Page 39 of Phoenix Academy: Mayhem

Blood seeps into the ground and splatters the walls. It's dark and gory, the scent of it like iron and sweet, rotted flesh in my nose. The stain in the middle of the floor is wider than I remember, the blood a dark brown that flakes at the edges.

Staring at it makes me feel like I'm about to fall down into a deep, dark abyss. I want to move, to look away, to forget, but I can't. Phantom pain crawls up and down my arms and legs. I see his face and hear his voice as he bled me dry.

The door to the cabin opens, and the guys slowly walk in. I hear them but don't turn to watch their approach. My gaze is fixed to the spot on the floor where it all ended and it all began.

"I knew it. This must be where she died. Where her father..." David's voice floats through me, his tone full of anger and disgust. "We were pulled here for a reason. I'm going to go look for a place to plug in my phone."

I hear footsteps approach. Xavier murmurs to his brother, "I knew it was bad, but I didn't imagine all of... this. That smell."

"It's awful," Reggie agrees, unusually subdued. "I wish it never happened to her. When I think about that bastard I want to punch him in the face."

David calls out, "She wouldn't want you to do that. It's up to Ari how she handles him."

"Her father," Xavier says pointedly. "We're saying him but we all know who we're talking about. I know she says he's not really the same man who was her father, now that his soul is missing, but it has to affect her. He was supposed to love and protect her, but instead he killed her. How horrifying that must be."

It is, and it also isn't. When I think of my father, there are two of him in my mind: the version my mother occasionally described, who was sweet and half-wild, a man prone to hunting and taking jokes literally. Then there was the Heretic, who never had a name and barely has a face in my mind. All I see when I think of him are black eyes. All I hear is a voice without warmth or humor.

They're not the same man.

But at the same time, they are. It was my father's hands that killed me, even without his soul in them. And my father is still the one tracking me, hunting me, searching for me—to put an end to what was reborn.

If he gets his hands on me again, there's no telling how many deaths I'll suffer. How many times I'll succumb to mortality only to be reborn. The torture would be endless.

I have to find him and put a stop to him before that happens.

Moving into the room, the guys pass through me. Feeling the spark of their shifter power, our connection, I shiver and break away from this horrible room. They're staring at the blood stains now and discussing where I might be; the top theory is still that my spirit went back into my body at the academy, though Xavier is arguing there must be a reason why the three of them wound up here.

There is a reason, I'm starting to realize. I'm back here because some part of me never really left. Even as my body was reborn on that pyre, my spirit was forever changed by what happened here.

Walking through the back door, I slowly turn to face the end of it.

The charred remains of the pyre call to me. They've been blown around by the wind, covered in fallen leaves and pummeled by rain, but much of their blackened remains are still piled up in a heap on the ground. Scorch marks run across the woods beside them, not just from the fire that was lit to burn my body and my mother's body, but also from my own phoenix fire as I woke in a rage and lashed out at my father's followers.

Fire killed and consumed me, but also became my steadfast companion. I didn't realize how much I'd become used to the warmth of my phoenix flames inside me until just now, when they've gone dormant in my spirit form. It's as if there's an empty fireplace with cold coals inside my heart where a furnace should be.

Inhaling, I reach out with the one type of magic still available to me: my naturalistic senses. I can feel the distant squirrels and birds, wary of getting too close to this place of violence. Moving my senses further out, I pick up other things: hawks in the sky, deer grazing on grass hidden beneath layers of autumnal leaves, raccoons and foxes, animals both big and small.

Within them all I sense a little part of my mother's aura.

The wind scattered her ashes and threw them into the fresh water streams. Her remains danced on the wind and fell to the ground in far-flung places. Even as far away as she is from me, her spirit hopefully at rest by now, there's still some of her with me. I may not be able to visit with her, but I can always visit her grave, which is miles and miles of land all around me.

Thinking of my old life, I mourn how sad and small it often was. We were always running, moving, looking over our shoulders. But despite that smallness, my mother was a constant presence in my childhood. Her warmth, vitality, and strength led me on. I always believed that she would be able to beat back the darkness and protect me from the monster on our trail.

Now it's time for me to lay her to rest.

Just as soon as I finish what I should've started long ago: ending the Heretic once and for all.

He's my responsibility. Not just because of revenge. But because as long as he's out in the world, he'll be infecting others with his hateful soullessness. His followers grow, and his influence travels. There's no telling how many witches he could harm in his immortal life—especially now that I've changed the barrier between realms for good. With wild magic running its course and wakening sparks of magic inside witches who were dormant, he'll have more targets than ever, and more opportunities to gain followers.

So it's up to me to take him out.

Taking a deep breath, I walk out towards the woods and let the wilderness wash over me. My mother's presence is a steady low murmur out here. I can hear the voices of the guys planning how to save me, drifting from the cabin windows, raising and falling in discussion. They've spoken to the school on the phone and found out I wasn't there, so now they're arguing about searching for me more in the woods or trying to figure out a way back into Hell. None of them can quite agree about what's going on.

My heart hurts for them, but I can't do anything to show them that I'm here. I need to figure out my own way back to my body. Maybe the best way to do that is to get in touch with my spirit magic and figure out how to take my ghostly feet off the ground. Getting away from the black pit of darkness that is my murder scene seems like the best way to start out, so I venture further into the woods, my mind wandering.

As I leave the boundaries of the cabin I start to sense her.

Lizzy.

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