A Phoenix Never Dies (Afterlife Book 6) Read online

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  About the Author

  ONE

  For Chloe McAllister, the world was a place of varying shades of gray. There were no distinguishable shapes, just blurs and lines and bubbles. For a moment, she thought she must be blind. Then she realized her eyes were closed.

  She opened them and attempted to look around. When she did, a sharp pain shot through her neck. She stopped trying to move and simply gazed at what she could see: hot, orange flames licking the walls of the building she was in. Bodies laying on the floor, burning and screaming, or quietly choking on the thick, black smoke.

  When her eyes got around to looking towards the floor near her, she saw one of the children she'd first noticed when she entered the building a few minutes before. He was dead or dying. No, she reminded herself. He was a vampire. If he was completely dead, his body would be nothing but ash.

  His hand was extended towards her, in some sort of weird, silent plea. She wanted to help him, but she couldn't even help herself. She'd done what she could to prevent the mass slaughtering of dozens of vampires who'd been holed up in the house, like lost refugees. It hadn't been enough. Someone had struck the match anyway, and then...

  Then, boom.

  In all her years with the Afterlife crew, and the years before before that spent hunting vampires, she'd never really given much thought to how she'd die. If she had, she wouldn't have envisioned it like this; locked in a building burning, unable to move her head, unable to even offer comfort to the dying boy beside her.

  She let her eyes drift closed and she imagined the people she loved: Sarah Carter, her best friend. They'd been through so much together, and they'd become close confidants over the last few years. Then there was Conner Kingsley. If she'd had an older brother, she would have wanted one like Conner. He was so sharp with his wit and so clever with his tongue. And Alec! Oh, Alec Morodan, the man who'd brought her back from the edge of losing her humanity, the man who'd given her a reason to live again. Harper Hawthorne, the newest addition to their group. Her courage, her humor, her acceptance...

  And finally, she thought of Brittney Conley. They'd only recently admitted their feelings for each other and consummated their relationship. She didn't know whether to feel guilty about that now or have gratitude for the short time they had. She just imagined Brittney there beside her, stroking her hair and telling her it would be alright. Then she would just drift to sleep and it would be over.

  Her spirit began to rise out of her body and she could see more of the house. There were men everywhere, men with hoses, and masks, and heavy equipment. A startling realization struck her: her spirit wasn't rising, she was. Someone was lifting her.

  "No," she tried to say, though her voice was little more than a raspy breath. "No, save the boy."

  "What boy?"

  Despite the pain, Chloe turned her head to look for the little boy with the pointed hand. All she saw was a pile of ash. Tears filled her eyes, and she closed them again. She didn't want to see this.

  The next time she opened her eyes she saw only white. White lights, glaring down on her. Was this her judgment day? Would she stand before a God, or Gods, and hear her sins listed off?

  No, she decided. She wasn't dead. She was in too much pain to be dead. Everything on her body hurt, even her fingernails. She tried to lift a hand to look at it, but she was too weak. She only managed to get it a few inches off the bed before she had to let it fall back down.

  "Don't try to move yet," a voice said. "You're in a hospital. Do you remember what happened?"

  "Yes," Chloe said. The harsh, whisper of the word pushed through her throat like fire. She desperately needed something to drink. Her mouth tasted like burnt cotton. "There was a fire..."

  "Yes," the man said, presumably a doctor. "That's right. You were severely injured during the fire. You broke several ribs, your left arm, and suffered a concussion. You also suffered third degree burns over a large portion of your body."

  "But I'm alive," Chloe said.

  "You're alive," he said. "And you're not in critical condition. You'll pull through, as long as we keep you hydrated. I set your bones when you first came in. They look like clean breaks, and we didn't have to put any pins in."

  Chloe said nothing to this. Instead she asked, "Water?"

  "Of course," the man said. He picked up a water cup from a nearby table and held it up to her mouth. She sipped from the straw, and was surprised at how much strength that little gesture had cost her.

  "I'm Doctor Evans," he said. "I'll be taking care of you while you're here, along with Nurse Abbey. She'll be in shortly to check your vitals."

  "What about the others?"

  For a moment, Doctor Evans said nothing. Then he cleared his throat. "There are several patients in critical condition. Most of them are recovering at what, frankly, is an astonishing rate. The rest have, well, they've disappeared. We've put security guards in the halls, so I don't want you to worry."

  Chloe laughed. It sounded more like a cough, and she motioned for the water again. "They're not disappearing. They're dying. They're vampires, Doctor Evans."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Vampires," she said. "Please, as if everyone in this city doesn't know about them already."

  Doctor Evans shook his head. "You hit your head pretty hard. You need rest. I'll send in Nurse Abbey. She'll give you some more pain medication as well. We've got you down for an MRI as soon as we can to make sure there's no internal swelling or bleeding."

  "You know they're real," Chloe said. The doctor shot her a furtive glance and then exited her room, closing the door behind him.

  There was so much Chloe wanted to do... no, so much that she needed to do, but she couldn't summon up the strength to even sit up in her bed. She would heal faster than a normal patient, but for now, she was stuck.

  There was really only one thing left for her to do. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  TWO

  Harper stepped into the hotel room and tossed her bag onto the bed. It landed next to Brittney, who was holding a pillow to her chest, and watching an old sitcom rerun on the television.

  "Anything new?" Brittney asked, as she always did.

  Her voice was uninterested, and Harper's heart went out to her. She had never lost someone she loved, not like this, anyway, and she could only imagine what her friend was going through. She wanted to offer more than dreary words, but those words were all she had.

  "No," she said. "Phoenix is still under National Guard quarantine. There are soldiers at every exit out of town, and they're armed. All flights, trains, and buses have stopped running. We're essentially cut off from the rest of the world."

  Brittney sighed. "It's been two weeks since the fire," she said. "So we didn't kill them all. It's not like Serendipity couldn't handle the rest as they surface up."

  "Come on Brittney. A thousand people have disappeared since then and nobody knows where they went or what happened to them," Harper said. "Of course they're going to keep us here. Maybe I should just walk up to one of the soldiers and be like hey, the
y're vampires, you idiots. Think that would get something moving?"

  "No," Brittney said.

  Harper had hoped for a laugh, but Brittney wasn't in a very happy mood these days. Since the fire she had hardly left the hotel room, and only then at Harper's insistence. Harper knew this was normal, that this was a mourning period, but she wanted her best friend back and had no idea how to go about getting her.

  "You know," Brittney continued, "they probably do know already, about the vampires. I mean, it isn't like it's that secret. The entire city knows."

  Harper frowned. "Then why are they keeping us here?"

  "I don't know," Brittney said. "They have to come up with some kind of excuse for the media. They can't very well go on air and talk about an army of vampires that was built and then killed in a matter of weeks. Speaking of vampires...

  "Did you see him?"

  Harper shook her head. Not only had they lost Chloe to the fire that was set by Miriam Underwood, the head vampire of the other team they'd worked with briefly, but they'd lost Alec as well. Conner had found his broken cell phone on the ground after he took off in the rental car, but they hadn't heard word from him since that night. She sometimes wondered if he'd gone into the building himself, if he'd committed some sort of suicide.

  "Where do you think he went?" Brittney asked.

  "How would I know?" She tried to put that thought out of her head. It wouldn't come to any good, and it only made her feel sick to her stomach. Alec wouldn't do something like that. He had too much to live for. Didn't he?

  Brittney shrugged. "The two of you were close."

  "Not that close," Harper said.

  She thought of the brief chemistry she'd shared with Alec and the kiss that one night in his apartment. They'd both agreed the romance wouldn't work and moved on as friends. Well, friends of a sort. She wasn't stupid; she knew if she still harbored feelings for him that he probably still felt them for her as well. The thought made her feel guilty, and she hated feeling guilty.

  Of course, friends didn't just get up and leave. They didn't do a disappearing act like he had. What had he been thinking? She didn't care if he was upset about Chloe, he had no right to leave like he had, leaving the rest of them with a myriad of questions and no way to answer them.

  There was a tap on the door and Harper went to open it. It was Wren and Samuel. They both had their hands in their pockets.

  "Hi guys," Harper said. "Come on in."

  Over the last two weeks, Miriam's crew had stayed at the same hotel as Harper and the remaining members of Afterlife. None of them wanted to go back to the coffee shop Miriam ran her operation out of. Her death was still too fresh. There was no question what had happened to her; in her guilt over the vampire army she had asked Alec to kill her. And he had. Was that why he'd left? Because he felt guilty about her death, as well as Chloe's? She just didn't know.

  "Where's Heather?" she asked, trying to force Alec from her mind. Dwelling on him would do no good.

  "She's with Sarah," Samuel said. "The two of them went for a run."

  Harper blinked.

  "I know," Wren said, reading her expression. "It surprised me too. Heather has always hated exercise of any kind. She'd complain about getting dragged to the gym with Samuel for training."

  "Chloe was the same way," Brittney said quietly. Everyone stopped talking and looked over at her. Wren shuffled his feet in an embarrassed sort of way.

  "Anyway," Samuel said in a stronger voice that seemed a little too eager. "We came to see if you guys wanted to have dinner with us... and discuss what we're doing next."

  Brittney blinked at him. "What we're doing next? What are you talking about?"

  "Well, obviously something is going on in the city," Wren said. "Something unnatural. There's no reason they should still have us under quarantine. We want to find out what they're really up to."

  Harper nodded. "We were just talking about that. We thought maybe they were buying time so they could come up with an excuse to tell the media."

  "Maybe," Wren said hesitantly.

  "It doesn't matter what they're doing," Brittney said. "We're not a part of it. We're just waiting for the ban on traveling to lift so we can go home."

  "Brittney..." Harper said.

  "No," Brittney said. "Don't you use that tone on me, Harper. I know what you're going to say, and I'm not doing it. Look, it was fun while it lasted. But let's face it. Chloe's dead and Alec's gone. Afterlife is done. And so is Serendipity. Their leader is dead too."

  "I think Sarah and Conner would want to have dinner at the very least, and discuss our options," Harper prompted. "And it would be nice to see you out of bed, in, uh, fresh clothes."

  Brittney glared at her. "Where's Conner, anyway?"

  Samuel shrugged. "I think he went after groceries. With the hotels filled up, room service is getting kind of shoddy. He said something about sandwiches. It was sandwiches, right, Wren?"

  "Yeah," Wren said.

  Harper groaned. They'd been practically living off sandwiches the last couple weeks. It was the best thing to bring into hotel rooms because they didn't have to cook it. She was dying for some real food, though, and she thought the others might be as well.

  "We made the reservation at the Mexican place that's just down the road," Samuel said. "If you decide to come, we'll be there at about seven."

  Before either Harper or Brittney could say more, they shuffled back out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  "We're not going," Brittney said.

  "Of course we are," Harper said.

  "Why? What's the point?"

  Harper could have easily strangled her. Instead, she tried to place herself in Brittney's shoes and remember that her friend was heartbroken.

  "We have a responsibility to Chloe and Alec," she finally said. "We have to continue their work. It's what they would have wanted."

  "We don't owe Alec anything," Brittney said. "And as for Chloe... do you really think she'd want us out there risking our lives after what happened to her?"

  Harper nodded. "Actually, I do. She gave her life to try and save a group of vampires who were out to kill us all. She would have tried to figure out what's going on in town and put a stop to it. So you're going to get out of bed, you're going to take a shower, you're going to get dressed, and you're going to come to dinner."

  Brittney sighed. "I just don't want to, Harper."

  "I know," Harper said. "But sometimes we have to do things we don't like. This is one of those times. Suck it up, buttercup."

  THREE

  Despite how little she actually wanted to leave the hotel room, Brittney forced herself up off the bed and into the shower. She didn't want to feel better -- it seemed like an insult to Chloe's memory.

  She went through the motions of choosing out the perfect outfit, of matching her shoes to her purse, and to applying color to her lips and eyelashes. She stared at herself in the mirror afterward, noting how red her eyes were. The makeup didn't hide that.

  Brittney wanted to slam her fist into the mirror, to break it into a million pieces, to watch her reflection shatter and fall, but she didn't. She just stared at herself, willing away the tears that wanted to come. She was successful, at least for the moment.

  She went out to meet the others. When she saw Sarah, she felt a moment of guilt. Sarah had been Chloe's friend, and she'd known her far longer than Brittney. Yet, somehow Brittney had felt her own grief must be so much greater. Was that how shallow she was? Did she really never stop to think of the others and how they must feel?

  She approached Sarah and put her hand on her arm. "Hey."

  "Long time no see, stranger," Sarah said with a small smile.

  "Yeah," Brittney said. "How are you?"

  "Hanging in there," Sarah said. "Did Harper see any sign of Alec today when she went out?"

  Brittney shook her head. She didn't even want to think about Alec. He had abandoned them when they'd needed his leadership the most. She couldn't
imagine how bad he must have felt about losing Chloe, but she still knew they needed him.

  "Maybe he got out before the quarantine."

  Sarah considered this for a moment. "I doubt it. I don't think he would have just got on a plane and left us. Maybe he's staying away intentionally, but I think he's here somewhere. I guess when he's ready to be found, we'll find him. I imagine he blames himself for... well, you know."

  "Yeah," Brittney said. "But how does he work that out? He didn't light the match. He wasn't the one who started the fire."

  "The entire thing was his idea," Sarah said. "He might as well have."

  "You don't mean that," Brittney said. "You don't really blame him, do you?"

  "I don't know," Sarah said. "I don't think so, not when I'm awake and reasonable anyway. But when I sleep and dream, who knows? Maybe part of me does... because he brought us here, and he was supposed to keep us safe, and he didn't."

  Brittney nodded. She had thought the same thing a time or two, but she'd always stop her thoughts at that point. There was no reason to assign blame. It had happened, and that was bad enough.

  "Come on," Harper said, approaching the pair. Conner was at her side. "Let's go, before we're late."

  Conner shrugged. "I don't understand why we're meeting them in the first place," he grumbled. "I mean, this entire mess is their fault. They were the ones who went along with Miriam and her grand scheme to turn the city into a vampire zoo."

  "I'm pretty sure they feel bad enough as it is," Harper said. "You know they didn't really want to do it, they were just following orders."

  "Following orders that's got hundreds killed," Conner said. "If they had any sense of self, they'd disappear."

  Sarah shook her head. "I wish you wouldn't say that, Conner. They're not bad people, they were just in a crummy situation and chose the wrong side to take. They should have stood up to her, sure, but would you have stood up to Alec? Any of you?"

  She looked around at each of them.

  "Damn right I would have," Conner said.

  "None of us tried to stop him when he barricaded the vampire house and burnt it down," Brittney said softly.