Dreadful Ashes

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  A place for his son to live.

  “Well, my people will put all of this to good use, I assure you.” He drained rest of the bottle in one long draught. “We will find you what you need to put this little drug-fueled insurrection down, no matter what its goal is.”

  I found myself smiling grimly, inspired by the certainty in his voice.

  “One thing, though.” He rose and tossed the empty beer casually into the half-full recycling bin, a precision shot from across the room. “Are you sure you can trust that vampire?”

  “Nope! Not at all.” I grinned.

  “Well, we’ve all been there.” He sighed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to bed. I have a lot to do tomorrow—even more now—and I’d like to get it all out of the way so I can take Rain out to celebrate the day after.”

  I perked up, interested. “Oh? What’s the occasion?”

  “That’s when he’ll be passing his first benchmarks under his new tutor, who happens to be particularly demanding.” He smiled proudly, unconsciously puffing out his chest a bit.

  “But…” I raised an eyebrow. “What if he fails?”

  “Then I also get him a slice of chocolate cake and tell him I’m proud of how hard he’s been working,” Garibaldi replied, his eyes twinkling. “And we figure out a way to adjust things. But I like to think I know my son pretty well. He’s nervous, but he’ll pass.”

  With our business concluded, I nodded, wished Mr. Garibaldi a final good night, and saw myself out under the watchful eyes of his night guard.

  Alone, I ventured out into the clear Birmingham night—and was greeted by the warning howls of many wolves on the hunt.

  12

  Prances with wolves

  The haunting sound of hunting wolves lingered in the placid Birmingham night air, not too close, but not far enough away for comfort, either.

  But if they weren’t hunting me tonight, who or what were they hunting?

  There were only two or three answers to that, and all of them were useful to me.

  The decision to act was easy, and I was on a nearby roof in an instant’s puff of delicate shadow. From there, I wrapped myself in a shroud of gloom and chased the echoes of howls into the darkness, hunting the hunters and staying out of sight.

  I vaulted from one building to another, mortals below blissfully unaware as I flitted by overhead. I pushed myself sideways along the walls of Next Door, skipping streets and traffic while seeking the source of the sound. I left the relative safety of Homewood quickly behind, beelining North past the Birmingham Zoo, past the towering mountaintop Vulcan statue, and deep into the bustle of Five Points, the heart of the Magic City’s nightlife.

  And somewhere in all of the car horns, raised voices, and cacophony of beating hearts, I lost the trail.

  The distant noise of wolves died away as I passed through the city’s core, buried by noise pollution. I paused, crouching on the corner of a rooftop like an ugly gargoyle, trying to get my bearings. Fate had handed me what felt like a golden opportunity here, and I didn’t want to go this far out of my way only to end up empty-handed, especially just because my half-dead ears couldn’t hear for shit.

  So I considered. Unless I’d gotten myself turned around in the densely packed buildings and twisting streets and alleys of Five Points, I figured I was still pointed toward the last howls I’d heard. And in that direction lay a couple of deteriorating neighborhoods where guns were more common than meals, an old, sprawling cemetery…

  …and the decaying railyard where Rain and Jason had almost met Fright.

  It was a gamble, but one with better odds than most of the gambles I made.

  Instead of wasting any more valuable time, I leapt from the roof and hit the ground running. My ridiculous strength, speed, and lack of fatigue let me accelerate until the world blurred past around me. Augmented by frequent steps from one far-ahead shadow to the next, I barely slowed down even when I ran face-first into a lurking dumpster.

  I cut back on the speed a little as I recovered and ran alongside the long stretch of railyard, the piles of mangled scrap bleached pale like jumbles of giants’ bones under the unfiltered moonlight. Had I missed my mark? I couldn’t see or sense anything amiss in the railyard itself. Perhaps I’d guessed wrong after all.

  And just as I was considering giving up, my luck caught up to me, a flash of silver fur far ahead.

  With a grin, I continued the chase, spotting another glimpse of the tail end of a familiar, silver-furred wolf slightly smaller than myself.

  But to my surprise, the lupine didn’t head into the railyard at all. Instead, the shifter skirted along the outsides, circumventing the landmark with a route similar to my own, and taking a right turn along the old dirt road where we’d abandoned Fright’s trail several days ago. I jogged past jagged, rusted metal, keeping pace with the changeling and staying to the long shadows of dead train cars as I followed along for the ride. Once more, I heard the urgent call of wolf to wolf and smiled; I hadn’t fucked this up after all.

  I watched as the silver wolf-shifter caught up to a waiting packmate, one larger, darker, and definitely the one I’d punted onto a rooftop. I followed as together they sprinted towards a concentrated source of growls and howls just up ahead, leaving the railyard behind and bypassing a couple of streets as we entered Woodward Cemetery and Mausoleum—

  —and stepped right into the middle of a massacre.

  Blood already soaked the manicured ground under the soft, grave-cluttered crest of a mortuary-topped hill, filling the air with the pungent aroma of cloying blood, dead human and dead Sanguinarian alike. Around ten bodies decorated the grass in between the headstones, the corpses busted, broken, and shredded by something with immense strength.

  And there he stood, the eye of the storm, a familiar, tall man drenched in shadows with menacing, bladelike claws. The killer. A vampire, a Strigoi, and the most recent page in my book of sins.

  …Covered in wolves.

  They piled on as I watched, the silver wolf hesitating for a second before surging to the others’ aid. The other Strigoi seemed to have his hands full for the moment as the enormous alpha wolf made an effort to eat his face, the huge changeling mauling his stronger opponent with the ferocity only a wild animal can manage. While they struggled, the others tore at his clothes and iron-hard skin, coming away with shreds of clothing and mouthfuls of dripping shadow, trying to drag him down.

  I grinned helplessly. I’d been there before.

  With a shrug, I decided to let my enemies fight it out and see what happened.

  He held out admirably at first, kicking away a pair of changelings and pushing the alpha wolf aside. But the big wolf rebounded, latched onto his arm much like he had with mine and pulled the vampire off balance. The other wolves wasted no time in picking a leg and dragging it out from under the shadowy figure, and from there it was all but over. The Strigoi struggled, going down to one knee and slapping punt-wolf in the face, but soon lay on his own face in the grass, covered in a moving mass of fur and fangs. For a moment, the cemetery was peaceful, save for the stench of death and the rumbled warnings of wolves.

  Wait for it…

  When the Strigoi stood again, it was with explosive force. Wolves went flying, some of them ten feet or more into the air. I watched Silver Wolf fly past my face, trailing a sad whine, and felt a twinge of compassion. Furry bodies thumped against the grass carpet all around, except for the unlucky couple that bounced painfully off the ubiquitous marble tombstones instead.

  The alpha recovered first, his toothy maw stretching wide as he tackled the vampire. I saw what he was trying to do, and it was clever: wrap those menacing jaws around his enemy’s waist and lift him off the ground, leaving the vampire unable to brace himself and put as much power behind his blows. But the Strigoi was simply too mighty a foe; he pried the wolf’s mouth apart instead, pushing the alpha away as the big wolf’s jaws cracked from the grisly, bone-breaking strain.

  The other
wolves rushed to help their leader, careful to avoid several of the viscous crimson puddles on the ground. But the Strigoi didn’t make the same mistake he—and I—had made before; instead of standing still and letting the supernatural lupines swarm him, he kept moving, knocking them down and slamming bodily into them, then breaking the alpha’s jaws apart with a sickening snap and tossing him aside as well.

  After that and a couple other object lessons, the packs’ will to fight fell apart, much like it had against me. With broken bones and battered pride, they slowly slunk away, always careful to avoid the sticky patches of addictive Sanguinarian blood.

  With the pack gone, that left me, him, and the other corpses.

  I remained still as he breathed intermittently, struggling to release the rage he’d accumulated during the fight. In the moonlight and monochrome, his concealing shadows stripped and savaged by the wolf pack, I got my first really good look at the vampire I’d mistakenly…

  I swallowed hard, forcing myself to digest the thought.

  The truth.

  I did recognize him after all.

  For the first time, I got a solid look at the vampire I’d mistakenly created.

  He was tall and dark-skinned with a mess of dark hair that might have been neat and close cut months ago…when I’d killed him. I remembered a flash of something similar, anyway. His nondescript jacket matched his bland shirt and jeans: shredded and stained from wolves and his most recent killing spree. His neck bore a thick, white bandage that soaked up the moonlight, a garish, standout reminder of what I’d done to him.

  Once, he had probably been rather healthy with lean muscle mass that still showed under the savaged remnants of his clothing. A strong man, but not bulky. His face was composed of strong lines as well, especially the jaw, and his dead eyes were still sharp, if currently tainted by an unforgiving veneer of Strigoi rage. If I looked closer, I could see the faint white lines of several scars criss-crossing his exposed torso, and wondered if I’d given him those, too.

  I crouched on the top of a tombstone and watched, motionless, as we both struggled with our emotions.

  I could do it now. Should do it now. He doesn't know I’m here; now is the time to end this. For good.

  And yet, I didn’t move.

  As the rage finally began to fade from his eyes, he started checking the nearest bodies, turning them over, examining faces and looking for…fangs? The human gangers, he searched for wallet and ID instead, turning out pockets and collecting small baggies with blood-red pills inside.

  No one came to stop him or investigate. Woodward Cemetery had long ago devoured several other, smaller cemeteries nearby and now lay claim to an expansive, meandering patch of land packed with final resting places. Full to bursting with the buried dead long before I ever came to town, the winding graveyard bristled with small stone monuments to the deceased, broken up occasionally by a mausoleum, small building, or the thin, winding roads that divided it into traversable sections. A few leafy trees grew out in the open or clustered at the edges of the property, but they did little to hide the fact that the cemetery bordered no less than three parks, a CCOS chemical plant, a fancy suburb, and a shopping center.

  But all of those things felt miles away. Here, there was only the dead.

  I could just pop out of the shadows and grab him. I’ve torn one of my own kind apart before, after all. It wouldn’t stop him, unless maybe removing his head would do the job, but it’d certainly make him easier to manage until I could silence him forever. Here in the graveyard, soaked in shades of death both new and old, it would be even easier. Maybe a claw in the heart? Like a stake, to hold him still…

  He knelt over a fallen Sanguinarian and turned his back to me, probably the best opportunity I could ask for.

  I remained still, frozen in place.

  Could I really do it?

  Kill him, just like that? Again?

  Tamara had made it clear: this was the easy way out. She was right.

  For months, I had just wanted this nightmare to be over. To be behind me. But at what cost?

  Hadn’t I done enough to him already?

  “You might as well come out.” The vampire cleared his throat. His words were thick and dry, but not nearly as rough as mine. “You don’t hide as well as I do.”

  Caught off guard, I slowly released my grip on the shadows. I took a deep breath to steady myself, remembering too late that breathing never helped. “I guess the apple can fall far from the tree, then.”

  “So it is you.” Slowly, he rose and turned to face me, the last of his own shadows pooling on the ground alongside mine…and a whole lot of blood. “I wondered, you know.” His eyes, tarnished and dead, took me in, coming to rest squarely on my face, a heavyweight.

  “Wondered…what?” I croaked, feeling lost.

  “If the person who made me really was the same one trying to kill me.” He said it flatly—and not without anger.

  I couldn’t blame him. I opened my mouth to reply…but to what end? To make an excuse? To apologize?

  “I don’t remember that night perfectly, you know,” he continued, the angry edge rising as he spoke. “Not around the part where I died, that is.” He took a step forward, one fist in a tight, angry ball, the other sporting rusty claws. “I searched; I wandered. I pieced some of it together. You were the only thing in town like me.” He stared me down, his faint, gray-green eyes like bludgeons. “I thought…maybe there was a mistake. That just maybe I wasn’t alone, adrift in a world of monsters.”

  A flicker of light caught our attention, a pair of predators abruptly distracted by motion and the small, soft sound of fear. Behind a cracked tombstone, a battered young woman cowered, painted by the revealing light of her still-working cell phone.

  The injured Sanguinarian hissed at us, an empty threat forged in terror. Her skin was dangerously pale and her eyes halfway to bloody, but she managed to hold herself together, though she fumbled her cell into the grass with the blood-slick fingers of her one intact arm.

  “But it turns out we’re all monsters,” he finished flatly. Both hands now bore claws as he took an implacable stride toward her.

  “No.” Finally, I forced myself to rise, my emotional inertia broken. I held out a hand as if to bar his way from where I stood.

  He stopped, staring, as the Sanguinarian girl tried to drag herself slowly away. “So you wouldn’t help me…” His claws shook. “But you’ll protect her?” His tone was incredulous, coated in righteous wrath.

  I took another step, blocking his way. Past my heels, the Sanguinarian whimpered, trying to work her shattered legs.

  I sighed, settling myself for what was to come.

  “You really are working with them, aren’t you?” Now his voice shook along with his claws. “These…abominations…are destroying lives. Neighborhoods. Families. And you’re—”

  “I’m not.” I shook my head, a pointless, passionate denial. “You don’t—”

  One powerful stride brought him to me, almost chest to chest. “You. Killed. Me.”

  The words resonated in my head, a razor-edged shard of my own past. Haunting me.

  I shook my head, trying not to relive uttering those same words myself, years ago.

  I didn’t realize he had struck until I felt the pain—I’d been far too busy trying to refuse reality. The recent wound in my side lit up at the impact, a spark of fire burning all the way down to the hole in my undead heart as the man I’d killed rammed his thumb-claw into my chest, aiming clumsily for my heart.

  I twisted without thinking as the blood-rusted iron sheared into my thick metal plate, the bit of protective gear awarding me just enough time to react. The claw slid across my tough, dead skin instead of sinking in, and I knocked his arm aside.

  With an earth-shaking roar of sheer fury, he kicked me in the chest, pushing me off balance and away as he lunged for my eyes with both handfuls of rusty metal.

  I smashed him in the side of the head with an uprooted tombs
tone, the shiny stone cracking loudly as I swatted him away. He struck another tall gravestone head first, broke it in half, and kept going, finally dragging himself to a stop with claws dug deep into the packed earth of a stranger’s grave.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!” I snapped, trying to manage my own anger.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” he growled, his tone savage, his words barely decipherable. Seeming out of control, I expected him to bullrush me, but he circled like a shark instead, and it took me a moment too long to realize what he was doing.

  I registered the surge of Next Door power right as he struck, his suddenly enhanced might bearing me easily to the earth. His senses impaired by unbridled rage and the deathly power flooding his body, the Strigoi dug his claws into my arms, immobilizing them as he roared in victory and lunged for my face with all four fangs bared, a mirror match of my own.

  Of course, two could play that game.

  It was how I beat my first Strigoi after all.

  I drained the area’s energy into me like a siphon, taking some of my spawn’s power with it as my will eclipsed his. As I did, I rolled onto my back and planted both feet into the vampire’s gut, twisting my arms to break his grip as I launched him high into the air.

  And when he finally came back down to earth, I was still there waiting.

  I shattered another tombstone across his face and clubbed him brutally with yet another as he staggered, both of us blinking away shards of stone shrapnel. His rage buckled as I pounded him relentlessly, dual-wielding gravestones, my face cracking with maniacal glee as I overcame him, crushing the challenge of his unyielding body mercilessly into the packed turf.

  Until I stopped, my conscience breaking the unforgiving cadence of heavy thuds.

  Crumpled to the ground but unbroken, he lay there, for a moment unmoving.

  I stood over him, also motionless, trying to make a decision. Any decision.

  My ears caught the sound of another supernatural heartbeat, quickly approaching.

  His cracked scalp dribbling dark blood, the other Strigoi’s eyes refocused, searching my face.