The Deaths of Me (NEW ADULT REWORK)

15. His Beautiful Phoenix

Yer beautiful in yer wrath! I shall keep you, and in responding to my passions, yer hatred will kindle into love.

--John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror

He sat in something like meditation as he deliberated over his options. So far, his plan had hit a few...speed-bumps. His experiments on the phoenix had yielded nothing useful. Then she had been stolen from him. His beautiful phoenix, taken due to the incompetence of his followers. Of course, he'd had to kill those men, but he'd found new ones to replace them.

Mercy was a luxury he could not afford.

The only comfort he found was in his sole ally. A secret weapon of sorts. A dark chuckle escaped him, and he finished the shaky drawing on the floor. His mark, an intricate emblem of crescents and dagger strikes, glared up at him mockingly. He was failing. He would never achieve true enlightenment unless he could recapture the beauty that he'd lost.

The darkness around him shied away inch by inch as he lit a dozen candles. When each point for his seal was marked by a candle, he started a low chant.

"A bit dramatic, don't you think?"

His chanting stopped. He looked up toward the doorway.

"You should learn to meditate. It might curb some of that anger you have."

"You don't bench your best player, old man. My rage is my M.V.P."

Always the joker, he silently noted. He resumed his quiet mantra and closed his eyes, trusting his friend to leave peacefully.

"I'm ready."

Again, his incanting came to a gentle stop.

"No, you are not."

"I am. I swear it."

"And if you fail?" Since the phoenix had been recaptured by her own kind, he'd known that he would only have one chance to right the injustice done to him. One last shot to collect a phoenix tear.

"I will not fail you."

"You lack patience."

"And you lack faith."

Faith. Faith was the only thing he had for certain. In the darkness, in the doubt, he had faith. His phoenix was just that: his. He had felt a connection to her the very first time he'd seen her. She'd stirred something in him that he hadn't felt since he was a young boy. He'd had his hired group of Underdwellers steal her for him as soon as he'd formulated his plan. He was far from young, now, but she would fix that for him.

And she belonged with him. Even after he used her tears for his own purposes, he would keep her by his side, always.

"If you lose her for me..." The unfinished threat held more than he could possibly say. With one, tiny wag of his finger, the candles' flames extinguished simultaneously.

"I will bring her to you," his friend promised. Though he couldn't see his ally, he knew his eager friend gravely meant what he said.