Crown of Ashes

by Addison Moore

  Logan pops in before I can answer.

  “Glad you’re here, man.” He slaps me five and pulls me into a partial embrace. Logan called and said I needed to get my sorry ass down to Whitehorse as soon as possible.

  “I came right over. What’s up?”

  His forehead wrinkles with concern, and I can tell he’s holding back. I can only assume it’s because Lex is in the room. “There’s some stuff I wanted to go over with you downstairs.”

  Technically, there is no downstairs at this particular Oliver estate. The only thing down there is the subterranean lab he built for Ezrina to emulate the one she had in the Transfer—but in typical Logan fashion, it’s infinitely larger than the facility the Counts furnished her with. It’s been a godsend, but something tells me that’s up for debate at the moment. I follow Logan into the kitchen and through the pantry, which leads to the stairwell that spirals down to the lab. To say it’s enormous down here doesn’t do it justice. A football field might be dwarfed. I’ve never walked the periphery, but from what I can tell it spans a great deal past his lot lines.

  “What’s up with Bakova?” I ask, jogging to keep up with him. “She still trying to heat the sheets?”

  “That would be it.” He shakes his head at the thought. “She’s company, though.”

  “For who?” Logan has been at the house we grew up in as much as I have these last few months.

  “I pop in every now and again, and it’s nice to have someone to carry on a conversation with.” He cuts me a quick look, and his cheek twitches. “Relax. I’m shitting with you. Trying to stave off her hormones is like holding up a wall. She’s relentless as they come.” He frowns as we head down the corridor that leads to Ezrina’s shiny new chop shop. “But she’s with the Barricade—she’s one of you.”

  I pull him back by the shirt like a reflex and shove him against the wall. “Don’t say that, dude.”

  Those lucent yellow eyes of his meet up with mine, and a sober moment bounces between us. “Own it, Gage. You went in with a purpose. You and I both know you went in to save your children—and now that you’re in, we can use this.”

  “Is that what you dragged me down here for?” I give him a hard shove, and the back of his head hits the wall with a thud.

  “No.” He squeezes his eyes shut tight as if that knock to the skull actually hurt. “But you asked what Lex was doing here. I’m telling you there’s a need to infiltrate.”

  “So you infiltrate with Lexy, and Skyla infiltrates with Chloe.” And I infiltrate on my own, but I leave that dismal bit of obvious news out. I bypass him and head into the stainless lab with its white-on-white décor that messes with your head. “Tell me, Logan. Has Skyla given you the slightest hint of what she’s up to, or is that something the two of you have decided to keep from me?” I run my hand along the stainless sink, so squeaky clean you could eat right out of it.

  “I don’t have any clue. But if I did, I wouldn’t keep it from you. Just like I’m not keeping this from you.” He motions for me to follow him farther down the hall to the room where Ezrina has a legion of oversized glass tubes on display, each filled with blue keeping solution, each one void of one quasi-human body. She built this resurrection wing in hopes to bring back the Videns from their impending doom. A third of the Videns have gone MIA, gifting their life to Wesley’s cause. There’s no real way to know if they went in knowing they’d convert into Spectators—something Wes is busy spooking the world with. The hope is to capture them and return them to their pre-Spectator state. But how do you convince a dead man that he should want to live if he prefers the alternative in order to progress a demonic movement? This room tells life and all of its hard questions to go to hell. Ezrina is determined to help me save them.

  “I know all about this room, Logan.” I touch one of the tanks with my hand and let the icy current enliven my anger once again. The Videns were gifted to me as a people, and the fact that a significant number of its youth is now all but dead speaks volumes to my leadership skills. I don’t give a shit if they wanted to go in—they made the wrong decision. I should have been the one to guide them, not Wes with his deadly intentions.

  “Did you know about this?” He heads to the corner, where a white curtain surrounds one of the glass coffins, the blue solution glows from behind, and near the top it looks as if the fluid is percolating. Logan pulls the partition away with an easy flick of the wrist.

  “Shit.” I take a quick step back, my heart leaping into my throat at the sight. “Is that—”

  “Laken.” He gives the side of the tank a quick knock, but the girl inside doesn’t flinch.

  Laken Flanders floats submerged with her eyes closed, her mouth sealed shut, her long brown hair floating around her like tendrils. She’s neatly tucked in a skintight wetsuit of some sort that Ezrina used to dress the Counts in.

  “Shit. Does Coop know about this?” My head beats erratic, echoing through my skull at the insane amount of grief my friend must be feeling, or will feel. Hell, I care about Laken myself, and seeing her lifeless body spinning silently in that bubbling brew pains me.

  “I don’t know. But that’s not Laken—at least not the version we know. As soon as I saw it, I ran like hell to tell him, and lo and behold he was having dinner with his wife. Whoever this is—whatever Ezrina has done, has something to do with—”

  “Wes.” My eyes close a moment at the thought of my brother having anything to do with this at all. “Who is she? Laken never mentioned a twin. I met her sisters at the wedding, and this isn’t one of them.”

  Logan and I look up at the girl silently bobbing in the bright blue watery grave. Her uncanny resemblance to Laken is impossibly perfect.

  “It’s not a twin.” He glares at the girl a moment. “She might not be one of us. Hell, she might not even be human.”

  The sound of heels clicking down the hall behind us echoes into the room. “Logan?”

  “It’s Skyla.” Logan looks to the curtain, and I can tell that for a brief moment he considers covering up this latest, perhaps not greatest, dirty little secret of ours. But he doesn’t do it. I think the days of keeping things from Skyla—even if it had fallen under the banner of her safety—are long gone.

  “Gage?” Her face lights up for a moment when she sees me, and just as quickly her expression dims when she sees the horror in the room. “What in the hell?” Skyla staggers forward, her wool coat cinches her waist, emphasizing the fact she’s all but bounced back into shape. Skyla is beautiful in any shape or size, but I’ve heard her lament more times than not how much she craves to have her old body back. God, how I’ve missed her body in any state.

  Logan smacks me in the gut and pulls me out of my stupor.

  “Skyla.” I lunge forward and wrap my arms around her. “It’s not Laken.”

  “No.” Her voice comes out small. Her gaze never leaves that liquid casket. “I just left her. But—”

  “We don’t know what’s going on.” My arms tighten around her waist, and every cell in my body relaxes for the first time in months. I haven’t held Skyla like this since December. Not holding your wife for months should be criminal. My heart thumps back to life as if it were waiting for her touch all along. And it has.

  Logan steps over, and the three of us stare up at the girl, the thing together. “I stumbled upon her this afternoon.”

  “And you called Gage.” Skyla gently breaks free from my arms and walks over to the tank, running her hand along the glass as I did moments before. “Of course, you did. He’s the one you trust,” she says it so low it’s as if she’s speaking to herself.

  Logan and I exchange a quick glance. It pains us both to have lost Skyla’s trust. Logan and I have spent years breaking Skyla’s heart in just that fashion.

  “So, this is what Marshall and Nev were talking about.” A deep sigh expels from her as she sags at the sight of the girl above. “This must be Ezrina’s secret project.” She turns toward the two of us, the look of indifference o
n her face. “And that’s all I know.” She blinks a sarcastic smile. “Gage.” Her expression darkens. “Just the person I wanted to talk to.”

  I can feel Logan flinch by my side. “I think I’ll head upstairs. I was thinking about making dinner. How about I make enough for the three of us?” He takes off without bothering to wait for an answer.

  “Four,” Skyla calls after him as he takes off. “Don’t forget your precious little Lexy Poo! Sluts have to eat, too, you know!” She turns to me and growls as if I were somehow harboring a slut of my own. But as irritated as she is, I’m that happy. In fact, I’m bursting with joy inside because my beautiful wife and I are alone, not another living soul in the room with us—and God knows that Laken lookalike isn’t able to take her next breath.

  “Why are you dimpling at me?” She scowls at my cheeks as if the God-given divots I sport have somehow harnessed the ability to piss her off. It wouldn’t surprise me. Everything about me pisses Skyla off lately. And I’m not sure it shouldn’t.

  “Because you’re beautiful—and you’re still my wife.” That last part comes out unnaturally aggressive. “And because it was me you wanted to speak with. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it stroked my ego a bit.” There—a single truth rolls around between us, hard and cold as a marble.

  Her brows rise a notch as anger dissipates, replaced with amusement. “I bet there’s something far more tangible than your ego you’d like me to stroke.”

  I don’t hesitate to run with it. “Can I put in a request for your tongue to do the stroking?” She drew first euphemism. Skyla and I have always enjoyed a healthy dose of sexual banter. It feels normal, necessary, and yes, desperate on my part just a bit. But then, I think the world knows I’ve always been desperate for Skyla on some level.

  “I’d laugh, but that bulge forming in your jeans lets me know you’re not joking.” Her demeanor flattens once again. “Control that dragon in your pants, Oliver. He’s not taking flight in my vagina anytime soon.” She steps in front of the glass vial, and the glow from the keeping solution washes her skin an electric shade of blue. “Nevertheless.” Her voice grows breathy in a way that I haven’t heard in months, and my dick grows ten times harder. It takes far more willpower than I have to get myself off that sexual ledge. I should have mastered this skill by now. In high school, for as much as we were messing around, we weren’t fucking around, and thus my inhuman ability to get my hard-on to go the hell away.

  “Nevertheless.” I step in behind her and tuck my lips just shy of her neck. I can’t help it. That word sounded like a promise. At this point I’ll take an insult from the woman I love, let alone a vow.

  “That’s what Ezrina is calling her, Nevertheless.” She runs her fingers across a small bronze strip adhered near the bottom of the tank. “Ezrina always gives them a proper name—their given name. But not this one. She’s opted for an idea rather than a truth.” Skyla tips her head toward me and doesn’t bother hiding the smile tugging at her lips. “I guess the two of you have something in common after all.”

  A tired laugh dies within my chest. Skyla thinks I’ve opted for an idea rather than the truth. What she won’t let me tell her is that the truth is darker, far more frightening than she ever wants to know. A part of me doesn’t want to tell her. It’s morbid and hellish, and without a ray of light. What’s the point? Although, I need for her to understand—and so there it is, the double-edged sword.

  “You were looking for me?” I sweep the hair off her shoulder and soak in the heat from her body as I take a bold step closer.

  Skyla looks up with those heaven-sent eyes, those barely there lenses that look clear as glass—a color impossible in nature. Those eyes alone should tip people off that she’s not quite human.

  “Yes,” she whispers, glancing to the ground as her cheeks heat with color. “Tell me everything you know about Melody Winters.”

  And just like that, my heart plummets because this isn’t the topic at all I was hoping for.

  “Why? What’s up?” I look back up at the girl with Laken’s face. She’s about as much a mystery as Melody is to me at the moment.

  “She says I stole this ring from her.” Skyla holds up her hand, and the large blue stone on her finger glows like a fallen star. I glance to her other hand and she’s still miraculously wearing her wedding ring, and that sight alone makes my heart soar.

  “Where’d you get the ring?” I pick up her hand, pretending to be morbidly interested in her newfound jewelry, but the truth is, I’m thirsty to hold her, so very thirsty for her touch.

  “Chloe gave it to me for Christmas.” She carefully pulls her hand away and fondles the ring with her thumb.

  “Chloe?” I try to hold back my judgment of their new bond, but for the life of me I can’t. “Skyla, what are you doing with Chloe of all people? You know you can’t trust her.”

  “I can’t trust anybody.” She shrugs it off like a fact. “And don’t worry about what I’m doing with Chloe. I’m guessing you have bigger things to burden you these days.” Her eyes darken as she stares me down with something just this side of hatred. Skyla sinks to her knees next to the floating casket by our side and releases a nozzle near the bottom that sends both the fluid draining and the entire glass capsule tipping to its side.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m freeing this poor thing. What does it look like I’m doing?” She glides a metal gurney from the corner and rolls it over. “You can help if you want, but trust me—I don’t need you.”

  Those last few words cut like a knife. “I need you,” I say as I help her hoist the glass the vial on its ear. Skyla meets up with my gaze a brief moment before twisting open the top of the contraption, and the smell of something a little more pleasant than formaldehyde hits my nostrils.

  “Shit.” I tuck my face into my arm a moment to catch my breath.

  “You think that’s bad. Imagine a world of servitude with this stench. I smelled this in my sleep for months—tasted it in my food.”

  Skyla was taken captive and worked with Ezrina for a time. It was a dark season in our lives. It seems as if our lives are continually peppered with dark seasons.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry about that.” She grunts as she pulls the girl free from her confinement and lands her onto the glorified metal bathtub before her.

  “I’m sorry about everything, Skyla.” As difficult as this conversation is, I’m relentlessly pursuing it. “Let’s take a moment and talk things through.”

  “No.” Her eyes flicker to mine like flames. “Right now, I want to talk about Melody Winters—not to mention the fact—figuring out what in the hell Ezrina is doing with Laken 2.0. And before you say it, yes, I smell Wes at the other end of this disaster.”

  “So we’re on the same page regarding that.” I watch as Skyla runs her hand over the girl’s face, examining her with the precision of a surgeon. “Melody is Dominique Winters’ daughter. She has two brothers, Asbury and Cash. They live on the other end of town in some weird mega house that has some never-ending construction project going on. The mother, Dominique, had a major heart attack about seven years ago. She was DOA when she got to the hospital and then miraculously woke up about an hour later as if nothing happened.”

  Skyla stops all movement and glances up at me. “Sounds like a familiar story, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s close to what happened to Melody, only she woke up at the morgue.”

  She gives a wistful shake of the head as she rolls the girl on her side. “I always suspected you could wake the dead.” She does a finger sweep of the girl’s mouth. “Especially the estrogen card carrying variety.” Skyla shoves her finger down the girl’s throat, and a burst of blue liquid vomits from her. “There we go,” she says it softly as if speaking to the girl. “If only I could figure out how to resurrect the dead myself.”

  A burst of blue light shines through the Laken lookalike as she coughs and sputters to life.


  “Skyla.” I hold an arm over the girl in the event she’s about to attack.

  Ezrina and Nev hurry into the room along with Logan and Lexy.

  “What have you done?” Ezrina shrieks and sends us both jumping back. “Skyla!” she growls so loud it sounds like a cat with its tail on fire.

  Skyla takes a careful step in toward Ezrina. “Who is she and what does Wesley think he’s about to do with her?”

  The room grows strangely silent as Ezrina and Skyla have a momentary standoff. But the girl groans and vomits another vat full of keeping solution and brings everyone’s attention right back to her regurgitating self.

  Nevermore clears his throat. “I do believe we have a life on our hands. Rina, please tend to the girl so she doesn’t suffer.”

  “I’ll deal with you later,” Ezrina growls at Skyla before barking commands at Nev for her tools.

  Skyla backs up slowly, her face washed white with shock as she stares down at that ring Chloe gifted her. “I have to go.”

  Logan grips her by the shoulders. “What happened? Did you pull her out?”

  Skyla glances up at me a moment. “The boys are at your mother’s house. Bring them home for me.” She darts down the corridor before anyone can stop her.

  “Skyla!” I run after her, but she’s out the front door and I’m chasing taillights into the night. “Where the hell are you going?” I pant as I try to catch my breath.

  Logan and Lexy run out the door, and I join them on the porch.

  “Skyla’s friends with that girl.” Lexy shudders. “I bet she’s off to tell Coop.”

  “That’s not Laken.” Logan takes a seat on the porch, and I join him. “Would you mind giving me a minute with Gage?”

  Lexy clicks her tongue and huffs toward the door. “Fine, but remember I came over to discuss the dance. It’ll be here before you know it, and there are still a ton of details we need to cover.” She slams the door behind her as if to annunciate the point.