Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows)

by C. V. Larkin

  The air was blanketed in coastal fog. Blue green flecks of phosphorescent algae sparked in the mist, spinning in dizzy arcs away from his skin. As beautiful as it was he couldn't muster a response. He was almost numb. Almost. If it weren't for Tian and his reaction to what she'd done for him, he would have said his touchy-feely fuse had been blown for good.

  Don't think, just walk.

  He plodded in the only direction available. He held Tian's hand, pulling her along because it was the only thing she would allow. I walk out of here under my own power, she'd said. It was more than he'd been able to do. A fissure dug deeper into his chest. Sio cracked his neck and readjusted Loren's weight, hoping to get the feeling back into his fingers. He'd never be able to repay what Tian had just done for him, but he held her hand because that was what he could do. He thumbed tiny circles into her palm, murmuring useless words of comfort and trying to overcome the burning impulse to bleed any and everyone that had hurt her. He prayed for the existence of karma. He'd make sure of its actuality if he could, but now wasn't the time and he had to find a way to make that stick. The sentiment was a mantra in the back of his brain, willing the unadulterated psychotic rage to follow and wait.

  God, she'd endured it all. So much evil, and cruelty, and madness. There had been so much pain. The uneasy taint of what he'd seen worked its way through his bloodstream, polluting it. Tian had survived things so heinous he hadn't been able to watch all of it. Then she'd done it twice to save him the same fate. When he'd realized what had happened he had asked the Two to take it back, to press the play button on his shitty memories. They'd laughed. Now his guts were permanently warped. He kept walking anyway.

  The mist swirled, parting like a curtain to reveal a freestanding twig and branch doorway. A skinless hand glowed against the frame before disappearing from view. The door, which looked more like it should be an iron gate, was illuminated with the Lulo's sickly light. It popped open like the lid to a malevolent jack-in-the-box and the alleyway on the other side wasn't what he'd expected.

  The view was grim, and dark, and ugly; an almost laughable contrast to the shimmering azure otherworld of the Between. It may as well have been the first stanza of melody after a hundred years of silence. Sio dragged them through the twigs in a grateful rush as the door swung shut with a harsh clatter. He held his breath and waited for catastrophe. Nothing happened. The late night city sounds of the mundane world prickled at the edges of his awareness, bleeding back in as the droning beeps from the early morning garbage trucks, the exhaust sputtering from careening taxi cabs, the shuffle of footsteps from random passersby, and the low hum of electricity that fed into the dormant structures around them. It was heaven, more than he had let himself hope for.

  "Tian..." Whatever he'd been about to say died in his throat.

  Her eyes were glazed with unshed tears. Sio set Loren down, propping the guy against the brick wall next to the gate they'd come out of. He could still feel the cool electricity of Tian's touch lingering against his palm. He turned back and, before he had the chance to talk himself out of it, pulled her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, wrapped his body, hell, his whole existence around her as if he could play human shield to ward off the crushing aftermath of recall.

  The fire lit warmth between them flared, filling him with a vibrant metallic rush of contact high beginning with the hand he used to stroke her hair. Tian made a small pained noise against him. He froze, but didn't pull away or let her go. Her whole body was ridged in his embrace, thrumming with tension. Sio's throat was so tight he had trouble speaking around the knot in his esophagus.

  "Let it go," he said. "I got you."

  "I can't."

  There was a sluggish pause where he had himself convinced she'd pull away. She didn't; she collapsed against his body, melting into him as her arms slid around his torso and she held on for dear life.

  "I can't," she repeated.

  Sio blinked and realized his face was wet. Tears slid out in hot tracks from his exposed eyes. It was the first time he'd cried since he was a kid, the first time he didn't bother to hide it or wipe it away. He leaned his face into the top of her head and dragged in several long slow lungfuls. Her smell was soothing, even tainted with the coppery tang of blood that still clung to them both. If it was a choice between watering her skull and letting her go to mop up he'd openly bawl like a bitch.

  Tian didn't make another sound, but the way she fought to calm the tremors in her system caused the anger at what had been done to her to reassert itself. Every protective instinct from the core of his being screamed through his cells. He felt like he'd failed her.

  "I swear on my life..." Sio licked the salt off of his lips and tried again. "I swear on my life, I'll never let anything like that happen to you again. I swear it on the darkness and on my blood in your veins. I swear it Tian. Never again."

  "Pain is inevitable," she said.

  It hurt to hear the emptiness in her response. The intensity of his emotions peaked and the knot in his chest expanded. The pressure of it sparked under his skin, filling him with the raging power of a tropical storm.

  Wash us clean, he prayed. Make us new.

  "I'll find a way."

  For you I'll be invincible.

  He stroked her hair again as she tilted her head back and met his eyes. The electricity arced between them like a Tesla Coil. It rolled over every square inch of his skin in a silken wave, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He fought against the inexplicable pull toward her. She'd gone still in his arms, aside from the hand that slid around his rib cage and up his chest. Her touch sent shivers in its wake as it drifted around his neck and balled into a fist at the back of his skull. The breath was vacuum sealed in his lungs. A phone went off in her coat, vibrating where it was pressed up against his obliques. He flinched and Tian jerked herself out of his grip, stumbling away from him. She careened toward the mouth of the alleyway like a drunk then proceeded to dry heave in the street. Her phone continued to violate the loose items in her pocket.

  "Should I answer that?" he asked.

  She nodded and spat a hostile comet of residual bile onto the ground as she extracted it. She tossed it to him with a surprising amount of precision, considering she wasn't facing him. Sio caught the thing on instinct and hit accept.

  "Do you have any idea how bored I've been for the last month? I was losing my sodding mind. If I had to sit through one more of Avery's musicals I was going to hurt people. A lot of people. What are your cross streets?"

  "Hallam and Folsom, we're somewhere near the Cat Club," he said.

  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

  "Anyone ever tell you that you sound like a phone sex operator, mate?"

  "No."

  "You do. It's an improvement to GPS, but not as good as my girl. Where's Tian, tosser?"

  "She's right here and don't insult me again." His tone was level, but too much over stimulation was searing holes in the back of his dome.

  "Excuse-"

  Tian cut her off, "I'm fine, Cey. Just get here."

  The woman on the other end of the line must have heard because there was a grunt of acknowledgement before she barked into the receiver and disconnected. "I'm there in ten."

  Sio assumed that the ten she was referring to was measured in minutes, so it was a mild surprise when six seconds later an enormous black Lincoln Navigator spilled from the front of a run-down apartment building on the corner. The thing bounced down the street and screeched to a stop in front of them. The driver side window was tinted so dark it was opaque and nothing else about the tricked out beast read as street legal.

  The window dropped. Sio took one look at the driver and could guarantee that neither she nor Tian had ever been ticketed. Behind the wheel a beautiful black woman with exotic features and jade green eyes perused him with distaste. She exhaled a stream of smoke from the corner of a well formed mouth absent a dangling
hand-rolled cigarette.

  "The hearse has arrived."

  "Hey soccer mom," Tian said, propping herself up in the mouth of the alleyway. She looked exhausted.

  The driver moved on to survey Loren's slumped form a few feet away. Her shrewd gaze returned to Tian. "We picking up strays now, T?"

  "They stay."

  "Both of 'em?"

  "I gave my word."

  The other woman's eyes narrowed and she turned back at Sio. "Brilliant. Whot are you waitin' for then, mate? Get in."

  Sio chaffed at being called a stray, but he busied himself hefting Loren off the ground. He walked around Tian and laid their Good Samaritan out in the back seat. He went to close the door, but thought better of it and buckled the guy in.

  When he turned around again Tian and the other woman were deeply embroiled in a subvocal female conversation he usually went leaps and bounds out of his way to avoid. Irritation still wrinkling his nerves, and contrary to common sense, he put himself in the line of fire. Tian's expression was unreadable, but the hard edges were back. They made her look cruel and otherworldly, slicing through the air in front of her as if she could put down a small army if necessity dictated. It was the kind of metal that commanded respect.

  Desire curled in wildly inappropriate response near the base of his spine. He cursed himself, but didn't back down. There were soft purple bruises that haunted the shadows under her eyes. She didn't need to be strong right now; that she was standing was a testament to what a badass she was. She knew it though, wasn't posturing, or trying to show off.

  "I'm right here," he said.

  There was a stretch of silence that a city bus could have driven through, and what in truth, probably was no more than two or three seconds, before she took him at his word. She released her death grip on the wall and managed a step forward, trusting him to catch her as her knees buckled. The warm weight of her hummed against his body as she pressed her face against his chest for a millisecond, forgetting herself.

  "You know," he said. "I think you're humoring me."

  "You're full of shit," she told him.

  He grinned as he walked around to the passenger side. "You do have a way with words."

  "You'd be the first to say so."

  He opened the door and slid them both inside. As he shifted to get comfortable, he realized the driver was staring at them. She watched, slack jawed, eyes two wide green orbs, as if he'd sprouted a second head or damaged himself in church. The cigarette dangled precariously from its fatal foothold, balanced against the outside edge of her upper lip. As it smoldered, she seemed to have forgotten having perched it there.

  "I think you're about to lose that thing," he said.

  "Wha? Bollucks."

  The hand-rolled made a mad leap, plummeting end over end toward the steering wheel. The woman's hand shot out, capturing the errant butt between two freshly manicured fingers mid-way through its decent. She stubbed it out on the edge of the open window.

  "Slippery bastards," she said. "Whot's your name?"

  "Sio," Tian answered.

  "He go mute in the last thirty seconds then?"

  "He's capable of speech," Sio said.

  "Her name's Ceyla."

  "Charmed," the Brit said, stuffing the remainder of the cigarette behind her ear and throwing the Navigator in reverse. She glanced at Tian. "You alright then, luv?"

  Ceyla tossed her right arm onto the back of their seat and contorted so she had an unobstructed view out the back window before hitting the gas. The vehicle jolted into motion, barely hitting the pavement as they careened toward the solid face of the apartment building the SUV had come from.

  "'Bout as good as I look," Tian answered.

  They hit the brick exterior and began to roll. The world exploded in a familiar white haze. It was a relief to stumble onto some consistency, a piece of strange he already recognized. Sio leaned back against the leather seat and closed his eyes. The way Tian felt in his lap was hazardous territory. He couldn't escape the way she smelled either. The electric tang, desert rain, slightly floral, clean scent of her slid across his olfactory senses and burrowed into his brain. He wanted to bathe in it, roll every inch of his naked body against it, inside of it, and find out if immersion was possible. That smell was the promise of things he hadn't known existed.

  There was another sharp jolt so he opened his eyes. The world didn't fade into focus as much as it snapped back in a vertigo inspiring way, popping into place like a burst soap bubble. The Navigator landed hard, flinging up a cloud of dust into the dense shroud of fog that hung heavy around them. A buffalo stared at them through large baleful eyes on the far side of the grill and looked nonplussed at the intrusion. It made an attempt to replace a headlight with its skull. Tian swore under her breath and Ceyla took the attack as a formal cue to exit, peeling out in reverse yet again.

  Once they were clear of the livestock which neglected to continue pursuit, she slammed the vehicle back into drive with an angry whine from the engine, and picked up speed, tearing toward the edge of the paddock. A small wedge was nestled in the ground by the chain link fence and they were headed for it like it owed them money. The vehicle swerved before making contact and the back tire closest to the thing hit hard. The next minute they were airborne and flipping. Sio white knuckled the handle on the door frame, staring at Tian and interpreting her lack of response to mean this was a frequent occurrence. They cleared the fence in a dazzling display of death-proof stunt driving, and landed on a patch of road facing the wrong way somewhere in Golden Gate park.

  Chapter 16

  Devotion

  The visions projected into Tian's optic nerve started the second the hearse hit the portal outside of the Brainwash Laundromat. One minute moderately mundane conversation (which let's face it, was all she was capable of handling), the next, agony and a goddess complex. White hot shards lanced through her collarbone, grafting themselves in shifting lines to her shellshocked flesh, serving as a one hundred percent effective distraction from the head trip she'd been trying unsuccessfully to get out of.

  Fire is always cleansing.

  The thought hadn't been hers.

  A wellspring of god-touched emotion bubbled beneath the searing arcs of torment, buffering the bitterness and sting of the flame that slid down her right arm. Tian watched, mesmerized as the timelines of centuries unfolded, gossamer threads shifted and glittered in stunning detail and clarity. They radiated a gracious complexity of unfathomable proportions.

  The past, present, parallel, and future blended into the myriad events that spun out, took shape, and came to the perfect fruition of a blessing. All the beauty and the madness had been thoughtlessly set in motion by her own hand. Through the Goddess, Tian felt the enormity of what she saw and was humbled before those shining strands of eternity.

  She must have made a sound, a small gesture maybe, because she became increasingly aware of Sio. She was aware of the points at which his body came in contact with her own, of the rough fingertips he was brushing against her jaw, the spill of his emotions, and the intensity of her own attraction.

  The brackish mixture of her own warring desires dispelled the gift of vision from the Goddess. It evaporated from within, a soft breath on a winter night, leaving her staring into the pale anxious eyes of her Anamchara.

  The impossible consuming need of him was back, eating her breath, and making her reckless. Tian shifted forward without thinking, unable to stop even if she had been, and pressed her lips against his bedroom pout. His mouth was hot and silken. Her body bled fire in response to the touch. Sio's eyes popped wide as if she'd surprised him before he kissed her back and the flashbulbs burst in her head.

  Wave after wave of pleasure radiated from that connection. The soul stealing bliss of the small consummation blanketed her skin, seeping inside. Her heart expanded and contracted with enough force to threaten the construction of her rib cage as she worked her body closer. The last vest
iges of frost in her bones burned away, melted in the blistering heat of attainment. The vehicle shuddered around them.

  "OY!"

  The panic and pitch of Ceyla's voice had risen to ear ripping decibels. It set off enough self-preservation alarms in Tian's brain to trip the land mine that helped her claw her way toward some shoddy semblance of control and avoid getting fucked in the passenger seat of the SUV. She struggled against the metallic fluttering in her veins and slammed into the dashboard, nearly falling off Sio's lap and landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor boards. He caught her around the waist.

  They were both breathing hard. She could barely see him through the cloying volumes of steam in the cab. It saturated everything, billowing out of the windows and the sunroof. Sio stared at her, eyes unfocused, lust naked in the hard angles of his sexed up face as the tendrils of steam continued to spill off of his golden skin. Tian looked down and realized that the blame for the sauna was half hers.

  "Damn."

  "Too right," Ceyla said. "I am not Dim Sum. Fuckin' hell, I just got me hair done."

  The vehicle buckled again, causing the slowly dissipating steam to ripple and curl like smoke. Tian looked over and clued in to the sudden tension that registered under Ceyla's careful composure. It was a shift so subtle that even Avery might have missed it.

  "We're stuck, aren't we, not parked because you couldn't see."

  "Harmless pixies my ass," Ceyla answered.

  "Pixies?" Sio asked. He flinched and slapped a thick hand against his neck. "What was that?"

  Tian and Ceyla both answered in the same breath. "Pixies."

  A high-pitched moan of pleasure from the plastic seat belt holder set Tian's teeth on edge. Sio eased away with wary surprise as a seven inch pink haired female arched against the nylon of the belt, furry wings spread wide. Her spindly arm was draped through bits affixed to the side of the cab. Belladonna writhed against the poly-blend strip in the throws of food-gasm, crinkling the wrappers that made up her bizarre garment. Sio's blood smeared the lower half of her heroine chic pallor and dripped in bright splatters onto the tops of the small breasts that were contained in the twisted remnant of a Three Musketeers wrapper.