Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows)

by C. V. Larkin

  His hand tightened at the base of her neck where it met her shoulder. There was something wrong with her. The Lulo was gaining on the edge of the bubble and she was getting reckless. Sio grunted and leaned back pulling his hips away.

  "Sorry." His voice was guttural and strained.

  Not as sorry as I am.

  She was still cursing her own lust-induced stupidity as the Slaugh legend met the rheumy barrier that housed them. Ice crystals formed lacy patterns, spreading from the Lulo's outstretched hand. The small paw cracked its way through the icy wall of its own creation. Its skin split, rolling away from bone and shivering bands of muscle. As the deconstructed aspect of the false youth breached the ice the gruesome mass that crawled through was bone dry, but the lack of liquid didn't manage to make it smell any better. The skinless one reeked of old death and it wasn't difficult to assume that a fresh kill was in its near future.

  Tian ignored the thundercloud in her stomach. There was nothing sexy about the rubbery, sloughing, hollow skin suit that oozed through the misshapen hole left by its predecessor. What was left of the Lulo poured angry, bloody, cherry snow cone syrup trails into the ice as it moved.

  "Two," Tian said, not sure where she was directing the statement.

  Sio stepped back in toward her body, but he didn't touch her. She caught the glint of the blade in his right hand and fought down a flash of physical recall as her mostly healed wound throbbed. He sure as shit wasn't stupid. She had to give him that.

  As a half-breed she was bound by Fae etiquette which was why her guns were still holstered. Sio, on the other hand, was an anomaly, and as ironic as it was, could pixie out of the rules that didn't refer to him directly. He didn't know that, but because of it she didn't say anything about putting the knife away.

  Gerganara floated to the left of the fleshless counterpart. Her scarlet hair undulated like a bloody aura. The over large horizontal slit of a mouth curled up at the edges in line with the outer corners of its eyes. Desiccated lips moved with rubbery ambiguity while the actual sound emanated from Uthboada's motionless form.

  "Dark gifts from the scrubsey brighted ones is not repaid easy. It's the we's an I's comed to concluded that three favors are owed. Three favors bind the Night Host unto thy master's servicesssss. Beseech the we's careful poppets, your Unmoved takes not kindly to lost advantage."

  Tian blinked. To the Slaugh it was as close to an alliance as anyone got. Three favors, sweet mother, Eamon had just been gifted an oath from the nightmares. If she was lucky it would be enough to keep him from killing in retribution Sio for her involvement in a Guardian Blood feud.

  Gerganara continued, "Old ones have returned. Yesss, we's come to offer a dark boon of her own unlooked for, a pathway the bright flames will not turn from. Many choices pretty ones. The Lulo shall leads you through the betweeny places, shall leads you home or you will remain ere for permanent. We's kind to grant you choices poppets."

  Tian's alarm must have registered in her body language because a croaking raven's broken laughter poured from Gerganara's pursed mouth. Uthboada's horizontal pupils glittered with pleasure in her colorless eyes. Both halves of the two tracked them expectantly.

  The power shivering in the air had coalesced like a pale cloud of smog. It wrapped a sickly corona around the Two's deceptively small bodies. The flickering haze lit them up like a firefly's ass in the night, making them all the more otherworldly. Tian bit her lip to keep from swearing as the goddess soul burned in her chest. Her heart hammered in time with the flickering phosphorescence, and dammed if that wasn't some freaky shit.

  "We accept," she answered.

  "You may be right, but whatever this is, I have a bad feeling," Sio said under his breath.

  "We won't die."

  "That's not a rousing endorsement."

  She didn't have anything to say to that. Tian stepped around him without turning her back on the Lulo, which would have been considered something akin to an unforgivable broach of protocol. She collected unconscious human off the ground and slung him fireman style across her shoulders.

  "I'll get him." Sio offered a hand.

  She shot him a dry look. "Do I look helpless to you?"

  "Helpless? No, but the fact that he's twice your size looks ridiculous. Now give me the body before you bruise my ego."

  She might have been losing it, but it sounded like one of the Lulo snickered.

  "Suit yourself."

  Tian slid Loren down her shoulder so she could shift her grip and pass him over. Sio grabbed him with an ease that made it look like he'd been handling the unconscious for years. He hit her with a hot grin. Her own innate battle lust screamed to meet his. The smile she returned was filled the same self-destructive anticipation as usual, but for the first time, there was shame in the sensation.

  "After you," Sio said.

  She faced the Lulo and the metallic words that bubbled up came more from the goddess than they did from her. They seared their way out of her throat with little concern given to her own vernacular preferences. "We thank you for your guidance, honored hosts. We thank you for the healing that you offer. We ask that in your wisdom you lead us true, for there is much at stake."

  Both halves of the Two froze; Gerganara's eyeless sockets expanded and Uthboada's striated muscles rippled in shock. It was Uthboada recovered first and the voice that rang from Gerganara's flesh had the rich resonance of a wide brass bell.

  "The pleasure will be ours... child."

  "Let's us makes this pity pat timely then, eh poppets?"

  Gerganara shot them an evil leer as her voice rasped like heavy grit sandpaper through Uthboada's elongated form. Tian inclined her head, gritted her teeth, and made a ridiculous curtsey because the wildly outdated rules of faerie etiquette still required it. The gesture seemed to please both halves of the Lulo.

  A rough grating sound grew in Uthboada's torso, vibrating against glistening strips of muscle, stripping them from multiple points of insertion with harsh wet snapping sounds. The dislodged strips of sinew floated, weightless, with the languid sway of liquid submersion. They drifted toward the wall of ice behind and whipped against it with blurring speed.

  The cracking ice chipped away in fat chunks under the brutal rhythm, revealing a small misshapen door sapped of color. Both halves of The Two faced one another. Gerganara reached forward and used the dirty talon of a fingernail to pry loose a tooth in the shape of a key from Uthboada's lipless mouth with a meaty wet popping sound. Uthboada caught the loosed key, slipping the molar onto the exposed bone glistening from her index finger. The gesture had an odd grace to it.

  A foul smelling liquid trickled from the hole left behind, blending with the liquid darkness of the ground as the key was used to unlock the door.

  It opened on a soundless inward swing, though whether it was one door, one hundred, or a thousand was impossible to say due to the afterimages imposed by the twilight lighting. Revealed was a derelict hallway that extended to time bleached infinity.

  The initial appearance of the Between was innocuous save for the ever present dusk in which it languished, but the hallway and every object in it, from the peeling wallpaper to the flickering florescent bulbs, was alive. The space writhed, made up entirely of living vines, curling earth, faded foliage and the kinds of small creatures that mimicked man made structure with bleak mundane accuracy.

  "I think I was expecting something more intimidating," Sio said.

  Tian shook her head and threw a cagey glance over her shoulder. Her mouth was dry and her lungs were a knot the size of a fucking basketball. The Between made the Black Gate look like Christmas morning.

  "Famous last words?" he asked.

  "If I say yes does that make me an asshole?"

  "If I answer it'll make me one too, but at least you'll be in good company."

  He was joking, obviously trying to lighten the mood. If he had any idea what they were walking into he wouldn't have bothered.<
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  Tian kicked into gear after the Night Host representatives. Sio followed in grim silence. He moved like the extra weight he was hauling wasn't any more cumbersome than a backpack and had no trouble keeping up as they careened through the hidden twists and turns of the endless corridor. It was a relief not to be lugging those awkward pounds of unconscious human biscuit around, and if Sio wanted to play chivalrous she wasn't about to argue.

  "Does this place seem...I don't know, faded to you?" Sio's voice made her jump. He continued as if he hadn't noticed the freak out. "All the living elements add a disturbing kind of beauty, but they should be more vivid, shouldn't they?"

  Tian caught another glimpse of the Lulo's sickly glow before it disappeared around another bend and ran faster. Nothing looked familiar yet, which had her spooked.

  "It's always twilight in the Between," she answered. "You can think of it as a sort of alternate plane to what you're used to. Halfway between Tir Na Nog and the mortal coil. Everything that is or was between anything is fair game here, but it's like this hallway, neither here nor there."

  The corridor had shifted while she'd been talking, morphing from something that resembled an aged hotel to a slum apartment complex. She wondered how many mortal days had sloughed away during that subtle transition. The ghosts of the Between spilled from every surface and they were overrun. The spectral images of roaches, and junkies with dirty needles hanging from tortured veins swarmed them. Sio went ridged beside her.

  "Did you know that if DCFS involvement automatically entitles you to benefits?" he said. His voice had gone flat. He was staring at a sagging toddler duct taped by the hands and neck to a steam pipe in the far corner of the hallway.

  Goddess turned.

  "You're not there anymore. That is not you. That is the Between."

  "Is it supposed to feel like I'm reliving it?"

  "Yeah."

  Realizing she'd lost the light of their guide, Tian doubled back with a curse and caught a door made of writhing beetles before it closed. She grabbed Sio's arm, gritting her teeth against the electric jolt of his skin, and barreled through the opening, listening for the crunch of a thousand shells that never came.

  "Whatever happens is going to be bad, but getting left here is worse."

  Sio nodded. Their escort stopped. Tian looked around and nothing about the grub carpeted suburban hallway was familiar. It was just beige. She glanced back at Sio, who was pale as death. The muscle pulsing in his jaw spoke volumes about how well he knew this place and how little he wanted to be here.

  Tian put a hand on his chest in an attempt to diffuse the situation. Every muscle in his body was ridged with anxiety. The specters of an endless number of days were here, bleeding from the ground, through the walls; strolling from other parts of the house as if their reality still existed. Tian dropped her eyes to the floor, attempting to give a little emotional distance even though she couldn't ignore the quiet whispers that hung in the Between.

  She didn't want to stand witness to Sio's dark past any more than she wanted to relive her own. Still, she watched as the apparitions tread countless pathways over the soft carpet of grubs. She focused on Sio's shoes, noting they were the ones that consistently had either fresh or faded blood spatter on them.

  Too close. Bits and pieces of this nightmare hit too close to home. She hated that with every fiber of her being.

  "Where's the next door?"

  His demand was leveled in tight voice at Uthboada and Gerganara, who were scaling the walls like something out of The Exorcist. Gerganara's boneless hand twirled the cord to an attic trapdoor in the white moss of the ceiling. Sio lurched forward, grabbing the ladder then throwing her and the human through it. The glow from The Two dimmed as they emerged from a pale blue carpet of flowers. Sio came thundering up the ladder behind her, slamming it shut, and falling to all fours. His head hung down below his shoulders and he sucked in one ragged breath at a time, as if he were struggling not to hyperventilate.

  A soft hiccup from the other side of the room caught his attention and his head shot up. His eyes grew wild and wide. In that moment, Tian wanted, more than anything, to have the power to change the past. She couldn't. And she couldn't avoid intruding on a painful history that wasn't hers to share. There were few things worse than that kind of forced exposure. She knew from first-hand experience.

  Sio's childhood was across the room, but he wasn't alone. His eyes were glazed, his breath burst out in short confused pants, and the images of countless occasions of abuse, both male and female, were superimposed on top of one another. In every image his shoes were lined up neatly next to the bed. Every single one. In the same place. As if he'd been seeking approval, trying to do right, be a good kid. Tian crouched on the floor with her soul hemorrhaging all over the place.

  "I can't do this," he said.

  Tian knew exactly how he felt and they were not staying for this. She frog marched them toward the closet door because the light seeping through the gap at the bottom was fractionally brighter than it was where they were. The helplessness here was the worst part, the inability to stop events you knew the outcomes to. It was almost as bad living through it the first time, because you couldn't check out and wait for what was happening to your flesh to be over otherwise you'd never leave.

  They pushed through, but Tian didn't get a chance to turn around before Sio was gripping the door knob on the other side. It dissolved in his palm, leaving them trapped. She could hear the cries behind her, the wet thudding sound of flesh against flesh as they became the sickening sounds of impact. She didn't want to look and knew it couldn't be avoided. She glanced at Sio's face.

  Somewhere in his head the denial had dissolved and confrontation had come in its cruelest incarnation. This wasn't an experience she'd wish on anyone, let alone a survivor. She turned to search for the next exit. She owed him better than to pretend evil shit never took place in the world, cared too much to pretend everything was or could be fine.

  There was blood everywhere, smeared and splattered on the walls and the furniture, pooling in contrast to the neutral color of the floor fibers. A meaty all American Ken doll was throwing a savage beating onto what was left of Sio's youth while an aging bleach blonde beauty queen stood at the fireplace, gripping the mantle with perfectly manicured hands. The twisted fascination in her expression distorted her features, made them ugly. No matter how many faces wore that look the sickness in it was always the same.

  The long buried rage lurking in Tian's soul clawed its way to the surface. It screamed in the back of her brain for blood, and pain, and vengeance, and it didn't abate. She was bowled over by the intensity of the reaction, which included some long forgotten protective instincts, that were shockingly her own. The goddess was silent within, not absent, but eerily still. Waiting.

  The All American was painted red. His anguished ranting was unintelligible, as if his psycho to speech translator had fried. There was no doubt that in his head the words following the flecks of spit out of his mouth were spewed in a language that vaguely resembled English. His face was contorted with a rage that fell out of the scope of human capacity. There was no spark of awareness, only a perverse pleasure in perpetuating an act so heinous there would be no return for anyone involved.

  Sio slid to the ground next to her. He dropped his head between his knees while his hands clenched and unclenched in front of him. A weak keening, and the harsh clatter of leather and metal, dragged Tian's attention back to the center of the room. The swollen mass of flesh that used to be Sio's face was ground into the carpet. Visions of her first death ran in a disturbing parallel to what she was witnessing. She closed her eyes, and wondered if she would be able to endure what she was about to do.

  It took her three tries to get the words out. When she did they were high and reedy. "Do the Fae so fear their own crimes that my life would remain unexamined?"

  A muffled viscous cry broke in the center of the room.

 
Soul crushing fear slammed through every cell as she raised terrified eyes to the two halves of the Lulo. She bit through her lip to keep from bawling or screaming unceasingly like a maniac.

  "You would choose to take his place?"

  Tian couldn't look at Sio. She couldn't actually focus on anything.

  "Yes."

  A gunshot echoed through the still air.

  "Then take his place you shall." Uthboada's brass bell voice rang high and sweet.

  Fuck, if that wasn't the most ominous thing ever.

  Tian turned to find that the handle had grown back out of the door. She cracked it open, hating herself because she was desperate not to go through. She dropped to her knees, relieved that for the moment she didn't have to will them to hold her up. Tian gathered Sio's clenched fists into her hands. The physical jolt of contact was still there, but it made her want to cry.

  Sio's beautiful dead grass eyes were broken, so vulnerable that she couldn't bear it. Her throat constricted.

  I can't survive this again.

  "My turn."

  He turned his head to see what was happening in the room. She caught his jaw and turned him to face her as she stood. She kept hold of him until she found her footing and stepped back through the door. Loren's unconscious form slipped on her shoulder, causing her to stumble. She'd forgotten that she was carrying him. Now that she'd remembered it was as if he gained an additional ten pounds to spite her. A latch clicked into place behind them.

  Sio's voice was soft and empty, "Tian, I don't recognize this place."

  They were in a corridor made of limestone and water; gold filigrees decorated the walls with impeccable taste and delicacy.

  "It's okay," she said. The response was followed by a blood curdling scream from her former torment that pissed on the peaceful facade.

  Chapter 15

  A Safe Place

  Sio kept moving. If he didn't the hastily erected compartments in his brain were going to buckle under the weight of what he'd witnessed. He trudged along. The sand skittered away from his feet as the granules pressed themselves in the opposite direction of his bulk. It spilled in hissing curtains from one side of the narrow path in front of him. Briny tides soaked his shoes from the other side, climbing his pant legs like attention starved children before plummeting to meet the mica flecked sheets of sand in the twilight abyss below.