Page 51 of Red Dragon’s Flame

“Brock said not,” Mikah told them.

There was more key-tapping as Thorne consulted his notes. “Brock said she wasn’t a phoenix shifter. Of which there are none, as far as anyone knows. Phoenixes were always rare—wise protectors of other races. But they disappeared or died out. None of them have been seen for centuries.”

Mikah said slowly, “How many centuries? As many centuries, say, as the Banarak have been cut off from other worlds?”

“Possibly,” Thorne said. “The timeframes are vague, but they seem to be about the same.”

“So, what are you saying?” Devon asked. “That the Banarak turned themselves into the Allohim by doing weird shit with phoenixes? And that they shoved a phoenix into me, for some reason? Why would they do that?”

Tyr frowned. “To make themselves a mate, maybe?”

Devon said, “Okay, that just made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.”

It made Mikah burn from the inside. His dragon was roaring, so loud he could barely hear anything else.

“That is absolutely never happening,” he said.

Thorne said, “We’re only twelve hours into this. We still don’t know what they want. But, Devon, I saw a recording of the story you told Emon. Your parents were afraid of the Allohim?”

“Yes. They were coming after us.”

“The whole family? Or just you?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It could have been just fear for me.”

“And you never saw a phoenix, and your parents never talked about them.”

She shook her head.

Tyr added, “And neither your mom nor your dad had a tattoo like yours?”

She shook her head. “No. Definitely not.” She paused, thinking, and then said, “But you still think there could be a phoenix in me? Only not a shifter. So how would a bird even fit in me? Where would it go?”

Mikah’s dragon asked, unhelpfully.

Tyr said to Devon, “It’s not quite like that. Phoenixes are fire elementals. They take the form of birds, but they’re mostly energy, not mass. One could have hidden itself inside your body, and possibly used its energy to reconnect your neural network.”

“But why?”

“There’s no way to know. It’s possible the Banarak themselves taught the phoenixes how to do it, however inadvertently. Suppose they captured a phoenix—or more than one—and somehow merged with them, using the energy to evolve their species. To give themselves powers they’d never had before.”

Mikah thought that through. “Okay, but then… why are they so desperate to get their flying monkey paws on Devon? They already have the powers, right?”

“Maybe they don’t,” Devon said suddenly. “Isn’t the phoenix legend that every so often they burn up and die, and then they rise from the ashes again, renewing themselves?”

“Yes,” Tyr said.

“So… what if the powers they got from the phoenix don’t pass down from generation to generation? Or what if they die out within a phoenix’s life span? What if they have to be renewed, like the phoenix renewing?”

Thorne said slowly, “So without the phoenix in their possession, their powers could disappear? That would be a powerful motive.”

“So we could defeat the Allohim by keeping the phoenix away from them,” Tyr said. “That would be good news.”

“Yeah,” Devon said. “Unless, when it comes time for it to renew itself, it burns me up with it.”

Mikah didn’t say what he was thinking. That in order for the phoenix to not burn Devon up, it would have to leave her body. And then she’d die anyway.

Obviously everyone else’s mind was going in the same direction.