?The Phoenix Gate, Jochin joon.?

Held delicately, between his thumb and middle finger, and out into the air. I could make out a large avian claw cleanly cut at the ankle, scaled in a variety of orange and red you could only see on a color wheel comprised of fire. Clutched between two onyx, and one ivory talon, was an egg with mottled color markings of flame across its shell.

Baba Jarid used his gnarled hands to open my palm, placed it delicately into it, and closed my fingers around it. Compared to dad and I my grandfather was short and it did not help that age had bent his back. The look in his eyes, all knowing, that I felt the power in this specific object just as he did. When it touched my skin it sung, surging with an energy that made its use instinctual. The simple spells I knew were fireworks. This was an atom bomb dropped into my hand.

?The Phoenix Gate will open at your direst moment of need. It will take you from where you are to somewhere safe and burn anything that is a threat to you to ash in its wake. But the price you pay to be brought back is high.? A knowing shake of a leathery finger wielded like a sword in my direction.

?Very high.? He said gravely, his eyes glassy. He had known the cost, and it was painted there in that empty look and razor sharp, marrow deep, pause.

That was that.

I had never intended to use it.

Duty had called back on Earth, or at least the version I was familiar with. I'd been brought back to quell an uprising across Europe that was only happening in the shadows. With Sipen on Rhy'din, and my hunt for him proceeding at a snail's pace, the rest of the Suckers were left to war for the power vacuum his feigned absence left. In my own absence the Knights and other agents of the Freemasons had a good handle on keeping a modicum of normalcy. The occasional flare up here or there was nothing they couldn't subdue so long as I kept preventing Sipen from gaining too much power in Rhy'din.

The best I could manage was a stalemate. So I'd spent the latter part of all those years working on my knight-moves.

The Freemasons came calling and even opened a portal for me to go back home. Funny, it didn't feel anything like it.

It should have resonated, somewhere, that the stars and night sky were all familiar again. Take off and touch down in airplanes instead of magical portals and moving through the mists of other realms. They were calling for my trans-Atlantic flight on the intercom. My phone was grasping for towers now that I had switched it over to the Earth SIM. I dialed from rote memory. Ready to vomit when it actually rang. My heart was fluttering so fast I knew for certain it was making its way up my throat so I could puke it out onto the floor.

?Hello??

?Been so long you didn't let it go to voicemail huh??

?...Jo??

?In the flesh.?

?It's been...?

?Seven years. Yeah. Seven. I just wanted to know you were still alive.?

?I am. We should--?

?We should nothing. I just wanted to say I....I understand why you did what you did. It's better this way. You're safer this way. I need to board my flight. But it's good you're alive. You'll stay that way if you stay away from me.?

I could hear her saying something else through the receiver but I'd already hit End and watched as the LED screen became lifeless.

A few hours later I was in Paris. I took a cab and told the driver to drive me past a few of the places she had gawked over when we planned our honeymoon.

I couldn't tell you how satisfying that roar was. All 8 cylinders jumping to life whenever I pushed my foot on the pedal. I gunned the engine a few times, flirting with the redline, and decided I didn't hate the ?sports shift? option as much as I thought I would. The cliff was on a winding roadway and I'm sure Le Gramps had done this on purpose, thinking I would just gently ramp the sedan down those few meters to the soft grass and not completely ruin the front and rear ends.

Instead I drove instinctual down the winding roadway, letting the intuitive distribution and shift in weight of that luxury vehicle's suspension guide me until I was nearing 100 km/h. Once I could get just that bit of straightaway I stomped my heavy foot down so the pedal touched the interior and launched myself over rows of delicately grown grapes.

Hopefully the element of surprise would carry me further than that heavy sedan had leaped from the cliff. Wheels still in motion, they ground up soft grass and the grill sent wood and plant matter flying in every direction around me. Fancy and furious, once the ruckus sent the non-supernatural ones running, the Suckers broke the laws of physics and blurred every which way they could in strategic defensive patterns. Those just a few decades turned that they used for security leveling firearms that fired uselessly against the bulletproof armor and glass. No wonder why this thing was so heavy. Just for good measure I ripped away a bit of that beautiful wood and leather paneling to find plastic explosive. Pepe Le Grampew hadn't been lying.

Smart enough to line the veritable gathering of holsters and hidden compartments in my trench coat with the gear from the trunk, I set the cruise control, kicked the door completely off its hinges and to a hunk of what was now scrap metal to the ground, then rolled out. I'd set the steering wheel so it would hit center mass of that expansive mansion that sat as the centerpiece for this opulent European estate.

The flash and ensuing heat from the explosion was gratifying. I even got caught up a little in the blast. Enough that I rode the air current and drifted back down to the ground while all the Suckers, security, debutantes, dressed as the upper echelon, exposed their fangs and came for me.

They were fodder. It wasn't hard with all the things I had learned. All hard hours training even with my talents. A Suckers' first lesson was how to feed. But their progenitors never taught them how to hunt for what they ate like I Hunted. Deceit, and maybe even some sleight of hand, drawing even the unwilling to them with overly romanticized tactics of unnecessary seduction. For decades after they were turned they learned to perfect this to get what they wanted. Forgoing the art of war that I had spent years perfecting. Overlooking the one thing that would stop them from dusting at the end of another titanium-silver alloyed stake. The trench flapped behind me while I danced, moving through the forms like I was proving myself for another belt test. I always took pride in how I never had to worry about needing to heal when it came to these recently turned who liked to play dress up and ?Vampire?.

They screamed, all of them, in that moment just before they flared into embers and then dust. Whenever one wasn't in range of a stake I whispered an incantation they hadn't learned a protection spell from in their ?youth? and they erupted into flame, panicking even though they could have easily put themselves out, healed, and continued to fight. I mercifully ended them too.

?**** that stinks.? I said, scrunching my nose at the smell of a dozen dusted Suckers now blowing away on a French breeze.

Stand steadfast, Jo, because this was no where near the end of it at all. Ford through the current if you can. Put your back into the breakers because now the tide was coming in. A coursing tidal wave I knew was about to knock me back before I could even blink a few times.

These were the End Bosses.

Forsythe and Fitzpatrick. Not so affectionately known as F&F. And eff them especially. I knew my history. Forsythe had been turned in ancient Briton during the Dark Ages when the Freemasons and Knights Templar hadn't found a way to protect everyone everywhere. When precarious travel made by sea had actually ended the life of a Hunter too early.

Fitzpatrick could track his turning to the days of the Picts but had made his way eventually to Ireland.

These two way too pale skinned sons of bitches were responsible for what people had been referring to as ?The Troubles?. Not as rivals. But as allies. All that death so they could distract from their overly ambitious ideas and ideals.

When they were this old it was a different story. The ones that were really in the know knew the truth. It wasn't the purity of the bloodline or how many generations removed. It wasn't the fact that the ?curse? was ?diluted?. That was just a bunch of horse****. Think about it this way. If you could live forever, as young, hearty, healthy and hale as you were, and you spent all those days and nights over all those years learning how to fight, use magic, and how to use your supernatural abilities. If you picked up a few pieces here or there every year but lived over a thousand? You would be damn close to unstoppable.

This was why I knew I was outnumbered. F&F never went anywhere without the other. Playing up their accents for their street brawling hooligan tactics. ?Bloody hell.? I heard Forsythe say as he sped forward and buried a barreling fist into my jaw. ?They keep getting uglier.? Fitzpatrick finished for him.

I had never so much as seen a picture. Dad had done his best in the late 90s to end their reign of religious borne bloodshed even though at the end they had slipped just out of his grip. The latest intel had placed them in an island fortress off the coast of the Isle of Man. With other fish to fry we couldn't be forced to care that they sequestered themselves and only fed from willing blood dolls. They weren't our main concern until they made this play.

The old man had wanted me to be prepared. He had trained me to face them anyway. Over the years the most either of them could muster after ?The Troubles? was a soccer hooligan riot. And that was there style of fighting too, Dad had said. Known to get into street brawls through the years. They hadn't formally trained, preferring to sit back and let good men blow themselves up for nothing for causes they had created only to further chaos.

Fitzpatrick was smaller. Faster. Fond of dirty tactics as he became a blur even to my vision and abilities. He clawed my face and I was blinded by blood pouring down. Forsythe took that opportunity to jam a fist under my jaw in a devastating uppercut. Dazed, and blasted backward by the sheer strength of it, I sailed a few feet until I landed on my back.

This is what I had told the French lodge leader on the way here. One Governor was enough that I would have been given a run for my money. But two? This was a deathwish. A suicide mission I was almost suspicious of until I remembered how Dad had insisted on teaching to every living Governor's style with martial repetition.

?F&F.? He called out while we'd practiced in the ring. Street brawlers knew how to fight. They had no rules and that's what made them the most dangerous. When they fought they had nothing to lose. They often faced overwhelming odds or opponents much bigger than them. But there was a weakness. There always was.

Faster by far, and maybe even a little bit stronger though in my constant desire to find that endorphin high I forced the Freemasons to rig up a flatbed tow truck to deadlift. Each raggedly thrown haymaker was sloppier than the last. There was no long game in a street fight. You were just trying to end it before your opponent.

Jessie slipped back into the leather contraption that tucked her into the small of my back, I squared up. Fitzpatrick first. Now that I knew how fast they could move my eyes adjusted. Coming forward for a combo, I weaved back then aside. And because he hadn't ever thrown a thousand punches in a row just as a hard lesson to learn to always keep your hands up I came around with my own. A jab, then a hell of a haymaker hook that completely jacked his jaw into next week.

This wasn't a ****ing movie though. Forsythe wasn't going to wait for his partner to fall. He had come forward with another one of those fast moving fists just a split second behind. This was where the actual gamesmanship of all those days I spent in the ring imagining my name at the top of a fight card, came in handy. I rolled with the blow, bobbed beneath it, and just because I was a petty ***hole I came up under his chin with my own uppercut.

We could stay like this for hours. I had lost track of time and I'm sure we had. Trading blows and battling it out while the smoldering remains of that expansive mansion burned behind us. With a sudden blast that sent the three of us flying I saw a figure rise into the air, and hover over the smoke.

This was the Final Boss.

And I was absolutely ****ed.

The world as I had known it burned away in just a few blinks.

Eroding down into the ether of entropy. Wearing down until even now with the memory so fresh the slippery threads I tried to grasp at became intangible before I could secure my grip.

These looked like big strong hands. And here they were failing me all over again.

The way back will come but once.

Spoken, if it could be called that, in my mind. My thoughts heard nothing else.

?Okay now, put your shoulders up.? I hadn't made myself say it but I was saying it. First there was nothing and then there was...everything. A bright sunny Sacramento day without a cloud in sight. Still spring before the ridiculously hot dry season would undoubtedly hit. It was California's dust bowl but I had grown up here all my life. Wait..no I hadn't. But why did I say that to myself again? Why were the memories more real than what I had actually known?

He had...

He had her eyes.

They were crushingly beautiful.

?Yeah, just like that.? I said again forgetting about how the world had just fried in front of me. He wasn't old enough to handle anything but that long yellow plastic bat while I hunched forward and tossed the wiffle-ball in his direction. Somehow I knew he was 3-years old.

She was sitting in the shade just a few feet behind him. A book opened slightly enough not to crack the spine. Just another quirk that made me smile when I traced that banging body appreciatively. Maybe pregnancy had put a few pounds on her but I had never met anyone sexier to this very day and I meant that. Somewhere between retiring because the money was only in cage fighting and not two warriors squaring off in a ring and settling into the idea of a 9 to 5, I had dreamed up an ideal type. She would have actually been built from two shapely, sexy, pale legs on up. Chestnut hair, and two eyes I was too uncultured to assign a color to. When Ethan was born I hadn't bothered to count fingers or toes. Just made sure his looked like hers and not mine.

?Just like that buddy.? I couldn't stifle that chuckle. He looked so rigid and out of place even though I had corrected his form a few times. ?Now remember, when I throw this you hit it with the bat okay??

?Okay daddy!? He yelled, too loud. This was one of those few things they never warned you about parenthood. Just how long it was going to take your child to learn what was, and what wasn't, the proper volume for their voice.

?Alright, 1, 2, 3.? I lobbed the ball as softly as I could. ?Swing swing!? He did and for the first time after about a dozen tries actually made contact.

?Good job!? I couldn't hold my excitement back. I rushed forward and lifted him into the air. He barely weighed anything.

This wasn't right.

But I needed it to be so bad.

?Yay! Good job Ethan!? I heard her voice. So soft and high pitched. A few months into our relationship I started teasing her by asking if her parents were home whenever I called. That's how soft and dulcet the notes were. But sometimes it was the only thing that would help me get to sleep. And we spent hours in that first year just talking, dreaming what our life would be like, when another bout took me too far away to lie beside her. She rushed into join us and wrapped her arms around both Ethan and me while I circled in triumph at the first of many small victories.

I stopped mid-victorious chant and turn to stare. It hung a few dozen feet away. Maybe fifty by my estimate. An archway made entirely of flame. The park was full of people and no one else saw it. ?Jo?? Michelle asked, spooked by how sudden I stopped. ?What is it??

?Its nothing doll.? I offered her a reassuring smile from where I stood. Had it been a few dozen feet away? Because I could feel the heat from those flames. How couldn't they? I was surprised that the kids riding their bikes, and that old couple walking so close to it didn't notice it either. I handed Ethan over to her and looked again.

The way back...

?Jo?? I could hear the fear in her voice. That same fear I heard all those nights she called me crying when I was in some dangerous, foreign, and far-away place when the truth had come out. The memories intersected in a way that reality couldn't handle, and I could feel something fracture just enough for the flames to burn it again. ?What's wrong??

?Stay here..?

?Jochin?? She'd had all those years to practice saying it in that precise way. It wasn't fair how she could put every bit of gravity and fear into the enunciation. I looked back and there she was with a dark haired, bronze skinned, beautiful eyed boy clutched to her breast.

I turned around. Hypnotized, the rolling waves of flame, door-shaped, stood in the middle of that verdant field touching the ground without burning the grass. When I faced it I felt the burn. I was sure some skin was beginning to singe. Whenever I turned around I felt it on my back, just as hot.

..but once.

I forced my feet forward. Dragging them both across the grass and dirt. They didn't want to move. Halfway there I heard a scream. The flames were so close I must have been awash in sweat. The archway shape maintained even though the flames lapped out towards me. Blinding with how white hot the surface had become, I blinked the spots burnt into my vision away and turned back around.

Somehow the sun had set and night had made its way here. The only light I could see by was street light. Michelle shivered in the shadows, still clutching Ethan to her breast, too terrified to move. I could make a few pale skinned figures out approaching her. She screamed again.

?Jo! Where are you going?! Don't leave me!? She shouted, the panic escalating in her voice caused Ethan to cry. The pale skinned figures parted their lips and I could see the sudden ivory shine of lengthening incisors. They converged.

I closed my eyes and let the flames heat cover me. Permeating through my entire core. Teeth grit, fists so tense they were shaking, I walked forward finally making it to the door so the screams could burn away to ash just like the rest of me.

?Say it again.?

?Shao-kin??

I couldn't quite care that it was absolutely terrible and she was mangling it. A few hours ago we'd found ourselves in the same WestEnd bar sharing a few shy glances, smiles, then drinks. I wasn't opposed to letting liquor be quicker at the end of the day. I had a mission not to let him down and was doing my best to do so. But why did this still feel wrong?

I couldn't hate myself anymore. It was beautiful. The only thing I saw when I looked in the mirror was a rocking bod and killer good looks. I couldn't help but admire myself each time I passed, and blew a kiss every time that reflection showed off the body I had built for myself.

So why did this random, empty hook-up feel like the last thing I needed?

Deep down there was more than just self-loathing. I had always known it but couldn't ever settle on the not so easy way to go about solving it. Always looking for a quick solution, instant gratification even though I hadn't grown up entirely in the digital age.

?Jochin.?

I said again, correcting her, and she giggled.

When I left while she slept I didn't hate myself.

I hated everything.

Rhy'din had changed again. The faces I had come to find familiar changing aside from a scant few who were becoming more like family to me every day. Friends who endured longer than a few months to a few years who I could rely on. Sometimes we wouldn't see each other for years, like Katt, but we'd pick right back up where we left off. Instead this time around she was trying to do way too much good than was good for her. A part of me wished I could teach her that hard lesson I'd learned all those years ago about doing more good than was good for yourself. But she hadn't asked for the advice. Just a shoulder and an ear. And for the fact that she stayed my friend through those really rough years after Harper when everyone had just about given up on me I'd always have time for her.

But she was the only one I'd recognized. People weren't as friendly as they used to be. Or maybe I was just getting older. Surlier. I caught my reflection a few times in the mirror before I looked back.

Mid-drag, right about the time I was thinking about leaving was when she walked in. To be honest, I was actually in the middle of flirting with someone else.

The first impression I got was she wasn't impressed. Not even close. And that drove me absolutely ****ing wild. "Ali." She'd said, without the least bit of fear or trepidation in her voice. Not only was she not impressed but not intimidated either.

?Jochin.? I'd said, making sure every last bit of that subtle J sound was secured around too many consonants in a row.

?Jochin.? She echoed, way more accurately than I'd heard from someone else in a really long time. Call me a creep but I couldn't take my eyes off the way her lips moved to form that foreign name.

**** me.