Dreadful Ashes

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  After a moment, he nodded. “Fair. But you also don’t have dozens of lives depending on the accuracy of your decisions. I cannot afford mistakes.” Adjusting his still-pristine suit, he took a deep, settling breath and glanced my way. “At least there were no casualties. This time.”

  My face fell. Tamara looked at me concerned, and I huffed out a sad sigh. “There was one casualty.”

  Everyone looked at me, concerned. Tamara gave my arm another squeeze, comforting, encouraging me to continue.

  “I lost Rusty,” I admitted sadly.

  Aine and Garibaldi glanced at each other, confused. Tamara stared for a moment, then gave me a soft hug. “Sorry, Ashes,” she said, giving me another kiss on the mask.

  “Our time together was far too short,” I complained, looking at the obliterated manor. “Judging from the size of that explosion, I’d say she’s probably somewhere in space by now.” I looked upward to the stars and saluted. “Farewell, my friend.”

  Tamara shook her head; everyone else seemed to have figured out that I was insane as well.

  “Anyway,” the Sanguinarian began, “so either of you figured out yet why there was a trap?”

  “To kill me,” I responded. “Juris has wanted that from the beginning. That’s why he’s here.”

  “And to fulfill his threat against me,” Garibaldi added. “He is not the type to make empty promises, I’m afraid.”

  Tamara frowned, her sapphire eyes growing more and more worried.

  Aine glanced at her. “You get it.” The vampire grinned and looked between the two of us. “It ain’t that simple,” she said. “Timing, people. Why enrage you two when ‘e did? Why try to kill Tamara when ‘e did, to make you even more pissed? Why such a clumsy trap,” she looked at Garibaldi with deadly serious violet eyes, “at a place he let you find so easily?”

  Garibaldi and I stared at one another; his back went straight and stiff as the realization hit us both at once.

  “He drew us out,” the Italian stated flatly. “Goaded us.”

  “So that we’d abandon the crown,” I finished. “On the other side of the damn city. He knew. Shit-fucking-hats.”

  “Charles,” Tamara breathed. “Mama Flora. Oh Goddess… I hope they’re okay.”

  “They’d better be,” I growled.

  21

  Fanning the flames

  We were too slow. Charles’ sanctum was burning.

  The small, toad-like house crouched by the side of the road, its windows and door open wide, as if making an alarmed face at the blaze roaring energetically all along the roof and down one wall.

  Paulie slammed on the brakes, quickly decelerating us past the small crowd of worried onlookers clustered on the porch and stairs of Bookbinders, only a few dozen feet away. As soon as the vehicle had remotely slowed, I opened the door and leapt out, Tamara right behind me.

  Charles lay face down, half in and half out of his own front door, unmoving as the flames crept closer and closer and the roof creaked ominously, as if in warning.

  “Charles!” I darted toward the downed magician, only for a gout of flame to bust out one of the front windows and reach for me, hungry to cleanse my undead flesh. I recoiled, trying to get close enough to help, but unable to move in without attracting tongues of voracious flame.

  Tamara slid in close and did what I couldn’t, grabbing the wizard by the shoulders and dragging him free of his own blazing home. She flipped him over on the weed-infested front lawn and put an ear to his chest.

  “He’s alive,” I rasped in reassurance. “I can hear his stupid heartbeat.”

  The Moroi nodded. “Fortunately,” she replied, looking around. “But what the hell happened?”

  Charles coughed once as if in response, stirring somewhat as tires screeched, a pair of nondescript SUVs and Mama Flora’s Mercedes sliding up to the sidewalk and helpfully blocking line of sight from the street.

  “Okay, we don’t have time to play nice,” Tamara commented quietly, putting a hand on the side of the wizard’s neck. “Charles. Wake up.”

  With a gasp like we’d dunked his head in freezing water, Charles’ eyes sprang open, unfocused and alarmed. One of his hands reached reflexively for the staff that wasn’t there, and the other reached Next Door, coming away with a sputtering handful of sparks and flame.

  I stepped on his hand, trusting in the sturdiness of my boots and trying not to break his fingers. “Asshole!” I shouted at him. “It’s us, so snap the hell out of it!”

  It took a moment, but his eyes slowly focused on us as Rain, Jason, Dezi, and Mama Flora all gathered around as well, staring down at the prone magician.

  He stared back, then glanced at the nearby flames. “Okay.” His voice was rough and harsh, like he’d had his ass kicked or had drunk way too much vodka. Or both. “What did I do?”

  “More like, what didn’t you do,” Mama Flora complained, hands on hips. I waited on Tamara’s nod, then removed my foot from the big wizard’s fingers. I could tell he wasn’t fully okay because he didn’t glare at me.

  “What do you mean?” Charles shook his head, as if trying to clear it, and ran a hand over his face.

  “Th’ crown,” Mama Flora stated emphatically. “You still got it, or don’t ya?”

  Charles blinked. “What crown?”

  We stopped, shocked, and stared at one another over his body, speechless.

  “And why is my house on fire?” he snapped, grabbing my pants leg and pulling himself into a sitting position.

  “Th’ crown I gave you yesterday t’take care of? Th’ only way we were gonna stop that damn Vulcan ritual from tearin’ open a passage t’the Other Side or somethin’, yeah?” Flora leaned over him, her face more alarmed and off guard than I’d ever seen. She snapped her fingers in his face, watching as he tracked the motion, then looked up at Tamara. “He got a concussion, or somethin’?” she asked, sounding almost hopeful.

  “I…I don’t know,” Tamara replied, at a loss along with the rest of us. Then she narrowed her eyes, a glimmer of suspicion brewing within. “Wait. I don’t think he has a concussion.”

  “Okay,” Charles cut in, waving Tamara and Mama Flora away from his face. “This sounds bad, but give me a minute.” I stared at him with a flat, resigned expression as he latched onto my pants leg again and used me to climb to his feet. Then, he set his stance, half-closed his eyes, and took a deep, steadying breath.

  Then he reached Next Door and blew out the flames.

  As the wizard exhaled, his hands blurred and pushed, and a wind that was both real and not real caught the flames, all of them, exterior and interior alike, and extinguished them.

  “Wow. Okay, so that was—” I reached out and caught him before he fell down, holding the wizard upright by his coat, “—cooler before you almost collapsed.” I looked to Tamara. “So what’s wrong with him?”

  “I think…Lan happened to him,” she said, looking from Charles to his home.

  “Wait. You’re saying Lan broke down Charles’ wards?” Rain interjected, his eyes wide. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “It’s not,” Charles interjected. He looked at me, holding onto my arm until he got his feet under himself properly again. “Who the hell is Lan?”

  I stared into the smoke, concentrating. “Sure feels like it.” Charles’ once mighty wards were mere flickering embers, like the cherry-red dots all along his roof. There was no sign of the powerful arcane traps once woven into them, either. I looked back to the magician, still worried, and finally let him go. “He’s a powerful Jiangshi working for the bad guys,” I explained.

  Charles’ denial turned to a frown. “Maybe it’s possible,” he amended. Straightening, he patted his coat down until he found the ruby and gold chain that represented Rhongomyniad, and his Knighthood. He sighed in relief and wrapped the chain around his hand until the palm-sized jewel once again rested firmly in his hand.

  “Start at the beginning,” he said.

  We exchanged l
ooks. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” I replied.

  “Ran into a Fae and a crazy vampire stealing pieces of the Vulcan for another crazy vampire,” Jason sighed, spitting it out matter-of-factly. “Bunch of bullshit happened. People died. We found out it’s all part of some ‘world-changing’ ritual that involves the big guy on the mountain, and we stole one of the pieces to stop it.”

  “And I had…one of those pieces,” Charles finished, gazing at his damaged home.

  “More than that,” Tamara added. “You were the one that explained the ritual to us. You’d researched it, you knew all about it…you even had a map drawn out with the ritual points on it.”

  “Well, I was gettin’ to it,” Mama Flora complained quietly.

  At mention of the research and map, Charles winced, putting fingers to his temples. Then he frowned. “I…don’t remember any of this,” he said, his typically stoic face uncomfortable and obviously upset. “I mean…I kind of do. But it’s all far away and foggy. Like I dreamed it.”

  Tamara looked at the rest of us. “Lan,” she said firmly. She caught my eyes, her own grim. “Remember how our memories were foggy and inconsistent after he fed on us? I bet he did the same to Charles while he was here. To make sure he couldn’t remember.”

  I nodded. “Well, we’re lucky he didn’t just kill him.” My own memories had returned—mostly—over time. Hopefully Charles’ would as well.

  Before it was too late.

  “I probably fought him off,” Charles replied. I stared at him. “Anyway, what you’re telling me worries me. You’re talking a city-scale ritual that exploits a long-lived cultural and regional icon, right? Something like that could be used for a lot of things, all of them bad; things like influencing or enslaving millions of people, or drawing on their energy and emotion to tear open a wound that breaches the Walls between Home and Next Door.”

  I nodded. It was easy to forget how damn good Charles was at what he did, especially when he was passed out on his front lawn.

  “Thing is,” he continued, “if they stole it from me tonight, I imagine they’re going to act very soon, so that I—we—can’t react to stop them from whatever it is they’re planning. Which means, considering the time it will take to integrate a final component and prepare the ritual sites…” He stared at the sky, toward the distant Vulcan statue, and took a breath. “We’ve probably got about two to three hours to find them and stop the ritual before it’s completed. Four, tops.”

  “Well shit,” I replied, speaking on behalf of all of us.

  He nodded. “This is exactly what I like waking up to: the world about to burn down.” He frowned. “I wish I had that map you’re talking about. It would save time, but…” He glanced at his home again, a current of obvious anger running through his dark chestnut eyes. “If whoever it was went to all of this trouble, no doubt it’s cinders by now.”

  “Nope,” Tamara replied with a smirk. She held up her phone. “I snuck pictures just in case.”

  He took the phone from her. “Let’s see them.” He started swiping through images without asking. “And what do you mean, ‘just in case?’”

  “She means, you’ve been actin’ even more offputtin’ an’ disagreeable than usual,” Mama Flora replied, crossing her arms.

  “I’ve been busy,” the magician replied absently, peering at the device. “Knight duties, regional defenses, Magisterium assignments. Can’t remember the last time I slept well, either.”

  Flora frowned. “Yeah, things sure ain’t been th’ same since you took up that mantle an’ spear. Makes a woman wonder how heavy they are, yeah.”

  Charles just shook his head. “This is all wrong,” he said after a moment. He stared at Tamara. “You must have done something wrong.”

  The Moroi blinked and stared him down. “I can’t take a picture wrong, Charles.” She took a deep breath. “I took pictures of your map, that you showed us, right from over Ashes’ shoulder.”

  “Well, it’s wrong,” he replied flatly. We watched, Tamara too surprised to react, as the wizard took a permanent marker out of his pocket and started drawing on the surface of her phone. “Look. Those map markers show spots here, here, and there.” He looked up, his eyes worried and his brow furrowed. “That’s almost the opposite of where they should be for a spell of this scale.”

  Tamara glared at him quietly.

  He made several more marks and showed them to us. “I don’t know what I was thinking, since I can’t remember, but these should be the areas of the actual ritual sites.”

  Jason leaned in. “So, wait. If you know where this shit’s going down, why don’t we just roll up and shut them down, one at a time?” He looked at Rain, and the other changeling nodded eagerly, if a little nervously.

  “Not so simple,” Charles replied. “I can narrow it down, but each area is still the size of several square city blocks, they’re spread out all around the city core, and our time is running out.”

  “So, what do we do?” Tamara’s dull sapphire eyes softened; she was getting scared.

  I put an arm around her shoulders and turned around, looking for the one person who hadn’t spoken this whole time.

  Dezi waited, just behind Rain and Jason, tapping her foot impatiently. Expectantly.

  “So, did that offer for help have an expiration date?” I gave the wolfling a sheepish, hopeful smile.

  “Why do you think I haven’t left yet?” She grinned. She gestured at the parked cars. “Let’s get moving, people. No time to waste.”

  o o o

  Dezi’s pack lived in an old strip of battered apartment buildings, well to the north and west of Birmingham proper, in one of the older, outlying metro areas that wasn’t really safe, but wasn’t going to get you randomly shot while eating dinner, either.

  It bordered a couple of those areas though. I could virtually smell the odor of old death just a couple of blocks away in more than one direction, but the encroaching violence and urban decay seemed held at bay, at least for now.

  Lights were on in most of the apartments along the strip though the general area lacked in nighttime activity. Many of the streetlights were busted or blown, leaving pools of isolated light splotching the street and sidewalk, though several still operated around the fenced-in basketball court at the end of the street and the cracked, near-empty parking lot next to the pack’s apartment complex. The building itself seemed well-maintained despite its advancing age, though the corners were worn down and the once white-painted brick was now various shades of sun-faded yellow.

  The rest of the neighborhood wasn’t so well-loved, however. There was an overabundance of graffiti tags on pretty much everything that had sat still long enough though I didn’t notice any distinctive markings from the most brutal gangs in the area. An old community pool between two rows of apartment buildings lay dusty and dry, the bottom full of dead leaves and trash. Broken-down cars dotted the sides of the road, which itself hadn’t received any repairs in at least a decade, and I spotted a couple of lots that were abandoned and overgrown, their once-livable houses now crumbling and in danger of collapse.

  “You’re making a worried face,” Dezi commented, poking me.

  “I’m worried you guys will get shot,” I retorted.

  “Nah. It’s not as bad as it looks. Matt keeps this place clean and safe.”

  I took another doubtful look around, mentally comparing it to the area around my church, and hoped Matt kept it safer than he kept it clean.

  “Well, we don’t have time to waste,” I rasped finally. I looked to Rain and Jason, who nodded back; they were ready. Though Jason looked much more at ease here than his best friend did. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

  Dezi directed me to the proper door; I could hear the muffled noise of several people just on the other side of the dry wood, talking and laughing, as well as the solid echo of their heartbeats.

  Backed by three changelings, I rapped on the door, accidentally rattling it in its fram
e.

  Except for the heartbeats, all sound from inside cut off abruptly, accompanied by an air of cautious tension. One deep breath later, the door opened inward, and I looked up at the pack’s alpha.

  And up, and up, and up.

  Well, he wasn’t quite that tall, but he was taller than Hershel, maybe about Charles’ height and almost twice as wide. The fact that he wasn’t currently wearing anything but loose sweatpants only emphasized the silly amount of muscle tone the man had. Matt—from his attitude and standoffish, protective posturing, this could only be Matt—wasn’t overly bulky, but he was built like a truck. Maybe two trucks.

  I hesitated. I wasn’t typically intimidated by things like muscle or height anymore, but I was still taken aback by suddenly being in the face-to-chest with someone who probably picked things my size out of his teeth.

  “So hey!” I began, wincing a little because my damaged voice sounded anything but friendly. “You’re Matt, right? I think we got off on the wrong foot—”

  I stuck out my hand for a handshake, and he punched me in the face.

  “Or not,” I mumbled around his fist.

  When I didn’t move out of his doorway, the muscular changeling hit me again in the throat, then uppercut me forcefully in the ribs; I twitched a little in aggravation as the second blow struck the wound in my side.

  “Matt!” Dezi squeezed around me, putting herself in between her alpha and me, holding up her hands, and immediately the oversized wolf shifter stepped back, confusion in his eyes. “Stop!”

  “Dezi?” He exclaimed, sounding relieved, then worried, his fists still up in a ready boxer’s stance. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you! Why are you with…that?”

  “And more importantly, can you stop hitting me?” I rasped, irritated. “Because I came here to talk, but if this keeps up, I’m going to feed those to you.” I stared pointedly at his large, scarred fists.

  At my response, he straightened, meeting my eyes firmly. “Just try it.”

  It was about that time I noticed the six or so other changelings just behind him that obviously had his back.