parent holding their child’s hand.
“I can’t.” Blaise stretched the bond tight between her fists, offering it up to her animal. “So help me. Take my fear away.”
She couldn’t see Zephyr’s face in the dark, but she heard his sharp intake of breath. He’d figured out what she intended to do.
“Blaise,” he said, sharp and urgent. “Blaise, no—!”
Too late.
Her animal’s sharp, black beak closed over their connection to the Phoenix, and severed it forever.
