From the Ashes Read online

  From the Ashes

  A Psychic Visions Novel

  Book #16

  Dale Mayer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Complimentary Download

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Excerpt for Stroke of Death

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  This is the 16th Psychic Visions Novel from USA Today Bestselling author Dale Mayer.

  Born and raised in a cult with a fanatical father who believed she was destined for greater things, Phoenix endured a childhood of pain and torment. Not only was her father preparing her for the future he saw, he hated that she was stronger, better than he was.

  When she’s finally rescued, her life slowly improves, but still her past hinders her future. Her father has gifted her with one special note, written on a material she has yet to destroy. In order to get rid of it forever, she travels to Iceland to her father’s hometown to visit a fissure of lava that opens every summer. Surely the material will burn in the lava? And she can then be rid of her father and the special note forever …

  Detective Rowan Einar hates when the damn fissure opens as it always signifies the suicide season—a despicable time of year where people travel to his small corner of the world to end their lives. When a waif shows up with huge eyes and scars, both external and internal, he wants to ensure she won’t be the next suicide in town. But, when he hears her story, he wonders what is going on …

  Then the deaths begin, … and he witnesses the visions and energies that he’s always been able to see have now merged with Phoenix’s energies, making the two of them stronger and more powerful. What they see though is even more terrifying …

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  KILL OR BE KILLED

  Part of an elite SEAL team, Mason takes on the dangerous jobs no one else wants to do – or can do. When he’s on a mission, he’s focused and dedicated. When he’s not, he plays as hard as he fights.

  Until he meets a woman he can’t have but can’t forget. Software developer, Tesla lost her brother in combat and has no intention of getting close to someone else in the military. Determined to save other US soldiers from a similar fate, she’s created a program that could save lives. But other countries know about the program, and they won’t stop until they get it – and get her.

  Time is running out … For her … For him … For them …

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  Chapter 1

  Phoenix Rising stepped off the tour bus and was engulfed by the sights and sounds of the small Icelandic town they would spend the next few days. An odd ashy aroma filled her nostrils, even as a fresh breeze lifted her long blond strands of hair.

  She’d spent her whole childhood being told about this place. Then spent the rest of her life researching, studying, trying to figure out exactly what her connection was to this place and to the Eternal Fire that burned here.

  Or rather the Eternal Fire that always burned beneath the ground but rose to the surface once every year. It had resurfaced weeks ago.

  Finally she was here.

  Her father had prophesized how she would die by the Eternal Fire—and then be reborn.

  Her delusional mom had believed him and, after way too many sessions of drugs, had named her daughter Phoenix Rising, as supposedly the epic answer to this burning in hell and subsequent resurrection.

  Phoenix had no clue what the truth of the matter was.

  Then again, not many children from cults escaped, and, if they did, they needed a lifetime to deal with the BS they’d been spoon-fed. Rescued at eleven, she was old enough to understand what had happened and how her rescue from that nightmare had been a gift.

  Her father, the cult leader, who had impregnated almost all of his followers, had decreed Phoenix was special. Very special. But she’d had no idea what that meant or why she needed to be special.

  The rational part of her mind understood her father would say that just to make himself more special because he was her father. He’d filled her head with stories of this fire that burned here, but he’d never answered any of her questions.

  Instead, he’d patted her on the head and said, You’ll learn, child. You’ll learn. But, when the cult had been raided by the cops, she only learned that her father had been a pedophile and a psychopath.

  And, with his blood in her veins and his words still in her mind and his torture ever evident on her body, that meant she was damaged.

  But, even as broken as she had started out in this life, she’d gone to a wonderful foster couple, both professors, who’d quickly filled in the gaps of her education with intensive tutoring. Now she had her own degree and had been an associate professor in mythology at the same Seattle University she’d attended, until recently but had volunteered to take a layoff from her struggling university.

  Now she had severance money in the bank and was footloose and fancy free.

  Only for her, true freedom meant finding answers. She reached up to touch the scar on the side of her face. Just another reminder of some of the things her father had done to help her remember who she was and what she was here for. In his uncontradicted opinion, she was the Chosen One, and as such was required to endure the pain of training to achieve that status.

  The scars on her body ached as they always did with the memories of the torture she’d endured on a regular basis.

  Her mother had cried with her afterward but had never stepped in to stop the abuse.

  Phoenix had screamed and wailed, asking the others to stop him, telling whoever would listen how she didn’t want to be this special child. The other children had laughed, had taunted her more. But they’d also been afraid of her—maybe a tiny bit jealous too of the Chosen One moniker.

  “We aren’t special, like you are,” they would say and, instead of helping her, had often beaten her more.

  Her lessons about humanity had been learned at the hands of a madman and his all-too-willing disciples.

  When she had finally become an adult, she had a very twisted view of man and religion, how distorted beliefs could distort people and how so many of them had taken their beliefs in a very wrong direction, like her father had.

  He had died in a shoot-out with the cops, choosing to die a martyr—as he had put it—than to go to jail and to suffer at the hands of others.

  His disciples had chosen to die with him too—taking the poison they had ready and waiting for the one day when it was needed.

  Her mother had tried to drag Phoenix into the closet to die with her. “Come. We must go. We must follow Father,” her mother had insisted harshly.

  But Phoenix had fought back. “No. I don’t want to follow him anywhere.”

  Slap.

  Phoenix had taken several hard blows from her mother’s very capable hand before her mother gave up to dash into
the closet alone. Phoenix hadn’t even tried to follow.

  When the cops had surrounded her, she had pointed at the closet where her mother was. When they opened the door, they found her mother dying on the floor. And that was the last Phoenix had seen of her family. That vision sat at the edge of her consciousness, never giving her a chance to move past it.

  Now, so many years later—eighteen years to be exact—she had decided to finally put this all to rest.

  “Phoenix?”

  She shook off her tortured memories to see the whole tour bus had emptied, tourists already storming through the gift shop and heading toward the hotel.

  The driver stood beside her.

  “Are you doing okay, Phoenix?” he asked in his jovial tone, but his fatherly gaze studied her with concern.

  She smiled and nodded. “I am. Just a little tired, so thought I’d wait for the crowd to disperse first.” A fib as she’d been lost in her thoughts.

  “Understandable,” he said. “This afternoon you are on your own. After we get you into your hotel, you can rest. Tomorrow morning we’ll head out to the Burning Fires.” He paused and studied her. “Excited?”

  “Very,” she said. “I’ve come a long way to see it.”

  “People come from all over the world,” he replied and shrugged. “I don’t understand the attraction myself. It’s just a fire.”

  “But a fire that has burned for a long time,” she said gently. “With very specific start and stop times. an eternal schedule that surpasses our understanding.”

  “But still just a fire. It’s burning because of an opening in the ground with an endless amount of lava fuel for it. I understand a lot of people believe in the mythology of the place. And, of course, the few missing people cases we have around here help to fuel that fire’s legend. But it’s just gossip. None of it makes much sense to me.”

  At his words, she stumbled, righted herself and then asked, “What do you mean, missing people?”

  “Ah,” he said. “It’s nothing. Just a few missing tourists every year. But it’s to be expected. Hundreds of thousands of people come here. Some with good intentions and some not. And some come deliberately to commit suicide,” he said, his gaze sharp as he studied her. “We have a weird season here—Suicide Season. For anyone choosing the fires as a way to die, the lava leaves nothing to see afterward. A way to disappear completely. It’s not a bad method if someone is dead set on dying. Just hell on those left behind.”

  “Suicide?” she exclaimed and shook her head at his nod. “I’d never even considered something like that.” She looked at the quaint town around them. “Such an awful concept against such a picturesque background.”

  “Oh, the town is definitely picturesque,” he replied. “But the townsfolk play into that. They need the tourist dollars so they give it their all. As much as they love the tourists, they hate them too.”

  “I can understand that,” she said. “They need what we have to offer, but they don’t really want us in their space. I’d probably feel the same.”

  As the only surviving cult member, she was left to the foster care system. It hadn’t been a kind system to her, but she could sleep in a warm bed, eat real food and not deal with her father. A few years later she’d landed at one foster home and had stayed. She had gone to school for the first time. Although she knew her numbers, reading and writing, she had been so far behind that she’d had to focus hard to catch up.

  By the time she hit grade ten, she was there and well past. Her final foster parents had tutored her steadily. Both of them were professors and put high stock in education.

  Patrick had tutored her incessantly on all things mathematical, whereas the woman, Merry, had tutored her on all things scientific. And then Phoenix got into mythology, making them both stand back and look at her in surprise.

  She had done it more because of all the training she’d received in the first years of her life. She had also taken a lot of forensic courses on serial killers and psychopaths and the damaged mind, in an effort to understand how her birth family could have been so bent on destroying her childhood.

  Nobody understood what she had been through, except maybe the cops, who sat listening as she answered their questions. She had watched the looks of shock and horror, then the pity.

  Her father’s teachings were always in the back of her mind. She was afraid some code word existed that somebody would say, and she would then turn into this mass killer or something.

  Maybe that fear had kept her on the straight and narrow. She had never been into drugs or sex or boys. She never cheated at school. She was always too wary that maybe this learning opportunity would be taken away from her, and somebody would lock her back up again.

  It was funny. With another eighteen years had gone by in this whole new world, she wondered if maybe it had been a myth—a dream—or rather a nightmare.

  In the back of her mind, she worried there were eleven-year cycles, starting with the first eleven years in the cult. The second eleven years in foster homes and college, before finally having her own place. She’d made it about two-thirds of the way through the next set of eleven years. Which so far had been about independence and loosening the shackles of her history. Who knew what the rest of this set would bring?

  “You’re off in your own world again,” he said with a kind smile. “Come on. Let’s get you to the hotel. You look tired.” His eyes once again went to the scar alongside her face. She let him look. Everyone did. Her foster parents had wanted her to get plastic surgery to cover it up. Phoenix wouldn’t hear of it. It was a reminder of who she really was—inside and out.

  A monster.

  Just like her father.

  Chapter 2

  Phoenix headed into her hotel. Three buses were in town, adding an easy couple hundred people to the small town. She winced at the numbers in line at the registration desk but stood obediently at the end. She knew the receptionists would get through this process as fast as they could, and being difficult and or having a tantrum wouldn’t help.

  Her mind caught on the simple wood furnishings as she studied her surroundings. Outside, she could see a cop having an argument with somebody. Whether the suspect was drunk or just being argumentative was hard to determine. But the cop looked more exasperated than anything. Finally he shut the door to the police cruiser with the man now inside and hit the hood so it could drive away with its passenger. Then, as if sensing she was watching, he turned toward the hotel, seemingly staring right at her.

  Instinctively she ducked back, even though she was inside and shouldn’t have been visible from where he stood. But something was so compelling about that gaze. She waited, her breath caught in her throat, as he strode through the front doors of the hotel in the loose-limbed stride of a man in control. He was a man in charge. He was a man who knew what power was all about, and she could feel the waves of energy coming off him. She didn’t know how people created that aura, but her father had had the same overwhelming “I’m in charge” presence.

  Her father had said she was a sensitive and could understand energy like he did. Then he had said a lot of things. Supposedly he’d been looking for that one special child to rise up and to lead the group with him. As far as she knew, she was the only one in the group of children he’d shown any interest in—lucky her.

  She definitely was sensitive to others—sensitive to her surroundings, sensitive to danger. She had this supervigilant instinct to run. She called it her scaredy-cat genes. Because anytime there was a confrontation or something was about to get ugly, she knew somehow and tried to get away before things got bad. Of course, in her mind, she was still escaping her father.

  Now she was avoiding the policeman. She deliberately turned her back on the front door and waited in line. She refused to look back, but her skin crawled as that presence walked toward her.

  Her breath caught in her chest as she stepped forward once again. She was next in line. The cop stepped up beside her and called out, “Hey, R
eethra. How’s it going?”

  The receptionist on the left side of the long counter smiled up at him and said, “Just like every other day.”

  He chuckled, and then, in a deliberate move, he turned and looked at Phoenix.

  Phoenix refused to look at him. She kept staring at the three receptionists, waiting for her turn.

  “What brought you here?” the cop asked in a nonchalant tone with a slight thread of steel running through his voice.

  She turned to look up at him and replied, “Just looking at the touristy things to do here. I came off the bus.”

  “I talked to John. He said everybody was up here registering.”

  She nodded. “I am part of his group,” she replied with a shrug.

  Just then the male receptionist called out, “I can help the next person, please.”

  Pulling her small suitcase, she walked away from the cop and headed toward the man at the counter. She gave him her name and told him which bus she was on. It was a process they must deal with all the time. He nodded and went through her paperwork, looking at her passport and checking her identification.

  “You’re supposed to be in a double room,” he said. “I have one more person booked into that room with you, but they haven’t checked in yet.”

  She didn’t say anything, just waited. Every stop was a double-booking per room. That was how they managed to get the prices so low. So far every time she got the room to herself. Perfect. She’d wondered if she’d been putting out a special “stay away” energy or if it was coincidence. Regardless, it had been working in her favor on this trip.

  He handed her a key and gave her directions to her room. She gave him a soft smile and said, “Thank you.”

  He nodded but still didn’t bother looking up. He called out, “Next.”

  She unhooked the handle on her suitcase and rolled it toward the elevator. Her room was on the second floor. High enough to be out of danger in case somebody tried breaking in through a window but not so high she couldn’t escape out a window if needed. She shook off that thought.