The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  Katie lay still underneath Justin until he was done thrusting into her and finished his business. Then he collapsed on top of her body in a sweaty heap and nuzzled his greasy nose against her neck.

  “Yeah, baby, that’s what I needed,” he said.

  “Can I go clean up now?” she asked.

  He pulled back away from her and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “No, my lord. I don’t feel well.”

  “You don’t want Traxx to die, is that it?”

  “Of course I don’t want him to die. He was my first boyfriend. I just want him to be able to live his life in peace.”

  “He has about twelve hours left. Do you want me to send him a woman so he can go out with a bang? No pun intended of course.” Katie frowned at his stupid attempt at humor.

  “No, just make it quick so he doesn’t suffer any more,” she replied.

  “As heavy as that guy is, his neck will snap like a twig. Promise.”

  She sighed and nodded her head. “Thank you, my lord. Can I go get cleaned up now?”

  “Yeah, fine. Make it quick though in case I need some more.”

  Katie grinned mischievously at him. “You’re insatiable today.”

  “There have been a lot of interesting developments that are on my mind and sex helps me think clearly.”

  She made an effort to push her lip out in a pouty expression. He noticed it and squeezed her breast, “Of course, being close to you is what really helps me out.”

  Katie nodded her head, saying, “That’s right.” She slid out of bed and bent down seductively away from him, giving him a full view of herself as she reached into her shoe. “This is what makes everything better.”

  She gave a fake squeal of delight as he slapped her hard on the ass. “Go to the bathroom, I think I’m ready for round two, baby,” Justin said.

  Katie walked quickly across the room to the bathroom and sat heavily on the toilet. She pushed hard, trying to expel everything that he’d deposited in her. But she knew that there was still a part of him inside of her and it made her want to throw up.

  Her hands shook as she unfolded the knife that she’d taken that morning. The thought of Justin touching her again made her sick. Was taking a human life worse? She’d been forced to do absolutely horrible and disgusting things to stay alive and to keep people away from her younger sister, but could she kill someone? Besides the few times when he’d forced her to have sex with a few of the palace women and humiliated her in front of Aeric, he’d been gentle enough with her. Did she have what it took to kill him?

  The blade locked in place with a soft click. She’d watched that man in the next room beat people, torture them, cut off body parts and repeatedly commit murder. If what Aeric and Tyler had told her was true, then his gang was responsible for the nuclear war. There was no doubt in her mind that he was evil incarnate. She could do this.

  She stood and hid the knife along the back of her forearm before opening the bathroom door and walking out. “Oh, good, I was starting to wonder if you were taking a crap or something.”

  Katie exaggerated the sway in her hips as she walked towards the bed, allowing the candlelight to play across her cold-hardened nipples. “That’s not very sexy, my lord.”

  He threw back the covers to reveal his small, semi-erect member and asked, “Is this sexy?”

  She placed a knee on the bed and grinned. “Yeah, baby. You know I love it.” She bent over seductively and suppressed a gasp of pain as the knife’s tip dug into the skin on her arm.

  “You know what I want first,” he ordered.

  Katie nodded and slid the hand with the knife under the covers while she bent down over him. It took a few minutes to get him to where he wanted to be, but he finally told her to climb on top of him. She positioned herself and he leaned his head back in ecstasy.

  She grabbed a pillow and pressed it hard against his face while she stabbed savagely into his neck. Blood spurted towards the ceiling when she pulled the blade from his artery, spraying across her naked body. The knife lifted and fell again and again, leaving jagged wounds across his chest and then in his stomach. The air filled with the smell of half-digested food and feces as the blade plunged into his intestines, spilling their contents. Justin’s struggling stopped and the sheets turned a deep red as the last of the blood flowed from his corpse.

  Katie leaned to the side of the bed and threw up. Then she pulled the knife from his body one more time and ran it across the man’s throat to ensure that he was dead. She’d already went this far, there was no sense in leaving herself open for a comeback.

  She gently lifted herself off of him and used the bedsheet to wipe herself off. Then she settled down to wait.

  *****

  The clinking of chains woke Traxx and he looked around wild-eyed into the near darkness. He was used to the normal movement of Coach Harris and Tyler throughout the night in the next room over, however this was different. It sounded like the chains had fallen to the floor. In the morning, he and Tyler were condemned to death by hanging, but it was still the middle of the night. What were the guards up to this time?

  The movement increased and then the twisting of his cell’s door handle announced that someone had come inside. He attempted to see over his shoulder to determine what was happening. It was no use. He couldn’t see anything in the half light of the hall’s candles. It was probably another one of Justin’s ways to fuck with him or one of the night guards coming to rape him one last time.

  A flash of blonde hair appeared over his shoulder and he immediately saw red. Katie had been sent to him in one final twist of the knife in his gut. While he understood her desire to stay alive, it still hurt him more than he could have ever imagined that he’d been deceived by her so completely.

  “Hold still,” Kate said. “We’ve got bolt cutters for the chains.”

  Her words swam through his mind, refusing to process correctly. In an even crueler twist, Justin must have sent her to be the one who unlocked the chains before the hanging. Had the entire night passed without him realizing it and now the hour of his death had arrived?

  A familiar face appeared in front of him. Dried, crusted blood and mucus covered his cheek and jaw where it had oozed unattended for hours after Justin had put out his eye. “Dude, Katie is rescuing us. We need to hurry.”

  “Tyler? Oh my God, I’m so sorry for what that bastard has done to you.”

  “Can’t be helped. Let’s get out of here.”

  Katie materialized beside Tyler and lifted the bolt cutters. The chain broke with an audible snap and he fell the several inches to the ground. Tyler held the kettlebell handle to keep it from hitting the floor and set it down between his feet. As soon as his vision cleared, Aeric reached out and placed his hands around Kate’s throat to squeeze the life from her worthless body.

  “You filthy whore!” he spat. “I’m going to kill you!”

  Tyler’s meaty hand wrapped around his wrist and pulled weakly at it. “Stop, she’s helping us.”

  Traxx saw her eyes beginning to roll back in her head. A few more seconds and he’d be rid of her forever. She’d never be able to betray him again and he’d never be manipulated by her again, forced to do things in order to keep her safe. He’d never have to worry about her safety again; never have to wonder if she was alright, or if she was in pain….

  He opened his hands and she collapsed to the floor. “Fuck. What have I done? Katie, are you alright?”

  She sat up weakly, glaring at him and gasping for air. After several seconds she muttered, “You’re welcome, you fucking prick.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said and reached out for her.

  She recoiled from his grasp and whimpered, “Don’t touch me! We need to go before they find the bodies.”

  Traxx didn’t know what the woman was talking about, but he knew better than to ask and delay the rescue attempt. “Do you know the way out?”

  “I know how to get to the back door, b
ut after that, it’s all new to me,” she admitted.

  “We need weapons,” Tyler said.

  “What about Coach Harris?”

  “He was in the same room as me. When Katie killed the guard and opened the door, we tried to get him to come with us.” Tyler shook his head, “The dude’s gone to Lala Land. There’s nothing left upstairs, man. We cut off his chains, but he curled into a ball and talked to himself.”

  Traxx nodded in acceptance. He’d been pretty close to losing it himself and coach had been in Justin’s “care” for months longer than he had been. He glanced at Kate. She sat on the floor rubbing her neck. Maybe he had lost it and just didn’t realize it yet.

  “I’m not leaving until that bastard is dead. I don’t care if they catch me again, he can’t be allowed to live.”

  Kate accepted Tyler’s outstretched hand and he pulled her to her feet. “He’s dead. I was finally able to get a weapon and I killed him. Oh God, I stabbed him over and over. Then I slit his throat to make sure he was truly dead.”

  The look of pain and sorrow that crossed her face made his cold heart melt. Traxx realized that she’d been as much of a slave in this place as he’d been a prisoner. She hadn’t traipsed around the palace on her own, in fact, this was the first time that he’d ever seen her without a guard. She’d been forced to have sex with that madman and she’d been biding her time until the opportunity presented itself for her to strike.

  He gestured towards her throat and said, “I know this doesn’t help, Katie… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that you were forced to do. I’m sorry that I choked you. I’m sorry that I believed that you’d betrayed me.”

  Her lips pressed thin and she nodded. That was all he was going to get out of her for now. He looked over towards his friend, “We need weapons.”

  Tyler bent and picked up the bolt cutters. “I’ll beat motherfuckers to death with these.”

  Kate pulled a bloody knife from the pocket of her pants. “You can take this. I don’t ever want to use it again.”

  “I don’t suppose you got any of our clothes, did you?” Tyler asked as he gestured to his naked, shit- and piss-covered body.

  “No. You’ll just have to get over your modesty for now, big guy,” Katie replied. “We need to get going. They’re going to find the guards’ bodies soon and Captain Sanders always comes to brief Justin in the morning.”

  “What time is it?” Traxx asked.

  “No idea. I had to wait a long time after I killed Justin…until the bedchamber guard went to the bathroom.”

  He accepted her explanation without comment and walked gingerly towards the open doorway. His legs were still wobbly from being chained for so long. It couldn’t be helped. They had to get out of the Vulture’s palace before they were discovered.

  The bloody body of a guard sat in the hallway so he dragged it into the room. It had a knife and a pistol, so he grabbed both and then sized up the rail-thin body. There was no way that the man’s clothes would come even close to fitting either of the two of them.

  They closed the door and then stopped quickly at the one where Coach Harris was writhing on the floor as if he were in pain. His body jerked and he stretched out to his entire length, then back to a fetal position. It reminded Aeric of how possessed people used to look in the movies. The man had clearly lost his mind and wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

  Aeric started to leave him, but had a change of heart and went into the room. He knelt beside the pathetic shell of the man that he’d once looked up to and tried to talk to him. Coach Harris didn’t even realize that Aeric was there. He had a choice to make and he didn’t have a lot of time. He could leave the man there to be tortured further or he could end his suffering.

  Aeric tried one final time to get the man to stop, to listen to the message that he was free, but the madman heard none of it. His body straightened to his full height as the blade of Katie’s knife went through his ear canal into his brain. Aeric left the knife in place until the body spasms stopped and then pulled it bitterly from the old man’s head.

  Tyler nodded curtly in approval and the group left the torture room. They followed the hallway towards the stairs and crept quietly down to the first floor. At the base of the stairs, two guards sat playing cards, obviously bored of their assignment. Neither of them saw the two naked men descending on them. Tyler bashed in the head of one of the guards while Aeric stabbed the other in the throat. It was over before it even began.

  They turned left towards the back of the building, creeping through the darkness, ready to do whatever they had to do in order to escape. When they arrived at the building’s north entrance, they startled two more guards who were watching the doors to the outside to ensure no one tried to enter in the middle of the night. These two were vastly more attentive than the men at the stairs and recovered quickly from their surprise.

  One of the guards blocked Tyler’s swing with the bolt cutters. It shattered his forearm, but he was still able to fight and brought up his pistol. Aeric’s target hadn’t been as lucky. He dodged the blade aimed at his neck, but took it to the chest instead. The knife penetrated his lung and put him down so that Traxx was able to slit his throat.

  The first guard’s shot went wide of Tyler, striking a pillar on the far side of the rotunda and echoing across the great hallway. Aeric stabbed him from behind and grabbed his pistol. “Let’s go! We need to move. NOW!” he shouted.

  The group burst through the doors and raced barefoot across the pavement towards the single guard shack near the entrance from the street. They had no way of knowing if there was a sniper up in the rafters of the capitol building taking aim on them or if the late hour assisted them. Traxx cursed their bad luck at the guard who’d shot his weapon, probably alerting everyone around that they were attempting to escape.

  There was nothing that could be done about it though. The governor’s entrance was wide open, with no cover or concealment so they ran full tilt. Tyler had trouble maintaining his balance due to the lack of depth perception with only one eye and stumbled multiple times. They raced past a giant circular hole in the ground and Aeric’s mind flashed on what the hell that could have been for. It was clearly man-made with pillars and glass windows down below. It was mildly interesting, but not important enough to stop and read the plaque.

  He sprinted ahead of the other two, grimacing as boils burst and scabs across his body ripped open. Aeric didn’t even bother to see if anyone was in the guard shack, he fired three rounds into the glass doorway and continued running. The glass was bulletproof and it spider-webbed. If there were guards inside, the ear-shattering noise would likely cause them to keep their damn heads down until Aeric and his friends could make it past the structure.

  No one returned fire from the guard shack and he immediately turned left out of the building, heading westward down old 15th Street. Traxx slowed to a walk behind the relative safety of a five-story building that blocked him from view of the palace. He allowed Katie and Tyler to catch up to him and then began jogging slowly. He needed to find a place to rest soon, though. His body was unused to the physical activity, nearly starved and he was battered and broken. Tyler seemed like he was in worse shape than Aeric was—which was saying a lot.

  “I’ve got to stop soon,” he admitted once they were several blocks away.

  “Where can we go?”

  Traxx ignored Katie’s question and looked over to their large companion. He was clearly beginning to flag, but didn’t complain or say anything. “How are you holding up?”

  “We need…to get off…this main road,” Tyler answered gasping for breath between words.

  They crossed a large street and Aeric tried to determine which one it was. The moon was hidden behind the clouds of ash that still smothered the earth and there were no lights anywhere. “I don’t know where we are,” he admitted.

  “Lavaca,” Tyler replied. He pointed to the next street and said, “Guadalupe.”

  “Let’s
go north on Guadalupe,” Traxx said. “In a couple of blocks, we can try to hide out.”

  They made it to 18th Street and then slowed to a walk once again. By the next block, they were looking for a place to hide. Then, the idea hit Aeric. “What if we go to Veronica’s place? Either she’s there or not, but her neighbor had clothes that fit us.”

  “How far?” Tyler asked.

  “It was what, 27th or 28th Street, right?” Aeric asked.

  “28th and Guadalupe.”

  “Okay, so we’re only about ten blocks away, maybe less. Can you make it that far?”

  “I’m good to go. Just need a goal to focus on.”

  “What do we do if this woman that you’re so infatuated with isn’t there?” Katie asked.

  Aeric glanced at her. She was still jealous about Veronica, a girl that Aeric barely knew. He shook his head. He’d never understand what went through women’s minds. They’d escaped a cesspool of torture, murder and rape only a few minutes ago and she was acting like a jealous school girl.

  “Then we steal whatever we can find and try to make it to San Angelo like we’d planned all along.”

  “Well, what if she is there?”

  He stopped and looked over at her. “Are you serious right now? We’re running for our lives and you’re acting like a damned…” He sighed in frustration. Fighting amongst themselves wouldn’t do any good. “I don’t know what you’re acting like, but knock it the fuck off. If she’s there, then we’ll find out why she’s still there and not in San Angelo. Hell, for all we know, that place could be worse off than Austin.”

  She put both of her hands on her waist and cocked her hips out to the side. “You don’t have a right to treat me like that—no, shut up.” She held up her hand and Aeric could see the darkened lines on her skin where blood had dried in the crevices. “Yeah, you were tortured—so was I. Maybe not to the extreme physical level that you were, but that son of a bitch abused me mentally and raped me two or three times a day. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that I’d be able to find a way to save you. Yes, I want to know what your obsession is with this woman. All you’ve ever talked about is how she was going to lead us to her family.