Burning Ashes

by Jadyn Chase

  "Goodbye, Skinner."

  I made my way home with a sulking feeling in my heart. Suddenly, promising him a simple favor should have been my last good deed to him. Whether Julian was telling the truth or not, my heart broke as if this would be our last conversation. Disturbing and full of debauchery, there was no one like Skinner Finch, and there never would be. Memories of times gone by made my heart swell with every step I took closer to the water. Perhaps I'd enjoy a swim tonight. I couldn't remember the last time the cold waves of Black Harbor washed over my scales.

  Just as soon as I thought I'd regain some joy in the night, the air shifted. The winds changed, and an aroma, an all too familiar aroma hit me over the head like a kick from the past. Wet fur and soiled meat was the only way I could describe it. I looked up to see a hooded figure standing out on the docks. He had to be there for me.

  I wanted to head back toward the Onyx Skull headquarters, but I’d been spotted. Two gloriously beautiful Scalers circled above me before coming in for a landing. I wouldn’t get away from either one of them. They were Jade Sentinels, and I owed Julian an apology.

  My pulse pounded against my eardrums as I made my way toward him. His stench intensified. My memories came screaming back to life. I could hear my mother’s voice, full of terror, telling me to fly. My father shielded her from the devastation raining down over us, but I couldn’t stop them from being taken. I dove into the water near our home and didn’t come back up for air until I was miles out to sea. Far enough to have escaped, but still close enough to see I could never go back.

  The one who I should have sought out then stood in front of me now. The face of loss and regret stood a few inches taller than me. He didn't have hair on his head this time around, but the long brown beard draped over his chest reminded me of a bib. Dark brown eyes glared at me as he smoothed it down. The rough hands looked chapped with broken skin around the knuckles. Red splotches scattered across his arms and face. Perhaps he came to seek treatment.

  “What you want?” I asked getting to the point.

  “I need you to come with us. You will do as I say. I will tell you what to do. You will do as I say. So what say you?”

  “What?” paralysis attempted to overtake me.

  He repeated himself, "You will do as I say. I will tell you what to do. You will do as I say. So what say you? Take us into your home. There are items we need to collect to make this easier than my antiquated methods. You will do as I say. I will tell you what to do. You will do as I say. So what say you?"

  "I say let's go inside my home," I voiced from a place where I had no control. Panic struck me like a bolt of lightning. I couldn't fathom why I'd willingly give up my logic, my mind, my body to this man with only a few words. Tears formed in my eyes as my thoughts began to disappear.

  Leading the bald man and his Scaler henchmen under the docks gave me anxiety. Fear and adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had to lose control to regain it. The moment my door opened, the scent of cinnamon hit me first. I stared up at the wooden dock above us before shooting a beam of flames toward it. White fire engulfed the structure making the weakest points crumble.

  “Take her down!” he yelled. The fingers of two Jaded Sentinels gripping me by the shoulders sent me into a blinding rage. I couldn’t see straight as I kicked, punched, and lashed out at my attackers. My efforts were met with searing pain as one grabbed me by the feet twisting my ankle in the process. The audible sound of it snapping left me gasping for air as I tried to suppress the scream threatening to erupt from the back of my throat. Setting my own place on fire was out of the question.

  “Damn it, Six! We can’t sacrifice her with broken limbs! She must be in perfect condition. Let’s grab some supplies to help treat that while prepping her for the ritual. She has to be the key! I can feel it in my bones.”

  7

  Julian

  The waves crashing against the cement barrier below weren’t loud enough to mask the scuffle I heard near the wooden pier. White flames shot up between the boards right as her scent hit me. Cyrus, Six, and Axel had found her. I was too late.

  I took off running toward the attack unsure of how to get underneath the dock, so I dove into the water. Not a single splash sounded as the sea enveloped my body and my gills opened to serve their purpose. I let myself wade in the water only letting the top of my head break the surface. My teal scales flexed all over my body, pushing for my Scaler to be set free. I couldn’t take them all on without help. I wish there were time to go back to Skinner. I’d owe him a thousand favors for his help to rescue her, but time was of the essence. So I watched with my heart breaking for every minute I contemplated my next set of moves. My arms and legs moved under the surface of the water.

  Aya certainly put up a fight as they brought her into the dwelling under the docks. Once they were inside, I made my way ashore creeping towards the door that they'd left wide open. I could only hope the sea muddled my scent long enough for me to sneak inside. My back slid against the cement as I lowered myself toward the ground. The entryway was smaller than I imagined and wouldn't let me get to Aya without being spotted. I had to go in the other way.

  The coolness of the water let me swim easily but the darkness of the night made it harder for me to see. It took my eyes a few minutes to adjust while I swam through the water like a fish reunited. No time to enjoy it as I pushed myself deeper and deeper until I finally spotted a shallow light coming through an opening in the wall. A whole big enough for a truck to drive into gave me plenty of room to swim under the cement that held the block of abandoned warehouses along the waterfront.

  When I surfaced, there was a small beach about 30 feet long covered in black sand. A cave entrance led me into a tiled room with strobe lights. A flight of stairs at the back brought me up to a smaller space that overlooked the small indoor beach and the dance floor. As Scalers of solitude, the place struck me as odd. While my own abode was set in the banks of a river, I made it impossible for me to have visitors. This Siren was special. Despite our nature, she opened her home to others.

  The scent of Aya, every trace of her sprinkled around me, hugging me tighter than a long lost lover. I followed my nose as the strength of her essence pulled me into another section of the underground dwelling. I stopped just shy of a wooden door, listening to Cyrus boss Six and Axel around.

  “Find a potion or something that can fix her quickly!” he told them.

  “I don’t know what to look for in these vials,” Six replied. Axel moved around the space clumsily knocking things down and turning over tables. Aya was quiet as she watched the three make a mess of her home. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pushed herself out of the chair. I moved into a dark room before any of them could spot me.

  “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” Cyrus snapped at her.

  “I need to lay down. There is no elixir here to fix me. I’ll heal on my own in a few days,” she told them.

  “I call bullshit!”

  “I don’t care who you call, but you’re not going to find anything in there to fix an Emerald Siren. Think about it. I don’t have any enemies. I don’t exactly get hurt so easily. Why would I have anything to repair myself when there’s no one in Black Harbor out to hurt me? I’m going to lay down. Besides, how far can I get on a broken ankle? Where am I going?”

  Aya limped away from them heading straight toward me. I didn’t realize I’d stepped into her bedroom. That was fine by me. I hid behind the door until she was inside. Her labored breathing showed me the immense amount of pain she was suffering through. She kept her eyes closed as she spoke to me, just above a whisper, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I told you why I came to Black Harbor. Let’s get you out of here. You have to swim. I can’t take them on by myself.”

  “How do you expect me to swim with my ankle broken?”

  “The same way you’d fly with a sprained wing. It ain’t gonna be pretty, but we have to get you out of here. Now
stop fussing with me and come on!”

  “Okay,” she panted. “Let’s stabilize it first. Get the whip out of the closet.”

  A dozen images crossed my mind when I saw the thick, leather tassel bullwhip hanging on a hook behind the door.

  “Your hair’s getting pretty white,” she whispered with a light chuckle.

  “I can’t control it,” I admitted bringing it over to her. I noticed the tips of her own hair turning white, but I wouldn’t be so ungentlemanly as to point it out.

  She took several deep breaths, "Give me a second. Take the handle and line it up next to my ankle. You can feel it. You have to make sure the bone is straight."

  I'd been a healer in Roselake, but setting bones didn't happen often. Black Harbor outnumbered my small city by thousands, I'm sure. My thumb slid over the bruising skin where the fractured bone was slightly out of place. I nodded to her as she grabbed a pillow. I closed the door as much as I could and went to work. It took seconds to set her ankle in place. She screamed into the pillow, biting down on it as hard as she could. Scales flaked up and down her legs. She couldn't scale. Not now, not in here, and not with this injury.

  After the bones were in place, I lined the thick handle up to her leg. The whip itself had to be at least six feet long as I wrapped it around her and the ankle as fast as I could. Once it was secured, I wrapped one of her sheer scarves around it as well, to be confident the makeshift splint wouldn’t move.

  The three were still tossing Aya's place, and we were ready to go. She grabbed a few things from her dresser that I tossed in my satchel. I knocked against the heavy piece of furniture causing it and the lit candles on top of it to rock back and forth. We froze in place wondering if they'd heard us.

  Nothing.

  After letting out a huge sigh of relief, we quietly made our way out of her home the same way I’d made my way in. By the time we got down to the small beach, she sat down in the sand to inch herself into the water.

  “Wait! I need my box. I can’t heal as fast without it.”

  “You told Cyrus-”

  “I told Cyrus what made sense so he wouldn’t steal it, or use my own elixirs to heal me for a sacrificial ceremony! It’s on my dresser. Please, Julian. I can’t leave here without it.”

  “Fine.”

  I made my way back into the bunker while she began to swim. I told her I’d catch up, but that was wishful thinking. I don’t know how many chances I’d get to sneak around the Sentinels without me being tracked. They hadn’t made it to her bedroom yet as they weren’t screaming and searching for her. My pulse beat so fast it made my jaw tingle. I didn’t like this.

  My eyes scanned the room until it locked onto the item I came back for. The box stood about an inch high, five inches wide, and seven inches long, and small enough to fit in my bag. I was fine, but the sound of them making their way toward me sent me into a panic. I practically threw myself under her bed. Fitting my rather large body under it was no easy task either. Thankfully enough they didn’t come all the way in.

  “She’s not here, but there’s sand on the floor!” Six yelled.

  "Is it possible she snuck out without us seeing?" Axel shrugged.

  Cyrus's frustration seeped through every word as he growled to them, "Possibly. She'd know this place a lot better than we would. Let's grab her. She couldn't have gotten too far on that ankle."

  Once I heard them take off, I pushed myself out and knocked the dresser getting up. This time the candles tipped over igniting every piece of fabric, paper, and elixir ingredient that sat on top of it. There wasn’t time to stop it as it spread a lot faster than I anticipated. I hurried out of the home, and back into the water swimming out into the open sea of Black Harbor.

  Aya struggled under the water, but fortunately, her gills worked just fine. Still, I could see the pain on her face. I hurried through the water to her, wrapping her in my arms and bringing her to the surface. We swam far enough out to see Axel and Six scouring the docks with Cyrus continuously barking orders at them.

  “It won’t be long before they think to check out here,” I told her as we waded amidst the waves.

  “Okay, I need to get some sleep. Did you get it?”

  My hesitation forced her to push off of me, “What’s wrong?”

  “I got the box, but I knocked your candles over.”

  Before I could finish a giant ball of orange flames exploded through her door under the wooden pier setting the whole thing ablaze.

  "I can't believe … You just … They were … Please get me out of here," she cried. I took Aya into my arms. After wrapping my satchel around her, I scaled for the first time in months. Her warm tears mixed with the waves splashing against me making my heart break with every stroke. While the Sect and Cyrus wasn't my fault, letting her home burn down was. She didn't deserve to lose everything as I did. I'd make it up to her. I didn't know how yet, but I would.

  8

  Aya

  The tears flowing down my cheeks felt like they’d never end as memories of what I used to call home went up in flames. Torched history, work, pride, and everything that my life encompassed; destroyed because of these bumbling idiots. Tossing my place? Fine, I can clean up a mess. I can pick up the pieces, but fire … A Scaler already knows how destructive the power of the flame could be. It didn’t matter that it came from something as small as a candle. My life was gone.

  I wanted to blame Julian, but the sorrow in his eyes wouldn't let me be angry with him. Had I listened to him at the party, they would have never been there. They would have never gone inside. I should have made Cyrus, and his goons chase me right into the Towers. The Canes still maintained power over the Black Sapphires. With their family permanently indebted to me, they would have kept me safe. They would have rallied to fight those Jade Sentinels if necessary. I should have listened to Julian.

  The smoke and flames seemed to burn forever as we stared at the fireworks from the waves of Black Harbor. I couldn’t take it anymore. Once the aromas of my elixirs hit the air, I caved into Julian’s chest unable to stop my emotions from swallowing me. I couldn’t move. I felt him slide his satchel over me and his scales began to erupt.

  “Hold on, Aya,” he told me softly moving away from me. He dove under the surface and when he returned his Scaler was on full display. Teal and light blue scales coated his entire body with a trail of gold ones lining his back and his belly. Grey hair flowed around two silver horns. I nestled against his cold body, cradling in his arms.

  Julian used his wings and his tail to propel us through the water. Once we were far enough away, he took off into the sky. Dawn approached as we headed out of Black Harbor and into the woods. We didn’t spend too much time in the air as we landed in a patch of land big enough for his wings to lower us down gently. After setting me down on the ground, he scaled down to his Anthro form with nothing but apologies written in his eyes.

  I beat him to it, “I’m sorry, Julian.”

  "No," he shook his head hugging me tightly, "I am. I should have forced you to stay with me. You should have stayed with me at the party. I should have made you listen until you believed me."

  "I thought you were like those other Scalers I used to hear stories about. The ones who'll try to make something up to have a reason to keep our sexual relationship going."

  Julian lifted my chin so that he could gaze down into my eyes, "We were both clouded in judgment. I'm sorry I burned your place down. I've gone through that, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

  “How long have you been tracking the bald guy with the beard?”

  “Cyrus?”

  I nodded, “I know him. Well, I don’t know him. I remember him.”

  “Any Scaler with memories of him has one hell of a survival story. I’ve only been tracking him for eight months or so. He’s been going city to city, collecting firearms and searching for rare Scalers.”

  “In all this time that you’ve been tracking them, what do you plan to do?”

&n
bsp; “Kill them,” he replied bluntly.

  “Why haven’t you killed them yet?”

  "There’s about fifty people traveling with Cyrus. Six and Axel are the two Jade Sentinels working for him. I thought I killed him before, but it was the wrong guy. Ever since then, Cyrus won't travel without Six or Axel nearby. When they're off doing whatever they've been told, he surrounds himself with his Anthros army. Whenever he gets near a Scaler, he whispers something to them and then they're like putty in his hands. I don't get it. We're stronger than they are. Our power is immeasurable compared to them. We shouldn't fall prey to his tactics. I take every opportunity I can to kill Cyrus, but I can't get close enough anymore. So I tried to prevent him from gathering Scalers, which has been oddly easy."

  "Do you think it's because he is searching for specific breeds?"

  “That’s the most probable reason,” he shrugged. “He’s been zeroing in on Sirens. This notion that we’re able to give them immortality drives him, and every other nutjob following him, to cities across the country.”

  “How does he find out where we are?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling that Six and Axel have something to do with that. I overheard him talking about a group of scientists that were in Black Harbor. They were supposed to take over or something?”

  That made me chuckle, “I destroyed a lab or two, a while ago. Those scientists were trying to create a gas to prevent us from scaling. They failed to realize the ingredients they needed were based in Golden Imperial scales.”

  “Are there really Golden Imperials around here?” his voice full of innocent pondering.

  I motioned toward the mountain, “Empyrean is up there. That’s where they reside for the most part. I wouldn’t know how many are left, but if necessary, I’m sure we could get some help dealing with those Jade Sentinels. I still can’t believe they’re here. How did he get them to follow him? He said something to me that almost made me give up control.”