Dreadful Ashes

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  I held her; after Tamara realized I wasn’t going to let go, or go anywhere myself, she turned and pushed her face into my chest. I couldn’t cry away the stress, so I forced myself to breathe instead, inhaling the scent of her over and over again. I stayed silent until I felt the tears soaking the front of my nightshirt finally starting to dry.

  “Are we okay?” I held Tamara at arm’s length and took a good look at her: tired, disheveled, and distraught. “Mostly okay?” I amended.

  “No.” She stared me down, her expression softening the longer she looked into my eyes. A gleam of liquid blue traced the edges of her irises, and she turned away. “But I’ll manage…thanks to you.” She pushed at me, seeming stronger than before. I still didn’t release her though. “I…need you to let me go now. This is…hard, okay?”

  Suddenly understanding, I released her and waited for her to seem settled before standing and offering her a hand.

  This time, she took it.

  With a smile, I pulled her gently to her feet. It was an act of will to resist pulling her right back into my arms.

  “Sorry about your floor.” She glanced down and made a face.

  “This is a church. I’m sure it’s seen worse.”

  Tamara stared at me. “I…don’t even know what that means.”

  “Me either.” I grinned at her until we both started laughing. “I just thought it might get a laugh out of you.”

  “Mission successful,” the Moroi shook her head. “Where’s…Where is Lan? Did you get him?”

  I shook my head, unable to keep the faint rumble of a growl out of my voice as I answered. “No.”

  Tamara gave me a worried look.

  I took a deeper breath and tried to let the stubborn anger go, with minimal success. “He turned into a cloud of…smoke?” I paused as I finally got a chance to think about it. “I thought that was one of the Strigoi legends. The smoke mist thing.”

  “Looks like one legend that got misplaced.” Hesitantly, Tamara laid a hand on my arm for support. “What…how did he…get me? I don’t have clear memories of it.” She pulled me slowly toward the hallway, keeping a steadying grip on my shirt sleeve.

  I tried to keep a handle on my rage; every memory of Lan’s near-lethal assault on Tamara threatened to bring it rushing right back to the surface. “He managed to eat some of the energy in your commands, I think? Then he knocked you down and tried to—” I swallowed, but the anger didn’t obediently go down my throat. “Tried to eat you,” I rumbled.

  She nodded as we made our way into the hallway. “I was afraid of that,” she sighed, sounding so very tired. “But not using my powers on him would just have gotten my ass kicked quicker.” A flash of amusement quirked her face into a thin smile, and she seemed to perk up a little. “But…hell, I almost had him, didn’t I? That’s not bad for one down-and-out Moroi, huh?”

  “You sure did,” I smiled a bittersweet smile, still wrestling with the idea of nearly losing her every time I looked into her eyes.

  “Damn.” She paused. “You know, I should have used that time to un-stake you, instead trying to kill him, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.” She gave me a tired wink. “You know, should have freed my minion first.”

  “That’s henchman, thank you very much.”

  Shaking her head a little, Tamara stared off down the hall and whistled. “So that’s how he got in? I didn’t think Lan was that strong.” She nudged me with an elbow, staring at the toppled chunk of gray stone support pillar. “You’re gonna need a security system or something.” She frowned.

  “That wasn’t him. I moved it while trying to chase him down and beat him with his own skull.”

  She snorted, and the frown dissipated. “Well, that’s good. But how did he get in, and can we stop him if he—” Tamara cut off and took a long look around, seeming to gaze past the stone walls surrounding us. “Wait. You’re walking and talking. And joking. And you almost chased him upstairs?”

  “Yeah?” I shrugged. “Asshat had it coming.”

  “Ashes.” She stared at me. “It’s daytime.”

  I stopped moving for a moment as the shock caught up to me. “Huh.” Now that Tamara had reminded me, I could definitely feel it, the sun’s wrath hovering outside, hungry to cleanse the flesh from my undead bones or whatever.

  But the energy I was still drawing from the pulsing heart of the old church was more than enough to counteract the burden of daytime.

  I grinned, broader and broader.

  Tamara raised an eyebrow. “Something tells me you have a story.”

  We sat down, right there in the hallway, and I told her all the details I could manage of what had happened, of how I’d really managed to fight off Lan. I tried not to get too angry, but I wasn’t terribly successful—until Tamara put a cautious hand on my arm and helped me manage it, drawing off the excess anger and absorbing it herself.

  “So. I’m pretty sure that this means your church isn’t really a church,” Tamara commented when I was done. “But…what is it, then? I mean, I’m not naturally attuned to death energy. But even I can feel it now, somewhere…” She gestured broadly at the floor. “…down there? I dunno. It’s like there’s a direct connection to Next Door, either beneath us…” Her eyes went wide. “Or woven into the fucking foundation itself.”

  My eyebrows went high at that suggestion as well. “But how? And why? And does that mean someone killed a whole fuckton of people here…or is it magic?” I shook my head. “This is a job for Charles if I’ve ever seen one.” I started to reach for my phone, then realized it was in my other pants. The pair I wasn’t wearing.

  “But Mister Wizard is still MIA.” Tamara rolled her eyes. “For now, we have to work with what we have, which unfortunately doesn't include Charles.” She looked around again as if trying to gaze into the mysterious depths of my weird old church. “Well, I know enough about magic to put a few things together, at least.”

  “By all means, Magister Tamara.”

  She made a playfully disgusted face, sticking out her tongue cutely before continuing. “Whatever this is, it’s always been there. Hidden. You probably just never noticed until you…had a reason to pull really, really hard.”

  “And I happened to grab hold of it.” I nodded. “Also means somebody hid it for a reason. This place doesn't feel like Sloss, ‘naturally’ created.”

  “Correction: somebody very skilled hid it for a reason.” Tamara looked thoughtful. “I mean, Charles never noticed.” She furrowed her brow. “Or, he did, and the asshole never mentioned it.”

  I snorted. “That second one seems more likely.”

  “One more thing to ask whenever he clears his schedule—and his guilt—and decides to come around again.” Tamara sighed. “Either way, I’m willing to bet today’s discovery is also tied to the same reason the Sanguinarians can’t enter.”

  “Holy shit.” That realization took me aback. “I bet you’re right…which means my church was never actually holy ground at all.”

  The Moroi smiled firmly. “Yup. Instead, someone made it look like holy ground, to hide…whatever this place really is. Was.” She shook her head. “Which is incredible, by the way. It’s also why you can enter, but most other things can’t get in unless you let them.”

  “Because this site’s attuned to death. Like me.”

  “And I’m willing to bet that once you started lairing here, the church’s wards attuned to you specifically. A resident after so long, someone to awaken this…site…from dormancy.” She smirked. “A new lady of the manor, so to speak.”

  “I’m hardly anything of the sort.” I snorted derisively. Then paused. “Wait, wards?”

  Tamara nodded. “Yeah? I mean, Lan must have eaten them down to just bare embers while breaking in. They were barely alive when I…woke back up. But now…they’re regenerating. Regrowing. I’m pretty sure they’re drawing on this place’s energy source to just…put themselves right back together, even stronger than before.” She took a deep br
eath. “Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it…except once.”

  I just stared at her. “I have wards?”

  Tamara rubbed at her temples. “Yes, Ashes. You have wards. Well, it’s more like a threshold, I guess. Just a really goddamn powerful one.”

  “News to me,” I commented defensively.

  “I guess it makes sense. It typically takes training to see your own threshold. Or magical talent. Sometimes I forget you haven’t been around the supernatural world for that long.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “You and I have an easy time feeling foreign thresholds because we can’t cross a solid one without permission. But it’s harder to spot our own, since it doesn't stand out.”

  I nodded, rubbing absently at my punctured side before I could stop myself. The persistent burning in my damaged heart was gradually subsiding, but I was still leaking. I’d have to do something about that. Eventually.

  “Now, though?” Worry flickered across Tamara’s face before she could hide it. “With a threshold this strong, it’ll stand out. Like the wardings around Charles’ house or Bookbinders.”

  I frowned. “That’s attention we don’t need. That you don’t need. But maybe it’ll deter people too, like the threat of Charles’ wards does.”

  “Except they don’t stop anybody from looking, just from entering.”

  “Well, shit.” I scratched at my face and smeared something on it. And abruptly realized I didn’t know where my mask was, or the last time I’d had it on. I sighed a shallow sigh, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, one step at a time.” I groaned my way to my feet, my worn bones groaning right along with me. “Let’s deal with the guys currently trying to murder us before we start looking for more.” I shuffled my way over to the pillar and muscled it back in place, drawing on a little more of the church’s power when the huge stone got stubbornly stuck on an irritatingly tiny crack in the floor.

  “You okay?” Tamara asked when I was finished. “You don’t look as unstoppable as you did earlier.”

  I’d already been feeling that out myself. “I’m starting to get tired again, to be honest. Don’t ask how it works, I have no idea. Maybe I still can’t escape the sun forever, even like this.”

  She nodded. Slowly. “Ashes…what do we do if Lan comes back? And say, just tosses a Molotov into your room, or something.”

  I frowned. “Catch fire and die?” I tried to shrug the disturbing thought away. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”

  Tamara sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Well, hopefully he can’t get past the new wards.”

  “And just maybe…” Red tinted the very edges of my eyes; I knew Tamara could feel it too. “He’ll be a little hesitant to come back for seconds.”

  “Zealot, remember?” She shook her head. “So I wouldn’t put any bets on that. But right now…” She stared at the stairway up. “Short of Charles offering us room and board, which will happen approximately two weeks after hell freezes over, your church is now the most fortified place available to us.” She met my eyes and smirked. “Either way…no more sleeping in separate rooms for us. Not till this is over.”

  “Good. If they Molotov us, they Molotov us together, right? And I guess I don’t mind sharing a room with you for a while.” I tried not to sound too interested and absently wondered if my tone ever mattered when living with a Moroi. “I might should clean up a little, though.”

  “Yeah? Me too.” Tamara smiled. “Sorry again about the…” She made a throwing up gesture, bending at the waist while fanning both hands out from her mouth and wiggling her fingers energetically, and I almost lost it. Especially at the extended pffllllt sound she made to accompany it. The Moroi grinned, but it faded a little as she spoke again. “And sorry about…how I got earlier.”

  “What? Do you mean the yelling or the crying? Or the gravy?” I grinned back. “I bet it’s the gravy.”

  “You’re hopeless.” She took my arm and pulled me back toward our rooms, but paused beside the bloody, dented metal stake driven into the wall, staring at it. “Oh, and sorry for almost maybe eating you.”

  I grunted…and felt another slow trickle of liquid from the hole in my ribs. So I wadded up a section of my shirt, stuck it in the hole, and proceeded to ignore the injury. “Well, I do know one thing for certain.”

  “Oh?” She leaned against my side, wrapping both arms around my bicep.

  I stared at the sleek silver stake driven into the stone, the dark Jiangshi blood drying on the wall, the shredded right half of a silver and ebony suit still hanging from the oversized nail…and ground my teeth a little, fangs against fangs. “Yeah. That somewhere out there is a half-naked vampire with my name on him.”

  “Only if you get to him first,” Tamara muttered darkly, pulling me insistently into her room.

  11

  Maybe I’m at the wrong table

  Sometimes I worried about telling my friends’ secrets to a Sanguinarian.

  More so when the Sanguinarian in question might just lunge across the table and try to stab me.

  “Don’t you bullshit me over this. Drew with ‘is throat ripped out. Lissa with ‘er poor little head torn right off. And Gilbert—well, I think it was Gilbert, since I couldn’t find enough goddamned pieces to tell for sure!” Aine leaned across the booth, brazenly invading my personal space, her eyes two angry drops of dancing blood. “Now you got the audacity t’sit there and tell me that don’t sound like somebody we both fucking know.” She eyed me pointedly, her gaze hard enough to make me shift uncomfortable.

  “I—”

  “Do you some’ow not get it, love?” The pale-skinned, violet-eyed Sanguinarian reached over and rapped on my skull as if she expected it to be hollow. Irritated, I tried to slap her hand away, but she was surprisingly quick. “I don’t exactly got enough admirers among my own for them to be fucking disposable, y’know?”

  “I told you already. It wasn’t me.” Trying to stifle a bubble of anger, I broke eye contact with the rogue vampire and looked around the themed restaurant, worried about the scene she was making. But everywhere I looked, waiters, cooks, and patrons alike just went about their business as if they simply hadn’t noticed two vampires yelling about dead bodies and murder in the last booth on the left.

  Concerned, I raised a hand. “Um, what exactly—”

  “Don’t change the bloody subject.” Aine removed her accusatory finger from my face just long enough to scoop a double handful of dirty blonde hair back behind her ears, then put the digit back in place, almost sticking me in the eye. “Do you know how hard it is to find a vampire that shares half an asshair of my ideals these days? Much less willin’ to act onnit?”

  That raised an eyebrow. “You mean there are more of you willing to push back against the Sanguinarian status quo?”

  “We lack conscience, not intelligence,” she retorted. “Well, some lack both, but…” She shook her head, her thick hair falling loose again. “Point is, there are less every time you kill some. Follow me?”

  I swatted at her finger until she removed it, then rubbed my masked face with my hands, exasperated. “For fucking out loud, it’s not me.” I met her eyes again and said the words slowly, firmly.

  “Sure, ‘cause there’s a ton of assholes in this three-ring shitshow with that much more strength than sense.” She scoffed, but as I stared her down, her voice gradually lost its cutting edge and her eyes returned to their “normal” shade of violet-red. “So if it weren’t you, then who dunnit?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  The vampire rolled her eyes to accent a derisive snort, but finally settled back on her side of the booth, seemingly calm. Well, calm-ish. “I can’t tell if you’re just stupidly honest, or if that stupid face of yours is a really good act.”

  “Probably not that last one. I assure you that my stupid face is exactly what it seems to be.”

  She sighed. “Ah well. In for a pence, in for a pound, y’know? I’m a
lready ass-deep innit by now. Might as well see how far I can go ‘fore it all burns down ‘round me.” The casually-dressed Sanguinarian raised a hand high in the air, waving over one of the costumed waitresses. “So, what do you know about the fucker murderin’ his or her way up my hierarchy?”

  “Not much,” I hedged. “And why—and since when—do you have a hierarchy?” I fell silent as a short, cute waitress bustled over, clad in a vintage WW2-era dress complete with fake bloodstains, long rents in the fabric, and a network of battered leather-and-metal straps securing her coin change belt.

  Aine didn’t bother to do the same. “Don’t you go holdin’ out on me now. This relationship is built on trust. Don’t make me cut you.” She placed an extensive order—for both of us—without bothering to look over a menu, then looked me right in the eye and continued. “And the hierarchy’s for movin’ Ruby. Duh.”

  I glared at her disapprovingly.

  “Hey.” Already off guard, I didn’t quite know how to react as the waitress leaned in and whispered, “I like your costume,” giving me a wink and going so far as to gently poke the side of my face, where the mask had shifted enough to reveal a hint of my damaged cheek.

  “Yours too?” I managed to offer before she moved off, a faint hint of a blush coloring her all too human cheeks. Her makeup really was pretty good, fake scrapes and dirt smudges backed by warpaint markings made from what smelled like actual motor oil. I shook my head. “Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone, or something? And why are you moving Ruby?” I snapped the last part, lowering my voice, the words taking on an angry edge. “You’re supposed to be helping fix this shitstorm, not contributing to it.” I paused. “Or profiting from it.”

  “Look love, if you wanna try to make an omelette without breaking any eggs, ‘ave fun losing. But I'm in this to win it.” She gave me a serious look from behind long lashes and folded her arms across her chest, crinkling the long, soft, knitted crimson shirt she wore. “You dun like it? That’s fine. There’s the door.” She pointed past my shoulder. “But don’t go gettin’ all sanctimonious with me; your book of sins is full o’ pages too. So how about you manage yours and I manage mine, amirite?”