The Beautiful Ashes

by Jeaniene Frost

  “That was already broken,” I began to lie, only to be interrupted by the heavyset African-American woman saying, “You are in the wrong place, Grandpa!”

  What? As I goggled at her, the woman’s gaze dropped to my lips, then to the glass on the floor.

  “You okay, sir?” she asked in a less scandalized voice.

  “I’m not a man,” I protested, then stopped at the sudden burst of laughter from inside the store. Uh-oh.

  Costa’s look of disbelief when he first saw me. Adrian’s amused comment of “Nice” to Zach. Both of them following me to the ladies’ room. This woman calling me “sir” and “Grandpa.”

  “I look like an old guy, don’t I?” I asked resignedly. “An old guy wearing lipstick, no less.”

  Concern pinched her features. “Is someone here with you, sir? Or is there someone we can call?”

  “Yeah.” My voice was wry. “Call the angel with the warped sense of humor, because this is all his fault.”

  Now she really looked concerned, but I brushed by her, saying, “Fun’s over, sonnies. Time to take Grandpa for a ride!” to the two grinning guys waiting for me.

  * * *

  Way back when, Roanoke Island had been the site of a Colonial-era settlement that mysteriously disappeared. Today, parts of the island drew visitors by marketing that event. Take Festival Park, a tourist attraction complete with a structural re-creation of the Lost Colony, a play about it, several Elizabethan-styled games, and people wandering around in sixteenth-century costumes.

  Costa didn’t drop Adrian and me off here so we could join the festivities. In the glimpses I caught of the demon realm, the north side of Roanoke Island was surrounded by ice instead of water, with barren earth replacing the pretty oak and myrtle trees. Some of the pre-Colonial huts from Festival Park were there, though, looking not much different from the ones that duplicated the village in the former Lost Colony.

  “It’s like the realm swallowed this place,” I murmured to Adrian, glad someone else could see what I did.

  “That’s exactly what happened,” he responded, his voice low. “Realms start out as duplicate reflections of our world, with everything we build here getting mirrored there.”

  “Everything?” I tried to absorb the staggering thought that demon realms had duplicated the entire world.

  “As reflections,” Adrian stressed, leading me into the trees behind the Visitor’s Center. “They’re not tangible yet. That only happens when demons get powerful enough to absorb an area. When they do, the place, along with everyone in it, gets sucked into a new realm in the demon world. So in effect, they swallow it. Then what’s left in our world is an empty shell.”

  For a second, I closed my eyes, thinking of the two versions of the bed-and-breakfast Jasmine was trapped in. “But that shell can be rebuilt.”

  “It can.” Adrian looked around, his mouth curling. “Absorbed places carry negative imprints of what happened, even if people don’t understand why they don’t want to build there. Festival Park is at the back end of the demon realm. The main part looks just as beautiful in our world, but it isn’t crawling with shops and hotels like these sections of Manteo.”

  He was right. The part of Manteo we’d rented a room in had nearly wall-to-wall bed-and-breakfasts, inns, restaurants and stores. Compared to that, the place where the former Lost Colony had been located was largely undeveloped.

  “So what was our version of Mayhemium’s realm, before he swallowed it?” I asked, no longer whispering since we were a hundred yards into the woods by now. “It looked like bigger versions of the Sun and Moon pyramids in the Avenue of the Dead.”

  He gave me a tight smile. “You know your history.”

  “It’s my major,” I said, remembering that the ruins of Teotihuacan were thousands of years old on our end. The demons had had plenty of time to keep building on their side of the realm. By comparison, the colony at Roanoke had been recently swallowed, and it was far less impressive than sucking in the third-largest pyramid in the world.

  “Why’d the demons want this place?” I wondered.

  Adrian gave me a jaded look as he held back a low-hanging branch so I could duck under it.

  “Same reason every conqueror wants more territory. The person with the most usually wins.”

  Duly noted. “And you think the weapon might be here, why?”

  He stopped in front of a tall tree stump that had been halved, as though a lightning strike long ago had split it in two. The dark wood rising up behind him reminded me of Mayhemium’s wings, and I shifted uncomfortably. What horrors would I discover in this new realm?

  “It’s led by a weak demon,” Adrian said. “All I know of the demons from Goliath’s line is that they’re very strong. That rules out the weapon being hidden in one of their realms. Otherwise, the demon who stole it would’ve just given it to that realm’s ruler instead of hiding it while looking for someone who could wield it.”

  I stared at him, incredulous. “You’re saying that Mayhemium was a weak demon?”

  His snort was contemptuous. “Oh, yeah. Total pussy.”

  “Sure. Because who can’t transform into dozens of killer crows, am I right?”

  His mouth quirked at my shrill tone. “You freaking out, Ivy?”

  Yes. If Mayhemium was the demon-lite version, we were so screwed! “I’m just...absorbing this.”

  That quirk deepened. “Sorry, time’s up. Here’s the door.”

  With that, he grasped me and then dropped us backward into the V in the tree stump. Instead of hitting the long-dead wood, the realm-piercing roller coaster started, leaving me with a familiar sensation of nausea when it spit us out into a dark, freezing version of Festival Park.

  This time, lights from the realm’s residents were close enough that I didn’t feel like I’d been struck blind. Of course, it also meant that we were stopped by a minion before we’d been here less than five minutes. The slide show of white in his eyes matched the furs he wore over his leather-and-metal outfit, making him look like he’d gotten it at a Viking surplus store.

  I’d heard enough Demonish to know that he said a variation of “Stop! Who goes there?” to Adrian, but his reply was lost on me. It seemed to satisfy the minion guard, and the way he barely looked at me made me glad for Zach’s old-man disguise.

  “What was your excuse this time?” I whispered when the guard was far enough away not to overhear us.

  Adrian’s mouth tightened. “I told him you were food.”

  Right, because that, forced labor and forced sex were the only things demons imported humans into their realms for. A sick sort of rage swept over me. Jasmine. Despite Adrian’s assurance that the demons were treating her better than anyone else, I couldn’t help but wonder what horrors she’d gone through while I was fumbling around looking for this weapon.

  I forced those thoughts back. They only led to more rage and feelings of helplessness, which wouldn’t do my sister any good. Finding the weapon would, and to do that, I needed to concentrate on abilities I was just learning to use.

  We passed some old wooden huts that were covered by a thick layer of ice. Human slaves occupied them, and it was all I could do not to give away my warm jacket, boots and gloves when I saw them shivering in their paltry coverings. I couldn’t, of course. That would be announcing myself to the minions and demons here, and though there were a lot less of them than in Mayhemium’s realm, there were a lot more innocent bystanders on our side of Festival Park. Costa waited with our arsenal in the parking lot, but starting a firefight at a tourist attraction was the last thing we wanted to do.

  After the wooden huts, we walked along what seemed like a mile-long line of igloos. The igloos made sense, I supposed, since ice was the only material in large supply here, and demons had absorbed this realm before anything substantial was buil
t. Light inside made the igloos glow, and while I was sickened by all the trapped people they denoted, I was grateful for the extra illumination. Did I mention I’d come to hate the dark?

  “Sense anything?” Adrian asked.

  “No,” I replied, and he grunted as though he’d expected that. Guess the last place he thought the weapon was hidden was in the wall of a slave hut.

  About three miles into our hike, I had a question, too. “Why are demon headquarters so far away from realm entrances?”

  Adrian shot me a slanted look. “Tactical advantage. They want to see an army coming, if someone’s after their realm.”

  “Demons fight each other for control of the realms?”

  Adrian’s mouth curled into a sardonic grin. “Humans don’t have a monopoly on land grabs, Ivy.”

  Guess we wouldn’t. Compared to all the demons’ other cruelties, snatching each other’s kingdoms seemed almost a benign activity.

  After ten minutes of brisk walking, a castle came into view. The walls glowed with different colors, faint but ethereal, reminding me of a small, multicolored version of the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. When we got closer, I saw the gates were adorned with ice sculptures that looked like mermen and mermaids. A long staircase bordered by ice-carved waves led up to the castle, and the front doors resembled huge seashells.

  More guards were stationed around the gates. In addition to metal, some of their weapons seemed to be forged from ice. It was as though we’d stepped into a demonic version of Poseidon’s Frozen Paradise, and the more I stared, the less I wanted to remember. I hated that it was so beautiful when I knew what horrors lurked beneath the exquisite exterior.

  After exchanging a few words with one of the guards, Adrian took us around to the back of the castle. There, we were stopped again, and Adrian relayed the same cover story as before. One of the guards shook his head as he gave me a rough cuff, and I didn’t need to know Demonish to guess that he was disparaging my proposed edibility. I hunched my shoulders and tried to look terrified while I hoped Adrian’s darkening expression didn’t mean he was about to deck the guard. I still hadn’t sensed anything, but we hadn’t entered the castle, and I wasn’t leaving until I’d given it a supernatural once-over.

  Thankfully, Adrian didn’t do anything violent, and we were finally allowed into the back of the castle. The narrow hallway looked more igloo-like than Icy Emerald City, but I guess fanciness wasn’t required for the slave entrance, although the floor was a pretty shade of deep pink—

  Adrian’s grip on my arm tightened until it should have been painful, but I barely felt it. The floor of the room we entered resembled a layer of rubies. The reason for that became abhorrently clear as I saw a cloudy-eyed minion mop up a pool of blood, its crystallized stain adding another layer of red. The blood came from a nearby ice slab, where another leather-clad minion carved out sections from the body lying on it.

  This wasn’t the slave entrance. It was the slaughterhouse.

  Mopping Minion said something in Demonish to Adrian. He responded in a harsh voice, dropping his hand from my arm, but I wasn’t focused on him.

  A bound, naked boy lay on the floor. At first, I thought he was dead, too. Then his gaze slid from the dripping slab to me, and the absolute hopelessness I saw in it shattered me. He wasn’t silently begging for help. As he watched the butchering going on above him, his blank, empty stare said he knew nothing could save him from being next.

  Without the slightest hesitation, I drew out the gun Adrian had given me and fired. The butcher went down, clutching his chest. I kept shooting as I advanced, part of me marveling at the quiet, cough-cough sounds the gun made. That silencer Adrian had screwed onto the end really worked as advertised.

  I stopped shooting only when the butcher’s body turned into ash. Adrian looked at the black ashes on the ice, at the slack-jawed minion who’d stopped mopping, and finally at me.

  “Shit,” he said simply.

  chapter twenty-one

  Mopping Minion opened his mouth. Before he could scream, Adrian’s punch to the throat cut him off. Then Adrian gripped him in a brutal headlock that ended with a jerk, a snapping sound, and the minion dissolving into a pile of ashes on the floor.

  “Move, Ivy,” Adrian ordered. “We don’t have long until someone finds them.”

  With the same eerie calm I’d felt when I shot the butcher, I put my gun away and knelt next to the naked boy.

  “Give me your knife,” I said to Adrian.

  He frowned but passed it to me, and I cut through the plastic that bound the boy’s hands. He blinked once, but said nothing, even when I took off my parka and wrapped him in it.

  “Ivy,” Adrian said in a warning tone.

  “We’re taking him with us,” I replied, kicking off my boots.

  Pity creased Adrian’s expression. “I wish we could, but—”

  “We’re taking him with us,” I repeated, almost spitting out the last two words. “I don’t care if it’s more dangerous. I don’t care if he’ll slow us down. He’s coming or I’m not.”

  “You’d risk your sister’s life to save him?” Adrian asked harshly.

  I shoved my boots onto the little boy’s feet. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, so they were too big. Tightening the laces would have to do.

  “I can’t save Jasmine right now,” I said, my voice calm from the absolute certainty I felt that this was the right thing to do. “But I can save him. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. Costa and Tomas are proof that you do.”

  Adrian muttered something in Demonish, but picked the boy up, throwing a hard glance at my now-bare feet.

  “Put the boots back on. I’ll carry him.”

  “He’s freezing and I can manage,” I argued.

  “We do it your way, all of us die,” Adrian said flatly. “Put the boots back on, then shut up and do what I say.”

  I bristled, but our survival outweighed pride, so I took the boots off the boy and put them back on. He still didn’t say anything. Maybe he was in a state of catatonic shock.

  “Now, activate your power and search the castle from right here,” Adrian ordered.

  I tried to clear my mind enough to concentrate. It didn’t work, probably because I was in a small icebox with two piles of minion ash on the floor and a chopped-up body less than five feet away.

  “I need to get out of this room,” I said.

  Adrian’s sapphire gaze seemed to burn into mine. “Not an option, and we’re running out of time.”

  I tried again, closing my eyes, but I still couldn’t concentrate on anything except the carnage around me. I was standing on layers of frozen blood, for crying out loud.

  “Adrian,” I started to say, but his sudden grip on my throat cut me off.

  “Maybe you don’t understand,” he said, fingers slowly tightening. “You need to search this castle right now, and you’re not moving from this spot to do it.”

  I grabbed his wrist, digging my nails into his skin. His hand only tightened more, until my throat burned from the pressure. He didn’t even need to shift his grip on the boy to throttle me, and the child watched us with dull, empty eyes. Panic filled me as I couldn’t get in more than a few thin, insufficient breaths. My chest started to heave in urgency, trying to force in air that Adrian wasn’t allowing me to have.

  Stop! I thought, unable to say anything. My nails ripped into Adrian’s wrist, yet that ironlike grip didn’t lessen.

  “Still can’t utilize your power?” he asked, staring into my eyes with pitiless determination. “Then I’m going to choke you unconscious and leave this kid behind while I carry you out instead. You can’t look for the weapon anyway, or can you?”

  My gasp of horror caught in my throat. He wouldn’t do that...would he? Had I been wrong about him? Was he every bit t
he monster he’d warned me about?

  “The only way you’ll stop me is to access your power and search this place,” he went on. “And, Ivy? I can feel it when you do, so don’t bother trying to fake it.”

  I’ll never forgive you! my gaze swore, but then his grip loosened and air rushed into my lungs, claiming all my attention. My second deep breath was ambrosia, quelling the frantic clenching in my chest. The third took away my panic, and the fourth had me closing my eyes as I sagged with relief—

  An invisible flare ripped out of me, like I’d fired off a sonar ping that somehow made no sound. With it, I felt the castle and nearby grounds as though I’d managed to scour them in an instant. At the end of it, I knew, with a certainty as strong as my decision to take the boy, that the weapon wasn’t here. Nothing hallowed was. This was a frozen wasteland of evil.

  With a measured look, Adrian let me go. Red drops blended into the ruby-colored floor as blood dripped from his wrist where my nails had ripped into it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said stonily. “We couldn’t take the boy into the castle without getting caught, so I had to do something extreme to make you access your power from here.”

  “How’s this...for extreme?” I rasped, then slapped him as hard as I could, anger tapping into strength I normally didn’t have. Adrian’s head rocked sideways, and when he turned to face me, a red handprint was already swelling along his cheek.

  “I deserved that,” he said, still in that flinty voice. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

  I was furious at him for choking me into near-unconsciousness and threatening to leave the boy, but I filed that away under a rapidly growing list titled Paybacks To Come. I did shake his hand off when he led me toward the exit, and my glare warned him not to touch me again as I followed him down the pink-floored hallway.

  Before we reached the door, Adrian took my gun out of my parka, replaced the empty clip with a full one, and then handed it back to me.

  “We might have to shoot our way out,” he said, mouth curling with the dark anticipation he always showed before a fight. “But this time, don’t fire unless I do.”