Fire And Ash by Nia Davenport Page B

surrounded by four more.
    Where did they come from? It’s like they appeared out of thin air.
    Two of them go for Derek and two start towards me. I shoot a cross bolt at the first. My aim is dead on and it buries itself in her chest. She drops while the second one keeps coming. He is too close for the crossbow to be an effective weapon against her. I drop it and pull the silver knives Aunt Farrah gave me free from their place at my waist.  
    I thrust, he dances to the left and I nick his side. He swings his arm out and hits me square in the chest.  
    In my peripheral I see Derek and the two he is engaging at the same time moving in a blur of deadly moves that are too quick for my divided attention to track.
    I sweep my right leg out and take the phoenix’s legs out from under him before he has time to react. He shoots a hand out and yanks me to the ground with him. He uses his larger mass to roll us so he lands on top of me. His hands close over my throat trying to crush it. I don’t allow instinct to make me drop the one knife I held on to when I fell and claw at his hands with both of mine. Instead I let him continue to cut off my air supply as I bring the knife up behind him and slam it into his back. When I pull it free and slam it again his hands release my neck. I throw him off of me and jam the knife past flesh and breastbone and tissue and straight into his heart.  
    “I assume you want that back so grab it and let’s go,” Derek says from beside me.  
    No sooner than I dislodge it from his heart Derek cuts of his head like he did to the other three of the other four lying dead around us.
    Voices and footsteps sound in the distance.  
    Derek grabs my arm and pulls me in the opposite direction of the clearing and across the park. As we run, footsteps thud behind us.  
    When we get to his car he yells at me to get in as he scrambles into the driver’s side. He throws the Mustang into gear, its tires screech against the pavement and then there is a loud boom and my entire body shakes from the force of an impact. The car goes sliding across the pavement and we hit a tree. The force of the collision reverberates through the car and everything inside it. My head slams hard against glass.
    Darkness hovers at the edge of my mind but I fight to remain conscious.  
    Derek jumps out of the car and I hear movement that sounds like fighting.  
      I try to turn my head to see what is going on but the movement makes my vision go blurry. I blink once and then twice trying to clear it but I can’t. Everything looks fuzzy and the grunts that I hear sound extremely far away now. I hear Derek faintly shouting my name. Asking me if I am okay. I try to answer but I can’t. Pain explodes inside my skull and then I can no longer hold back the darkness. It completely pulls me under.

    ******
    I open my eyes to Derek and Cassie looking down at me.
    “Go tell Mom to tell the doctor she’s awake,” Derek instructs her.
    She says okay but hesitates, like she doesn’t want to leave. Finally she does.  
    “We were coming back from Lookout Point and a car ran us off the road,” Derek whispers to me hurriedly right before a man in a white lab coat walks in.
    His appearance makes me finally look at my surroundings. There is an IV bag to my left with a tube traveling from it to the needle in my left hand. To my right is a machine that beeps intermittently and all around me are glass walls. An old box television is mounted in the corner and in the one opposite to it sits an uncomfortable looking vinyl chair.
      I’m in a hospital, I think. Then the state park, Derek, the burning body, the phoenix, the fight and the crashcome flooding back to me. The thought of everything makes adrenaline flood my system all over again.
    “Are you alright Miss Jacobs?” The doctor asks. He is alarmed that the beeps coming out of the machine at my bedside are becoming more insistent.
    I take a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. “I’m