Crown of Ashes

by Addison Moore

  “By destiny’s desire, you mean the curse I’ve cloaked myself with.”

  “It is a blessing, son.” He steps down and pulls me into a partial embrace. “And one day you will see it that way, too.” He heads inside, and the door seals itself shut with a hiss.

  The fog moves in quick, covering the porch in a dense billow of clouds, and it’s hard to tell which way is up in this whitewashed world anymore.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket— it’s a text from my dad. The only father I’ll ever have in my eyes.

  Rev says the refrigeration unit is on the fritz again. Are you able to run by the morgue?

  I text right back. I’m on it.

  I’d walk around the proverbial block for my father, but for Demetri I wouldn’t cross the street.

  That stone Skyla handed me all those weeks ago at the boys’ christening party comes back to mind. Everything Demetri just said was bullshit because I happen to know that no matter what I do, my days are numbered.

  I’m about to bristle destiny’s desire.

  That’s for damn sure.

  I don’t bother with the late night walk I had hoped would clear my head. Instead, I use my old tried and true Levatio transportation system and teleport over to the morgue.

  The Paragon Cemetery bears the family name, albeit subtly on a wall plaque as you head into the foyer. My father, the one who I count as such, is a humble, decent man who would move the heavens to make sure I had my true heart’s desire, a simple life with Skyla and my children by my side. I’m pretty certain that whoever is in charge of doling out destinies up there—and yes, Candace, I’m looking at you and your cohorts—that they royally effed up because I’m no king, no prince of the Countenance underworld. I’m not even remotely interested in helping the Fems or the Sectors if you get right down to it. I’ll go kicking and screaming all the way down to the armpit where they store that rusted out throne they think I’ll call home one day. Nope. Bristling just so happens to be my new favorite word. I am bristling destiny, out loud, in the open, for everyone seated in that destination station to see.

  There’s a light in the room indelicately called the kitchen—the prep area for corpses. My dad has a smidge of Ezrina in him, and that’s one of the things I like about him among many.

  “Rev?” I spot him kneeling over an electrical panel in the back. His hair is growing back from its recent shorn state, and he looks halfway like a law-abiding citizen—halfway. His beat-up leather jacket rides up his back, exposing a mean looking tat scrawled over his torso. Rev, or Revelyn, is Dr. Booth’s son. I’m not sure how many kids Dr. B has, but if they’re all like Rev here, I don’t care to meet too many.

  He falls back on his ass before bouncing to his feet. Rev is tall and wide as a linebacker. He’s a little older than me, but looks hardened by life with a nasty looking ridge outlining his cheek that looks as if it was gifted to him by way of a knife and currently three steady lines that dig into his forehead.

  “Dude, this whole system is shit, but I think I fixed it.” He kicks the grill shut and slides his tools toward the wall. “I called the service, but the fastest they can get out here is Monday. It should hold until then.” He wipes the sweat off his brow.

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it. I know my dad does, too.” Suddenly, I’m feeling for the guy. He’s a part-time employee running a little more than an internship as he works toward his mortuary science degree. He’s been a good guy to have around the place, and I’m glad my dad is finally getting some trustworthy help. “Why don’t you take off? I’ll lock up around here.”

  “Cool.” He slaps me five, and the grease from his hand gets transferred to mine. “I’ve got Mia crawling all over my ass. I guess I’ll give her a call and let her know I’m free.”

  “What are you doing with her, anyway?” I try to hide the fact that I want to punch him for it. Mia is just as much my little sister as she is Skyla’s. There’s no way I want this guy sniffing around her—as if that’s the only thing he’ll be doing. “You can get any girl you want at Host. Legal girls—emphasis on the legal.” There. Feed his ego and see how far that gets you.

  “You don’t think I know that?” He winces, and those bushy brows frame his face just the way Dr. Booth’s do. “But chicks like Mia, dude, they’re clingers. They get one taste of the goods”—he clutches onto his dick and shakes it—“and they can’t get enough.”

  “Shit,” I hiss under my breath as I try to maintain my composure. “You’d better get going before I shove you into one of these drawers. You’re not to touch her. You got that?”

  “You got it, chief.” He tips his head back as he ducks out of the kitchen. “Don’t bother venturing out back. Heard some noises earlier. I think we got a pack of coyotes. I’ve already scared them off once tonight.” The slam of the front door echoes around the room like a gunshot.

  For a second, I consider giving Skyla the heads-up about Rev, but the boys pop into my head. Crap. I should probably shoot her a quick text and let her know where I am. I know she wanted me to pick up the boys for her, and I feel bad. She’s probably already home with them, nursing or begging them to go to sleep. I know two things about our boys for sure—they’re boob men, and they like to burn the candle at both ends. Those kids do not understand the concept of a solid eight. I know it’s making Skyla insane. I’ve tried to help out, stay over, but for the most part, she gives me the boot each and every time.

  I head to the refrigeration unit and check out the temps. A chilly thirty-eight degrees should keep all of the guests at the Oliver Inn crisp for the night. Just as I’m about to kill the lights, a pronounced thump comes from somewhere deep inside the walls.

  A mean shiver runs through me. That was no coyote. I head out through the back door, and the fog welcomes me with an icy embrace. The cemetery is covered in a blanket of white as the fog lifts her skirt and dances over the gravestones.

  “Anybody out here?” That was no animal. It was a solid wallop against the side of the building. I follow the walkway around the structure until I come upon the mausoleum. The moon hangs low, barely visible through the dense plumes bursting through the air like powder. It’s a magical kind of night, and if I wasn’t standing in a glorified body farm, it might even be beautiful—hell, it is beautiful. This is exactly the kind of night I wish I could share with Skyla.

  A muted bang comes from the left, and my heart stops on command.

  “Holy shit.” My muscles freeze as a paralyzing fear grips me.

  I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m not afraid of the cemetery—at least not under normal conditions. But I’ll admit that being here on my own, well after hours, is beginning to edge on my nerves.

  Those Spectators of Wesley’s come to mind, and I usher them right back out. I can take them if I have to. But the idea of wrestling with a brain hungry corpse ties my stomach up in knots.

  “Anybody out there?” My voice thunders through the mist and comes back to me as a haunting echo. “Shit.” I head over to the mausoleum and stand still at the mouth of that cavernous marble entry. There are bodies interred on the outside in what is aptly named the Hall of Heavens. And, of course, there is the oversized structure itself, a two-story building that contains thousands of bodies of yesteryear that have been lounging here far longer than my family has owned the place. The Hallowed Hall. No offense to my father, but I’ve always thought it smells like rot in here.

  Rump, thump!

  “Hello?” My heart detonates time and time again, deafening me from the inside. My blood runs cold at what that sound might be. Definitely coming from the Hall of Heavens. I head over and stagger my way slowly down the first row with its dull metal plaques gleaming under the stage lights we installed a few years back in hopes to deter any freaks that might want to confiscate a body for the hell of it.

  A sonic boom goes off from the left, shaking the metal vases hanging loosely in their couplets.

  Crap. Exploding body perhaps? Dad filled me in on the phenomen
on one year after he came back from a casket convention. He assured me it would never get hot enough on Paragon to insight such a messy spectacle, but then, humans are comprised of enough gases to cause even the most caustic explosion whether they’re dead or alive. Case in point, both Drake and Ethan Landon.

  Nevertheless, my father, being the precautionary gentleman he is, made sure all crypts were connected with a meager ventilation and drainage system. Yes, drainage. Corpses have a way of leaking even after being embalmed to the hilt. The air vents help the gases escape, thus sidestepping the exploding casket scenario, and the drainage system helps with seepage and leakage. Barron Oliver—Senior—has all of his cryptic bases covered.

  Of all the bodies buried in this mausoleum, I personally have only known one. I come across Kate Winston’s marker and place my hand over her name. Kate and I grew up together. I’ll always remember her as the sweet little blonde who told bad jokes and would go out of her way to make you smile. Back in high school, Kate was accidentally beheaded during a school-sponsored ski trip. It just so happened that it was Skyla’s ski that brought on that tragedy. Hell, it was probably Demetri working on Chloe’s command. Demetri is her supervising spirit bitch, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she had him hacking the heads off anyone she deemed fit. And by deemed fit, I mean pissed her off. Chloe is so easy to piss off, it’s shocking half the island still has their heads attached.

  About a year after Kate was killed, Chloe thought best to pull the poor girl’s corpse from the morgue and took her detached head to homecoming where Kate’s main apex was hurled over the field like a football. It was a thing of horror as only Chloe could produce. Chloe is a thing of horror, which is exactly why I’m so damn alarmed that Skyla has anything to do with her.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  Kate’s marker jumps beneath me, and I retract my hand as if from a fire.

  “Fuck!” I roar as I jump back ten feet. I stalk over to the crypt once again that’s housing my old friend, her beheaded body, albeit her head set in its traditional location.

  I pull out my phone and text Logan. Morgue. Now! That meager phrase will have to do. I shove the phone back where it came from and head to the marker that’s bowed from the pressure.

  “Oh shit.” I grunt as my hand runs over the deformed metal. It’s at least an eighth of an inch thick.

  Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

  The walls, the ground shakes with the racket as the sound gets louder, far more severe, and the façade of the structure begins to crumble. I waste no time. Instead, I run like hell back into the kitchen and reach for the tool bag underneath the sink until I come up with a crowbar.

  “Holy hell.” I run back toward the thundering clatter that has the entire cemetery under siege with its persistent banging, it’s jackhammer-like aggression.

  “Enough!” I roar to no one in particular as I attempt to flick the marker off Kate’s grave. The ground rattles beneath my feet. The loud continual booming deafens me as I struggle to ease the pressure of whatever the hell is going on.

  “Gage!” Logan calls my name from somewhere on the other side of the cemetery, but I’m expending all my energy prying off the plaque. It’s not until my Levatio strength, or something far more sinister than that in me initiates does the marker go flying like a Frisbee. The metal sheet beneath it bucks in and out like a heartbeat, and I shove the crowbar in as far as it will go until it too goes airborne like a flying saucer.

  Logan gets closer. His shouting rises above the rabid thumping from inside of Kate’s grave.

  I reach into the dark mouth of the crypt to grab ahold of the casket, but it’s bucking like a bronco in that small concrete space.

  “Shit!” I growl as I reach in with both hands and pull the trembling coffin out of the enclosure, and it flies right past me like a mahogany missile, falling to the ground with a thud and bringing with it an unsurpassed silence I thought I’d never hear again.

  The casket has landed on its side, splitting open as it rests over the marble floor like a tent.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” I kick the casket over onto its back to reveal her corpse in two pieces lying on the floor. Kate lies still in her formal gown. The scarf that was wrapped around her neck blows past me with the wind, but her head lies crooked to the side, face up, those eyes that were once sealed shut with my father’s eyelash glue fidget as if blinking to life. Her hands twitch, once then twice before tapping over the floor before snagging a finger around a single blonde curl. “Kate,” I whisper as I witness the atrocity.

  She pulls at her head, tugs it over, rolling and bumping her face over the cold hard tile before grasping it with both hands and situating it on the base of her neck—her face is set a little too far over her shoulder, offering her an unnatural disposition. Not that anything about this is fucking natural.

  “Kate?” There she is, blonde and petite as ever with pale doll-like features, a pert nose, and tiny little lips you can hardly tell are there.

  She slaps her hand over the floor as if begging for assistance before pointing to her skull.

  “Your head.” I fall to my knees and do my best to twist her head in the right direction. “Hang on.” I leap over and gather the white silk scarf that’s wrapped itself around a fallen vase. In all of the earthquake-like melee, the mausoleum looks as if it’s been ransacked of all its flowers, leaving all of its plastic floral displays scattered like debris.

  I wrap the scarf around her neck and do my best to secure her head to the rest of her before pulling her up and cradling her stiff, cold body in my arms. I’m going to have to shower for a week before I touch the boys again.

  She pries her lips open with her fingers, then her eyes—two milky blue orbs stare back at me. There is nothing more disconcerting than having an eye or a mouth pop open during a viewing, so we like to glue them closed along with the mouth. But in Kate’s case, she was glued shut twice. My father is meticulous about the state of his corpses. And I’m sure he won’t appreciate the fact that I’ve been present during two reanimations in such a short span of time.

  “Gage,” she mouths my name as she settles her eyes over me. An eerie grimace takes over her face as she struggles to smile.

  Footsteps speed this way and stop abruptly.

  “Oh fuck.” Logan staggers and sways on his feet as he gets in close. “What in the hell have you done now?”

  “I don’t know, dude. But something tells me we’re going to need Ezrina.”

  No sooner do the words leave my mouth than the cemetery rumbles and grumbles as if experiencing a seizure of its own.

  “Forget Ezrina”—Logan gives a suspicious glance around—“we’re going to need Dudley.”

  A shadow elongates over the cold stone floor and then another.

  “No need to call Dudley.” Skyla appears with Chloe by her side, both bleached white with terror, their eyes set over the rolling earth as the gravestones disjoint, undoing the symmetrical, linear as hell pattern my father has worked so hard to perfect over the last few decades. “I already did.”

  “Skyla.” I gently lay Kate over the floor, and her body bucks as she crawls spastically sideways much like a spider.

  “For shit's sake!” Chloe screeches. “Kill it with fire!”

  “Oh hush.” Skyla bolts to her old friend and lays her hand over her forehead as if checking for a fever. “She’s warming up.” Skyla looks over to Logan and me, panting through a smile. “She was the first I tried to wake, and here she is.”

  “Only she’s not one of us,” Chloe snaps. “You let that stupid beating heart of yours get in the way, and, as usual, you’ve fucked things up before they’ve ever began.”

  “Shut the hell up, Chloe.” Skyla struggles to help Kate to her feet, and I jump over to assist. Kate wobbles before toppling backward, stiff as a board, and I help Skyla lay her back on the ground. “It’s going to be fine.” A single tear streams down Skyla’s face, falling over Kate’s forehead like an afterthought. An
d just like that, the color pours back into her flesh. Her lips turn a ruddy shade of pink as she manages to sit up and pant as if she actually had a working set of lungs.

  Logan leans in to get a better look. “What the hell is going on, Skyla? Why is Kate sitting here? Why is the entire cemetery doing the graveyard hop?”

  Skyla glances up at him with a vengeance in her eyes. “Stop asking so many questions, Logan, and get a damn shovel.”

  There is a moment of pause as both Logan and I exchange a brief glance.

  Skyla has done this? How has Skyla done this? More to the point, how has Chloe done this?

  “Shit.” I take a few steps back and nearly land on my ass until the ground stops quaking beneath my feet. “We can’t dig up the cemetery, Skyla.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” She pulls out her phone, and before she can touch her thumb to the screen, Dudley strides on over as if this were the norm—as if the ground jumping, the jackhammering of a thousand corpses begging to escape their casket prisons were an everyday occurrence—and apparently on Paragon, it’s not far from reality.

  “Silence!” His voice roars over the dark expanse, and in a show of bravado on his part, a miracle on nature’s part, the fog rolls back like a scroll, receding from the graveyard as if it were chased by a demon, or in this case a Sector—and for a good five solid seconds the graveyard returns to its unanimated state. “Skyla,” he barks, looking back at her with his face screwed up in anger. “What in heaven’s name have you done?”

  That tone he’s invoked with her sets a fresh rage percolating in me. “Don’t talk to my wife that way.”

  Skyla bursts past me as she gets in his face. “Don’t you act surprised. I was kind enough to brief you!”

  “When it was nothing more than a fantasy.” His voice hits its upper register, his chest is puffed out like a gorilla, his nostrils flaring. He doesn’t take those heated eyes off her. He is pissed as hell and doesn’t mind showing it. I’ve yet to see Dudley agitated. For sure I’ve yet to see him reach that level with Skyla.