Wakeup call

I ran all the way back to the not-a-basement room where I’d left my friends hours earlier, it was just before dawn on a Saturday morning. I opened the door, somehow expecting him to be there and as the door swings inward, we make eye contact, relief flooding me in a warm wave of comfort. “Hello Catherine, good to see you again”. His grey eyes are as clear and cold as I remembered. “Hello Arthur, I really wish we could meet under more auspicious circumstances in the future. I’m getting tired of the charade and Angel of Death doesn’t really suit your style”. He smiles, and beckons me inside and to a seat. “I take it they’ve initiated the transition, as per usual?” he sounds bored by the repetitiveness of it all, as I am. “Yes, I’m shot through the heart, and you’re to blame”. 

The banter is easy, but there’s a tension in the room that you could cut with a butter knife; suppose it’s to be expected, everyone’s staring at the bloodstain covering the left side of my shirt. I didn’t sit down, knowing what was coming, and took my shirt off instead, revealing a tank top and a gunshot wound where my heart used to be. Taking stock of the damage incurred during the chase, I’m partly surprised at the fact that I’m still standing...gunshot wound notwithstanding, my jeans were torn and bloody and my hands looked like they’d lost several fist fights. “I don’t feel any of it and I can remember most of the stories, so I suggest you finish the transition before sunrise. I’ve no particular wish to be caught in the breach”. My words were scarcely cold before he was standing in front of me with a beautiful, jewel-encrusted dagger, stabbing me through the heart without hesitation. The others gasp or cry out as I fall to my knees, dizzy with more than blood loss.  It must be quite a sight to see someone spontaneously combust, a friend on her knees being consumed by flames burning white-hot for less than a minute before nothing but a pile of ashes remain. 

Stunned silence reigns, and then suddenly the pile of ashes erupts into a fan of white light, the motes swirling upwards in a spiral, somehow coalescing into form. At first it’s only a vague outline, a silhouette of a person, then a shadow, until finally a girl of twenty three stands before them in place of the ashes. “Phoenix” Arthur whispers the name in awe; after all these years, the rebirth of a phoenix still takes his breath away. The phoenix, in human form, is a girl of five foot five, long midnight black hair, honey coloured skin and azure blue eyes. Combat boots, stretch black jeans and a black tank top, an overall improved version of the girl that had died in the fire of her soul, this girl looks almost just like the deceased, but with subtle, indefinable differences. “Arthur, give me my dagger please”. She holds out her hand to him and he places the dagger that had killed her hilt first in her palm. The jewel in the hilt was gone, no evidence of where it had been. The blade is made of watered steel, the hilt a twisted black with an eagle’s head on the end and its claws curling where the hilt meets blade, a thing of cold, purposeful beauty. Her hand closes around the hilt and she points the blade at her left arm, sliding the blade beneath it, and it disappears as if being sheathed. “Thank you, Arthur. Now, I suppose we owe them the grace of an explanation, don’t you think?” The voice is familiar, that of their departed friend, but there are undertones and inflections which make it sound hauntingly melodious and somehow alien. They all stare in stunned silence; no one has moved since the rebirth, until Ryan breaks the spell and says “What the hell just happened?”