Page 1 of Phoenix Academy: Mayhem

Chapter 1

"There'sa dick-severing machine down in Hell," the trickster demon says casually, walking backwards in front of me as he leads me towards the door he wants me to open. "We rarely use it, though. Severing dicks is so cliche. Very been-there-done-that. These days we mostly flatten them into pancakes."

Reggie dryly mutters, "Riveting."

I'm too stuck in my own thoughts to really pay attention to the demon, though. About the only thing keeping me from shrieking in fear and horror is the steady warmth of David's wolf form beside me, leaning up against the side of my leg, his thick fur there when my fingers drop down to pet him like the dog he isn't. If I didn't have his form beside me, I think I'd probably be a gibbering puddle on the ground.

I can't let demons out of Hell. Not even to save my mother. But I'm running out of time to come up with a plan to stop it.

If the door to Hell is opened, I don't know how it'll be closed. Who will close it. How many demons will get through. All I know is that the campus of Phoenix Academy—my new, tentative home now that I've lost my entire family—will be overrun with monsters. And there won't be a Black Phoenix there to stop it, because Dani Carpenter is off somewhere, doing a mission that has taken her and the demon quartet bonded to her away.

I wish that she were here. Even though I didn't know Dani well, she was the only one on campus who felt really got me. We share a special bond: being fucked-up phoenixes with strange pasts and family tragedy. She would understand why the thought of my mother's spirit being tortured for eternity is the worst thing I can imagine, second only to the thought of being responsible for opening the door to Hell and letting demons run loose on Earth.

As we follow the trickster demon through a garden hedge maze, Xavier glances back at me, something insistent in his eyes. I can tell he's trying to communicate with me—maybe he has a plan or something—but my brain is too full of panicked thoughts to understand. Witch or not, I'm no telepath or foreseer.

But I feel David tense beneath me, and I wonder if maybe he has some idea what Xavier is trying to tell us with his motions. The trickster demon doesn't seem to be aware of our attempt to communicate—he keeps wandering off the garden path to shove his nose in flowers and lick them with his forked tongue—so I decide to try something a little dicey that might actually work.

I'm not a telepath, but I am a naturalistic witch. I can commune with animals. That includes shifters in their animal form, though it seems to be easier with a proto-shifter like David, who wasn't born with his abilities. Something about the sharp way his spirit refuses to completely settle into his wolf form makes it easier to reach towards his mind and sense his thoughts, albeit primitive versions of human thought.

Digging my fingers into the ruff of his fur, I let my naturalistic senses spill from my fingertips and race along his wolf-form.

Within his mind I get a single, sharply clear thought: connection. It's what Xavier is apparently signing with his hand, though his form seems to be off, something that irritates David. The black panther shifter is trying to sign subtly so the demon doesn't see him and understand.

The only thing is, I don't really understand either.

"You're going to just love my friends," the trickster demon says, casting his strange eyes on me and tearing my attention away from Xavier's signal. "They're very interesting people. Or not-people, as the case may be."

"Fascinating."

"You don't sound excited."

"It wasn't exactly what I was expecting."

"Hmph. Well, I suppose if that's the case, I could always remind you why you're going to help my friends escape through the door to Hell." Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a tiny glass marble, and my heart does a few running leaps off a cliff. "Remember now, if Mommy Dearest's soul is destroyed here in the Spirit Realm, it's destroyed forever. Gone. Done for. So do try to look excited for what's coming next, hmmm?"

I paste a smile on my face. Seeming satisfied, the demon turns around and continues to lead us through the twisting garden hedge mage, while I bite my tongue so hard pain sparks.

Somehow I've gotten here, in the Spirit Realm, near the edge of Hell. Somehow I'm following a demon in a three piece suit, my mother's soul trapped in a marble he's now bouncing carelessly on the ground. Somehow I'm a Blue Phoenix, a being with multiple lives and mysterious powers, bonded to three familiars. But despite all this, I still feel like a helpless little girl.

Connection.Reggie glances over at his twin brother as Xavier once again does the sign for the word. Connection. What does it mean? I wish my brain had room for things besides panic, rage, and fear. Connection.

Seeing my confusion, Reggie motions between himself and Xavier. Then the two of them and me. Then me and David. Annoyed, I glare at him—I know what the word connection means. He's being less than helpful, as usual.

Then it hits me all at once what they're saying.

When I was frightened and alone in the woods shortly after I came back to life, I accidentally turned the three shifters into my familiars. The connection we shares means they're bonded to me, whether we want it or not, their lives protecting mine, my witch senses reaching out to their shifter selves and influencing them. My magic seems to have a different affect on them—and I can, if I try hard enough and they're receptive to it, control them just a little.

The demon is no shifter, but he's not a human either. What they're suggesting is that I might be able to somehow bond him to me, the way Dani is bonded to her quartet of demons, and exert my influence on him just like a Grim would.

It sounds risky, though. Certainly I would never willingly choose to be connected to a fork-tongued demon who's got my mother trapped in a marble. But maybe I can use the connection to keep him from escaping this place, or at least make a bargain with him in exchange for dissolving it.

It's not perfect, but right now it's the only idea I have. If Auerbach were here he'd probably have a better solution—some sort of rune or ancient spell—but all we have are me and my familiars. My witch magic may not be as fancy or moldable as mage magic, but it has a primitive kind of strength, the kind that just might be able to pull this off.

As the demon leads us further into the twisting maze, high hedges on every side of us, it occurs to me that it'll be easier to forge a false connection if I know more about him. So I inquire, "I don't actually know your name. Just the name you went by when you... appeared to me as a spirit." Tricked me, that is. "What should I call you?"

"You can call me Isiah," he says casually, "though it isn't my true name. My human name was Percy, which is a truly terrible name. I've chosen several since. Isiah is one of my favorites."

Isiah. A human name. It's hard to imagine him having a name that isn't a screech of horror or a series of curse words. From his human-like face to his three piece suit, he looks just as human as Dani's quartet does, but the forked tongue gives him away. I wonder if that's something he was "born" with, or if it's an affectation, like the name he chose.

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