Wildfire Phoenix by Zoe Chant

Chapter 5

“You sure about this?” Buck asked. He spared a moment’s attention from the road to cast Zephyr a brief, worried look. “Still time to change your mind. We could turn around, go find a motel down in Antler. No need to rush.”

Zephyr shook his head, keeping his own gaze on the forest flashing past. “I need to do this. I have to know.”

Buck’s jaw tightened, but he flicked on the indicator. He turned off onto a smaller side road, steering the truck around the tight bends with the ease of long familiarity.

“Okay then,” Buck said. His voice was studiously calm, but out of the corner of his eye Zephyr saw his uncle’s hands clench on the steering wheel. “Should be able to see it up ahead, right about… now.”

Zephyr closed his eyes. He took a deep breath; held it; and looked.

Thunder Mountain rose before him.

It was just as he remembered. The gently sloping, pine-covered flanks; the sharp granite peak, rising into the sky like the point of a spear. Clouds clung to the very tip of the summit, shrouding it from view. Even on the very clearest day, Thunder Mountain always hid its secrets.

He stared, unblinking, until his eyes watered and it all smeared into a haze of green and gray. He blinked, and the mountain resolved again, in every detail. There was his childhood home, that he’d explored in happy innocence, until every tree and rock was an old friend. The place where he’d loved, and been loved. The place where he’d been lost. The place where he’d lost everything.

And still, he felt… nothing.

Perhaps the Thunderbird truly was dead.

Buck cleared his throat, making Zephyr start. “Breathe, Zeph. You okay?”

“Fine.” With an effort, he tore his eyes away from the mountain. “I thought the sight might trigger the Thunderbird to rise, if it was still there. But I don’t feel anything.”

Buck was quiet for a moment, navigating the winding road. “You sure?”

Gingerly, he explored his own mind, like someone descending into a vast cave with nothing but a feeble flashlight. Nothing stared back at him. No distant thunder; no rustle of vast wings.

Yet when Blaise had touched him… when he’d looked into her eyes…

“I’m sure.” He gazed at the mountain again; that silent, indifferent presence. “It’s just a place. Nothing more.”

Buck’s posture eased. He took one hand off the steering wheel, resting it along the edge of the wound-down window. “Good. Not far to go now. Soon have you back where you belong.”

Zephyr’s palms were damp. He rubbed them down the sides of his jeans, the new denim stiff and rough against his fingertips. They’d stopped at an out of town store for essential items after leaving the hospital. It felt odd to have things of his own again, even if it was just a few sets of clothes and a toothbrush.

Everything felt strange. The setting sun slanted through the forest, making leaves and trunks glow with warm, unearthly light. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole scene might ripple like a painted stage backdrop at any moment, dissolving into something different.

Real, he kept having to remind himself. Real. Not a dream.

But the closer they came to Thunder Mountain, the stronger his sense of unreality became. It was all too familiar. He found himself bracing for uneven sections of road before gravel rattled under the tires; knowing every twist and turn of the switchback curves.

How many times had he traveled this exact route? Sitting in the back, feet resting on his schoolbag? Familiarity clashed with a profound, jarring sense of displacement. The road and the trees and even his uncle; they were all the same. Only he had changed.

Everything was so close to how he remembered it. There was the great boulder that he’d first climbed when he was eight. There, the dry gully that flooded in fall, becoming home to a treasure trove of frogs. Here, the place where the road turned to dirt track, hard packed and rutted. Here was the turn off to the drive, and here was—

Shock hit him like a sledgehammer. “Stop!”

Zephyr’s seatbelt cut across his chest as Buck slammed on the brake, but that wasn’t what punched all the breath from his lungs. He stared out the window, not daring to breathe, or to blink.

It couldn’t be real. It was a dream.

But there it was. The house. His house.

For one glorious, agonizing second, it was exactly as he remembered. The long, airy porch; the roses by the front door. There were the barns, and the paddocks. Even Buttercup, his mother’s evil-tempered Shetland pony, was there in the front field, grazing placidly, the setting sun touching his chestnut hide with gold.

It was all as he remembered. And any moment now, the blue front door would open. And there they would be, waiting for him. Waiting to welcome him home.

Except… except that the front door was green now. And the pony didn’t have Buttercup’s long white stockings, and the barn was facing the wrong way, east not north. And his bedroom window was missing, and the shape of the roof wasn’t quite right, and…

And it wasn’t his home. His family wasn’t there. Could never be there.

“Zephyr. Zeph.”

Buck’s voice came from somewhere very far away. Zephyr gasped, coming back to the present with a lurch.

“It’s all right,” he said shakily. “I just—I was just startled.”

“I’m a motherfu-” Buck cut himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose. He’d gone as pale as though he’d seen a ghost too. “I’m a motherloving idiot. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. I should have taken a different route. Or at least warned you.”

“It’s all right,” Zephyr said again, although he wasn’t at all sure that was true. He couldn’t stop staring at the ranch, so close and yet so far from his memories. “I didn’t realize you’d rebuilt the place.”

“I didn’t,” Buck said. “Sh—sugar balls. I screwed up, Zeph. I sold it. I sold your mom’s ranch.”

The pain in Buck’s voice snapped Zephyr out of his stunned self-absorption. He turned to his uncle, managing to muster a reassuring smile.

“It’s really is all right,” he said, and this time he meant it. “You had no way of knowing that I was still alive. There was no reason for you to hang onto the place.”

“I still shouldn’t have sold it. I should’ve kept it for you, just in case.” Buck scrubbed a hand over his face. “But I couldn’t bear to come down here. Not after… that night. It was easier to just ignore the place. The house was gone anyway, and I let the barns all go to ruin. And then Wystan and Candice came to me with an offer. A plan to restore everything, set up a horse sanctuary. I thought, well, Wanda would’ve liked that.”

“Mom loved her horses,” Zephyr said softly. His mouth curved in a smile, a real one this time. “Almost as much as you hated them.”

“Stupid critters,” Buck mumbled. “Digestive systems with all the stability of a blender full of nitroglycerin. Might as well save time and just shovel fifty-dollar bills down their greedy gullets. Who designs an animal like that?”

Zephyr gazed again at the rebuilt ranch. “I’m glad you sold it. Truly. My parents would have wanted it to be put to good use. Whoever lives here clearly loves the place.”

“They do. Wystan and Candice are good people.” Buck sighed, dropping his hand. “Well, he’s a motherloving shifter, but he’s got his head on straight. For one of his kind at least. Works hard and always minds his manners, unlike most of my feral wolverines. I like him. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“I won’t,” Zephyr said, amused. “He’s one of your hotshots, then?”

“Yep. I’d introduce you, but he’s not here right now. Just had a baby, you see. A month early, so they’re having to stay at the hospital until she’s big enough to come home. Stable hands are looking after the place in the meantime.” Buck hesitated, eying him. “I could go find one of ‘em, if you wanted to have a look around.”

“No.” Zephyr turned away from the window. “It’s someone else’s home now. Let’s go.”

Buck studied him for a beat, then nodded. He put the truck in gear, pulling away.

“No more surprises,” Buck said as they started up the road again. “Just so you know, the base is going to be busy. Fire season starts in a few weeks, so the whole crew is getting back together for mandatory training. Even veterans have to go through the refresher course and fitness tests every year. Safety regulations. It’s not going to be a peaceful place for you to rest and recover.”

“I’ll be fine. Will the rest of your shifters be there?”

“Unfortunately.” Buck scowled at the dirt track. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep them off your back. I’ll have them running training laps around the entire damn mountain if that’s what it takes.”

“I want to see them.” He thought of Blaise; her strong hands, and the heat of her touch. “I have to thank them. For everything.”

Buck grunted. “Well, just don’t let them pull you back into all their nonsense. Anyone starts going on about demons or whatever, you tell ‘em it’s not your problem anymore, you hear me?”

“It is my problem. Even if I’m no longer host to the Wakinyan, I’m still Storm Society. I know you want to protect me, but you can’t. I have to take responsibility for the damage I caused. I have to keep fighting the horned serpents.”

“You can’t, Zeph.” Buck shot him a fierce, slanting glare. “What are you going to do, wander through the woods with a cattle prod in one hand, whistling hopefully? Even if you somehow stumbled across one of Uncegila’s demons, the motherlover would just swallow you whole before you so much as blinked. How is that going to help anyone?”

Zephyr wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. An ordinary human stood no chance against a demon. Someone without a connection to the spirit world couldn’t even touch a horned serpent, let alone hope to harm one. With all traces of storm gone from his soul, he would be nothing more than a liability in battle.

He leaned his forehead against the window, watching the trees pass by. Shadows and sun beams flickered over him. Darkness, light; darkness, light.

Without the Thunderbird… what could he do?

Unbidden, Blaise crept into his mind again. Not as he’d seen her last, fleeing from his hospital room in that strange, inexplicable panic. Not even what he’d seen when he’d first woken up, though that was burned into his memory like a brand; her beautiful face bending over him, lips half-parted and wonder in her eyes.

This had been earlier. He couldn’t have said exactly when. All his experiences as the Thunderbird were a patchwork of bright, alien emotions and glimpsed impressions, dreamlike and disjointed.

They’d been soaring high into the sky, carried aloft by hot thermal winds. He remembered the Thunderbird’s fierce satisfaction at the devastation below; acres of burning forest, a sea of fire.

There had been something else, too. A line of anonymous figures in tan safety gear. Firefighters. They’d been digging, scratching a hasty break in the scrubland to stop the inferno’s advance. Pitting shovels and strength against the raging wildfire; containing the furious forces he’d unleashed with nothing more than hand tools and teamwork.

One of them had looked up. She’d been just a tiny dot, far below, yet somehow her face shone in his memory. Just for an instant, their eyes had met.

“Could I join your crew?” he said abruptly.

The truck swerved as Buck jerked the steering wheel. “What?”

“I did a lot of damage as the Thunderbird. I can’t make up for that, but at least I could help contain other wildfires. You said you were about to start training. If I prove I can do the job, would you hire me?”

Buck’s breath hissed between his teeth. “This job isn’t for everyone, Zeph. It’s uncomfortable at the best of times, and damned dangerous at the worst.”

“I’m not afraid of hard work, and I’m used to danger. Look, I’m not asking for special treatment. Just a chance. If I can pass the training, would you at least consider signing me on?”

“Possibly. Hotshot crews don’t usually take complete rookies, but I am the boss. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve bent the rules a little.” Buck eyed him sidelong. “You realize that if I took you on, you’d have to spend a lot of time in Blaise’s company.”

Was he blushing? He had a horrible suspicion that he was blushing. He’d meant what he’d said about atoning for the damage he’d done, but he had been thinking of Blaise. How had Buck guessed?

His uncle let out a long, expressive sigh. “I’ll think about it, Zeph. Can’t promise more than that yet. But you have to promise me one thing in return. If you do end up joining the crew, take things slowly, okay?”

“I’m fine. The doctors gave me a clean bill of health, remember? I may not have the strength of a shifter, but I’m in good condition. I can handle it.”

“I didn’t mean physically.” Buck’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I meant with Blaise.”

“Why? Is there some regulation against relationships in the crew?” Zephyr heard his own words, and had a strong impulse to hurl himself out of the car. “I mean, not that I was planning on—I wasn’t thinking—I would keep things strictly professional!”

“Uh huh.” Buck’s voice was as dry as a desert. “And I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Great views of Brooklyn.”

Zephyr slumped a few inches in the passenger seat, his face burning. “I’m not so starved for human contact that I’m going to throw myself at literally the first woman I saw. I’m capable of controlling myself.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Buck said grimly. “Come on, kid. You must have figured it out by now. Blaise is a shifter. When you two met, she took a long, hard look into your eyes, and then lost her motherloving mind. Put two and two together.”

“Uncle, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

Buck scrutinized him, as though searching for any sign that he was joking. “You really don’t know about this?”

“About what?”

“About the…” Buck looked as though he would rather be having a root canal than this conversation. “The birds and the bee shifters.”

If Buck started talking about condoms, Zephyr really was going to throw himself out of the vehicle. “I was fifteen when the Thunderbird took me. Not five. I do know where babies come from. What does that have to do with Blaise?”

Buck gave him an indecipherable look. “Let’s just say that shifters have strong animal urges.”

Zephyr stared at him. “I think you are severely overestimating my sex appeal.”

“Whatever I did to deserve this, I’m sorry,” Buck said to the sky. “Never mind, Zephyr. Just be careful, okay? Motherloving shifters.”

Something about Buck—or more specifically, his choice of words—had been niggling at Zephyr. He finally realized what it was, and a wave of unexpected amusement washed over him.

“Ah, Uncle?” Zephyr cocked an eyebrow at Buck. “You do realize that I am fully aware of the existence of the word ‘fuck’, right? You don’t have to keep censoring your language like I’m still a little kid.”

“Not a chance. Your mom would rise from the grave to cram a bar of soap so far down my throat, I’d be farting bubbles.” Buck turned off onto a narrow dirt track. A wooden sign to one side read: Thunder Mountain Hotshots. “We’re here.”

Zephyr had seen the hotshot base before, but he hadn’t exactly been in the right frame of mind to take in any details. Approaching it now, he was surprised by the scale of the place. To the Thunderbird, the timber buildings and cabins had seemed like a child’s wooden bricks, scattered across the mountainside meadow.

Was I truly that big? he wondered, staring up at a two-story structure that seemed to be the central hub of the base. He could remember sheltering in the building’s shadow, blood trickling down his feathers, exhausted from battling Lupa’s hellhound pack. It didn’t seem possible that he’d been able to look over the ridge line just by lifting his head.

A small knot of people waited out the front. Even from a distance, he could instantly tell that Blaise wasn’t among them. As he got out of the car, Zephyr surreptitiously searched the surroundings, but no one else was in sight. If Blaise was at the base at all, she hadn’t felt the need to come out to greet him.

So much for Buck’s warning. The whole idea had been ridiculous, yet he still felt an odd lurch of disappointment. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been looking forward to seeing her again.

Plenty of time for that later, Zephyr reminded himself. He had to keep reminding himself that all this was real, and not about to dissolve into storm winds and lightning. It felt strange to have a future.

Giving himself a mental shake, Zephyr focused on the men and women awaiting his arrival. He’d been bracing himself for this moment, but his pulse still picked up. These were the people who’d risked their lives fighting the fires he’d started; the people whose lives he’d threatened, lost in the Thunderbird’s blind rage.

But he had to face them. He owed them that simple courtesy, at least. Steeling himself, he followed his uncle toward the group of shifters. Whether they were actively hostile or merely coldly accusing, it was no more than he deserved.

He hadn’t expected one of them to step forward, and hold out a hand.

“Rory MacCormick, A-squad boss.” He was a broad, stocky man, with thick blond hair and golden eyes as warm as his smile. His handshake was firm, but welcoming. “It’s good to meet you properly at last, Zephyr.”

Zephyr found himself at a loss. What did you say to someone you’d tried to strike with lightning? Sorry hardly seemed adequate.

“Likewise,” he managed. “I am deeply in your debt for all that you’ve done—you, and the rest of your team. And I truly regret dragging you and your squad into all this.”

“I don’t,” said a tall and very obviously pregnant woman. She was smiling as well, though Zephyr noticed that she seemed to be avoiding meeting his eyes. “Without you, we’d never have met.”

“That’s true for all of us, actually,” put in a towering man with ink-dark skin and turquoise eyes. He grinned down at the sharp-featured, gray-haired woman under his arm. “Maybe it was fate.”

“Was,” rumbled an enormous bearded man. He exchanged a soft, intimate look with the woman next to him, who barely came up to his chest. “No regrets.”

The short woman squeezed her partner’s hand. “Never.”

“If anything, we’re the ones who owe you, Zephyr.” Stepping back, Rory put an arm around the pregnant woman’s waist, in a way that left no doubt as to who was the father of her imminent child. “Let me introduce you to everyone. This is my—”

“This isn’t a tea party,” Buck cut in sharply. “Zeph needs to rest, and I don’t pay you lazy motherlovers to stand around flapping your lips. Haven’t you got work to do?”

The pregnant woman flinched. Rory tightened his arm around her, flashing Buck a startled look. The rest of the squad were staring at the Superintendent too, with expressions betraying varying levels of surprise.

Zephyr was taken aback by Buck’s outburst as well. “I’m fine. And I want to meet everyone.”

“Edith, Joe, Seren, Fenrir, Darcy.” Buck rattled off the names with machine-gun speed, jabbing a finger at each person in turn. “There. Done. Now you’ve met the whole lot.”

“Not everyone,” Rory put in. “Wystan and Candice couldn’t make it today, but Callum should be back soon. He went to fetch Diana. We thought she should be here, given her own connection to the Thunderbird.”

“Diana is the other thunderkin?” Zephyr recalled a dark-haired woman facing him without fear, lightning filling her eyes. “I would very much like to talk with her.”

“Well, it’ll have to wait,” Buck said firmly. “You need to settle in, and I need to find out how badly these delinquents have trashed the place in my absence.”

Edith looked anxious, and her hands made an odd, flurrying motion. “We’ve done our best to keep everything up to your standard. We really have tried, chief.”

“He doesn’t really think we’ve been slacking, Edith.” Over her head, Rory fixed Buck with a warning look. “Everyone knows how hard you’ve been working.”

“Yeah, Buck is just being Buck,” Joe put in cheerfully. “He has to stomp around finding fault with everything, otherwise we might realize how much he actually missed us.”

“You’d need a scanning electron microscope to measure that,” Buck growled. He glanced at Edith, and his tone softened. “But much as it pains me to admit that it, the place does seem to be in order. Good work, Edith.”

The blond firefighter’s face split in a relieved grin. “Thanks, chief. But it wasn’t just me. Everyone’s worked hard.”

Rory flashed a sidelong look at Joe. “Nearly everyone.”

Joe shrugged, looking completely unrepentant. “Hey, I make coffee.”

“I do not think coffee is your most significant contribution to the crew,” Seren murmured. “Some might argue it is actively detrimental to morale.”

“You see what I have to put up with?” Buck said to Zephyr. “Listen, I really do need to have a talk with the squad. My cabin’s just back there. You go get settled in, okay?”

“I don’t have a lot to unpack, and I truly don’t need to rest. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

“Oh, it’s just crew stuff. Bore you back into a coma.” Buck fished a set of keys out of a pocket, holding them out. “Go on. I’ll come find you as soon as I can.”

Given the choice, Zephyr would rather have shadowed the crew. From their easy banter, he suspected that the squad could turn a two-hour lecture about health and safety regulations into a party. After so long on his own, it was wonderful to be around such easy camaraderie, even if just as an onlooker.

But there was a certain tightness to his uncle’s mouth that made Zephyr nod and take the keys. Whatever Buck needed to discuss with the shifters—and Zephyr highly doubted it had anything to do with firefighting—he clearly wanted to do it in private.

“All right.” Zephyr hesitated. He knew it was none of his business, but he couldn’t help asking, “By the way, is Blaise around? We didn’t get much of a chance to speak at the hospital. There are some things I need to ask her.”

The instant the words were out of his mouth, he knew it had been the wrong thing to ask. Up until that point, the shifters had shown him nothing but welcoming acceptance. Now, with eerie synchronicity, their expressions altered, becoming guarded. They all looked at each other, as though hoping someone else would be the first to speak.

“All right, you motherlovers, spit it out.” Buck’s eyes narrowed. “Where is Blaise?”

“Ah.” Rory rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well.”