Phoenix Read Online Free Page B

to compel her to stay with us, another eruption pierces the night sky, this time shooting fire straight upward into the night. As we stare at the violent burst, a shockwave reverberates outward. Its concussion trembles through the air. As it moves past us, I feel its force.
    Nia moans. “That came from the cave. I must turn myself over to the white witch again.”
    “No.” Ram uses his tone of voice that no one ever argues with—the tone that seems to carry all the authority of a fire-breathing dragon, even when he’s in human form.
    I’ve never figured out how to get my voice to do that. I explain, “Our family was near there. We’ve got to make sure they’re okay.” To my chagrin, my words are tinged with something like a whimper.
    But neither Ram nor Nia appear to be paying me much attention. Nia moves to step free of us, but Ram takes hold of her arm, restraining her.
    “What would you gain by turning yourself over to her?” Ram asks.
    “Life. Not just mine. If she sends the mamluki—”
    “We will fight them. We are not old and injured.”
    “You cannot win.”
    “We have before. We will again.”
    “But when she sets them after me en masse, there is no fighting them off. It is a danger to all of us the longer I stay here. They may already be on their way.”
    Ram turns to me now. “Felix, go back to the cabin, make sure everyone’s okay, and fetch our weapons. You can catch up to us—”
    “I’m not going with you,” Nia protests. She doesn’t appear to be fighting against Ram’s hold on her wrist—probably because she’s guessed, rightly so, that Ram is stronger than she is. She’ll have to talk her way free.
    Ram ignores her protest and continues addressing me. “We passed an abandoned outpost the other day on our journey to the spy cabin. It’s perhaps forty or fifty miles to the southwest, along the route we traveled.”
    “I remember. I can find it again.”
    “Meet us there.”
    I nod in agreement with Ram’s plan, though everything inside me is protesting the idea. I don’t want Ram flying off with Nia. He’ll woo her and win her before I return with the swords. I’ll lose whatever advantage I had, which wasn’t much.
    But what else is there? If I argue with him, he’ll only bully me into getting his way (he’s done that countless times before) and I’ll look weak in front of Nia. I can’t risk that.
    Even more than that, though, I’m concerned about our family. That explosion was far too close to the cave, the lake, and the cabin. They may need my help.
    I linger, waiting to be sure Nia will go with Ram, that he doesn’t need my support to prevent her from eluding us. Waiting…because there’s a noise, drawing louder, a wailing sort of sound that strikes my bones and threatens to lock them into place.
    Yagi.
    I’ve faced them before. I know their defenses well. Armor-like exoskeletons, venomous barbs, rapier-like antennae, and—most unnerving of all—their paralysis-inducing wails, by which they freeze their prey before they pounce.
    The only way to keep from being frozen in place, bones locked in rigid stiffness, is to keep moving.
    Which means I can’t wait around any longer. “I’ll meet you at the outpost,” I promise my brother as I leap into the air, morphing into dragon form as a horde of yagi swarm to the spot where I stood seconds before. I glimpse Ram and Nia taking off in the other direction, but my eyes are on the yagi.
    I’ve never seen so many yagi in one place before. There must be dozens of them.
    Nia said they were drawn to her, trained on her scent, that Eudora would send them after her if she tried to flee. Not that I didn’t believe her, but seeing them streaming toward her in a swarm like so many man-sized roaches….
    She was right to warn us—right in ways I couldn’t appreciate until I saw the swarm myself.
    I fly swiftly back to the cabin. We’re going to need weapons.
    Lots of weapons.
    It’s a short flight to the hideaway. I