The Phoenix (Undying Series #1)

Chapter 1

A/N So yeah. Enjoy! :)

Chapter 1: The Strayed Savior

Flashes of colorful lights went on and off with the blare of the music. The moon is high and the students of Vermillion High celebrate their victory for the season with drunken talk, bare feet digging to the sand, boys in trunks and girls in their best beach wear.

Charlotte Drizzle, 13 years old, her hair a beautiful wave of black up to the bottom of her shoulder blades, her eyes a sleepy sapphire orbs to match her shimmering white complexion, and a short stature, too short for her age, looked like a porcelain doll by the counter ordering vodka lemonade in a white, floral Sunday dress. Her friends had all gathered in the dance floor, and she doesn't seem the least bit interested.

"Aren't you too young to be ordering that?" a senior took the stool beside her, voice thickly accented with Mexican descent, a smirk playing in his lips.

"Surprise, surprise. These days, you only need to be good with words to get what you want," she replied, going with his pace, voice a little deep. The senior scoffed and swept a highlighted hair to the back.

"I'm Leon. Want to hang out elsewhere?"

Leon found himself too far from the beach with Charlotte; they rented themselves a poorly-furnished and lighted room in a cheap motel, and presently, Leon is bound by shackles above his head, only his toes touching the floor, in his underwear.

"Wow. I didn't know you were into this kind of stuff."

Charlotte circled him like a prey, on her gloved hands, his belt, "You don't know the half of it." Leon chuckled in response and she smirked.

Leon hissed in pain when the belt landed on his back. It left a red mark, "S-seriously? Wait-" and he was hit again, on his leg. He yelled in pain, "What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"Hush. With pain comes the prize which is pleasure, right?" a laugh escaped his lips, but a laugh that seemed hesitant. Charlotte stood in front of him and put a finger in his lips. He kissed and sucked it, but before she abruptly pulled away and slapped him hard on the cheek, "Be patient," she ordered firmly as the mark on his face came into view, "That beautiful, awfully familiar bronze skin needs to bleed."

Outside the motel, a silver Bugatti Veyron 14.6 parked and a man in black suit and shades descended. He opened the passenger seat to a middle-aged man with such powerful and demeaning aura. The two of them entered with no words needed and speaking to no one, not even when the desk clerk shouted at them to stop until they reached room 105 and the man in black suit forcibly opened it.

Charlotte Drizzle, cross-legged and satisfied with her work, rose in an instant from Leon's form, naked, battered and bruised, surprised by the sudden arrival of uninvited guests, "Father?"

* * *

Charlotte felt herself being suffocated with each passing second. She doesn't even hear the psychiatrist's words anymore. All of her attention is on the white wallpaper of the room that seems to close in on them, eager to consume her alive. After finding out her late endeavors, her father decided that it's best to send her for a therapy on a neighboring town in Sydney where no one will recognize her. You need help, he said. There are people who can understand you.

"No one will understand me," she muttered, as if it could reach her father's ears.

"I'm sorry. What?" the lady before her asked in complete confusion. She has been babbling on and on and when the child finally answered, it didn't even make sense to her. She sighed, "Alright. How about we try again?"

"Sure. Let's waste more of our time." The woman frowned but chose to ignore the mockery.

"It's not unusual for people to.. develop these kinds of methods to seek pleasure, you know?" her mind wanders to her father again, when he revealed how he found out. Her account is almost empty and he just had to fish around. To his distress, the money was paid to various kinds of people for who-knows-what then checking in on motels and inns. What alarmed him most was the majority of these people were prostitutes. She should have known. She should have been less careless. And now, she's stuck with the boring bitch twice a week, three hours a day. "I think it's depression that is getting into you. Mr. Drizzle said your mother died? And you haven't been much of a social person. You should really try getting a hobby that will channel that- that negative feeling inside you. What do you think, Charlotte?"

She rolled her eyes mentally. Her social life is just fine, in her opinion. It's everything and everyone. It's not sadness or loneliness, but anger. A gnawing need to hurt. But she decided to play along. "You know, I think it's not that. I have a.. they call it a disease but I see otherwise. Alexandria's Genesis. Now I understand we're bound by doctor-patient confidentiality. It's rare and it makes me feel above all others. Like I don't belong here. Like I'm supposed to be bathing in sparkly water up above, with angels at my disposal. You know what I mean?" the psychiatrist bit it. She appeared satisfied that Charlotte finally opened up, but Charlotte knows differently.

"Mr. Drizzle did tell me about your condition and don't worry. I'm a professional. You know what, that's perfectly normal," she reached for the young girl's hand to show empathy. She cringed at its strange heat but pushed it to the back of her mind, "You could change the direction of Science with a nod," she wrote something in her memo, and that was enough to send Charlotte to the edge. Before the doctor's eyes, the memo bursts in flame, she threw it somewhere not near her and stood in adrenaline, the hair in every part of her body rising to the end.

She turned to her patient in confirmation, her eyes asking if she has seen the same thing that she has seen, but to her worst fear, she saw something else in the child. It was the root of the problem. Charlotte's sadism and her need to inflict pain. She is enjoying this. She watches the doctor in fascination.

"So what is it, Doctor? Am I psychotic or what?" she gulped from the unearthing words. For some reason, the doctor knows that it was her. Charlotte is responsible for the memo though she can't explain it logically. She is crying and shaking from the demonic events. She can't even move to save her life and run. The girl of 13 giggles then it was the doctor's hands now that are burning. It traveled up to her arms then her whole body until her shrieks were but a gasp and she was burned to a crisp and is lying lifeless on the floor.

The fire that started from that small, white room has spread throughout the four-storey building and devoured it to its foundation.

Later that night, Charlotte Drizzle, alone in their mansion on the kitchen counter helping herself to dinner, watched the travesty that took place in that building indifferently.

'No one knows how it started but no matter the cause, the tragedy killed..'

Mr. Drizzle clicked his tongue upon watching the news. He had just arrived and entered the kitchen to greet his beautiful, loving daughter.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm glad you ditched the session," Charlotte turned to him, smiling sympathetically, "I'm sorry. Whatever this is, this is our family's problem. We'll fix it. Together."

"Thank you, dad. I will try, for both of us. In the end, you'll look at me and you'll say 'We did it.'" Mr. Drizzle walked over to her to kiss her cheek and left. "Only one of us won't make it to the end."