Dreadful Ashes

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  —getting an easy view of where the attacker had torn out the side of his throat.

  The next closest corpse was the same, ragged strips of meat and gore where his carotid had been, but I’d already seen enough. I pushed nagging fear and suspicion aside as I left the carnage behind, refusing to think the discovery through all the way. Instead, I continued the hunt. A splatter of out-of-place crimson marked the spot, and I scaled the next building over, following the footsteps of the killer…and lucking out at the top. Here, wisps of collected death energy lingered, forming a trail I could follow—or a direction to go in, at least.

  Baring fangs beneath my mask, I did as I knew the creature before me had done. I breathed in deeply, reflexively, as I soaked up the lingering aura of death that filled the alley, letting it fill me and empower me.

  Whether my own buried fears were true or not, I was probably about to need it.

  Dead flesh strong with borrowed energy, I took a few quick steps and leapt to the next rooftop, then the next, until the trail went abruptly cold at the top of a decrepit apartment building. But instead of venting my frustration with a few select expletives, my instincts warned me to stay silent instead.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Into the still and quiet came a single, strong heartbeat. Close.

  Then nothing, save the whisper of the wind and the muddled murmur of the mortal hearts on the floors below.

  I followed the dying echoes of that single sound, drawing in the shadows around me until I was almost as silent as the grave. I ducked under lines of laundry left to dry in the cool night air, each towel and tank top seeming to harbor shadows a shade deeper than they had any right to, carpeting strips of the rooftop in shades of gray. A hulking central air unit whirred incessantly, but I tuned it out, instead straining to catch the sound of that solitary heartbeat once more—a sound that never came.

  Instead, the open door of the roof access beckoned, filled with shadows my darkvision couldn’t penetrate.

  Against my better judgement, I stepped inside anyway.

  “Leave. Me. Alone!” A sledgehammer whistled out of the black to accompany the words, smashing into my sternum, its thick oaken handle fracturing from the recoil. I stumbled back a step from the force, snarling as my body rejected the steel.

  “So you can murder more people?” I snapped, falling into a fighting stance as I scanned my surroundings, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar darkness. I managed to discern a hint of close brick walls and stairs leading downward before my eyes were distracted by movement, an instant’s warning as the shadows struck again.

  “You’re no different!” Moonlight flickered from the hammer’s head as it arced for my face. I caught the handle on my claws as they burst free of my fingertips, rending the wood to splinters, the head of the sledge clattering noisily down the stairs. In return, I lunged blindly at the darkness, to the faint sound of tearing cloth as the blood-rusted iron of my claws failed to find purchase in my opponent’s body. A growl born of Strigoi rage forced its way from my throat—a sound echoed by the shadowy figure as it moved toward me once more.

  I leapt high as it surged into sudden motion, then lashed out with both boots and drop-kicked it through the wall.

  Cloaking shadows frayed in a spray of brick and masonry. I followed as soon as I rolled to my feet again, shouldering my way through the remnants of the wall as the killer stumbled to a halt; in the ample moonlight, tattered shadows dripped to the ground, their inky darkness slowly fading, revealing by degrees the figure underneath.

  The somewhat familiar figure underneath.

  “How dare you,” the tall, lean, male silhouette growled, his voice undercut by a current of supernatural anger. “This is all your fault. All of it!” Without warning, he threw himself at me again, inhumanly quick, his voice rumbling with rage.

  I sidestepped the rush and kicked one of his legs out from under him, but he managed to twist and catch my arm with tarnished claws, fraying the fabric of my battered cardigan. I whipped my own claws across his face in response. Strigoi anger bubbled up unbidden, lending death-empowered strength to the strike, and he recoiled as the rust-etched metal scraped hard across his skin, barely missing one eye. While he flinched away, I struck again, grabbing him by the shoulder and slinging him against the roof access with enough force to crunch brick.

  “I can’t let this continue. You don’t know what harm you’re causing.” Shaking my head, I stepped close, ready to cut him off if he tried to run.

  “Causing? I’m killing it at the root,” he snapped, prying himself free of cracked brickwork. The shadows enveloping him continued to fade away, showing a hint of dark skin and dead eyes, disheveled hair and torn, bloodstained clothes. “All I know is that those monsters need to die—every last one. Human and…not. And if you’re siding with them,” his voice deepened, tainted by a roiling rage, “so do you.”

  I braced myself for his rush—an assault that never came. Both of us froze as voices—young, alarmed, and loud—echoed up the nearby stairs, accompanied by the erratic flickering of a flashlight.

  “Shit! Just look! I told you I heard something!” Two young women edged up the stairs, gawking at the half-demolished wall in shock and alarm. Unconsciously, I drew in the shadows, cloaking myself from their eyes—and blinking in surprise as my foe did the same.

  Almost exactly the same.

  “I’m sure it’s just…” The older of the two trailed off with a shiver, as if suddenly cold, casting about with her cheap LED flashlight as if seeking reassurance.

  “The wind?” The younger girl protested skeptically, clinging to the other’s arm, her voice edged in fear. Instinctively, I stepped back as the two timidly made their way onto the roof, remembering all too well the last time I’d run across a flashlight beam—only to realize a moment too late that moving away was a mistake.

  Unknowing, the two mortals turned the corner and walked right between us, close enough for the killer to reach out and touch, close enough for me to feel the rapid, frightened thrum of their hearts and the heat of the warm blood coursing through their veins. All he had to do was stick out his claws; if he tried to hurt them, or use them against me, there was no way I could stop him in time—

  “Sis, did you hear that?” I winced away as the dim flashlight beam raked across my face, not strong enough to strip my shadows away and terrify the two girls, but enough to blind me for an instant.

  When my vision cleared an instant later, the other monster was gone, shadows and all.

  “No…but did you see that?” The LED light flickered as the older girl trembled, her voice a whisper. “A skull! Floating there…with fangs…” The younger sister squeaked. “But it’s gone.”

  I stepped away with them none the wiser, adjusting my black cloth face mask. As scary as a glimpse of the grinning, fanged skull printed on it might be, a glimpse of my actual face would have been far worse. I walked to the edge of the roof, leaving the two girls to their own imaginations and wishing them the fewest nightmares possible. But no matter how much I looked and paced, the trail was ice cold. The shadow-cloaked man was simply gone.

  I’d run across several scenes of his handiwork during the last few months and followed his trail more than once. Once or twice, I’d found it possibly following me instead. But this was the first time I’d actually caught up with the murderer himself. He hadn’t been what I’d expected; I supposed I’d expected…well, one more in a long line of Birmingham monsters. Not something with reason, or reasons.

  Now I didn’t know what to think.

  Well, that wasn’t precisely true. I knew where the clues were leading me; my mind just didn’t want to go there. So far, I’d been able to live in comfortable denial, but tonight, the evidence had piled itself precariously high. So high, in fact, that it threatened to tumble down and bury me.

  So I stood on the corner of the decades-old apartment building, listening to the background chatter of two frightened but curious siblings and
the metallic rumble of an overburdened AC unit. I stood there and thought of another tall, lean man, his silhouette frozen in my hunger-addled memories, an instant before my fangs ripped his throat out.

  An instant before I’d murdered him.

  It would have been easier if he were just a monster. Easier for me to forgive myself, at least.

  Still, it wasn’t a solution set in stone, not yet. I’d been wrong a lot of times before; hopefully this was just one more of those. And even if my fears were right…

  …there was no way I could let this curse of mine spread. No matter what.

  Fortunately, the howling of wolves saved me further introspection.

  The sound didn’t sink in at first; it was the hushed talk of “werewolves” behind me that caught my attention, pulling me from my thoughts as the two girls searched for something to explain away the partial demolition of the rooftop. Under the bright light of the full moon, after incidents they couldn’t explain away, maybe it made sense.

  Their suspicions were closer to the truth than they would ever know.

  My feet were moving before I gave them the command as my mind started to make out where the howls were coming from. I flashed by the girls on the rooftop, another chill breeze and shadow in a city full of them and leapt from rooftop to rooftop once more, chasing the howls back the way I’d come.

  Back to where my friends were waiting.

  By the time I cleared the city blocks between us and looked down on Tamara and the two changelings, howls had turned to ominous growls. A thick ring of fur and fangs closed in on the three of them; I could see Tamara’s eyes gleaming a sluggish liquid sapphire from here as she stood poised, ready to fight. Jason had one hand in his pocket, probably on the switchblade he kept there, but his teeth were bared in animalistic warning and his eyes flickered with flashes of amber. Rain was already a coyote, the tiny shifter’s growls of warning almost comically muffled by the dangerous rumble of the encircling wolves.

  Tamara raised her hands toward the oversized alpha wolf, the very same one who’d tried to snap my neck in the collector’s house last night. I could feel her projecting calm from here, and I could see her lips moving, even if I couldn’t hear her words over the noise of the pack.

  I didn’t wait for the time the Moroi was buying to run out.

  “Wolf punt!” I burst from the shadows with a kick that lofted a large changeling gracefully onto the top of the building next door, its whine of surprise and pain disappearing into the night.

  From there, the scene went to chaos in an instant. I heard Rain yip in fright or injury as I punched a wolf in the face; meanwhile, Jason’s battlecry quickly devolved into a string of unintelligible Latin-American curse words. Tamara called out a warning, and I spun in time to catch a wolf mid-leap and throw it into space. I pried another off of my leg by the scruff of its neck and swung it around like a fuzzy club, swatting aside shifter after shifter with a possibly-maniacal grin on my face.

  Wh-CRACK! I might have made us some space wielding a wolf as a weapon, but Tamara solidified it with a snap of her silver-and-iron threaded whip.

  “Enough,” she snapped, her voice cutting the air as surely as the crack of the whip.

  “Time to back off,” I rasped in agreement, standing firm between the werewolves and my friends. My claws burst from my fingers in emphasis, splattering the cement underfoot with dark droplets of my own blood.

  The ring of wolves slowly but surely fell back—all except for the largest one. I growled in warning, and the hulking alpha wolf met my growl with one of its own, refusing to budge.

  “Ashes.” Before I could step forward and spark another round of fighting, Tamara’s whisper-soft voice caught my attention. I glanced back, then followed the line of her gaze to the mid-size, silvery white wolf behind the alpha. If I concentrated, I could hear the shifter’s heart hammering, a faster tempo than the rest of the pack; possibly from fear, possibly from whatever injury caused her to limp and her breath to wheeze in and out.

  He wasn’t threatening us—at least, not anymore. He was protecting one of his own.

  I backed down, dialing down the aggression but not giving ground. Sometimes, despite having a pair of shifters for friends, I forgot how amazingly quickly they could heal. I watched as the seconds slipped past and the silvery wolf’s injuries disappeared: first the limp, then the wheeze, and finally the pain in her amber eyes.

  Whole once more, she joined the retreating ring of wolves; only then did the alpha’s threatening growl subside into a lower rumble of warning. His moon-bright amber eyes locked with mine as he backed away, never turning his back or lowering his guard, not until the rest of the werewolves had disappeared into the darkness of the surrounding streets.

  Then he ran off into the night, taking his pack with him.

  I waited until their heartbeats were completely off my supernatural radar before letting my claws dissipate, a tingle of static arcing up my fingers. “Well, that was a thing.” I turned to look my friends over. “Everybody okay?”

  “Y-yeah.” Rain nodded, looking more shaken than stirred. “I don’t think…they didn’t actually do anything to hurt us.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Whuh?”

  Tamara stepped close to me, her eyes still simmering slightly, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Ashes…I hate to say this, but they weren’t aggressive until you showed up.”

  “What?” I blinked. “Well, fuck.” Then I shook my head. “Wait. That’s not how it looked to me from up there. I mean, a ring of wolves, slowly closing in, fangs bared?” I made clawy motions with my fingers. “That’s scary movie material right there. They looked like they were about to pounce, or whatever it is wolves do. They were growling and everything.”

  “Still though,” Tamara somehow coiled her whip back up one-handed and tucked it away in her threadbare thrift store shoulder bag. “I didn’t sense that level of aggression off of them. And I would have.”

  I bit my lip, refraining from questioning her weakening powers and hoping she didn’t notice.

  “They…I think they were posturing,” Rain said after a moment’s pause. “Like animals do? You know, not wanting to show weakness or anything? Maybe?”

  I raised an eyebrow at the talking coyote. “Then why were you growling?”

  The small, brown-and-gray creature shrugged. Like a person would shrug. I shook my head at the sight. “I didn’t say I wasn’t scared.” If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought the animal was blushing.

  I glanced at Jason instead. “You had your hand on that knife of yours. You had to think something was up.”

  The lanky teen shrugged. “Nah, chica. Just been one of those weeks.” He leaned against the wall and nudged Rain’s haunches with the toe of his boot, causing the younger changeling to pop into the air in surprise. He grinned. “Still though…I dunno. I’m with you. I just don’t trust it.” His blue-gray eyes flickered with a hint of amber as he stared thoughtfully after the vanished pack.

  “Well, as long as no one’s listening to the Moroi,” Tamara rolled her eyes and huffed playfully, then leaned over and gave me a surprise kiss on the masked part of my cheek. It landed on the ragged hole in my skin and I almost winced away. “So how did your…chase thingy go?”

  I realized I had hesitated too long when I found everyone staring at me.

  “Too well,” I finally answered.

  4

  The essence of fear

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Tamara whispered. Her voice trembled.

  I raised an eyebrow. “This was your idea,” I rasped quietly, ducking under the police tape.

  “Yeah. And it seemed like a damn good one until about twenty seconds ago.”

  I glanced back, watching Tamara shiver and hug herself as she reluctantly followed me.

  I frowned. It wasn’t that cold out tonight. “Are…you okay?”

  I watched as the Moroi asked herself that question. “I…” The light in her eyes hardened
into resolve. “I’m fine.” Whatever was bothering her, Tamara shook it off, following closely on my heels…and maybe a little closer than I would have expected.

  “If you’re certain…” I trailed off as we approached the darkened, three-story home. I wondered if it still smelled like wolves, or just like the majority of an old man’s lifeblood. I sighed.

  Tamara shook her head and took my arm. “No, I want to give this place another look.” She’d decided on our way back home from the Pancake Hut that maybe a second glance around the crime scene from a few nights ago would turn up something or at least sate her curiosity, and I had concurred. “I’m pretty certain that it wasn't the wolf pack that tried to kill this guy. So why were they here? Why did they come looking for us? And who was it that was here before them that destroyed the wards and left the place feeling of death?”

  I thought of the shadowy man from the rooftop and chewed the inside of my cheek—the intact one, anyway. “You think the pack was looking for us?” I rasped. “But why?”

  “That’s what I was just wondering. Pay attention.” Tamara stuck out her tongue; I missed the glimmer of the barbell she’d always worn. “If we knew that, the real question would be: why are we breaking into a crime scene?”

  “Fair enough.” At the not-so-subtle reminder, I drew in the shadows around us and held Tamara close—partially because it made it easier, but mostly because I wanted to and it was a good excuse. The darkness enveloping us would serve to get us in and out without mortal eyes any the wiser, at least. All we needed was the authorities pinning another murder on her, or a refresh of the manhunt that had ended not long after Meladoquiel’s banishment.

  The police, or someone, had replaced the old collector’s door lock; I broke it open as simply as the last one, except a little more carefully and quietly. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead to him being robbed; I could dream, I supposed. I left some of my shadows behind as I stepped over the threshold as even the fading flickers of its protections tried to hold me back and protect its absent owner. Rather than fight it, I let the darkness run like liquid, seeping into the cracks in the aged hardwood floor.