“Rose!” Blaze hurled himself at the window.
Across the room, the unseen creature in the other cell was howling and snarling as well, throwing itself against its door. One side of Rose’s face was numb with cold; the other, as hot and flushed as if she stood next to a raging bonfire. In her soul, her swan beat its wings frantically, trying to claw its way out of her skin.
Slowly, shaking from head to foot, she raised her hands.
Never taking his eyes off her, the soldier tilted his head to speak into a small radio clipped to his collar. “Intruder in the cold room. Specimens highly agitated. Orders?”
A tinny voice crackled from the speaker. “Eliminate the threat.”
The soldier’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“No!”
The world went white.
For a split second, Rose was convinced that she’d died and gone straight to hell. Incandescent fire swirled around her. She dropped to the floor, burying her head in her arms, but the furious light still scorched through her closed eyelids. Heat seared through her body, her mind, her very soul.
“Rose. Rose. You have to go.”
The light faded a little, to merely eye-searing. Rose blinked, tears streaming down her face.
Blaze knelt in front of her, his right arm crimson from elbow to wrist. A stench of molten metal hung in the air. His cell door was a wreckage of red-hot, twisted steel.
There was no sign of the guard.
“You have to go,” Blaze said again.
She clutched at his arm, gripping tight. “Not without you.”
Black flames filled his eyes, the only darkness in the blazing inferno raging around them. “I can’t! The binding—”
He stopped dead, staring down at his blood-slicked arm.
“The binding,” he whispered. “It’s gone. I’m free.”
He pulled away from her, standing up. Tipping back his head, he flung his arms wide.
“Free!” he cried, in a voice that was no longer human.
Rose flung up a hand to shield her eyes as he went up in flame. His body vanished, utterly consumed in seconds.
From the fire, the Phoenix rose.
He filled the room with fire and fury. Every feather burned, white-hot at the base, flickering yellow at the tip. Concrete and debris exploded outward as he spread enormous wings, shrugging off the ceiling as easily as cracking an egg.
Rose reached inward for her swan. Her animal surged up eagerly, wrapping her in ebony feathers. Shakily, she got to her webbed feet, stretching out her own wings.
The Phoenix’s crested head bent to hers. For a moment, the great golden beak caressed her own.
Then, together, they flew.
Chapter 7
This is nice, Rose told herself firmly.
The man sitting opposite her was certainly nice. Jim—or was it Tim?—had nice eyes, a nice body, nice…everything. Even his voice was nice, a pleasant, gentle tenor. He liked cats and gardening and long walks on the beach.
Rose had never been so completely, utterly, mind-numbingly bored.