Of Blood and Ashes

by Kyoko M

  Kamala sent him an uneasy look, but swallowed hard, nodded, and shut her eyes. She breathed deeply and pushed aside the tasks she still had left to do for the day and the haunting thoughts that surrounded her like a thick, impenetrable fog.

  Dr. Washington gave her a couple minutes. “Okay, Kamala. How do you feel?”

  “Scared,” she murmured.

  “Why are you scared?”

  “I’m scared that I cannot protect this child. That I’m not strong enough. That I don’t even know how to begin to prepare for its arrival.”

  “Are you speaking in a literal sense?”

  “Yes. What I have been asked to do to stop Baba Yaga will put me and the baby at risk. However, inaction would result in the death of innocents. I cannot sit by idly and allow that to happen, not even for the sake of my own child. I…I feel as if I’m betraying her by doing such a thing.”

  “I see.” He wrote a little more. “Kamala, I want you to consider something.”

  “Yes?”

  “The baby is you. You are the baby. The child comes from you, from your life, your energy. It doesn’t have an opposition to your morals and your beliefs. The guilt that you’re feeling isn’t unusual, but that is what has probably caused your current anxiety. You’re holding yourself to an impossible standard that isn’t real.”

  “But if I get hurt—if the child is hurt—while I’m on this mission, I will be directly responsible. I will have hurt my own blood because I wanted to be noble and do the right thing for others rather than the right thing for the child.”

  “Having a child changes you,” he said softly. “It changed me. My son came screaming into the world like a meteor and I wasn’t the same afterward. However, the person that you are now and the person you will become after you’re a mother still share a bond. Let me ask you this: if you stayed home from this mission and had the child, would you regret it if people died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, now consider how you would wake up each day and look at this little child remembering that resentment. That could take a serious toll on you. And you’re basing this on a theory. There may be a way for you to stop Baba Yaga without getting yourself and your baby hurt. You have to look at what you know instead of what you don’t know. You know that people will die if you don’t help. You don’t know that you’ll be hurt in the process.”

  He scribbled something. “And that’s to say nothing of your psyche if Jack is hurt because you weren’t there to help him. I know you haven’t said the big three words to him yet, but I think it’s quite obvious that you love him. There is an enormous amount of pressure on you for either decision, but you don’t have to carry this burden alone. From what you’ve told me about him, Jack will do everything in his power to make sure the three of you are safe. If you can push past the fear and the guilt, I think that you’ll find it’s possible to make this happen. Nothing is set in stone. Nothing is assured. But you can try. All you can do is try your hardest and go with the decision that you can live with for the rest of your life.”

  He handed her a tissue. She blinked at him and realized that there were hot tears coursing over her cheeks. She accepted it and dabbed at them, wincing as she saw the black blotches of mascara marring the white tissue.

  “Does Jack want you to stay home?” he asked.

  “Jack wants whatever I want,” she said.

  Dr. Washington smiled. “Smart man. If he trusts your instincts, you should too.”

  She nodded. “Even though he’s a useless pagal?”

  Dr. Washington’s smile stretched into a grin. “Even though he’s a useless pagal.”

  She let out a hoarse little laugh. He continued. “Speaking of which, the baby aside, how’s that coming?”

  “Jack is wonderful. Kind, sweet, understanding, and stable. It’s a little early to tell, but it might be the best romantic relationship I’ve ever had. He knows me, inside and out. It’s ironic that the reason I didn’t want to consider him a suitor is because I was afraid the friendship we shared would be a roadblock, but it’s precisely the reason it is working so well.”

  “Thank you for using ‘ironic’ correctly,” he mused. “And I’m glad to hear that you’re letting him into your life completely.”

  Dr. Washington paused. “Well, almost completely. With the baby on the way, what are you planning to do about your family?”

  Kamala buried her face in her hands. “I have no bloody idea.”

  He offered her a sympathetic look. “Yeah, that’s going to be…tumultuous.”

  “My father’s going to disown me,” she groaned. “I already know it. My mother is quite open-minded—after all, she married a Muslim man while being Hindu herself and refused to convert—and she will stand by us. Hell, she called it long before I realized I had feelings for Jack. I don’t need my father’s blessing or his approval, but my extended family…”

  She sighed. “I’m not looking forward to getting the cold shoulder from them. I have always been a social person and that’s largely thanks to them. However, none of them have adjusted to the American way of life as much as I have, and so none of them have ever had a child out of wedlock, and few of them have married outside of their race and religion. I’m not sure they’re even capable of understanding what I feel.”

  “Don’t burden yourself with that just yet. They may surprise you.”

  She snorted. “Unlikely.”

  “But possible,” he said firmly. “It’s always possible for hearts and minds to change.”

  She smiled. “You’re oddly idealistic for a shrink.”

  He shrugged. “Blame the poetry. Alright, Kamala, I think we’ve made some good progress so far. I’m going to touch on a subject that you might not be ready to discuss yet, and I want you to just be honest with me.”

  Her smile faded. “What?”

  “The man who died in Japan,” he said softly. “The one you feel responsible for…have you told Jack about him yet?”

  The reaction was automatic. A muscle jerked beside Kamala’s spine and made her physically shrink in on herself slightly. The image flashed through her mind—a tall Japanese man in a black suit sprawled in the middle of the street in a sleepy middle-class apartment complex. Blood pooled underneath his thin frame, staining the shirt, turning the street from grey to a shiny sickening black. His brown eyes empty when they had been full of life only seconds before. She stood over him, hyperventilating, her bruised hand pressed to her mouth in horror.

  The man she’d killed.

  “No,” she whispered hoarsely.

  Dr. Washington sighed. “I was afraid that was the case. Why haven’t you told him yet, Kamala?”

  “I…” She choked on the words at first. “Jack can’t know that about me. He can’t know what I did to protect him. It will make him see me differently.”

  “That isn’t a certainty, Kamala.”

  She shook her head. “It’s a possibility. He doesn’t need to carry that. He’s carrying enough after what happened when we saved our dragon. He’s still healing. If I tell him, he’ll try to take that pain from me and I will not let him. It is mine to bear. I won’t have the father of my child trying to heal both of us at the same time. He deserves better than that.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Washington said. “But I’m not going to stop asking. I want you to get to a place where you can share that with him. I think it would help. I truly do.”

  “I understand.”

  The psychiatrist wrote a couple more things down. “Alright, I think that’s enough of the heavy stuff. I’m going to give you a few exercises to work on that might help reduce some of your anxiety before you head to Japan. As always, you can call me if things get really dire.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Dr. Washington.”

  “Anytime, Dr. Anjali.”

  ***

  Of all the hard conversations Jack had held recently, the one
he was about to have was definitely going to break a record.

  The phone rang a few times. He paced in a tight oval in the middle of his den, sifting his long fingers through his disheveled hair and half-praying the person on the other side didn’t pick up. Right before he was going to let out a relieved breath, the phone clicked and a curse slipped out by accident.

  “Shit.”

  “Language, young man,” Edie Jackson chided her son. “You’ve been avoiding my calls, Rhett.”

  Jack sighed. “Not avoiding. Understandably, it’s been hectic over here. I finally caught a quiet moment.”

  “I’m glad you did. How are you, sweetheart?”

  He resisted the urge to touch his bruised temple. “In one piece, more or less.”

  “Good. I’m worried enough as it is. I assume you have an update for me?”

  Jack winced and took a deep breath. “Yeah. And you’re not going to like it.”

  His mother paused. “Well?”

  Jack shut his eyes. “Kam and I are going to retrieve Baba Yaga.”

  Silence. Then Edie’s voice came out low and hushed, in the kind of tone that made him shiver with discomfort even hundreds of miles away from her. “Rhett Bartholomew Jackson…have you lost your damn mind?”

  “Language,” he said weakly, trying to sound cheerful and failing.

  “You are a scientist,” she all but snarled. “You are not a dragon tamer.”

  “Well, no one’s stupid enough to try and tame a twenty-five-foot killer dragon—”

  “Don’t you give me that sass, boy. This is not a joke. You saw that footage. You saw what that dragon can do. It’s already killed twenty-two people. Twenty-two, Rhett. Do you want to be number twenty-three? Is that it? Do you have some kind of death wish? It’s bad enough you risked your life a month ago to go get your dragon back. I know you didn’t tell me everything that happened, but I know you. I know that you came back with bad dreams, a guilty conscience, and a gunshot wound. You’ve lost enough. Let someone else take the risk. Why does it have to be you? Tell me that.”

  “Because no one else can do what Kam and I can do fast enough to catch her before she kills more people. I can’t be so selfish as to stay home when I know how many lives are on the line.”

  “That’s not your job, Rhett,” she snapped. “Your job is in your lab at the institute. So is Kamala’s.”

  “What would you do in my position, Ma?” he asked quietly.

  It was brief, but he heard her hesitate. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “How is it different? If you were in my shoes, can you say that you’d stay home when you knew helping them could save an entire city—possibly an entire country—full of people from losing their loved ones?”

  “I would consider the risks more carefully,” she said. “I would consider putting my mother through hell. I would consider leaving a void in my family’s life. I would consider what a loss the scientific and conservation community would suffer if I didn’t come back. The resurrection project can’t progress without you and Kamala at the helm. They’ll try, but they won’t succeed. You once told me that you believe that this is what you were put on this earth to accomplish.”

  “It’s not that simple. Things change. People change. Needs change. Did you pursue the same path that you thought you would when you were in your twenties? Didn’t something change your mind?”

  “Yes, it did,” she said quietly. “It was you, Rhett.”

  Jack stopped pacing, his throat tightening as he heard her voice crack ever so slightly. Edie sighed and didn’t say anything for almost a minute.

  “Rhett, I love you more than life itself. I have been patient and understanding this last month because I knew you needed distance, but I can’t stay silent anymore. You are my son. My only son. Don’t do this. Let someone else take the burden. The world is not yours and yours alone to save. There are people—good people—who can handle it instead. You are asking too much of yourself. You are asking too much of Kamala. I know you love that girl with all your heart. What if something happens to you? To her?”

  “I want you to understand something, Ma. I’m terrified. Utterly and completely terrified. I’m not charging into this all cocksure and brave like I did with Pete. I had an idea of what I’d encounter when I went after our dragon. That’s not the case here. We’re hunting something ancient and powerful, and I am so scared that I just want to curl up under my comforter for the next six months and hide from it all.”

  Jack took another breath to steady himself. “But that’s why I have to go. I don’t want the people of Japan to feel that way. I don’t want them afraid that the sky could come crashing down at any second and kill them all. Maybe I’m responsible for what happened and maybe I’m not, but I can’t sit here when people are suffering. Do you know why I can’t do that?”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Because you taught me better. You taught me to take responsibility for my actions, to decide what kind of man I want to be and not to let anyone tell me who to be. This is who I am. I have to help those people. And if I fail, then that’s on me, not on you or anyone else.”

  “Please, Rhett. Don’t do it.” He could hear the hoarseness in her voice and knew that there were tears in her hazel eyes. He hadn’t seen his mother cry often; she was the strongest woman he knew aside from Kamala and Fujioka. The only solace he had was that he didn’t have to see it in person, because his instincts would have screamed at him to do anything to make her stop crying.

  Jack cleared the lump out of his throat. “I have to. I’m sorry. I love you.”

  For the first time in his entire life, Jack’s mother hung up on him.

  ***

  Jack’s line of work often required the use of a tuxedo, whether it was for accepting an award or hobnobbing at a large gathering of scientific minds from various universities, so he actually owned a tuxedo rather than having to rent one. He’d scraped together the cash and got something nice that would last: a Calvin Klein with drape-front lapels and a white silk boutonniere. His mother Edie had bought him a couple different classy cufflinks to wear with his plain front French cuff dress shirt, so he chose a bright blue-and-silver pair to match his tie. Thanks to the bruise, he’d also suffered the embarrassment of needing foundation to cover it up, which Kamala did while trying her best not to laugh at the scowl on his face. He used a bit of gel to keep the front of his hair from sticking up, dusted off his high-polish shoes, and headed into the den to wait for Faye.

  He heard the bedroom door open and glanced up from his phone.

  “Face it, Tiger,” Faye purred. “You just hit the jackpot.”

  Jack tried not to take a long look, but it was borderline impossible not to. True to her word, Faye had chosen an elegant long black gown with a plunging neckline that looked as if she’d poured herself into it. The slits up both sides stopped at knee-level and exposed high, strappy heels that he swore only a high-wire acrobat could balance on. She’d put her blonde hair up in a neat bun and had what appeared to be real one-carat diamond studs in her ears, though the thick necklace at her throat was crusted with moissanite diamonds instead. Her makeup was light, but devastating, as the eye liner made the ice-blue of her eyes stand out, and the pale pink lipstick complimented the dark ensemble.

  Jack clutched his chest. “My God, was that a Spider-Man reference? Be still my heart.”

  “What kind of girl doesn’t read comic books?” she sniffed, checking her tiny clutch purse to make sure her keys were in it before snapping it closed. “I wouldn’t trust one who didn’t, honestly.”

  She paused to drink him in as well. “You’ve got quite the Pierce Brosnan look going on.”

  Jack arched an eyebrow. “I can’t tell if that’s a backhanded compliment or not.”

  “Well, I’ve got to keep you on your toes, don’t I? Let’s get moving, shall we?”

  He offered his
arm, which she took, and opened the front door once they reached it. She locked it and then allowed him to slide her fur-lined overcoat on her before they headed to her Honda Civic. He opened the passenger’s side for her and then climbed in, adjusting the seat for his big frame. He fired up the engine and pulled away from the apartment complex, heading downtown.

  “Did your mom design that dress?” Jack asked.

  “She did. Also a late birthday present. Been looking for an excuse to wear it.”

  “What about the earrings?”

  “No. Believe it or not, they’re a family heirloom. My grandma gave them to me in her will.”

  “They’re nice. Must have cost a fortune.”

  Faye shrugged. “My mother’s side has always been wealthy. This is a drop in the bucket as far as they’re concerned.”

  She shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. “Anyway, enough about me. Coping any better since last night?”

  “Marginally. Can you keep a secret?”

  “Nope, but tell me anyway.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “We’ve got another trip to take. The Japanese government parlayed with the authorities to borrow us to go hunt down Baba Yaga.”

  Faye stared. “The irony of this situation just blew my mind.”

  “Right? Kamala’s packing up now, so I can’t stay at this shindig the whole time. Probably no more than an hour.”

  “That’s fine. Who’s going with you on the hunt? I know your friend Fujioka is out of commission.”

  Jack winced. “Apparently, there’s a CIA agent, a dracologist, and a dragon-hunting expert on the shortlist as well. They want to send us to the ground zero site first and then see if we can pick up on her trail. They think she’s been sighted near Aokigahara.”