Ashes of Raging Water Read online

  Ashes of Raging Water

  Blood Phoenix Chronicles: Book One

  Michael J. Allen

  Delirious Scribbles Ink

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Delirious Scribbles Readers Group

  1: Incursion

  2: Internal Trouble

  3: Rebirth Pains

  4: Too Much History

  5: Acting Normal

  6: Aftermath

  7: Queueing the Music

  8: Come To Vitae Meeting

  9: Lies & Turncoats

  10: Chasing Her Tail

  11: Hard Choices

  12: Fighting Faerie Fire

  13: Seeking Answers

  14: Goblin Market Rewards

  15: Faerie Fairplay

  16: Mothering Earth

  17: Fantastic Nightmares

  18: Broken Hearted

  19: The Deep Forensics

  20: War’s Burning Heart

  21: Assault from Above

  22: Shattered Shield

  23: Declaration of War

  Readers Group, Reviews, & More to Read

  BPC 2: Ruled by Tainted Blood

  Blood Phoenix Chronicles

  Books by Michael J. Allen

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments:

  Delirious Scribbles Readers Group

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  1: Incursion

  Quayla

  Someone’s unbridled need for morning coffee nearly cost my life. Dying isn’t normally the end of the world, but this time it really was the beginning of the end.

  A green Humvee rocketed onto the exit 252 onramp and whipped across my lane in a mad dash for the empty shoulder. The maneuver required two ninety-degree turns that at least should’ve put the behemoth up on two wheels, but only amounted to a pair of reckless slides.

  Deprived of a clear path, the Humvee’s driver cut back across the off-ramp, forcing the minivan in front of me to slam its brakes and jerk left. Slick concrete betrayed the van’s traction, transforming its overcorrection into a spinning slide through my lane and down the embankment into rush hour traffic.

  I wrenched my Jahammer motorcycle around in a tight, full-throttle circle inches ahead of the Ford pinball paddle. Praying heightened reflexes and Caelum’s modifications to my baby sufficed to save my tail, I jerked my pearl white jelly bean with wheels to a jarring stop.

  Squealing brakes cut short a relieved breath and brought my attention up to oncoming traffic, certain my escape had been a hollow victory thanks to drivers more focused on phones or applying makeup than me and my bike.

  I beat the odds.

  The rush of adrenaline lifted a smirk onto my lips. A pickup slid to a halt rather than splatter me under its huge tires. My smirk died when its headlights ended up close enough for me to count the bug carcasses.

  All the cars behind me managed to stop without hitting anyone.

  A snarl launched from my lips toward the Humvee. “Selfish, hell-blighted wafer!”

  Anima’s voice emerged from the tiny bronze archangel mounted just beyond my handlebars. “Shield Quayla? Do you require assistance?”

  Dread welled up to fill my throat. Pleading with our Shield’s automata had taken considerable wrangling. If she chose to back out and read the other shields in on my operation, I’d lose my one chance. “Ani, you promised. This is just between us girls.”

  “Might be best if I notify the Shieldheart,” Anima said.

  “I need to handle this myself.”

  With a cringe, I checked the angel. The figurine wasn’t Anima, merely a way for the automata to communicate with us in the field. The angel itself stretched arms toward the heavens. Outstretched wings braced the figure like a feather shield version of see no evil, but it didn’t otherwise appear disgruntled by my not-totally-unwarranted outburst or my departure from protocol.

  “Okay, but please keep me up to date,” Anima said.

  Dread exited in a single exhale. “Thank you.”

  Warranted or not, neither my outburst nor curse were fair to the wafer in the Humvee. She knew nothing about where I was headed or the lives that were at stake.

  Nor should she.

  Truth was, I’d screwed up and my mistake had cost hundreds of mortal lives. If I didn’t redeem that selfish choice, I was dead—really dead, like couldn’t be reborn again True Death.

  I couldn’t blame the last few decades of increasing everyday selfishness for my mistake. I’d made my choice and caused all those deaths over a century ago on another continent. I’d tried to save myself and cost others their lives—something I’d tried to make up for every day since the Shieldheart had let me off probation and out of our sanctum.

  Even though humanity had grown more selfish in my time sequestered, they were still worth protecting. Of course, when weighed opposite their great potential for goodness and caring, such blatant disregard for each other threatened to exceed disheartening on the way toward nauseating.

  Today’s shining example blared her horn when a car in front of her blocked a path the Humvee driver felt entitled to have to herself. It would’ve been more fitting if the vinyl family on the Humvee’s back window made rude gestures. Instead a vinyl dog, two cats, four children, a mom and a decapitated dad with his head stuck to the window between his legs offered only innocent grins.

  My Jahammer had a lot of power—certainly more than provided by the manufacturer, but the motorcycle offered little protection against the herds of selfish drivers and their metal behemoths. It did, however, let me flow through traffic along paths of least resistance—just the way I liked it.

  Leaning right, I slipped between a timid SUV and the sidewalk onto Howell Mill. The Humvee following my example, jockeyed across a gap left by an instant’s too-slow reaction to the sound of blaring horns. She mounted the sidewalk and cut across my path.

  A blonde girl in pigtails waved through the window as her mother made a desperate dash through oncoming traffic toward the Starbucks.

  Great plan, orphan your family to get that so-called green monstrosity into the drive-thru for some burnt coffee.

  Thumbs tapped my handlebars as I gritted my teeth.

  Gentle ponds. Babbling brooks.

  I took a deep breath.

  Shields served the light. No matter how self-centered a wafer was, no matter how ignorant they were of the other cherished souls surrounding them in the great plan, we did not levee punishment upon the untainted.

  A phoenix has to do what a phoenix has to do if she wants to avoid probation.

  Yeah, phoenix. Five of us comprised my Shield—part and parcel of a cosmic Plan B. We’d each been created from the essential energy of a given element, including a fire of course—his name’s Ignis. If we died protecting humanity from the Sidhe Courts, we could be reborn from the enchanted essence of our individual elementals

  Or if we get mowed down by a caffeine-deprived soccer mom.

  Our Shieldheart had a real grudge against me. Maybe he didn’t like water. Maybe he disliked girls. Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to look up from his books and train a younger shield, but most likely, it was because of my history. Whatever his reason, I was pretty much our Shieldheart’s whipping girl.

  Caelum—our air phoenix—maintained that I was overreacting, but I knew our Shieldheart was collecting evidence to prove I deserved True Death.

  Luckily, he wasn’t the real boss, just the boss’s old pal. That’s where stopping the incursion alone came in. Faeries from both of the major Sidhe Courts had been breaking through the Veil inside animal shelte
rs, killing and stealing the animals. My mission was about more than just saving a bunch of waggy-tailed puppies and precious little kittens. I had to stop the incursion and figure out what the Sidhe were up to before humanity caught them in the act and our whole fragile world—yours, mine and ours—went to hell in a djinn’s lamp.

  I had to stop the incursion, save the animals and figure out the Sidhe’s plan without the others along. If I succeeded, there’d be no way for our Shieldheart to give credit for the mission’s success to one of the others.

  Save the world, rescue some furbabies, and redeem myself enough to save my own feathers in the process—no pressure.

  Stop-and-go morning traffic, navigating commuters with delusions of supremacy, and the crazy low speed limit the angel on my dash made me follow knotted my shoulders. I tapped my thumbs harder and checked the horizon. Dawn lurked just behind the impending birth of morning twilight. Cleanup had to be complete before wafers started arriving for work.

  Come on. Come on.

  A narrow gap in oncoming traffic converged with my destination’s driveway. A self-conscious glance shot to the angel’s stern expression. I licked my lips and thumbed the booster Caelum had added to my bike. The engine’s electric hum intensified to a banshee’s shriek.

  Horns blared as I whipped onto a side street and into the Humane Society.

  “Get out of the way, lady!”

  I didn’t return the mortal’s rude gesture—I swear.

  I pulled to a hard stop under the animal shelter’s guest awning. The required-by-law helmet I didn’t need mussed my hair as I yanked it free. One hand sorted my hair, and the other hung the helmet on the bike’s handlebars.

  The angel glared at me over folded arms. I tapped its head, “I’m here, Anima.”

  The finger rings of two Karambit knife hilts stuck out from the custom sheathes mounted at opposite angles just behind the handlebars. I grabbed both and leapt off my baby.

  Excited barking rose over the sounds of angry traffic.

  I flipped the knife hilts around on their finger rings, tucked the bladeless knives into my jean’s belt loops, and scented the already muggy, early morning wind.

  More dogs barked beyond the building’s attractive facade. Mournful howls escaped dark, windowless metal buildings, twisting my heart even more than the scent of so many animals kept too close together. My pulse rushed as images of imprisoned puppies and kittens flashed through my mind.

  I forced away righteous indignation and rising disgust.

  Focus. I’m here to stop an incursion, not lecture wafers.

  I inhaled deeper in search of dark faerie taint. I circled the unlit building, sniffing for faeries and scanning for a tear in the Veil from a Sidhe court.

  Wish Caelum and his nose were here.

  I berated myself. We all had our gifts, standing around and whining profited no one—especially not the lives caught in this newest faerie machination.

  But why are they risking exposure to steal a bunch of animals?

  Exposure could’ve been the goal. We kept a lid on Sidhe existence the best we could, but once in a while they got to a mortal, offered a seemingly good deal in exchange for granting mortal desires, and stole, enslaved or perverted the wafer. Still, the Sidhe seldom played a simple, straight forward game.

  A change in barks sent me running back around to the front of the building. I hooked a hilt out of my belt. With a deep breath, I tightened my hand around the hilt’s ridged grip and pushed on my center.

  Frothing water slid out the hilt’s heel, solidifying into a forward curved blade of glistening blue. I swept my essence knife up the seam between doors, severed the lock, and charged in.

  An alarm console chirped.

  Dammit.

  I considered going back and using my helmet to conceal my face, but the haloed angel Caelum had painted along its surface for me was unique and readily identifiable. I bent my face toward the ground, freeing my hair from an aquamarine hair tie to hide my face as I concentrated. My wavy black hair took on the wet blue-brown appearance of Atlantic waves. Strands of living water flowed around my head, coming together in an undulating mask that only resembled hair at a first, distant glance.

  I charged inside and through the administrative area, eyes scouring everywhere for trouble. A frame wrapped in black ribbon brought me up short. The picture displayed a mousy, bespectacled woman holding a humongous orange tabby almost as big as her torso. A label included birth and death dates too short to apply to the cat’s owner.

  I wasn’t allowed a pet, but several strays I’d kept fed had died on me. In light of the crisis, the itch behind my eyes had to be pushed aside, but I allowed myself an instant’s sadness for her loss before continuing toward the panicked barking of living animals in need of my help.

  Movement flashed in my peripheral vision.

  I slid to a halt on paw-printed linoleum and threw open the door to the kitten cages.

  Two waist-high grendlings whirled. The diminutive faeries clutched kittens to their molding-blueberry chests and spat like angry cats through needle teeth.

  My nose rebelled. The stench of dank mold seldom teamed up with rotting meat, but together the potent miasma overpowered shelter smells of litter box and Lysol. The stink nearly overwhelmed my gag reflex even through a filtering mask.

  So glad I don’t have Caelum’s nose.

  Pinching my nose offered immense appeal, but I toughed it out and drew my second hilt.

  “Put those kittens back.” I pushed my essence out of the end in shimmering blade. “Breakfast hours are officially over.”

  Dropped kittens skittered everywhere, mewing their objections.

  The grendlings gibbered insults at me in Wyldfae and drew knives from behind their backs. Shaped troll bone throbbed with magic so dark green it was almost black. While the acidic magic’s primary purpose lay in subduing the regenerative abilities within the troll’s bone pressganged into a weapon, the acid and magic also combined to arm the primitive blades with poison and agony.

  The pack hunters circled me, one moving slower to position themselves on either side for best advantage. Their extended bat ears twitched eagerly forward.

  That little shit lied. He told me the raiders were Unseelie.

  I relaxed into a fighting stance, sweeping my feet in smooth circles. I clinked my hilt rings together, keeping an ear on the sound.

  Grendlings weren’t goblins.

  They possessed the same intelligence and mentality, but grendling tribes dwelled in caves rather that settling in forests or ruins. Grendlings maintained fierce independence from other faerie and prided themselves on the mold colonies cultivated on their skin.

  They rushed me from either side.

  I sought the room’s acoustic center and pitched my voice to boom like the legends of Hera on high. “By the Undying Light, I command you to surrender.”

  My echoing voice folded the grendlings’ ears against their heads, stealing a vital battle sense—equivalent of dropping a flashbang in front of an eye-stalker. I used their disorientation to slip between them, body flowing around their strikes quick as class six rapids.

  My blades sliced across the shorter’s leathery skin, parting its spotty blue hide to expose even darker flesh. Sidhe taint rippled nausea up my blade and into my gut. Black blood glooped from the cut like a month-old blood pudding.

  His partner thrust for my heart. An upward sweep decapitated his blade and a downward counter sliced across the shorter’s side.

  The other grendling’s broken blade bit into my thigh. Denim protected me from the worst of the damage, but the shallow cut burned like cuddling a welding torch. I punched the grendling, finger ring breaking teeth from its mouth.

  The shorter hurled his knife and scrambled for the door.

  A fluid weave escaped the blade’s path.

  The other grendling caught the blade, reversed it and thrust once more for my chest. I slid downward, doing a split. My head snapped back, turning
to follow the blade mere eyelashes from my nose. My attention whipped back to my opponent as my shimmering Karambit sliced upward. Empowered essence focused to a razor’s edge severed the grendling’s arm at the elbow

  Disgusting black blood splattered my face.

  I gave up a surprise wake-up massage for this?

  I turned away.

  The armless grendling sank teeth into my extended arm and shook it like a terrier. I cried out and cut its head off with my other knife. The thing’s jaws didn’t release in death, if nothing else they bit down harder. I tried to shake the stubborn thing away so that I could pursue the shorter grendling but was forced to saw open the still-locked jaws from my arm while the other grendling escaped.

  I sucked the water blades back into my body, partially filling bite wounds.

  I scooped the kittens away from the blood before they could lick it up. I rubbed their purring little heads against my cheeks and cooed reassurances.

  Dylan’s fingers are fantastic, but this is rewarding too.

  It would’ve been nice to bask in their purring adulation, but I rushed them back into their cages and bolted back into the hall.

  Black blood trailed away from the frantic barking, crying, yelping tumult. The roar pounding in my ears like surf on sand demanded I chase down the little bastard, but I couldn’t turn my back on the heartbreaking sounds coming from the main kennel.

  I cursed and let the grendling escape.

  I’ll hunt him down after.

  My first glimpse through the kennel door’s window stole breath from my lungs. Dozens of grendlings—enough for several tribes—swarmed the kennels. A winter-deadened tree dominated the play space between runs, stretching up from a crack in the concrete floor until its dark limbs scraped the ceiling.

  Two decoratively armored grendling chieftains braced either side of a foul portal. They disdained each other, the larger’s muscles poised to fend off his one-eyed rival as they paid less attention to the raid than their one up man’s contest of posture, glower and stance.

  Dark magic throbbed through the whole tree, as if the heavy breathing of some carnivorous tree from a dark forest. The skin-crawling throbs worsened, shooting nausea through me as each grendling fed a stolen animal to the tree’s dark, gaping maw.