Rising Ashes

by Annie Anderson

  Carver passes over his cell, and he and Claire travel from the chamber to find a place that actually has cell service.

  “I don’t even know if he should travel,” Mena mutters under her breath. “I’m not sure he’d survive the trip. We need a car or an ambulance or something. He’s… drawing on me still. I can’t let him go or…” She shakes her head.

  “We’ll do small distances,” Asher offers. “There is no way we can make it up those stairs carrying him. I say we take him to the foyer first.”

  “I can carry West and Mena, but I need you to follow close,” I tell Asher and Ian. Turning to Aidan and Cam, “I need you to find a car and get it to the front door. Now.”

  Carver and Claire pop back in the room. “My friend is setting up the OR now,” she informs us.

  “How long is the drive?” Ian asks.

  “About twenty minutes. Ten if we hurry,” Claire says.

  “Let’s go,” I order and smoke out with my hands on Mena and West from this horrible room to the foyer then to the back of the SUV that screeches up to the front door. It’s a tight fit, but since all the seats are laid down in the back, we can squeeze in.

  “Meet us there," Mena yells through the glass to Asher, Carver and Claire as we speed off through the night hoping we make it in time.

  I brush West’s long, blood-crusted hair away from his face. If I didn’t know him, if I didn’t love him, I would never recognize him. His eyes are swollen shut, his nose mangled, his full lower lip split clean through. I don’t realize I’m trembling until I see my shaking hand hover over his injuries. I don’t know where to touch him so it won’t hurt. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

  I do the only thing I can – I brush his hair back, and kiss him on the only uninjured part of his whole body. I press my lips to his forehead and pray with everything in me he stays alive.

  It doesn’t take us twenty or even ten minutes to get to the hospital.

  It takes us eight.

  Nurses are waiting for us with a gurney when we screech up to the emergency room entrance, and they help us carefully extract West’s limp body from the back of the SUV. I have to give it to Claire, she was right – this is a safe place. The four nurses that met us are made up of a Phoenix, two witches and some sort of shifter. I follow them as they haul ass into the hospital through the emergency room entrance straight to an OR elevator. When I try to follow, two sets of hands hold me back.

  “Let them work, darling girl,” Aurelia says in my ear when I struggle against Cam and Aidan’s hold. I turn, spying my best friend. She’s here right when I need her, and I can’t help but break. I slam into her with a hug so tight it’s possible I cracked a rib.

  “When did you get here? How?” I question muffled by tears as I burrow my face in the leather of her jacket.

  “Voyt and Kyle brought us when Carver gave me a call about the hospital,” she says. “He thought you might need me.”

  “He’s… he’s hurt, Ari. Do you… do you know if…” I couldn’t even finish that sentence. I don’t think I wanted to know if he was leaving me yet.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen, baby girl. All we can do it wait,” she says as she squeezes me tight.

  Eight hours.

  We waited eight hours in a private operating room lobby on the stiff vinyl benches, picking over fast food remnants and vending machine offerings.

  Waiting for word.

  Waiting for hope.

  Waiting for West.

  Well, waiting and trying to calm Kyle down when he found out we didn’t find Nicola along with West. It took some doing, but we convinced him we would work together to find her, and while he wasn’t appeased, he took one look at my pleading face and sat the fuck down.

  The surgeon who emerges from the automatic double doors has carefully masked her features. Why do doctors do that? Any facial expression at all would be better than this.

  “Mrs. Carmichael?” she says as she scans the room for me. The name gives me pause, but whatever she needs to call me to give me what I want to know is good with me. It doesn’t matter how many times I’d wished for someone to call me by that name, and if it is the last time someone does it, at least I got it once.

  “Th-that’s me,” I croak, struggling to stand under the weight of the unknown.

  Aurelia grabs my hand and we stand together. The smile that breaks across her face nearly makes my legs give out in relief.

  “He’s alive, ma’am, and doing well. There was a severe bleed in his abdomen, and we had to remove his spleen, but we got it under control. We’re going to need to watch him for a few days, but given his species, he should make a full recovery. This hospital is a safe zone, so whomever did this cannot enter. It is appropriately warded against it.”

  “Good,” I sob in relief. “Can I see him?”

  “Absolutely. Follow me,” she says as she leads me to a private recovery room where I see the best thing ever.

  West.

  Safe and warm and alive.

  I waste no time and rush to his side. His face is still mangled, but his nose has been set and he’s breathing on his own, so I don’t give one single shit if he has scars or if he’s disfigured. He’s alive and mine, and if I had half a mind and he were anywhere near able, I’d bite him and cement the bond. Fuck this ‘the man has to bond the woman’ bullshit.

  Goddamn patriarchal society. Always fucking shit up.

  I climb as carefully as I can into the bed beside him, curling like a cat into his side and settle in to wait some more.

  I can wait.

  I can wait forever if he’s breathing beside me.

  EVAN – 1991 – SORRENTO, ITALY

  We lounged on beach chairs on the black sands of a little inlet in the cliff face. The turquoise water lapped calmly against the beach, and I was finally at peace. One better, West was right beside me, sunning himself, his wide, muscular body exposed to the warm rays of a beautiful Italian summer.

  His tattoos were on display for all the world to see, but the one that meant the most to me was the large stylized ‘E’ tattooed right over his heart. He’d had it long before we got together. I saw it the first time we made love on that cold winter night in England four years ago. I knew right away what it was and what it meant. The ink slightly faded with age, the greenish cast that most older tattoos had, I knew then he’d loved me for much longer than he’d let on. I didn’t need any more than that.

  He still refused to cement the bond, but I’d wait. I’d wait forever for him.

  “You want to go swimming, Angel?” he asked turning to his side to watch me, his voice a quiet rumble in the calm.

  “No, babe,” I said shaking my head. “I just want to doze. Wake me if I start to burn?”

  “Sure, darlin’.”

  “Love you,” I said as I drifted off into a light doze.

  So I heard him when he said, “Love you, too, Angel. Love you, too.”

  And because I heard the gruff timber of his voice, I knew I was safe, and I had sweet dreams.

  15

  Trading One Hell for Another

  WEST

  I can’t decide if I’m in heaven or hell. I’m warm for the first time in a month, so that’s a plus. The fact that my entire body feels like it has been run over twice by a Mack truck is definitely going in the minus column. But the best feeling – the absolute best thing in this world or the next – filters through my consciousness despite the pain.

  The warmth and softness of my Angel pressing against my side.

  I feel the pull of my answering smile yank at the stitches in my lip, and it all comes filtering back.

  The dungeon.

  Nicola.

  Emerson… he put a soul in her. A soul summoned from the depths of the worst pit of hell. I have no idea how he did it or how he knew how to do it. And I have the worst feeling I know exactly who he put in her.

  But why?

  What does he have to gain by putting the woman who
damn near exterminated us back into this world?

  Evangeline. He wants to kill Evangeline.

  My eyes jerk open to reveal the off-white acoustic tiles of a hospital ceiling, and I frown, confused. Hospital? If I’m in a hospital, it must be really bad. I have half a mind to lift the sheet to make sure I still have all my bits and pieces, but I’m having the hardest time moving my arms.

  I have to tell her. I have to tell her what they did…

  Instead, the pull of sleep – something I’d been missing out on considerably over the last month – yanks at my consciousness, and I succumb to the darkness with my Angel at my side.

  I wake again to the sun filtering through the blinds of my hospital room and Evangeline snoring next to me. I always found it hilarious that someone so small was capable of sounding like a freight train when she’s really out of it. It’s how I know she hasn’t been sleeping, she hasn’t been taking care of herself. She only snores when she is truly exhausted. I look down at the mess of curls spilling over my shoulder and bare chest. Her eyes have deep purple shadows underneath them, and the arm gently wrapped around my chest is one step away from skeletal.

  How did they let her get this bad? How did they let her go that long without eating? Without consuming?

  This is my fault.

  I should have made the time to bind her. I should have put away my own bullshit and took care of her. She was losing her parents, and I was stuck in my own head so much I didn’t see what I was doing wasn’t what she needed.

  What I was doing was pushing her away.

  But it doesn’t matter what happened in the past. The fights and disagreements and all the other bullshit doesn’t matter.

  I have her, and that is all that matters now.

  She makes a highly indelicate and downright hilarious snort in her sleep, and I can’t help but laugh. I regret it instantly. Red hot fire runs through my chest and gut.

  Holy. Fuck. That hurts.

  Evangeline rouses from her sound sleep at my pained groan.

  “West? Baby?” she calls to me, wide awake. “Are you okay? Do I need to call a doctor?”

  I shake my head, but just then, the door opens, and Aurelia drags Mena by the hand into the room. Mena’s eyes flash, and she reaches for my shoulder placing her healing hand on my skin. The relief I feel is immediate, but it doesn’t cure everything. Rhys and Asher walk in next.

  “Well, that sucked,” I groan.

  “Yeah, yesterday pretty much sucked all around. Good to have you awake, man,” Rhys murmurs, subdued.

  “Okay? What did I miss? Why does everyone look like somebody died?”

  “Four children were found in the dungeon where you were held,” Mena informs me, the only one of the women in the room whose eyes aren’t swimming in tears.

  “What? Are they okay?” I ask aloud, but even I know it is probably the dumbest question I could ask. If they were okay – these children – Aurelia wouldn’t be shaking her head at me as tears pour down her face. Evangeline wouldn’t be holding in her sobs by the skin of her teeth. Mena wouldn’t be looking at me with dead eyes. And Rhys and Asher wouldn’t be staring at me like they're just glad I’m alive.

  I didn’t know there were children down there with us, and now all I’d gone through seems trivial, selfish even. Because I made it out. I’m alive. I’ve lived longer than I ever thought possible, and these kids barely lived at all. Brutality towards children kills me. It brings up so many old ghosts. Ghosts of a long dead father who was the vilest man I’d known of until this moment.

  “Do we…” I choke out. “Do we know who the children are? Have we informed their parents?”

  “We’ve called in the faction leaders,” Mena answers. “We’re doing the hard shit here where it is neutral. This hospital is warded against malevolent activity. Harm can’t be done on the grounds. They’ll be here soon,” Asher says.

  “I want to go with you. To tell the families.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Aurelia mutters.

  “I don’t either,” Evan says.

  “Those families are going to come here, sit down in a conference room or waiting area or whatever and get the worst news they’ve ever received. Someone who was there with their children needs to be there when you tell them.”

  “And what happens when they see your broken but breathing self in that room, and they decide you need to die, too? Huh?” Evan demands. “You can’t stay in this hospital forever.”

  “I think I have given up too much of my life worrying that someone will come after me for the things I’ve done or the things I couldn’t control. If they have that much hate in their hearts for someone who barely made it out, then let them come. But I don’t think we need to discount them just yet.”

  My Angel’s answering growl tells me I’ve won this argument. She hops off the bed and slams out of the room. She returns a few moments later with a wheelchair and Ian, who goes to my left arm and the IV in my hand. He deftly removes it, turns off machines, and shoos everyone out of the room before he helps with the transfer from the bed to the chair.

  It sucks that he had to do it, but there is no way in hell I’d make it on my own. Sitting up took pretty much everything I had even with the handy dandy motorized bed helping me out with eighty percent of it. I’m just lucky I’m dressed from the waist down. Ian passes me a scrub top which matches the blue bottoms, and I struggle to get it over my head.

  Two small hands help me tug the fabric down the rest of the way over my eyes, and my Angel is there.

  I grab one of her delicately fragile hands and turn it over so I can kiss the center of her palm. I move it to the center of my chest, and I say the words I’ve needed to say since the beginning.

  “I’m staying with you, and you’re staying with me. I’m not letting you do the hard shit alone anymore. Don’t be mad at me for not wanting to abandon you again. Okay?” I murmur, and I watch as her expression goes from pissed to tearful in an instant.

  “Do you promise?” she asks.

  “I swear,” I whisper as I reach up to cup her jaw in my hands and bring her down to me. “I’m never leaving you again, Evangeline. Even if you send me away.”

  She laughs through a sob at my pronouncement.

  “I really wish I could kiss you right now,” she grumbles.

  “I do, too, Angel,” I murmur as I rest her forehead on mine for a moment before she gently kisses the tip of my nose and moves to the back of the chair.

  “Let’s go do the hard shit,” she says as we walk through the door into the hallway and toward another form of hell.

  The room they put us in to break the news is larger than I expected. It has couches and comfy chairs, and even though someone was kind enough to bring platters full of Danish and croissants splayed on the large sideboard at the back of the room, I can’t bring myself to eat. It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember when the last time I ate was.

  What matters is Evangeline and Mena have to tell these faction leaders that their young ones have died, and it was at Wraith hands. Here’s hoping it doesn’t start a war.

  Two men and a woman file into the room. The first man is medium height, maybe just under six feet and built with dark hair and pale amber eyes that flash like a cat’s in the florescent light. The Shifter leader. He’s dressed casually in a flannel shirt and jeans, and I expect if he weren’t frowning in preparation for the news he’s about to receive, he’d be smiling. Laugh lines radiate from his eyes, and he has a peace about him I wish I had.

  The second man is abnormally tall, so much so he has to duck considerably at the threshold to get in the room. He’s painfully thin, and his thinness is highlighted by the black suit hanging on his frame. Warlock. His face is impassive, if a little worried.

  The woman is nothing how I would expect a Witch to dress – she’s buttoned up to her neck in a black on black pantsuit and heels. She too is gaunt, and her ash blonde hair is pulled back so severely from her face, I half expe
ct to see blood at her scalp. Her face is what gives me pause. If there were one I’d bet on giving us some trouble, it’d be her. Most Witches are neutral, but this one has evil tattooed on her face in the form of a sneer. Plus, she smells like a damn snack, so I know she’s the goddamn devil.

  Phoenixes and Wraiths don’t hang out much with other factions, but if we did, we’d have the upper hand in most situations because we can smell a double-dealing psychopath a mile away. And this bitch smells like Sunday fucking dinner.

  Greetings are said, hands are shook, but when they sit in their seats, I can tell they have a good idea what they’re doing here.

  The first man, the Shifter, Anthony, pipes up.

  “Well, out with it. I have fifteen missing children in my community, I’m assuming you found them?”

  Evangeline’s face goes gray. “Fif-fifteen?” she asks before shaking her head. “We recovered the bodies of four children in our raid on Walter Emerson’s house. Two shifter children, one Warlock, and one Witch. We did not find anyone else in the house except for Claire and West, and had we taken any longer to find him, he would have been among the dead. Claire was caught trying to free the children, and either because he was her father or he just wanted her to die slowly, he left her beaten in a cell with no food, water, or way out. As far as we know, no one else was in the house,” she says squeezing my hand tight so her voice doesn’t falter again.

  I have never been more proud of her than I am right now, and even though I wish I could take this burden from her and shoulder it myself, I won’t. She’s doing what she needs to do to lead. Even the hard shit. Especially the hard shit.

  “We didn’t send them on yet. We wanted to inform you of their passing so you could help their families put them to rest. We will be more than willing to help you with the funeral rites if you so choose,” Mena informs them.

  Anthony and the Warlock, Sebastian look stunned, but the Witch, Tessa, does not. Her face doesn’t change at all.