Smoke & Ash (Wardens Series Book 2)

by Heather D Glidewell

  She rested her hands-on Adam’s shoulders. “A fencing sword.” She grinned and mussed up his hair. “Tomorrow we’ll work on some more moves. I may have you moved up to a broadsword by the end of the week.”

  “You hear that? I have talent,” Adam said, sitting up straight and tapping his own chest. “For once I’m good at something other than choir.”

  “Don’t let your head get too big,” I warned. “I hear a broadsword isn’t that easy to master.”

  We ate in silence for a moment.

  “So, they haven’t found Aaron yet?” Adam asked, looking at me.

  “Not a trace.” I put my sandwich down. “You’d think it would be easy to locate three mortals, even in a world full of mortals.” I wasn’t sure if that made sense even to me.

  “Yeah… that would be like finding a demon in a house full of demons,” he replied, raising an eyebrow. “But I know what you mean. I’m sure the big scary vampire will find him one way or another.”

  “I know you’re right, but I would much rather it be sooner than later,” I said with my mouth full. “This is a delicious sandwich by the way.”

  “Your mom buys only the best meat and cheese apparently.” He shook his head. “All my dad gets is bologna.”

  “You are getting your strength back?” I asked as he finished his last bite.

  “Yup. I feel a hundred percent better.”

  “Good, because we’ve got our homework to do tonight. Got to keep the mama happy. Otherwise, she’s not so angelic.” I intended it as much as a warning as a joke, though how he took it was up to him.

  Mom had set us up in adjoining rooms connected by a single door. Apparently, the room I was staying in would have been my nursery, which made sense because the walls were pink. If only they knew how much I now hated pink. They had exchanged the crib for a brand-new double bed, with a dark mahogany headboard, and fluffy black sheets. I had a feeling it wasn’t my mother who had picked this out.

  My parents had not lived in this house for long when John managed to take everything from them. They had run to the country house, where I was born, to get away from the scornful eyes of the town. I had not seen much of Harrisville on the drive. In fact, I had not seen any of it because I was asleep. Still, judging by how much land surrounded the house the town was not much bigger than a few blocks. How could something so unnatural take place here? Why was everything focused on this one location?

  I tried to focus on my schoolwork. Next door I heard Adam struggling with his Physics homework until my mother offered to help him out. It was surprising to me that she had never taken up teaching. I thought she would have found that it worked better in God’s graces than serving as a humble counselor for a local church. They were still working on it when I emailed my completed assignment and sat back to relax. I saw my eyes were slowly turning brown again. I still couldn't force any flames from my fingers, but I knew that the more I built up my stamina, the longer I would be able to hold the fire.

  ****

  We steadily grew closer to the time set for Krista’s resurrection. The tension in the house increased, but I was still not able to call only the white flame. I kept mixing the dark flame with it ruining the whole point of the practice. When I got frustrated, there were casualties. First, I set a chair on fire, then a table, then the whole back porch. Next, it was Shawn’s shirt, Minerva’s dress, and finally the back yard itself; which ended up with a huge burnt circle of grass in its middle. Dad said that he could turn it into a fire pit.

  I felt like an infant learning to walk. The few times I did something right everyone cheered. The moment it went wrong I was put in time out. Adam worked vigorously with my mother, learning the arts of swordsmanship, archery, and shooting. He had an impeccable aim, which got my father’s attention. I guessed that all those hours playing Halo hadn’t been such a waste of time as I had presumed. He looked happy too. In fact, he looked like he was having the time of his life, not that Adam was ever depressed or sad. He just always had an aura to him that was neutral. He didn’t care what you did to him: as long as it made you happy, he was pleased, which was why it was so easy for people to walk all over him. If they had seen all this, however, they might have thought twice before treating him so offhandedly.

  My stamina improved significantly. I was able to work longer hours, though longer hours meant I was more tired when I hit the homework. My legs hurt from having to stand straight while suspended in the air. My fingers actually had little black circles around the tips as a result of me scorching my own skin. Working this hard made me forget temporarily about the two important individuals who had been taken from me. I had to remind myself that I was doing all this for them. If there had never been a Wesley or an Aaron, or even an Adam, I wouldn’t have cared less if the planet had turned in on itself and imploded.

  My friends were the ones who balanced me. They were what made me wake up every morning and work so hard. They were the reason that I persevered at learning how to control a flame. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going. And I wouldn’t have mastered my role in the resurrection of a girl who had been dead for eighteen years.

  Mom had said that when I was born, I was the last of my kind. The rules forbade love, lust, and marriage between Heaven and the Underworld. There had been no further unions between the two sides, which meant there were no other children like me. This also meant that Krista had been condemned to Purgatory because there was no one her power could be passed to. It was heartbreaking, really. Without good, there was no evil, and without evil, there was no good. The world was like my bloodlines. As long as I kept them balanced, I was good, but the moment it tipped one way or the other all Hell broke loose.

  I realized how hard it must be to be in limbo, knowing that the only way you could truly pass on was for something remarkable to happen. It must be lonely for Krista. No wonder she gripped onto me when I traveled her timeline. I was the first being that had taken the time to care. I felt the tears rolling down my cheek whenever I thought about it.

  I was thinking about Krista one evening when my phone began to ring, causing me to jump. I grabbed it and noted the absence of any numbers on the screen. It was a private call, one that I would not be able to trace. I clicked the talk button and put the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Dawn, this is Edmund. I have someone here who wants to speak with you.”

  I heard a rustle of movement.

  “Dawn?” The voice was hoarse and groggy. As if the speaker had just woken up.

  “Yes.” My heart leaped in my chest. My mother was right. Dear Edmund had found Aaron.

  “Oh, thank God you’re okay,” Aaron said, his voice cracking. “They won’t let me tell you where I am. They’ve sworn Edmund to secrecy as well.”

  I heard a grumble in the background. Who could persuade an ancient vampire to make a pact not to tell where someone of importance was located?

  “Can you at least tell me who you’re with?” I asked him. My heart had been pounding nonstop since I heard his voice.

  “Not really. I can tell you that I am safe; so are my parents. In fact, my parent’s kind of like it here; it seems.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “It means… we’re staying.” His voice faltered for a second.

  “Staying?”

  “Dawn, you know I love you. You know that every breath I take is for you,” he said, a little too hastily perhaps.

  “Yes.”

  I had become numb to him saying it to me, even after I had confessed that in my own small way, I did love him, just not to the same extent that he loved me.

  “But I don’t know when I’m going to see you again,” he said. I could hear pain in his voice.

  “What?” I felt like my insides were going to fall out.

  “Things are changing. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  My head was swimming. “Aaron, are you breaking up with me?” I asked slowly.

  Y
ou would have thought I would be happy if he were. I would have thought I would be satisfied if he were. However, in reality, it sucked.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confessed.

  “What do you mean by things are changing?” I demanded.

  “That I can’t tell you. They just are.” He sounded like his heart was breaking. “Just remember that I do love you and that I will always love you. I just think that our souls need to part for a while. I need to get my head around the things that are happening here.”

  “I don’t understand, Aaron!” I was feeling sick.

  “I will still call you, and you can email me… you just can’t know where I am right now.”

  I heard the phone rustle again, and Edmund came back on.

  “Dawn are you alright?” he asked.

  “Of course. I was just dumped over the phone,” I said, trying to keep the tears at bay.

  “They’re making him,” he stated. “He doesn’t want to do this. His parents just feel it best if he does.”

  “How is he?” I asked, about to give up on my eyes, which were going to shed tears one way or another.

  “He’s good. He’s pretty much healed in fact.” He stopped talking.

  “What did they do to him?” I demanded, anger surging through me.

  “Dawn, he’s changing. He tells you he loves you now, but in two weeks he won’t even know how he felt about you. If the two of you came face to face, you might feel something, but he will feel nothing more than familiarity.” Edmund sighed. “Listen. I will be heading back to you at the first sign of night. You and I can stay up and discuss what’s going on. I can tell you some things, but I can’t tell you everything. I am sworn to keep the secret of their location. That is, until a time at which they feel they can make it known. Just know that it is a lovely place. They are well taken care of.”

  “Edmund?” I choked on my words. “What about the claim I have on Aaron’s soul?”

  “It will sever within the next few weeks,” he said. “Now I have to go to get things set for the journey home. He will email you until the day comes when he realizes he has no emotional connection with you anymore.”

  “Okay. I understand. See you when you get here,” I said and hung up the phone.

  Just seconds ago, I had been thinking about how Aaron balanced me out. Now he was gone, just like Wesley. One thing was for certain; I was not going to be making any more claims after this one was broken.

  ****

  “You want to talk about it?” my father asked, knocking on the door before coming into my room.

  “Not sure what there is to talk about,” I said slowly, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

  “I’m not going to say I warned you,” he said, sitting down on the bed next to me.

  “Good, because right now I don’t need a good I-told-you-so,” I said quietly.

  “I’m truly sorry this has happened. When you first started to see him, I thought it was going to end tragically for him.” He pulled me close to him, pressing my head against his chest.

  “I think it did end pretty tragically for him,” I said.

  “But not in the way that I thought it would. I thought that you were going to rip his heart out and eat it for dinner because you were so angry about Wesley.” He was petting my hair now and rocking me slowly.

  “Why can’t he tell me where he is?” I asked. I had to admit what he was doing was somewhat comforting.

  “Because he doesn’t know,” my father said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “How can he not know?”

  “Because they haven’t told him,” he answered with a laugh. “If he is, where I think he is, you wouldn’t want to be there anyway,” he said slowly. “I’ve been there once. Nice place, beautiful views over the ocean, but the people...” He shivered. “Well, they’re not people at all.”

  “What are they then? Dad, those things that attacked Aaron and his family… are they what’s causing this change?” I wondered aloud.

  He sighed. “They are the reason for the change, yes.”

  “This is a physical change, isn’t it? Not like a change in the time, or the weather. When he said things were changing, he meant that he is changing,” I murmured.

  “I think you’re starting to understand.” He kept rocking me back and forth.

  “What is he becoming?”

  “It depends what was in that house. There was a plethora of different species, different bloodlines… I’m not sure who was what. The bloodstain images I got were inconclusive. We couldn’t find anything that pinpointed who carried out the attack. It was motivated by malice though. They wanted revenge for their brother being burnt to ashes, and then the feeling of the two purebloods. It’s almost like a group of scientists has been experimenting to see what they could get by mixing different genetic pools. I just don’t know. Your mother asked me to let it go for a bit and focus on getting your third friend above ground. We will resume searching for answers as soon as the allies start to show.” He took a breath and kissed the top of my head. “I love you, Dawn,” he said into my hair.

  “I love you too, Dad,” I answered, squeezing him tightly. “How long till the contract is broken?”

  “You have a few days left, maybe two weeks. It just depends on how quickly the change happens.”

  I curled up closer against my father and closed my eyes. As much as I didn’t want to think about what was happening to Aaron, the more I felt it was my fault.

  Chapter 27

  Training

  I kept the story of my being dumped from Adam. I wasn’t sure if he would rejoice that things had ended between Aaron and me, or if he would feel some pity. And it was something I didn’t want to face myself. I was sure, however, that my father had told my mother about it.

  The one good thing that came out of the break-up was the fact that I could now focus on my fire training. I mastered the protection flame in an afternoon. That meant we were finally good for the raising of Krista. I was ready to provide my part of the equation. Minerva and Shawn both agreed that it was time Helen and I worked on the act together, trying to find out what exactly we needed to do.

  All we had to go on was a dream that Helen had had before she made her way to Midvale to find me. In that, I cast the fire of protection to keep the evil spirits out while Helen parted the earth and brought forth the casket. I broke open the top and then we recited some ridiculous chant that my mother had told us about. All of this was supposed to put Krista back on solid ground. It did make me think that God had a sense of humor after all. He had already told her that she was going to get a second chance. Perhaps he was somewhere up there finding this all hilarious. Watching me spend days falling on my ass as I trained would be enough to get anyone laughing.

  My thoughts kept going back to Aaron. I acknowledged that at the start he was meant to be nothing more than a filler. I was supposed to use him up and let him go, not actually start giving a damn about him and worrying when he wasn’t near. I wasn’t supposed to get attached to him. But I did. I had longed for some of that attention that Wesley had given me. Yet I had wished so many times for history to start over so that I could meet Aaron first and avoid the heartbreak of losing Wesley. Little had I guessed that Aaron would hurt me too, if not quite at the same level.

  Edmund returned that night. He looked at me with a somber expression while I tried not to drool over his immense power and presence. As soon as he saw me, he wrapped his long arms around my body and pulled me close. Aside from the lack of a heartbeat, I felt at ease in the vampire’s arms. I knew he wasn’t a threat to me in any way; after all, he wanted to live to see another night. I knew from experience that my blood was poison to their kind. For him, it would be suicided to attack me.

  “His family sends their love,” he said into my ear.

  “Well, that’s so nice of them,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I didn’t really blame them, but there was no one else I could blame.


  “They wish you well in your journey. They don’t know what you are or what you’ll do for them. They don’t know that they will see you much sooner than they anticipate.” He laughed. “I told them nothing, young one. I want to see their faces when they figure it out for themselves.”

  “By then it won’t matter,” I mumbled. “He’ll have no recollection of the feelings he once had for me.” I sighed. “Won’t he know there was something, anything at all?”

  “He’ll remember there was something, but it won’t come rushing back to him when he sees you,” Edmund said softly. There was a catch in his throat, and he changed the subject. “I also bring news to the mortal boy of his father.”

  “Please tell me that he’s okay,” I groaned. “Adam won’t be able to bear it if someone tells him his father isn’t.”

  “No, no. His father is doing quite well in fact. I think he has finally grasped this whole thing, the idea that there is more in the world than just humans. He actually finds Kim’s water play quite amusing.” Edmund smiled and let me go. “I’ll find you again shortly and answer any and all questions that I can.” With that, he stepped away and went to find Adam.

  I had a great many questions for him. I wanted to know what Aaron was becoming, what changes he was undergoing. I wanted to know if his family were on our side, or would the opposing side recruit them. I wanted to understand how Aaron could just forget how he felt about me. I mean, really, how does a person just forget they loved someone? I never questioned my love for Wesley. I accepted it, no matter how destructive it became. If I saw him standing on the battlefield across from me, sword in the air, I wouldn’t hesitate in rushing him. I might love him, yes, but that was for the boy he had been, not the creature he might become.

  I wondered if that was how I might come to feel about Aaron. Edmund had said that I would be seeing them sooner than they anticipated. They had no idea who I was or that it was my war they were choosing to fight in, no matter which side they chose. How would I be able to look at Aaron and not want him to remember how he had felt for me? I may not have wanted his love in the beginning, but by the end, it was his love for me that made me care so much about him.