Ashes (The Slayer Chronicles Book 3)

by Val St. Crowe

Logan reached out his hand. Using magic, he ripped guns out of the hands of three of the men. He made the guns hurl through the air and fall in the fountain.

  I grabbed three more arrows. Notching the first one, I let it go.

  The arrow hit another man in the shoulder, knocking him off his bike.

  The Brotherhood was shooting at Naelen.

  My next arrow burrowed into a man’s ear. He fell to the ground with a dazed look.

  Naelen breathed out more fire. It came down like a hot orange curtain right in front of the Brotherhood’s bikes.

  But they didn’t even back up.

  They just kept shooting.

  My third arrow hit a man in his forearm and he dropped his gun.

  I reached for more arrows. I was out. Damn it. After that lab in Colorado, I’d gotten a new quiver and tripled the number of arrows I brought with me, but that quiver had been my main quiver and Cunningham had taken it from me.

  None of that would help me now.

  Logan was pulling more guns out of men’s hands and depositing them in the fountain.

  Naelen was circling low, breathing out fire and herding the men closer together.

  I was helpless. I looked around to see if I could get some of my arrows back, but none were close, and I wasn’t running out with no cover just to get them back. That was when I remembered the talismans around my neck. I had two, the one that I always wore to protect myself from compulsion and the one that Riley had given me. I never used to be able to use the talismans for magic, but while I was kidnapped by Cunningham the first time, when we saved Santa Claus, he’d compelled me to be able to do it, and I remembered how.

  So, I wrapped a hand around the talisman Riley had given me, and I reached out with my mind.

  I gestured with one hand. The man closest to me cried out in pain as both of his legs snapped with a crack. I’d broken his bones. He fell down off his bike.

  Instead of disarming the men like Logan was doing, I thought I’d dis-leg them. I laughed to myself at my own little joke.

  I set about doing it to each of them, working my way down the line as I made their leg bones crunch and shatter.

  Naelen swooped down, picking up two men by their collars and tugging them off their bikes before dropping them on the ground.

  Logan started to help me break legs.

  I peered around one side of the fountain, Logan peered around the other. I reached out and broke another man’s legs. Logan reached out on the other side and broke a man’s legs there. We kept going until we met in the center.

  The men were still shooting. Even the ones with broken legs seemed undeterred. They were crawling forward on their elbows, raising their shotguns and squeezing off shot after shot.

  So, Logan and I had to duck out see a man, snap his legs, and then duck back behind the fountain.

  Then Logan cried out.

  I turned to him.

  He’d been shot. He was holding his arm. The bullet had gone through his bicep, and he was gushing blood.

  “No, no, no,” I said, going to him.

  “I’m fine, Clarke,” he said through clenched teeth. “I heal fast.”

  “You’re bleeding like crazy,” I said. I needed something to tie around his wound. My shirt? Logan’s shirt? How was I going to get Logan’s shirt off of him?

  And then, from around the fountain, came the men, crawling on their elbows, dragging their shotguns along with them.

  Why wouldn’t anything make them stop?

  CHAPTER NINE

  They were surrounding us, coming closer and closer. One of them raised his shotgun.

  I gestured with one hand and the gun flew out of his hands. Tugging Logan with me, I flattened my back against the fountain. Now, I could turn to the left and see them coming or turn to the right and see them coming.

  On the left. Pumping the shotgun.

  I used magic to rip it away from him.

  On the right, another man.

  And on the left.

  I let out a cry of rage and fear and frustration. This time, when I pulled the gun out of one of the man’s hands, I sent it hurtling through the air to me, and I brandished it at the man who was coming for me. “Drop your gun!” I snarled. I didn’t want to kill him. If there was any way to keep from killing him—

  But his finger tensed on the trigger.

  So, I fired. I wasn’t really all that good with guns. I had only shot them a few times in my life, and that had generally been in situations like this, where I’d just picked one up out of necessity. But I had good aim from using my bow and arrows, and the guy was in close range.

  The bullet went right between his eyes. Blood arced out of the circular wound there, and he fell lifeless.

  “Stop,” I yelled to the other men. “Stop, I’ll shoot you all!”

  It was like they were deaf. They didn’t say anything. They just kept crawling for me.

  I began shooting them in the head, one right after the other.

  I shot and shot and killed and killed until I ran out of bullets.

  And then I used magic to get another gun, and I started shooting with that one.

  Meanwhile, Naelen was overhead, sending down pillars of fire that consumed anyone who I couldn’t get to in time.

  In minutes, they were all dead, their bodies littering the driveway in front of the house.

  I turned back to Logan. “We have to get the bullet out of you.”

  He shook his head. “It went through and through.” His breathing was labored, painful. “I’m going to be okay, Clarke.”

  But he didn’t look okay. He was bleeding, and he was pale. He was gray anyway, but now he looked ashen. I hated it.

  “Well,” I said, “we need to get you cleaned up.” I went to him to help him up.

  But there was a splash. Naelen dove into the fountain and came back out—utterly naked, of course. He wasn’t the least bit shy about that kind of stuff. He braced Logan from the side where he wasn’t wounded. “Lean on me, okay?”

  Logan laughed. “Can you put some pants on, please?”

  “Oh, come on, nothing you haven’t seen before,” said Naelen, eyes sparkling.

  I went over to take Naelen’s place. “I’ve got him.”

  Naelen let me support Logan and fished his pants out of the fountain. He pulled the sopping things back on. Then he supported Logan and we all went slowly back to the house.

  * * *

  Once inside, we went directly for a bathroom to clean Logan’s arm. While we were working on dressing it—and I had to admit that it looked better already—Calliope ran past the open bathroom door, laughing maniacally.

  “Kill us all!” she shrieked, still giggling. “He’s going to kill us all.”

  I went out after her. “No, it’s okay. We’re safe now. We killed all the bad men.”

  She paid me no mind, just skipped down the hallway, laughing and going on about how we were all going to be killed.

  Riley stepped into her path at the end of the corridor. He held out his arms, and she went into them.

  She clung to her brother, and her laughter turned to sobs.

  Riley stroked her head. “Hush, then, Calliope. It’s okay. I’ve made arrangements for you to leave.”

  Logan and Naelen came out of the bathroom then. Logan’s arm was bandaged and clean and he looked a little bit less pale. Together, the three of us approached Riley.

  Riley was cupping Calliope’s face in his hands. “Yes, sweetheart, you get to leave. He says you can go.”

  “Who says?” I said.

  Riley looked up at us, startled, as if he hadn’t known we were there. “I say,” he said. “Calliope talks in third person sometimes, and I end up doing it too when I’m crooning to her. Bad habit, I know.” He gave us a tremulous smile. “I’ve made arrangements for Calliope and her nurse to go back to my home up north. After what’s just happened, I’d understand if you wanted to leave as well.” He gestured at Logan. “I’m so sorry that you’ve been
hurt.”

  “I heal fast,” Logan said again. “And at this point, I think we’re even more determined to find that cup.”

  Riley laughed a little. “I’m sure you are. Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get my sister back to Nurse Fiona. The two of them are leaving as soon as possible, before anything else dangerous happens.” He put his arm around his sister and led her away.

  We watched them go.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” I said in a low voice. “We don’t even know if the cup is here.”

  “You found that painting,” said Logan. “That’s got to mean something.”

  “Right,” I said, “and I need to ask Riley about it, too. The problem is that we don’t even know what the cup looks like. That painting could simply be a painting of some other cup. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the one we’re looking for.”

  “I think it is,” said Naelen. “Look, the cup is a manifestation object, right? It makes more of something. When I questioned Riley about that before, he told me that his father used to have these dinner parties in which there would be never ending food and drink, and that he would always have a little gold cup in his pocket the entire night. It’s got to be the same cup.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, “we stay.”

  “We stay,” said Naelen.

  * * *

  The sun was beating down on the dead bodies of the Brotherhood. We stood among them and knew that the stench would be bad soon. We needed to do something about the dead. We couldn’t simply leave them there.

  “I didn’t want to kill them,” I said, peering down at the glassy eyes of one of the men. He had a bandanna wrapped around his head and a grizzled beard. He was a member of the Brotherhood and that made him scum, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t have a family who cared about him, people who would be devastated when he never came home. “I don’t understand why they didn’t stop coming.”

  “Yeah, that was creepy all right,” said Naelen. “They weren’t acting normal.”

  “I agree,” came the voice of Riley. He was striding across the driveway, now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt instead of his robe. He surveyed the bodies littering his lawn. “I’ve been attacked by the Brotherhood before, but never like that.”

  “It was almost as if they were compelled,” said Logan.

  “Cunningham,” I whispered, looking around, as if I expected him to pop out from hiding somewhere, cackle, and say, I like you, Clarke. I’m doing this for you, Clarke. I grimaced.

  Naelen put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “These are humans, remember, Clarke? Any run-of-the mill magical creature could compel them.”

  I nodded, taking a deep breath. He was right.

  “Sure, I guess,” said Logan. “Say it’s a dragon or a vampire or even a mage. They’d still have to be in close proximity or the compulsion would wear off. Where are they?”

  Now we all looked around us.

  But there was nothing out there but vines and tree branches and the sounds of the swampy forest surrounding us.

  Logan turned to Riley. “You have any enemies? Of the magical variety?”

  “No,” said Riley.

  “What about your father?” I said. “Did he have enemies?”

  “My father?” Riley folded his arms over his chest. “Well, I’d say my father was mostly well liked by other mages. There could have been some animosity from dragons, there always is—” He turned to Naelen. “Speaking of which, I had no idea that you were a dragon. The talismans I’ve given your friends, I didn’t know—”

  Naelen raised a hand. “Don’t.”

  I furrowed my brow. That was strange. The last time that Naelen had ever been in the same room as a mage, he’d been less than polite, even though she was the kind of mage who came by her magic honestly. Many mages used talismans that were made from dragons killed for profit by unscrupulous dragon slayers. Those slayers would sell off the dragons scales and teeth and bones for mages to use.

  “Honestly, I don’t practice magic myself,” said Riley. “And part of the reason for that is because I’m horrified by the violence of it. It seems to me that my father was selfish to try to take it into himself. He had no right to magic. He took it, and that wasn’t a good thing.”

  “Really,” said Naelen, and now his voice was deeper, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Riley nodded. “Uh, we’ve never been attacked by a dragon or anything.”

  “You wouldn’t be,” Naelen muttered. “We have better things to do with ourselves than hunt down pathetic mages.”

  “Anyway, my father’s dead,” said Riley. “I’m sure any enemy he might have had would have heard that by now. Why would anyone attack?”

  We all just shrugged at him. He was the one who needed to answer that question.

  Riley walked over to one of the bodies and nudged it with his toe. “I can’t call the police about this. I’ll need to try to cover this up.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” said Naelen.

  Riley clasped his hands together behind his back. “Well, maybe we could burn them.”

  Naelen sighed. “You want my help for that, I assume?”

  “It’s only that I’ve heard that dragons can produce flames hot enough to actually burn bone to ash,” said Riley. “I’d appreciate it.”

  Naelen shook his head. But he spread his hands. “I guess I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thank you,” said Riley.

  * * *

  We used magic to move the bodies out behind the manor and to make a tall funeral pyre. We doused them with gasoline, and Naelen breathed fire on them. (First I took my arrows out of them and cleaned the arrows. I was able to salvage almost all of them.)

  The smell when the bodies burned was horrific.

  By then it was afternoon. We were starving, having worked so hard that the grisly work hadn’t dimmed our appetites. Riley said that the gargoyles had left sandwiches for us in the refrigerators in the kitchen. It seemed almost wrong to chow down after the morning’s events, but we’d worked hard, and we needed to refuel. Using magic can be just as grueling as any kind of exercise.

  “You really can’t think of anyone who would do this?” said Logan as we finished our sandwiches. The first part of the meal had been silent except for our chewing.

  “I don’t really know anyone who does magic,” said Riley. “It’s not something that’s part of my life.”

  “Well someone’s out to get you,” said Naelen. “And they might not be too interested in stopping from the way that all shook down today. You may want to consider doing something to protect yourself. We won’t always be here. Once we get the cup—”

  “We wouldn’t abandon him,” said Logan. “We help people. It’s what we do. But some protection wouldn’t be out of the question.”

  “What kind of protection?” said Riley. “We have the gargoyles. Isn’t that enough?”

  “They can’t help during the day,” said Naelen.

  “Besides,” said Logan, “maybe they’d prefer not to risk their lives for you. Just how nice is that salary you pay them?”

  Riley set down his sandwich, looking chastised. “You’re right, of course. I couldn’t ask the gargoyles to put their lives on the line. That wouldn’t be fair to them.” He rubbed his forehead. “I wonder if it could be… but no, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “What were you about to say?” I asked.

  “I have a brother,” said Riley. “Many years ago, he was disowned, cast from the family, stripped of any magic he had, and any memories he had of all of us were erased. He was thrown into the world to make it on his own.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said.

  “My father thought that it was appropriate given the nature of my brother’s transgressions,” said Riley.

  “Which were?” said Logan.

  Riley looked uncomfortable. “They were bad. Does it matter?”

  “Mayb
e,” I said. “You think he’s angry? You think he’s out there compelling people to kill you? It might be helpful to know what kind of power he can access.”

  “But my father wiped his memory,” said Riley.

  I wasn’t even aware that was possible. I didn’t know of magic that could take away memory. Mages were a crafty bunch, though, writing spells and creating all kind of magical workarounds. They might borrow all their power, but they could be formidable.

  “I suppose maybe he found a way to get his memory back,” said Riley. “And if so… he knew all sorts of things. Dark magic.” He gulped, looking at Naelen. “Dragon sacrifice.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said. Dragon sacrifice was what they used to create the magical jails. It was so powerful, it could suck away all magic entirely. “If he’s done something like that, well, there’s no telling what he could do to us.”

  “Is that what he did before?” Logan said to Riley. “Did he dabble in dragon sacrifice?”

  “Not dragon,” said Riley, making a face. “You have to understand that I loved my brother, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe the worst of him, not for a long time. When he and I discovered the ancient texts my father had kept, the ones that detailed the creation of the gargoyles—”

  “What?” said Logan. “Why would your father have those? Those are thousands of years old.”

  Riley’s jaw twitched. “My family may have been one of the mage families who…” His lips began to tremble. “When I found out that we’d done that—killed and killed to create a race of slaves—I was appalled. That was the moment that I swore I would have nothing to do with magic, and you have to believe me.” There were tears in his eyes.

  No one said anything.

  I reached out and gingerly patted his knee. I guessed neither of the guys felt they could comfort him, and really, who could blame them?

  “Well, anyway,” said Riley, “my brother and I found the ancient text, and he was… enamored of it. He couldn’t get enough of it. I tried to put it down to some kind of morbid curiosity, in the same vein as how some people are fascinated with serial killers. But it soon became clear that his interest went beyond fascination. He longed to try the dark spells that we had uncovered. He…” Riley rubbed his forehead and didn’t continue.