Enflame (Insight #6)(17)
His attention returned to Phoenix. “This is what mind is telling me.” He clearly pushed down emotions that he didn’t think belonged to him, or rather didn’t’ want to belong to him. “They killed our family, but we could still hear their cries. A shaman told us that if we went into the fire, we could pull them free.”
Phoenix nodded once. “We were away, defending our points of view. We abandoned our cause and headed home the second you had one of your visions. When we got there we found our parents’ graves, all of our families, everyone except the girls we were in love with. We had to hide in the woods. Our home had been burning for three straight weeks. The town thought evil had seized our family. From inside the house, we heard the girls scream our names. We could see their images in the window, begging us to save them.”
Phoenix hesitated as grief washed over his stunning image. He glanced at me. “You and her had barely spent the cycle of a moon together, but that didn’t matter. You told me you and her were made from one soul.” He moved his head slowly from side to side. “A shaman eased into our camp. He didn’t say anything for almost two days. We thought he was deaf and blind, so we let him be as we debated why the fire would not go out, why we only heard our girls in there. The shaman stood one night, gazed at the blackened sky, then at you. He told you that you were a guardian. That your must complete your purpose in the dark world. He told you the flames would not burn you, but set you free.” His eyes locked with Landen. “You didn’t even question him. You just ran, and I followed you.”
Landen glanced at me, then to the fire. “We did burn. We did die. There was no one in that house.”
“Right, mate. We burned to ash, woke three days later to that shaman performing some ritual over us. He gave us our ashes, then told us we were immortal. He told us that he was not from our world, but the dark reality, one that we were now firmly stuck in with him. He claimed that you were the one that asked him to turn us, in some past.”
“Why would I want to be immortal?” Landen asked so quietly that you would have thought he was asking himself.
“Why would you not? I admit I was mad at you for the better part of two hundred years for dragging me into this, but it makes sense. The only way to survive on this side, to maintain your course diligently, is to be immortal. When you die, all the deals you make are still in play. Your intent is set. When you are born again, you’re held to those notions but do not recall them. By staying alive, you remember, you know who’s playing you. Wide awake forever more. Being immortal is the only way for us to have any hope of returning to our roots. Our only hope of winning this.”
Landen leaned forward, enhancing the glare he was giving Phoenix.
“I’m not immortal now. At least not in that fashion. I changed, you didn’t. Why?”
“Her,” he answered, glancing at me. He held out his hand and the fire vanished. My necklace fell into his palm and with a nod he sent it back to me. I didn’t put it on at first. I couldn’t figure out why I’d always seen the glass as solid black. As the metal cooled, all the illusions it had displayed disappeared. With shaky hands, I clasped it around my neck once more.
“We had to find her again and again, wait for her to be born, for your visions to tell you what dimension she was in, then bargain our way there. It was never good.”
“Why?” Landen asked shortly.
“She was either possessed or taken.”
“Possessed by who?”
“Dane. I told you that. She was always with him. At first we thought it was a good thing because he was taking her away from the guy she was in love with in some form or fashion, but then we realized that guy was protecting her. The last time was the worst, bad enough for you to surrender your ashes.”
Landen leaned back, letting his gaze fall into the fire. I felt rage, heartbreak, and sorrow engulfing him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that in some past, he’d found me in Drake’s arms.
“The third attempt to turn her into a Phoenix failed,” he finally murmured.
“Right, mate. When we burn, we burn to recreate who we are, become new. Innocents cannot burn. Her vessel had never been claimed by a man. You thought because you loved her before, because she was yours countless times in past lives, that her soul would be reborn. I agreed, but we were wrong.”
I felt a pull of energy encase my body, and the next second I found myself in Landen’s arms on his side of the couch. He’d pulled me there with a thought. In his embrace, I felt his energy begging for forgiveness.
All at once I remembered the time I dreamed of him a day or so ago. He told me he would never watch me burn again. I had no idea what he meant then, but now it was all starting to make sense.
“When she did not rise the third time, Dane, as you call him, came to you. He told you that she would never be yours because you had disrupted the flow of life, that she could not and would not feel a pull to you unless you became human. He told you he could do that, throw you back into the cycle, and that the very next life she would be in your arms.”
Landen’s arms tightened around me. “He made me make a deal first.”
“Right. He said that when your soul reached its beginning point once again that you would be tested. By each planet, you would have to prove that she was yours.”
Landen nodded once. That was nothing new to either of us, and we were not afraid of the test before us.