Dead Girl's Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 1)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  “Charles, I…” Everything crashed back in on me, the state of the world punctuated by gunshots from down below. “Shit! We have to help Tamara!” A gunfight that had lasted this long was nobody’s good news. I stared at the injured and bleeding, worn-out magician. He was in no condition to run anywhere.

  “I had to get this guy,” Corey hopped excitedly past me, turning to look at us both as he ran a few feet down the slope. “But relax! I got this!” Flame, not all of it naturally colored, rippled and danced in his hands and eyes. I blinked in confusion as, without another word, he rushed downhill, sprinting directly toward the intermittent sounds of conflict.

  “Shit!” Charles swore, hastily wrapping a last strip of cloth around his injured neck, then bent despite obvious pain and scrambled for his staff. “The magic’s gone to his head. God damn it!”

  “What does that mean?” I glanced down the slope at the retreating apprentice and past that, at the intermittent lightning and fury of the ebbing gunfight. “What can I do?”

  “Go after him!” Charles bellowed, gesturing with his staff. “Save his stupid ass before he gets killed!” I barely heard the second part, because I was already bounding down the slope at full speed.

  I threw myself recklessly down the hill, but I still fell behind. Corey was young, energetic, and apparently full of magic, while I was stiff, dead, and severely battered, my bones strained to near the breaking point.

  I threw myself behind a big monument stone for cover as I reached the edge of the warzone. Peering around it, I took in the battle, trying to find Corey and Tamara.

  It wasn’t terribly difficult. The vast majority of the Hollow Men were down, the grassy stretch littered with crumpled, unmoving, military-garbed forms and their fallen weapons. But several were still standing, and in the middle of it all, Corey danced this way and that, exuberant and completely out in the open.

  I cursed. There was no way I could get close to the boy. Corey was tossing out dangerously wide arcs of searing conflagration at any targets still standing. That fire wouldn’t discriminate between friend and foe—hell, it’d probably prioritize me.

  To my relief, I caught sight of Tamara across the way, also still in the conflict. She was obviously injured, perverse splashes of crimson painting flawless alabaster. One arm hung limp at her side. The metal-fiber whip was coiled in her working hand as she frantically gestured and shouted at Corey to take cover. Only one final Hollow still defended her, a husky individual in riot armor bodily blocking gunfire in her defense, belching round after thunderous round out of the drum of his combat shotgun.

  And as I watched, unable to jump into the sudden inferno the combat had become, everything went wrong one final time.

  I flinched away from the sight as the captivated soldier guarding Tamara gave his life to defend her. His head exploded, blasting apart like a gore-filled melon, leaving Tamara scrambling for cover in a sudden panic, as men with assault rifles fired controlled bursts and advanced to flank her. Meanwhile, Corey unleashed a torrent of flame at the nearest Hollows, voluminous but without the focus and power of Charles’ mighty conjurations. The blast sent some of the Hollow Men stumbling or dropping for a quick stop-drop-roll, but not all of them.

  One of the Hollow Men, bulky, armored, and masked, weathered the cone of flame, advanced straight through it and leveled his shotgun at Corey. Another thunderous boom ripped the air and caught the young magician in between spells. A dense burst of pellets simply shredded his side at close range.

  Shock glazed the young man’s eyes, and he stumbled and fell to the earth. The sudden scent of fresh human blood soaked the air, making it harder for me to think clearly. The Hollow that had felled him stepped up and steadied his gun for the fatal, finishing shot.

  I dimly heard Tamara cry out for help. Her desperate pleas pulled at my heartstrings as they wove through the repeated reports of gunfire. Four Hollows advanced on where she’d taken impromptu cover behind one of the smaller stone markers. Concentrated assault rifle fire pounded the stone, chipping rapidly away at it and her both like a mad sculptor, leaving the Moroi no room to do anything but panic. Blood flew, showing that not all of the damage done was to unfeeling, inanimate rock.

  No! Once again too late to save anyone, I ripped the nearest mini-monument out of the earth, strength magnified by the ambient death that hung in Sloss’ air, permeating the scene in front of me. Dammit, we’d already won! I couldn’t force myself to approach the flickering flames, so I threw the makeshift projectile instead, roaring a single, desperate syllable in defiance as I did so.

  “NO!” The power I’d drawn in magnified the cry, dread and static discharge filling the air as my roar reverberated off of the ground and distant structures alike. A half ton of stone pulped Shotgun Zombie; the rocky projectile swept him aside and killed him outright before he could pull the trigger on Corey.

  Then the rest… They just stopped. The Hollow Men, those mind-warped creations of my progenitors, stopped advancing, stopped firing. Instead they looked up at me in bewilderment, heads tilted and eyes wide, as if my words had suddenly commanded their attention.

  No one moved. I stared at them, and they stared at me.

  “GO!” I bellowed, as loud as I could, trying to do whatever it was I’d done an instant before. With dazed, confused expressions showing on the few uncovered faces I could see, they turned and fled. Some quickly, some slowly and with confusion, some discarding their weapons as they went.

  I let them go, stunned at the turn of events, unable to even keep track of their numbers or which way they went. The near silence that followed was abrupt and harsh, almost painful in its own right, broken only by the frenzied beating of living hearts and harsh rasping of Corey’s breath.

  “What the fuck!” Charles’ entrance to the scene was abrupt and emotionally charged. “Corey!” Sliding to a stop on the bloody grass, he knelt with painful difficulty, then cast an accusing glare up at me. “What happened?”

  My mind, more than a little fuzzy from the delicious scent of Corey’s blood, took a long moment to form such a simple answer. “I failed.”

  “We have to get him to a hospital. Now.” Tamara drifted over, her eyes huge and inhumanly blue, her voice an eerie, supernatural echo of its former self. “Or he’ll die.” I looked her over, concerned, but before my eyes her remaining wounds began to slowly seal shut. Even much of the blood faded away, like some unseen force was working towards making her perfect, whole and untouched once more. Even so, she seemed far from okay.

  Charles looked up at me. “Can you carry him?” Physical and emotional pain mixed in his dark brown eyes as he tried to support himself with his staff.

  I looked down at Corey’s body, busted open and bleeding into the grass. I felt grief, fear, concern, and, of course, regret.

  But most of all, I felt hungry.

  I recoiled, refusing the urge even as my body leaned in. “I can't. Charles, I can't. I'm sorry,” I rasped, shaking my head. It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, just as much as it wasn't the one I wanted to give, and the magician glared up at me. Since I wanted to take another step forward so badly, I made myself take one back instead. But it barely helped. I was starving.

  His expression turned unreadable as the wizard looked to Tamara instead, his unspoken question obviously the same. But the Moroi shook her head as well. “Charles, I’m famished,” she said, echoing my feelings, her eyes as distant and compelling as her voice. “Barely standing. I’m no better of a choice than she is.”

  “Damn you both.” The wizard’s eyes were as hard as stone as he stared us down, then scooped his arms under his unconscious, bleeding apprentice, straining to lift him. After a moment of Charles’s anger and failed determination, Tamara did what I couldn’t. She stepped over, matter of factly hauling Charles to his feet, Corey still in his arms. Then she stepped away. I barely caught the “sorry” she whispered.

  With one final look around, Charles turned and left, walking with obvious
pain, difficulty, and as much speed as he could muster.

  “Goodbye, Ashes.” Tamara stepped unusually close, her presence in my personal space helping to break to hold the lingering scent of blood retained over me. “I’ve got to go…” Her eyes caught mine. I couldn’t read the emotion in them; they were two infinite pools of perfect blue, shining with shimmering stars I wanted to watch forever.

  “If I don’t…” she whispered softly, “Something is going to happen.” Her pale hand traced my jaw, the barest whisper of a touch catching me completely off guard and sending tingles racing along my dead, battered flesh. The way she said it sent a shiver down my spine, and it wasn’t one of fear. The emotions she’d evoked earlier stirred once more, warmth rising in my core. My heart would have raced, if it could have.

  She stepped away just as my self-control began to fray. “I’ll…be in touch with you soon. I promise.” A waver in her ghostly voice made her sound less certain of that than the words she chose. Her big, luminous eyes turned away from me, pulling at my emotions as surely as if she held them in her beautiful, alabaster hands.“I’ll call my family now. They’ll clean this mess up, get those girls some help. And Charles needs an ambulance now, or Corey will die.” Her tone was oddly distant, so unlike the Tamara I knew, and her certainty chilled me. And with that, Tamara turned and started away from me as well.

  And then I was alone, save for the death and gore all around.

  I felt strangely helpless.

  The whole purpose for this journey had been to help my friends, rescue my love, and save the innocents who hadn’t deserved a horrible death just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That, and maybe to prove to myself that I could actually make a difference. Do some good.

  But now, there was no one left to help, and so many I had failed. In the wake of all that had happened, the weight of loss finally started sinking in. How did I start picking up the pieces?

  At the end of the night, there was nothing left to do but to walk away too.

  29

  Epilogue: Almost a walk in the park

  My advice: throw out your welcome mats.

  Something might take them as an invitation.

  I lurked in the dark, unmoving. To mortal ears, I might as well have been completely silent. After all, there was no way he could hear my heartbeat the way I could hear his. That thump-thump of visceral rhythm slowly picked up its pace; he might not know I was there, but even his mere human senses were screaming that something was out of place, that he was in danger.

  He was so right.

  Nathaniel Fredericks. I still kind of preferred Cam-Kong, to be completely honest. It wasn’t a very nice nickname, but he wasn’t a very nice person. He’d intended to murder me, after all. Just because something else technically had finished what he’d started didn’t let him off the hook.

  I watched him open the fridge, fumbling around with cans of beer and knocking a carton of milk to the floor. The plastic cap popped off and it spilled, glug-glug-glug as it vomited its contents onto the stained vinyl. He cursed, his voice edged with unease. And when he turned around to fetch some paper towels, I was there.

  “Shit!” The refrigerator door slammed hard behind him an instant before his back slammed into it. “The fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

  “Don’t cry,” I responded, my sandpaper voice raking harshly across the vocal cords he’d ruined.

  He blinked at me in bewilderment.

  I wheezed out a sigh. “The milk,” I explained, extending a finger, a foot and a half of bloodstained, metallic death clearly indicating the white puddle at his feet. I couldn’t help but crack a satisfied smile as he instinctively tried to climb into, or maybe on top of, the fridge. “You spilled it.” I shook my head sadly. Well, I knew he was dangerous, not smart.

  Eyes wild with an appropriate mixture of fear and confusion, he raised his wavering voice. “You need to get the fuck out of here, whoever you are, or I’m going to beat that stupid grin off your face.” The machine-gun pounding of his heart belied the bluster, and I just smiled all the wider.

  “Sticks and stones, Nathan. Not the worst you’ve ever said to me, but still.” I took a step closer, then another. Damn, I was hungry. The sound of his terrified heart filling the room certainly didn’t help quell the urges.

  He stopped trying to crawl backward through solid objects long enough to scrutinize my face in the moonlight filtering through the kitchen window. “What the—Ashley? How the fuck? You’re—”

  “Dead?” I followed him as he shifted to the side, easily keeping between him and the door, trapping him against the sink as I closed in. “Well, you’re not wrong.” I flexed my hand, looking down at it, making certain he could see all the claws, scraping them against each other a little for emphasis. “Turns out you’re not that good of a murderer after all.”

  He blinked. I imagined the hamster wheel in his head overheating as he struggled to address his whole world suddenly turning inside out. And predictably, he lashed out at me.

  Fumbling around behind his back, he grabbed a sturdy butcher’s knife off of the kitchen counter, and rammed it down into my chest at full force. I let him. It dug a shallow hole in my jacket before the blade snapped in two, the front half flipping end over shiny end to the floor. His wrist twisted painfully and he stumbled into me.

  I didn’t move at all, except to grab him by the throat.

  “You know…I kinda remember you being bigger.” Effortlessly, I lifted the large, muscular man right off the ground. His eyes bulged, whether from the pressure at his neck or the shock, I had no idea. But, unlike me, he knew how to defend himself from an attacker in the night. He grabbed my arm at the joint, kicked at my shins, thrust a knee into my diaphragm, jabbed knuckles at my throat, and more. Against a mortal, it would have worked wonders. Against a Strigoi, he was probably just hurting himself. I tilted my head curiously. “Done yet?”

  He didn’t answer. I was no expert at physiology, but it was probably because he couldn’t breathe. How ironic. Part of me wanted nothing more than to make him suffer like I'd suffered, or turn the tables on him and deliver some well-deserved justice by literally tearing him apart. It’d be so, so easy. Or, hell, I was still really, really hungry… I let him dangle as I grinned, let him struggle uselessly, showing him the four solid fangs that could make short work of his life. If I wanted. How fitting would it be for the person who’d ended my life to be the first one I took to renew it?

  But, as much as I wanted to... I couldn’t. As his struggles waned, I thought about the things Charles and Tamara had said, about the inhumanity of Ariande and Dana.

  I let him go.

  Cam-Kong thumped hard against the kitchen counter, sliding to the floor at my feet and clutching at his throat, whimpering and holding up a warding, pleading, trembling hand in desperation. “Please…” His voice was hoarse and barely audible.

  I stared coldly down, then slowly extended all of the claws on one hand, flicking then carefully around the underside of his chin like the legs of the scariest spider in the world. I raised his face until he had no choice but to look me in my cold, dead, angry eyes.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen, tough guy.” I rasped, my eyes boring into his. “You’re going to leave town. Tonight. Stay here, and I’ll kill you.” I ticked off the points of my compromise on long, sharp digits, so close to his vulnerable flesh. “You ever so much as look at Lori again, I’ll find you, and I’ll kill you. If you ever come back to Birmingham, I’ll kill you.” I stated it all like it was fact, because for better or worse, it was. “And don’t you even think about hurting anyone else like this, ever again.”

  He nodded his head as vigorously as he dared.

  “Right. Because,” I leaned in close and gave him a good, long look at my pale flesh, my fangs, my dead mint eyes, let him smell the death and decay hanging heavily on my breath, “you wouldn’t want to wake up to this at the end of your bed, would you?” I pointed a claw at my own face.


  He shuddered and shook his head frantically, still trying in vain to push away from me. Of course, I had no way to know what he did once he disappeared. But he didn’t know that.

  I gave it a long, silent moment for the terror to really sink in; I wanted this to be a moment he could never forget. The instant I stepped back, he bolted, sprinting out of the apartment with speed that would’ve put and Olympic medalist to shame. I heard the door slam open, but not closed again. I could only hope I’d been fearsome enough to drive the lesson home, for good. And if he had a few nightmares as a side effect, all the better.

  I took a slow look around the now-abandoned apartment, listening to my stagnant heart slowly pushing dark blood through dead veins. I knew full well that I was going to have to eat someone, somewhere, and soon. I’d just have to find some way to come to terms with that, with the necessity of hunting and possibly killing, for my food. Assuming there was no way to avoid it, anyway.

  Things simply were as they were, and that would have to be good enough.

  As I dropped down from the window and started on my way, Charles’ tall, trenchcoated silhouette peeled out of the shadows, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. He was still limping a little from the wound across his back, but it was getting better.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him.” The wizard had been leaning against a wall close enough to get the gist of what had gone on up above.

  I willed my claws away, dispersing them with an electric surge. “Why? Because I’m a monster?” I figured the momentary bitterness I felt was justified.

  “No. Because I would have.” I missed a stride and stumbled as the tall wizard fell into step beside me.

  We were silent for a while as he walked with me.