Rising Ashes

by Annie Anderson

  He doesn’t get a swallow in before I’ve traveled to him and smashed that fucking glass against his misogynistic face. While he’s still stunned, I wrench him from his seat and bounce his head off an end table and then use his hair as a handle and drag him like a broken puppet to his feet. He can’t keep them, and I feel the hair start ripping from his scalp as I speak.

  “Using fear as a deterrent does not work for most people. Fear breeds unrest, unrest breeds hate, hate breeds war. You, gentlemen, have fucked around and done nothing for so long, we’re at the late stage. I want you to stop whatever scams you have going on. Whatever nefarious activities your family, friends, employees, your second cousins twice removed. Doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, it stops now. You will investigate and eliminate these operations. Eliminate but not kill. You will bring them to me and I will deal with them. We will be doing things very differently from now on, gentlemen,” I inform them, still holding up Walter by his hair.

  “Is this you not leading by fear?” Vincent asks, and by his smile, I can tell he’s proud.

  “I said fear doesn’t work for most people. For some, it is the only thing they respond to. They will only respect someone stronger than them,” I say with a smile, and unleash some of the power bubbling under my skin. The thick-pile Persian rug beneath my feet begins to abrade away, tiny particles circling around me and my captive like a tornado. Then I really let it out, and the chaise behind me, and every single stick of furniture not nailed down moves as if pulled by a string, smashing against the closest wall.

  “Trust me when I say, gentlemen, I’m stronger than you. Any questions?”

  9

  A Day at the Beach

  WEST – 2015 – ONE MONTH LATER

  I’d always thought my life up to this point was as bad as it could get. I thought nothing could be worse than my childhood or the gutter I crawled my way out of. I thought my father was the worst man I’d ever meet. I thought the level of his depravity and malice would forever go unsurpassed.

  I had no fucking idea.

  I never made it out of that cell. Walter had no intention of listening to me or meeting with me for anything other reason than to inflict pain. He paid me a visit in my lovely six-by-nine cell for the first time about a month ago.

  And every day – every waking moment – is worse than the last.

  He told me all about his visit with Evangeline, and I couldn’t help but be proud of my Angel. My tiny, little pixie sure showed him. His nose had the obvious slant of a fresh break, and there were anywhere from ten to twenty small slices in the flesh of his cheeks, lips and forehead. I was proud – still am – but I paid the price.

  Every single cut and broken bone, every slash and crunch, every single gasp of pain and drop of blood.

  I paid.

  I’m still paying.

  He refuses to kill me, though. No, he won’t kill me – that would be too easy. It would let me off the hook, and Walter is having too much fun. I know why I’m here. I’m a tool. A weapon. A chink in Evangeline’s armor. They know how much she loves me, and I her. They know so much about her. So much. Not from my own mouth, though. I have suffered absolute agony, and still I haven’t said a peep.

  But, I’m not the only prisoner here, and those prisoners don’t love her like I do. Voyt and Kyle are two that I know of. In fact, their cells are on either side of mine. Voyt tried to get me out, tried to convince Walter that I was an asset to him. He had no idea what he was getting himself into.

  My dungeon-mates don’t know it yet, but I have a plan to get us the fuck out of here. I just need one little sliver of a chance, and we’re bouncing out of this hell hole. Really, only one of us needs to get out, but I’m gunning for the three of us.

  I refuse to leave a man behind.

  My only respite is this cell, and as awful as it is, I’d rather be here. The torture is never inflicted here, only in the main chamber at the end of the corridor. That chamber has all the tools – pokers, blades, vices, racks, presses, manacles – all with the stench of old blood and the sweat of agony. But my respite never lasts very long. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything, and it brings back memories of my childhood. The cold hunger in my belly, the wet chill that never seems to go away.

  Then, my chance comes. The guards have never tried to get me out of my cell without incapacitating me first. Which is smart of them. Usually, they open a narrow slot in my door, slip the barrel of a gun through the gap in the steel and shoot me with a healthy dose of tranquilizer. It has happened enough, and I’ve been in this cell long enough, that I know the sounds heralding the shot. Tensing, readying myself for what I have to do, I try to keep my intentions off my face.

  When the shot finally comes, I almost fail. The needle barely pricks my flesh before I catch it, stopping the dart from embedding into my belly. From experience, I know it takes a minute or two for the drugs to take effect, so when I pretend to pull the dart from my stomach, I know I have at least two minutes before they’ll come in to get me. I relax my body slowly, ignoring the pain in my broken toes and shin, ignoring the slashes and bruises and seeping wounds, faking a drugged sleep better than I thought I’d be able to. I am tired, and those pharmaceutically enhanced nap times have been the best sleep I’ve gotten here.

  Too bad they’re usually followed up by torture.

  Two guards file into my cell, each taking an end and carry me down the corridor to the room I’m dreading. I dread, yet am thankful for this room. Whoever did the warding on my cell, failed to do the same level of warding on the torture chamber. I feel the magic in the air, and I have a good idea I can travel out of that room. My cell is damn near impenetrable, but the room-of-pain has little pockets of un-warded space – hopefully, big enough for us to travel through.

  If we can travel.

  My transportation and I are the last to arrive to the party, and I peek through my eyelashes to survey the room. Voyt, Kyle, and another small form are unconscious and already manacled to wooden racks that look older than I am. A few torches dot the walls of the circular space, highlighting the tools of the torture trade, but keeping most of the area covered in inky shadow. Sharp hooks, dragon’s tail rope darts, curved knives, vices with spiked barbs, and more all hang from pegs in the stone.

  The guards drop me unceremoniously on the wooden rack, and I notice the four of us are positioned equidistantly apart almost as if we are the four points of a compass.

  Not good. Really, really not good.

  We have never all been here together, and the fact that we are arranged in such a way… this does not bode well for us.

  Just then, a man strides into the room. He’s mostly in shadow, staying to the dark edges of the room, but stops at the rack that points south – or what I think is south – where a very small form rests. The flames flicker just right, and I catch a glimpse of copper hair.

  Nicola.

  Oh. Shit.

  No wonder they knew so much about us. I wonder how long she and Kyle have been here. Did they get him first? Her? And how in the fuck did they sneak up on the fucking Primary for fuck’s sake? I don’t care if she’s blind, the woman is a goddamn psychic.

  I have too many questions and no way to get answers – no way to know anything but that we have to get out of here as soon as fucking possible.

  The man leans down, whispering in her ear – his voice so low I can’t make out a single word. Her unseeing eyes flash open, her head and shoulders rise off the wooden rack, her face so horrified she can’t even speak. Nicola shakes her head violently, mouthing the word ‘No’ over and over again.

  The man turns from her and goes to the rack to her left where Kyle is still unconscious. His face is visible now. Blond hair tops a sharp and angular features, and his cold smile reminds me of Walter’s so much this man must be an Emerson. He pulls a wicked blade from a sheath at his belt and begins to remove Kyle’s shirt. Once Kyle’s chest is exposed, the man begins debating where to place the knife, asking Nicola
where she would like her mate to be stuck in the sickest sing-song voice I have ever heard. He’s beyond deranged and taking great joy in the hypothetical torture of her sleeping mate.

  “Come on, Nikki. Tell me. The lung? The heart? Maybe the liver? How do you want your mate to die, Nikki? How painful do you want it to be? Say yes, and I’ll let him go. Say no one more time, and I’ll make his death last days,” he threatens as he runs the knife down Kyle's face. I don’t blame her when she breaks down and reluctantly nods.

  “No, Nic. Don’t do this. Don’t let them do that to you,” Kyle groggily pleads, the cut of the knife rousing from his drugged slumber. He’s yanking at his barbed steel manacles, drawing rivulets of blood with each pull.

  “I have to. There’s no other way,” she rasps as she turns her head to face Kyle, her eyes unseeing, but her face pleading. He struggles to swallow, his head thudding on the rack and his body falters.

  “Well, then. That was surprisingly easy,” the man remarks, clapping his hands together as he walks to the center of the circle, raising his hands to the heavens and start to chant.

  I don’t know what’s coming, but I need to get us out of here.

  Now.

  I spied Voyt’s body lying untethered at the eastern point of the circle. He’s feigning sleep, but I can tell by the rigid set of his shoulders, he’s about to move. I cluck my tongue as quietly I can to get his attention, and he slowly turns his head to me. A silent conversation passes between us, and I knew we need to get Kyle and hopefully Nicola out of here before Crazy Ass Emerson can do whatever it is he’s trying to do.

  I nod to him to get Kyle while I go for Nicola. All the while Emerson is chanting, and some of the words he’s using start to filter in my brain. They’re Latin – only some long forgotten bastardized version that I haven’t heard since childhood.

  Oh, and the words he’s using are trying to summon a soul from the Otherside.

  I look to Voyt and can tell he just put it together himself because the blood drains from his face. Then Nicola starts thrashing and screaming, her pained cries so loud they reverberate off the stone walls, echoing into a tortured tornado of agony. We don’t wait, and travel to our respective charges, him much faster than me and it takes me a second to realize I’m more injured than I thought.

  In the next second that passes, as I yell for Voyt to take Kyle and go, I realize I can’t carry both Nicola and myself out of here.

  And I won’t leave her behind to suffer. Not like I suffered.

  I don’t see or hear the man behind me, but I do feel the sharp sting of the dart embedding its way into my back.

  Well, at least they got out, I think as the stone floor rushes up to meet my face.

  WEST – 1423 – SCOTLAND

  I woke up in my bed of old thatching before the light ever cracked across the sky. I had chores to do and a limited amount of time to do them. Father wanted things just so, and if I didn’t get them done timely enough, I wouldn’t be able to walk the next day.

  My tunic and breeches were woefully inadequate for the winter weather, and my shoes were three steps past threadbare. The snow seeped into the holes in them as I trudged through it to gather water from the well and give the horses their daily drink. I had no coat, and I shivered in the freezing air, but you’d better believe Father had one. I needed shoes and clothes and at the very least a sheepskin to keep me warm at night. At ten years old, I had long since forgotten what warmth felt like. I didn’t even have enough food to put a dent in the hunger in my belly.

  But Father did.

  Father’s bed was more than just thatching on the dirt floor of one of the outbuildings. His was in the house proper and was up off the ground in a wooden bedframe. He didn’t have a dirt floor – he had slate. His mattress was filled with feathers and fresh straw, and his meals were more than scraps left over that I stole from the dogs and pigs.

  I wasn’t the only servant – and make no mistake, that’s exactly what I was – I was just the only one he had fathered. A bastard child of a sadistic nobleman and the poor dairy maid he took as repayment of a debt – I was only slightly more important than pig shit on his boot heel. The other servants knew my place. I was less than nothing. An inconvenience. The only person who had ever loved me was my mother, but she’d died a rather painful death three winters ago.

  I’d promised myself as soon as I could find a way out, I’d take it, but there have been plenty of chances, and I hadn’t taken them. It felt wrong to leave when I feared humans so. I didn’t know how to hide yet. I was a good twenty years until maturity and knew no family who would take me in.

  And why would they?

  My father ruled over this village of Wraiths. He was known to be an evil man – evil but cunning. No one would dare go against him, and at least here, I knew what to expect.

  “Henry!” I heard my father’s slurred voice shout, and I froze.

  He so rarely called me by name. It was usually ‘boy’ or whatever horrible name he could come up with on that given day.

  I searched my mind and was certain I did everything required of me. I fed and watered the horses, fed the pigs, gathered water for the house and mucked the stable.

  But I forgot one crucial detail.

  It didn’t matter if I completed my chores or if I didn’t. Some days, I would receive a beating anyway. Not just beatings. These were the worst forms of punishment. Broken bones, blood drawn. And he did things to me. Things I hope to never think of again. Things I’d never wish on my worst enemy.

  I took a deep breath and went to face my father, but staying to the shadows so I could see him first. I peered around a hay cart, and my belly dropped. It was barely past midday, and he was already drunk on mulled wine. Drunk or sober, it didn’t matter, he was still mean as a snake, but drunk was invariably worse.

  “HENRY!” he roared again, and I knew, I just knew my time on this earth was up.

  He held a knife – a shiny silver dagger I’d seen him carry before. Usually, it hung in a small scabbard at his belt, and as far as I knew, he’d only been without it once. He’d lost it in a game of chance, but I’d heard the other servants say he murdered the man who won it from him – rather brutally – to get it back.

  “Y-yes, Sir?” I said, the small act of calling him ‘sir’ instead of ‘my lord’ was an act of defiance, but I hated how my voice wobbled. I was never permitted to call him Father, even though God and everyone knew he was mine. We looked just alike – same dark hair, same tall stature, same green eyes. Our noses, our chins, our cheeks – they all matched.

  I was my father – just in miniature.

  I could tell my face irked him. It was in his expression every time he looked at me.

  “Did you take this book?” he said, brandishing the leather-bound journal like a weapon. I’d hidden it in a secret nook in the stable – well, not so secret anymore – and read through it most nights. I’d pilfered it from my mother’s things years ago. Father had taken all of her possessions from me when she died. I had nothing from her until I stole that journal back before he could burn it.

  My mother – unlike many of the other servants – knew how to read and write, and taught me at a very young age. I knew what was in that journal. I knew every secret and every wrong doing my father had orchestrated over the last ten years. I knew the pain my mother endured. And I knew what she faced before he killed her.

  Painfully. He drew out her punishment for days before there was nothing left to her. Before her poor body just couldn’t take another moment.

  But that journal was my ticket to freedom – as soon as I could muster the courage. And he had my ticket in his filthy, drunkard hands.

  “Answer me, boy!” he roared, but he didn’t need an answer. He needed an excuse. An excuse to kill me. Just like my mother.

  Now he had one.

  I wasn’t expecting him to throw the book down and charge me. My only saving grace was his drunken state – it helped me avoid the flashing steel in
his hand. Otherwise, the dagger he held just a moment ago would have ended up in my belly instead of in the dirt where it laid between us. He lunged for it first, but stumbled over his own feet, landing on all fours in the muck.

  I knew he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to keep reaching for that dagger until it made its home in my gut. I debated saving myself until he reached for it again, and then it wasn’t in my control whether or not I was going to grab for the knife – I plucked it from the dirt before his awful fingers could close over the carved silver hilt.

  “You give my dagger back to me, boy,” he ordered as he climbed to his feet. His face had clarity to it, he was either no longer drunk or had sobered up enough to know I’d protect myself if I had to. Like my mother couldn’t.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Henry Carmichael Weston, you give me the dagger back right now!” he roared as he lunged, staggering at the last possible second and impaling himself on the blade. My only thought was on the fact that he called me by my full name – the name my mother gave me as a slight to him because it carried a part of him that he refused to acknowledge. The part that named him my father. I hadn’t even been sure he knew my full name until then.

  Father lurched backward off of the blade, but the damage was already done. Dark red blood flowed from the wound in his chest, pouring down his pale brocade tunic and velvet breeches all the way down to the buckles on his boots. He lost his feet then, his knees hitting the ground first.

  In my ten-year-old brain, I was still stuck on the name – my mind refusing to process the death of my tormentor.

  His face turned a sick shade of gray, the blood that used to fill it flooded from him in great gushes. Then he fell, face-first into the muck, still and silent as only the dead can be.

  “That’s not my name anymore,” I said to his back, and those were the last words I spoke for a very long time.