Fire And Ash by Nia Davenport Page B

I hiss at Derek.
    The corner of his mouth twitches as if I’ve said something that is amusing. Then shadows move behind his eyes and he is looking at me like he wants to do me mortal harm again.
    “I know what you are Ashley Jacobs and I know what your family does.”
    “How do you-“
    “How do you think?” He cuts me off.  
    No. That’s not possible. I would have known if Cassie and her family were phoenix. And they live near the mountains not the park. There’s more cover from hunters in the wooded areas.  
    Even as my mind is running through a million denials of why the new girl in town— the girl I just met but already like a lot, the girl who has become my friend— is not the thing that it is my duty to root out and kill, Derek’s eyes flash gold in the moonlight, like the eyes of phoenix are prone to do when they can’t reel in their emotions. It confirms what he is, what Cassie is, and a part of me shrieks that I didn’t just see what I know I saw.  
    “You’re one of them. You’re a monster. I’d be thrilled at the thought because it means I get to kill you but I also have to kill Cassie too.” And Mrs. Jensen.
    All of a sudden Derek’s face is less than an inch from mine and I never saw him move forward. “Threaten her again or my mom and you die. Not quickly and not painlessly. But slowly. Very slowly. As you experience every bit of agony you hunter scum deserve to feel.”
    His dark brown eyes don’t simply flash to gold. They remain bright, searing the color of the flames phoenix burst into before their rebirth into my retinas. I see my death in his eyes, every bit as dragged out and painful as he just promised. I should be cowed. But I’m not. He called me hunter scum and said the words like I was no better than gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. I’m offended and livid.  
    “You can try. But I promise I won’t go down without a fight. My family has hunted your kind for centuries. We evolved to be able to. It is in my blood to be able to take down and kill monsters like you.” I snarl the words at him.
    “And what about Cassie? Is it in your blood to kill monsters like her too? Or my mom who’s never been anything but welcoming towards you?”
    I open my mouth to say yes. If they are phoenix then it is. But the words get stuck in my throat. I swallow. Open my mouth to say yes again and the words still won’t come.
    “The funny thing is hunters call us monsters,” Derek continues when I don’t respond to his question. “Claim it’s your duty to protect the innocent from being preyed upon. But my sister was innocent and the baby she carried was too. They both died when a hunter shot an arrow tipped with silver into her heart. My dad was innocent too. His only crime was fighting to protect his family. And Cassie’s parents— her mother was a hunter who just happened to have fallen in love with my brother. When they came for him they came for her too. Born a hunter, die a hunter right? ” Derek mocks me with our creed. “They would have killed their newborn baby too had she been present when they struck. You all are the true monsters. We don’t butcher people in their homes and we don’t kill innocent people.”
    “The hell you don’t,” I snap. That is exactly what you did to my mother, I almost add but don’t. “You rob people of their lives just so you can cheat death.”
    Phoenix were never meant to live indefinitely. Despite what myths say about them they are not really immortal. They are born with a set number of lives, they closely guard what that set number is, and after they have used them up the next time they die, they do not rise from the flames they combust into. My grandfather told me this ten years ago when he made me open my eyes and stand up to see something I didn’t want to see.
    “ A phoenix is the reason you look upon what you see ,” he’d said. “ For every human life they take, they add an additional one to theirs. They aspire to have what