The door swung inwards, opened by Ash, his shirt rumpled and coppery hair disheveled. There were shadows beneath his honey-brown eyes, dark as bruises against his freckles. “We were just talking,” he said hastily, waving an arm at the brown-haired girl sitting cross-legged on the bed, blushing.
Alex said nothing, just raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Um. Yeah,” said Ash, looking awkward. He turned to the girl on the bed. “Goodnight, Del.” He pushed past, nodding at her. “Rose.”
Raze shut the door behind them and leaned against it, listening to the footsteps retreating down the hallway. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble, too.”
Del shrugged. The pale green aura she’d had since claiming the Heart Blade four months before was a faint sheen in the lamplight. “I don’t really care. Alex will have to start treating us like grown-ups soon. In a few more months Ash finishes his high school diploma. That was the only condition his dad made when he moved to the Chapterhouse. And he’s almost eighteen. If I were still human, I’d turn eighteen next year, too.”
The words if I were still human hung in the air, heavy, weighted. Last summer had changed them both. Raze had lived in New York, an orphan at the Abbey of Saint Martin of Tours, oblivious to her preternatural nature. And then she’d been attacked by a vampire assassin, and her whole world had flipped upside down. The Guild of Saint Peter had spirited her away and removed the wards she’d worn since she was a baby, and Raze had discovered she’d inherited her mother’s werewolf blood.
And Del… Del had changed, too. She’d been a half-demon on the run. And now her lilac demon’s aura had faded and changed, and no one knew exactly what she was, only that she was the Heart Bearer. The one who the myths said would lead the preternatural world into light, or darkness. Raze eyed her roommate as she sat quietly, staring down at fingers splayed in her lap.
“Del?” asked Raze, breaking the silence. She pushed away from the door and took a step toward the bed. “Is Ash okay?”
“Not really.”
“The nightmares again?”
Del nodded. “Nothing seems to make it better. I’ve tried, but nothing works.” She touched a hand to her chest, and Raze knew she was talking about the Heart Blade and the healing powers it granted.
Del’s hand crept to her arm as it always did when she was anxious, her thumb rubbing the scarred letters on her skin that spelled out never. Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “It’s not physical, it’s not something I can fix. It’s inside him, and only he can mend it. Dan says it’s some sort of PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Such a stupid, trite name for something that breaks a person up inside into a million pieces. And it’s like a puzzle, but I don’t have the key, and every piece I help him fit back, another slips out of place.”
Raze sank onto Del’s bed. Del looked up, dark eyes full of pain. Ash wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt by this secret war between preternaturals. They all had, in one way or another, or they wouldn’t be here under Guild protection.
“Maybe you’re not supposed to fix him,” Raze said. “Maybe you’re just supposed to be there for him. He needs you, not the Heart Bearer. Just… I don’t know. I don’t even know why you’re telling me this. I can’t help you. I’m lost, Del. I have no idea what I’m doing…”
Her voice cracked and she let the words trail out. She had no answers. Not for herself, and certainly not for Del. She tried to find something to say, anything. Some sort of comfort. But in the end she just touched her roommate lightly on the arm and said, “We should get some sleep.”
CHAPTER TWO
Ash
Alex led Ash away from the dorms and downstairs to the training wing. Ash frowned.
“Where are we going?”
Alex hadn’t said anything yet: not a word of recrimination or disappointment. Instead of the lecture Ash had expected, the vampire pushed open the door to the sparring room and switched on the lights.
“Gear up,” he said.
“What?” Ash knew he must look like an idiot, standing there blinking in the sudden glare with his mouth open like a fish.
“You heard me.” Alex stalked over to his labeled cubbyhole and reached in for his fencing equipment.
“We’re sparring? Now? It’s almost three in the morning!”
“And? You have a problem with this?”
Ash realized he was still gaping and shut his mouth with a click of teeth. He hurried over to his own cubby and pulled out his mask.
“Full gear, Ash,” said Alex softly.
Ash chewed on his lip, anxiety flaring in his stomach. He glanced over at the vampire, who was calmly folding up his monk’s robes and his sweatshirt. Under them, Alex was dressed in jeans and an old pair of battered Docs, tattoos snaking up his arms and under the faded black t-shirt he wore. Alex shrugged into a padded jacket, and Ash hurriedly took out his own protective gear and put it on before tugging on his mask.
He cleared his throat. “Why are we doing this? Is this supposed to be some sort of punishment for sneaking into Del’s room?”
“You should know me better than that. No, Ash, this isn’t punishment. Let’s call it… therapy.” Ash couldn’t see the vampire’s expression properly behind his mask, but his voice was kind. “I know about the nightmares. Del told me. She worries, you know? And I do, too. So. Steel tonight, I think.”
Ignoring the acrylic practice swords that classes usually trained with, Alex fetched two blunt metal longswords from the selection at one side of the room, and handed one over. They lined up on either side of the sparring circle painted onto the floorboards. In the mirror that took up the entire length and height of one wall, they were two black-clad forms in bulky historical martial arts fencing gear, distinguishable only by the faint glimmer of their auras: vampire-red for Alex, and the pure gold of the angel-blood sentinels for Ash.
They held their swords up in a salute, and then Alex attacked. Ash parried the opening cut, winding his hands high into the Ochs form to jab at Alex’s mask. But Alex was already twisting away, stepping aside to deliver a brutal overcut that landed squarely against the back of Ash’s neck and knocked him to his knees.
He stood up, breathing hard, and returned to his side of the circle.
“Again,” said Alex.
Ash attacked first this time, but Alex caught his blade neatly, pushing it away to slide the tip of his sword against Ash’s protected throat.
“And you’re dead,” said Alex. “Again.”
Steel clashed, loud and echoing. The blows came faster from both sides. But Ash couldn’t find an opening, couldn’t land a single hit. Usually, when Alex taught class, he allowed his students to score points now and then as part of the process. But tonight the vampire was merciless, and over and over his voice rang out, “You’re dead.”
Anger boiled up inside Ash. “You’re not playing fair,” he spat out, rubbing his wrist where a particularly vicious blow had caught the bone even through the padding of his glove.
Alex pounced, even though the bout hadn’t begun. Ash barely had time to throw up a hurried defense. “Life isn’t fair,” Alex said, voice as cold as the steel in their swords. The sparring blade caught Ash in the ribs hard enough to bruise, despite the thick jacket. Ash jumped away, out of the circle, but the vampire kept coming, the blows landing in a flurry all over Ash’s body as he tried to turn his wild and panicked defense into some semblance of organized attack.
“Was it fair when your mother died?” Alex asked, his sword ringing against the side of Ash’s mask so hard Ash saw stars. “Was it fair when you were taken by witches, tortured? Was it fair when Theodore Raven almost killed you, almost took Del?” Alex knocked Ash’s blade to one side and slammed his sword’s pommel into the front of his mask, shoving him backward a whole foot.
His anger erupted and Ash yelled out in fury, launching himself at the vampire. Ash’s blow caught Alex’s neck protector in full, and then he wound around and delivered a nasty uppercut to the o
ther side of Alex’s mask with a ringing clang of metal. He realized with a jolt that Alex had stopped fighting — that he was just standing there, letting Ash beat him up.
Ash dropped his sword. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard it clatter to the floorboards as he threw himself at Alex, fists up in front of him. “Fight me, damn it!”
He punched Alex’s padded body over and over, and suddenly it wasn’t Alex he was hitting but a myriad of remembered faces, flickering past too quickly to focus on. The two witches who’d tortured him last summer. The half-demon, Theo Raven, taunting him, laughing until Ash had buried the screwdriver hilt-deep in his eye. Shade Raven’s pack, victorious as they tore his mother apart while his fourteen-year-old self watched, unable to help. His father, who’d turned his cheek and obeyed the Covenant laws that let it happen. Ash saw them all, and it wasn’t fear he felt, like everyone seemed to think — poor traumatized angel boy. It was mindless, wordless fury. And he wanted to hurt them, make them bleed, even his father, even Theo whom he’d already killed once.
The anger ripped right through him, hollowing out all that was Ash and then filling him up instead. It was overwhelming, and terrifying. It felt like the time he’d managed to call upon Michael’s Blessing: something alien, not of this world, both right and wrong at the same time. Something other. He couldn’t— wouldn’t give in to it. He wouldn’t let it win. But oh, God, it wanted to win, wanted to take over and tear him apart, and he didn’t want it, he didn’t.
He realized he wasn’t hitting Alex anymore; he didn’t even know when he’d stopped. The anger and the fear pressed in on him, holding him down and keeping him pinned to the spot, when all he wanted to do was run far away and leave it all behind. His vision darkened, and he dropped to his knees, struggling to breathe behind the heavy black mesh of his mask. His heart hammered in his chest, too fast and too loud, and the room spun around him. He felt sick. Alex sank down to sit cross-legged in front of him and reached out, gently tugging off his sparring mask. A firm hand settled on Ash’s sweaty neck.
“Breathe with me,” said Alex, removing his own mask with his free hand. His voice was quiet, slicing softly into the desperate gulping for air and the iron-tight band that had settled around Ash’s chest.
“Ash? I need you to breathe. You’re having a panic attack.”
Ash followed Alex’s instructions, drawing in air through his nose, holding it for a while, and then releasing through his mouth, long and slow. After a while, the tight feeling around his chest lessened, and the room stopped spinning. He flopped onto his back and covered his eyes, trying to ignore the nausea as he focused on breathing.
Alex moved his hand to Ash’s shoulder, anchoring him. “Better?”
Ash started to nod, then shook his head. He moved his arm away to stare up at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he finally replied, his voice weirdly shaky. His whole body was shaking: light tremors at first, but growing stronger. “It’s too much. I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know how to be this angry.”
“Listen, I’m not going to tell you it will be all right,” said Alex, his hand a steady, comforting weight. “Because it never really goes away. But I want you to know I understand. I get it. I do. So much anger that it hurts, and trying to keep it all locked down, so no one knows how easy it would be to give in.”
Ash’s breath finally evened out, and the sick feeling in his stomach subsided, though he was still trembling. Every inch of him hurt, and he was boneless, exhausted. He was too tired to care that he’d just had a stupid panic attack, or that he’d broken down in front of Alex.
“I dream of it almost every night,” he whispered into the silence. “I dream of how easy it was to kill Theo. Then it’s not Theo I’m killing, but all of them, until I’m covered in blood, dripping with the stuff. And I turn and find that everyone I know is dead: my dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins, everyone I know here at the Chapterhouse, even Del. They’re all dead and I’m alone with the blood. And then I wake up and I’m not sorry, I’m glad I killed him. I’d do it again. There’s something wrong with me, Alex. I shouldn’t be here, with Del. I’m… not good for her. Maybe my dad and I deserve each other. Two broken things.”
Alex didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he took off his jacket and pulled up his t-shirt, twisting around so Alex could see the ink that covered his back in an intricate patchwork of shapes and colors. “Can you see a lion, near my left shoulder? That was my second tattoo. I’ve had it re-inked many times, or else it would have faded away to nothing by now. After I was turned in Cyprus, I disappeared for a while. I had to get away. I needed some time to understand the changes to my body, and to my self. But we were at war, a holy war, or at least I believed so at the time. The Crusades, you know? I was a young knight, fighting under Richard the Lionheart.”
Ash watched Alex pull his shirt back down and turn, blue eyes meeting his. Alex rubbed his face, something hard to define flitting across his features. Regret, perhaps?
“I returned three weeks after it happened. After I became a vampire. And I found that my entire cavalry unit had been slaughtered. Dead. All of them. I hadn’t been there to fight beside them. I felt immense guilt, but above all, I was angry. I tracked down the soldiers who had killed those men I had lived and fought beside. And all I wanted was to end their lives.”
“Did you?” Ash spoke quietly, not wanting to interrupt the story.
“All of them. Every last mother’s son.” Now the regret was clearly stamped across Alex’s face. “Then I caught up with King Richard’s army and turned myself in. I confessed to what I’d done, and knelt at my king’s feet to await his justice.”
“You were punished?”
“I thought I deserved to be. I had given in to my anger, and had killed in cold blood for nothing but revenge. I was hungry for it. Starving. I killed old men, and young. I killed those who had joined their army freely, and those who’d had no choice. I was cruel, and indiscriminate. But no. I wasn’t punished. Instead, I was received as a hero.” Alex bowed his head, his blond hair falling across his eyes and covering them from view. “I’ve never forgiven myself,” he said. “I got the tattoo a month later, as a reminder, and a warning.”
“Warning?”
Alex lifted his head. “Anger is a tool. It can be useful. But it can also become an overpowering force with a mind of its own. You need to learn to control it, before it controls you. And Ash? Del chose you. She needs you as much as you need her. Don’t let your anger and your pain push her away.”
He got up and held out a hand to hoist Ash to his feet. “I’m sorry I pushed you so hard tonight. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wanted to get you to open up, that’s all. And there you have it: centuries old and still making mistakes. And if I can make them, you can too. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Now, get out of here. Go and clean up. And then go and find that girlfriend of yours, and get some sleep. I can turn a blind eye for once. I’m sure Rose can, too.” He picked up his practice sword and spun gracefully into a cutting drill.
Ash, clearly dismissed, stored his gear in his cubby and left. He had a quick shower and changed into sweatpants and a clean t-shirt. He knocked on Del’s door, slipping inside at her sleepy acknowledgement. He tiptoed past a gently snoring Rose, and climbed into Del’s bed, pulling her warm body against his. She smelled faintly of night sweat and soap, and he breathed her in, feeling his heart slow and the last tremors finally subside as he relaxed. He kissed the back of her neck and let the steady rise and fall of her body hook into him and drag him into oblivion.
CHAPTER THREE
Camille
The text message was brutally short:
We’re done. You’re not worth the risk. Don’t contact me.
Again, thought Camille. Come to think of it, Dominique had called it off last time, too. Okay, so that had been in the late 1930s via beautifully penned letter, but still. “Should have learned my lesson back then,” she muttered, deleting the text with a
savage jab at the screen.
Deacon glanced over from the driver’s seat, his golden sentinel aura a faint shimmer in the dark. “Bad news?” he asked.
Camille scrunched up her nose. “Cell phone breakups are so tacky. Honestly.”
“That the vampire you were seeing?”
“I think ‘seeing’ is a generous term for what we had. Well, whatever it was, it’s over now. Apparently I’m persona non grata.”
Deacon gave her another sideways glance, amusement ghosting across his face and softening the wrinkles that time and worry had etched into his skin. “You knew this sort of thing was going to happen, Camille. I mean, come on! Publicly taking on hundreds — maybe even thousands — of years of demon tradition was bound to give you a certain notoriety among preternaturals.”
“It’s worth it,” she said, determination in the tilt of her chin. “If I win at Court, I get my freedom. Unconditional. I’ll be independent. Packless. And I won’t have to bow to demon laws ever again.”
She knew that most preternaturals found it hard to take her seriously when they first met her. The little succubus: the petite blonde half-demon with the curves and the pout, eternally eighteen years old, although she knew she looked even younger than that. She’d learned the hard way that respect was not earned, but taken. And now she was taking on the Covenant itself. Screw Dominique if she couldn’t handle it.
There was a quiet groan from the backseat of the extended-cab pickup truck. Camille turned to look at their passenger. “He’s waking up,” she told Deacon. She checked the clock on the dash. Four in the morning. He’d been out for three hours straight, all throughout the drive from Vermont.
The man was twenty-three, according to his file. His sandy hair fell across his forehead, shadowing his eyes, and his green witch’s aura gave his pale skin a sickly tint when she flicked on the cab light to check on him. He moaned again and blinked. “Where the hell am I?” he asked, his voice rough.
Night Blade: Blade Hunt Chronicles Book Two Page 2