A ruddy light flared from Charles’ position atop the wall, bright as the rising sun, minus the existential dread. The human wizard thrust both hands Next Door and came back with heaping handfuls of angry flame. He rolled them expertly together and they expanded, bigger and bigger, until they formed into a single, seething ball of hungry fire. With dark, hard eyes, he made an imperative gesture at the stage, and I started getting even more nervous than I already was. Atop me, Dana froze for a moment as the fire built and roared, buying me another precious second.
Our concerns over his aim proved unfounded. The experienced Strigoi magician didn’t counter the spell; she didn’t even let him release it. With a casual sweep of claws, air-warping blades with ebony edges lashed out from the open rift, seeking Charles’ flesh. His carefully crafted flame died away harmlessly into empty air as he was forced to duck and roll on the ground in order to survive.
Ariande didn’t let up for an instant. She pressed the advantage and directed the rift blades against him, striking again and again. Her gestures were eloquent and precise like a maestro who specialized in death. But Charles was only human. He tired all too quickly and slipped up, and one blade caught him mid-tumble to punish him for it. Black edges and invisible force sliced through his heavy coat and enchanted armor alike with contemptuous ease, and the scent of his blood cut through the air as he fell to the ground.
As always, the smell caught my attention and layered itself on top of my senses as if it were a legitimate priority. But even more pronounced was the effect it had on the Strigoi opposite me; Dana cut her attention away and stared toward Charles with unmistakable craving. I took advantage of her distraction and pulled her arms apart, surging to my feet and headbutting her in the face. I slid one leg behind hers, hoping to trip her up or at least shift her aside so I could escape.
None of my efforts changed a damn thing. It was like trying to move a mountain. Slowly, her attention returned to me, paired with a shit-creepy grin and overwhelming strength. “You’re not getting away again.” She shoved her face down toward mine, and I recoiled; with the interruption of the ritual, part of it had never healed. One arm and a strip of her body were still a charred, bleeding wreck, barely covered by dark-stained bandages. “Not after what you’ve done.” Her hands crept in from the sides, unstoppable, one still intent on my eyes, the other diving for my ribs.
Over her shoulder, I could only watch helplessly as Charles defiantly rose to a knee despite the recent injury and reached Next Door, even as the next blade fell.
He caught it, one hand rippling with an intensity I hadn’t seen before. The shifting, deadly blade turned still as if frozen, then shattered into dust and sparks.
The vampire cackled with appreciative mirth, a dusty, dead sound, as if her mirth were seldom used. The blades of churning, deathly energy still hovering at the ready dissipated, fading away as tendrils of chthonic, pulsing energy reached lazily out of the rift instead, like the tentacles of some dark god.
Uh-oh.
Charles braced himself, tracing quickly and precisely at the air with one blurry hand. He clutched his staff with the other, sigils of frost smoking along the length of wood. I cringed, seeing how much more slowly and stiffly he was moving compared to before.
Much more of Sloss’ stage was on fire than had been a moment ago, as the dying splashes of Charles’ lance slowly spread out and gnawed at the wood. One patch of fire to our left crawled steadily toward us, but wasn’t close enough yet to threaten us. Over my head, Ariande’s rift pumped deathly energy through from Next Door, and it was having a pronounced effect on the surviving captives trapped in the circle. Their skin gradually turned sallow and unhealthy looking, their muffled cries and struggles growing weaker and weaker. With Charles injured and on the defensive, if I didn’t do something soon, their spirits would join the dead swirling above—eventually joined by Charles’ and my own.
But helping others was a bit much to ask when I couldn’t even help myself. My spine was starting to crack and buckle as Dana bent me almost impossibly backward, bone grating audibly on bone. The enemy vampire bore down on me, and I was lucky her claws were so much shorter than my own, a mere six inches of wickedly curved, heated, bloodstained iron. If they hadn’t been, one set would already be inside my chest, the other protruding from the back of my skull.
I leaned against her left arm and put all of my might into staving off the smoking claws before they entered my eyes, but my right side wasn’t so lucky. My grip on her wrist simply wasn’t enough to hold her off any longer, and I felt the pressure as they started to slowly carve their warm way into my guts. It still didn’t hurt, but instead I felt every leisurely fraction of the movement inside as they split flesh and reached toward my organs.
Meanwhile, Charles took a good, solid look at what was coming his way—and bunkered up. His face was a mask of stony determination that disregarded his obvious pain and sluggishness, and he waved his hands in broad, circular patterns. The very air around him became visibly dense, then frosted over, as chunks of frozen wind from Next Door solidified into a thick, durable sphere of protection.
The dead-eyed Strigoi magician bared her fangs, eager to meet the challenge. Semi-transparent appendages wriggled through the rift, straining to open it wider, the terrible, distressing appendages distorting anything seen through them into an aberrant caricature. As she focused her full attention and magic on Charles, dark tendrils unfurled and reached out toward him, caressing the frozen shield tenderly before constricting firmly around it.
Where they touched, the ice slowly darkened, as if corrupted or dying. Worse, cracks in the barrier appeared almost immediately, and the sounds of a glacier-like sundering heralded just how little time Charles had if he didn’t think of something super clever super quick.
Charles needed me, now. But I couldn’t even win my own fight, much less his. My dead bones were already weakened from the Rawhead’s surprise attack and ensuing combat, and now they creaked ominously under the strain of this extended struggle. Dana’s claws might not kill me, but I was pretty certain once I was helpless, the crazy vampire would figure something out.
The half-burnt Strigoi laughed in my face as I looked around for something I could use; the desperation must have been painted across my face. There were three Strigoi, if I included myself, thirteen girls, at least half of them lying dead with the rest on their way to the same fate. One grumpy human wizard, encased for his own protection. Multiple relics and magical instruments were scattered about, things I wouldn’t know what to do with even if they were readily accessible. A cracked stage, a toppled podium, a tall chunk of conjured rock...
And a death rift.
I smiled, right in the face of the vampire gleefully overpowering me.
Her sudden surge of unmatchable strength was no great mystery. The same had happened to me in the alley, fighting the Sanguinarians. Our kind grew stronger in the presence of death, and right here, right now, our Home was saturated with it.
I let go of my reservations, stopped pretending, and stopped holding back. The swelling rift, that raw, fatal wound in the air pulsed once, as if calling out to me.
I let a piece of myself fall away, and in it’s place, power flooded my dead body.
Dana squawked in surprise as I twisted her smoking, razor-sharp claws away from my eyes, then went right on twisting her arm until the muscles stood out, threatening to snap. The passage of hot iron blades in my side reversed as I pushed them slowly back and stood up, straight and tall over the other Strigoi.
She wasn’t grinning any more.
“Why won’t you just die?” A note of desperation and worry crept across her features, and she began to shrink from me as she whined. “You should have died when I bit you! You should have died when we ambushed you at the apartment! Or to our Hollow Men! Or to the Rawhead! Or when she tricked those vampires into attacking you and your friend!” Desperation twisted into a snarl as both expressions warred for control of her face, leav
ing her dead eyes untouched. “Just lay down and die, you're not special, you're not me!”
Ice cracked sharply, thunderously, as Charles’ last line of defense started caving in. I was overpowering the demented Strigoi, but not quickly enough. Desperate times call for stupid measures. I let go of the dead girl’s wrist, which allowed her claws to plunge back into my side. I did my best to ignore the intimate, visceral feeling of how far they delved into useless, dead organs before grinding to a halt. Like the Sanguinarian in the alleyway, I wrapped my arm around hers, trapping it and holding her helplessly close.
Red tinted my vision, the crimson herald of inhuman rage. I let it come. She squealed as I twisted her arm and planted one foot solidly in her chest. “Funny, that.” I shoved hard, but she had nowhere to go; I had both of her arms. “If you guys hadn’t set them on us, I wouldn’t have figured out how to do this.” Bones snapped; tearing meat made a grisly sound as her arm ripped free of her shoulder, dark blood splattering us like rain.
Dana screamed, not in pain, but in shock. I tossed the arm over my shoulder.
“My body! You ruined it again!” she wailed, looking with desperation toward the older vampire, who was locked deep into her concentration. “I was beautiful and free! It was going to be forever!”
Her claws scrabbled for purchase inside me. The muscles in my abdomen tightened like iron cords, stopping them cold. “You killed them all for that?” I drank in more of the energy flowing freely around me, wresting it away from her, and headbutted her hard enough to make her knees buckle, splattering dark blood across both our faces. “You're a monster,” I growled. “Someone has to put you down.”
“I made you,” she protested. “You’re a monster, too!”
“Not like you.” My free arm plunged into her chest, ribs and abdomen as I put everything I had behind the blow. Eighteen inches of blood-rusted justice punched out her back, spearing her heart in the process.
She froze, going stiff and rigid like a real corpse, her open mouth hissing out a muffled banshee wail, carried on the barest whisper of breath.
Above the stage, Charles’ icy egg crunched and buckled inward.
“Please,” the broken Strigoi whispered. “Don’t...hurt...her.”
I was pretty certain I understood Dana Warren, where she was coming from, even why she was so unstable. But it didn’t matter.
In the end, some of us are monsters. Some aren't. She made her choice. And I made mine.
I stuck my other hand into her alongside the first. My muscles felt like they were going to rupture from the strain, but I didn't stop. Even the slow tearing of stiff, dead tendons didn’t give me pause as, with a tremendous effort and grotesque, disquieting squelch, I tore her in half, dark blood splashing to the ground and bathing my boots, viscera unraveling as she came apart at the waist.
She screamed again, a piercing, uncanny wail, as I threw the lower half into the nearby fire. As soon as the smallest portion of her body touched the flame, it roared to life, surging to cover the whole lower torso in an instant.
Ariande turned to face me just in time to stagger from the impact as the top half of her spawn’s torso smacked into her, grasping desperately at her clothes, crying out in torment and fear.
I waved at the elder Strigoi. “Do I have your attention?” I rasped.
She stared at the simpering remains of her protege for a few seconds as realization dawned, and her sharp, dead eyes hardened into glassy hatred. Her icy glare sent a spike of dread into my core. Carefully, gently, she set the shredded, one-armed torso of her scion aside, but her gaze remained locked onto my face. My righteous, inhuman anger quailed and dimmed under that glare and its dreadful promises. She started toward me, and I backed away. I might have made it this far, but I had no illusions of being a match for this ancient, inhuman creature.
Fortunately, I didn’t get to figure out how right I was. A crack and vacuum of sound from above halted her approach, as the ice entombing Charles flexed, burst outward, then imploded. Massive chunks of ice and ghastly tentacles alike burst apart, the otherworldly tendrils exploding like overcooked sausages as the whole thing sucked itself into the void of Next Door at Charles’ behest. The rest of the Strigoi’s conjured magic recoiled into the rift, as if fleeing in pain. Charles stood tall, battered, beaten, and proud in its wake, a massive flaming lance already growing between his hands.
I didn’t play around. I dove for cover and shielded my head.
Charles slammed his blazing spear down like the wrath of God.
The young Strigoi, Dana, my progenitor, abruptly stopped screaming. I hesitantly uncovered my face and looked for Ariande, but as the swirling ghosts of Charles’ flamestrike faded, she was gone.
There was only one half of an incinerated body to be found.
I followed the wavering line of Charles’ arm, pointing to where the elder Strigoi stood, her face a dead mask of cold fury mixed with grief, her frozen eyes a piercing sword of Damocles aimed at our very hearts. Then she turned and disappeared through the broad rent between worlds, her body trailing smoke and vanishing without a trace.
Behind her, the rift snapped shut, sucking most of my added power away with it; I felt weak in the wake of its absence. The ritual circle snapped, shattering, a wave of deathly energy rolling outward and dispersing into the environs of Sloss. Traces of death hung thickly in the air and not just over the ritual area, though the worst of the entropic energy surrounded the wound left on our world by the rift’s presence. I had a feeling that if Sloss hadn’t been haunted before, it would be after this.
I straightened my creaking back, almost wishing I could feel as exhausted bodily as I felt mentally. I stared up at Charles. Bent halfway over, breathing heavily, hands on thighs, he stared down at me. For a moment, we were both quiet.
“Worst family reunion ever,” I called, jerking a thumb behind me toward the wrecked, slowly burning stage.
Charles rolled his eyes, but I saw the briefest flash of white that might have been a smile. “We’re missing one girl,” he called down, his voice unable to hide his weariness.
I shook my head. “No, we’re not.” I said firmly. “Trust me.” I wanted to go free the others, but there wasn’t time. A pair of shallow booms from downhill accentuated that fact, spurring me to quicker action. “We’re not done yet!”
With what looked like an effort of pure willpower, the tall wizard straightened, glancing at the distance between us. With a wave of his hand, the scattered, fitful flames smothered themselves, leaving the Strigoi’s victims safe, for the moment. “Let’s hurry. I’ll meet you at the end, and we’ll go in together.”
I nodded an agreement, but was too slow to react as a huge man grabbed Charles from behind and yanked his head back, pressed a knife to his throat and started cutting across.
28
We all fall down
“Charles!” I bolted toward the metal-and-cement wall, knowing that I’d get there too late to do anything but avenge his death.
Charles’ eyes widened as he reacted instantly to the ambush, like a product of long practice. He threw his head back, dropped his staff, and grasped the Hollow Man’s thick, heavily bandaged arm with both hands, trying to slow his impending demise. But he couldn’t stop the much bigger Hollow. I leapt off the stage, knowing I wouldn’t make it up that wall in time to matter.
But Corey didn’t have to.
From out of nowhere, the young man leapt onto the broad back of Zombie Rambo, one skinny arm wrapping around the attacker’s knife arm, the other reaching around to cover the lower part of the big man’s face. But the kid’s efforts, however gallant, amounted to nothing. The camo-garbed behemoth didn’t so much as shift under the weight of his hostile new backpack.
Great. Now they’re both going to get themselves killed.
I didn’t give the boy enough credit. His hand blurred, blazing with embers stolen from Next Door, as he funneled a gout of dark smoke directly into the Hollow’s face, pouring it unerringly
into his nose and mouth, down his throat, and directly into his lungs. As the huge Hollow Man spasmed and retched reflexively, I threw myself fifteen feet upward and face-first into the wall. My claws punched through steel siding and aged cement, and I climbed like a maniac.
I literally clawed my way to the top, threw myself over the edge and stumbled to a stop in complete shock.
Corey had felled the giant.
I stared.
I hadn’t known smoke inhalation could do that, not even in such massively concentrated doses, but there it was. I looked for Charles and found the wizard still standing, if barely, already tearing uneven strips free of his dark undershirt and wrapping them around the dripping wound in his neck.
I took a step back. The smell was too strong to handle.
“Asshole,” he said, noting my late arrival. I initially thought he meant me, but he jabbed a boot at the familiar form of KHMZNO. The Hollow Man’s arm was still heavily bandaged, and I didn’t know how he’d walked all the way up this hill with what I’d done to his legs before. “If he’d stabbed inward instead, I’d have just died. Bastard wanted me to suffer.” Charles grumpily kicked the fallen Hollow. “And just my luck the buzz would wear off now.”
Corey’s mouth was moving, but I found it extremely hard to concentrate on little things like talking with that sweet, delicious metallic scent filling the air, shoving all of my other senses to the back of the line like an overzealous bouncer. I was dying of thirst. I’d never felt so parched in my life, like I’d never really known true hunger. It was only—
“Ashley!” The snapping of fingers and a swirl of flame way too close to my face broke me out of my tunnel vision, and I leapt back in sudden panic, almost falling off the ledge and back into the pavilion. “Ashley.” Charles said my name again, not yelling this time, but speaking emphatically, drawing attention to how close I’d gotten to him without realizing it. His eyes were narrowed at me, but with caution, not with the anger or revulsion I expected. The wizard clenched his fist, smothering the small flame held within. “Are we okay?”
Dead Girl's Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 1) Page 26