Dreadful Ashes

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  The toe of my boot caught on the freshest corpse, turning it over—along with my stomach—as I recognized the dead eyes of the too-young blood drinker from before, her thin, pale throat shredded like a cheap cloth.

  The faint sound of a scuffle caught my ears as my blood began to boil, and I vaulted a concrete pipe—

  —in time to see my scion grasp Aine by the back of her neck and ram his jagged, rusty claws through her torso.

  “No!”

  The denial tore its way raggedly from my throat, and the shadowy figure froze.

  Far, far too late.

  Aine coughed blood once, spitefully, onto his face as she doubled over. She tried to claw at his eyes, but her ruby-red claws shattered as a torrent of sickly sweet crimson gushed from the rents in her chest; he'd obviously punctured her vesica sanguis.

  Then he discarded her like a shredded, gore-stained rag.

  With a shriek and straining muscles, I tore a section of the cement pipe out of the ground and broke it on him, sending him flying.

  But all my rage did nothing to bring Aine back.

  Propped up against the blood-splattered backhoe, she gasped for the air that would never come and pumped her lifeblood swiftly into the dirt.

  There was only one thing I could do for the Sanguinarian now.

  A section of stacked steel pipes were scattered and dented from his impact, but my scion was nowhere to be seen. Seconds later the problem remedied itself as he stepped out of the shadows and swung one of the steel pipes at my head.

  Without a second thought, I sheared it apart with my claws and kicked his legs out from under him.

  “You idiot!” I palmed the back of his head and slammed his face into the closest piece of concrete pipe. “She was trying to help!”

  He threw me off with a wordless growl, and I responded by sticking my claws through the bandage over his ravaged throat and slinging him across the construction site.

  “And you murdered her!” I leapt high onto a section of skeletal scaffolding, then launched myself toward the other Strigoi. “You murdered all of them!”

  “Like you murdered me?” The vampire rolled away at the last moment, dripping shadows everywhere, and my claws shattered still-curing concrete instead, punching into the packed dirt underneath. “Like the ones they murdered?” A sweeping gesture at the dead Sanguinarians turned into a powerful backhand that caught me across the face as I rose, heavy enough to turn me halfway around. Strong, dead arms grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms, and rusted claws dug at my throat and chest. “You deserve no better!”

  I roared in anger—and denial—as I threw one leg back, hooking his and breaking his stance, then jerked abruptly forward and threw him over my shoulders and into the street. The blare of a car horn blasted the night immediately, and tires screeched across asphalt as an evening driver swerved to dodge the sudden vampire in the road. Close range halogen headlights stripped the shadows from the Strigoi’s body, leaving him staggering and stunned.

  Enraged, I drove my shoulder into his gut with enough force to sling us both across the road. Wide plate-glass windows burst around us as my tackle pushed us into a small, lightless gym; he grabbed my cardigan and dug in his heels, only for me to stop abruptly and shove him through a tall rack of heavy barbells.

  The tall, lean vampire went down in several hundred pounds of clatter and tangle, only to rise again a second later, armed with a mace-like barbell and swinging wildly. I leaned back, having fully anticipated the reaction, and threw a fifty-pound weight plate directly into his eye in response. The other Strigoi recoiled—as one does—and threw up a belated hand to protect his face, an all too mortal reaction. His next swing was one-handed and awkward, and I stepped forward, caught the barbell against my ribs, and yanked it from his grasp with a twist. I spun the thick metal bar in my hands, slinging more weight plates everywhere, and sheared the end of the pole off at a sharp angle with my claws.

  And when he shook off the blow to his eye and faced me again, I rammed the makeshift spear into his chest.

  Strigoi are tough, our bodies and skin sturdier than worked iron. The thick bar flexed just a little, penetrating slowly enough for him to wrap both dark, strong hands around the shaft and halt its momentum before I could impale him.

  Steel trembled, straining as we struggled, neither of us giving ground. Intermittent headlights from the road cracked the monochrome of the empty, darkened gym with flashes of bright yellow light, and I looked into his gray-green eyes, two dead orbs tainted with the same angry red that tinted my own.

  “I never meant to kill you.” I said it without thinking.

  He snarled in response, showing fangs, and I shook my head.

  “But I can’t let you go further down this path.” I thought of Aine, undoubtedly dead by now, and the lifeless, nameless young Sanguinarian, and anger settled on me like a mantle, insulating me from my decision. “You want revenge? Fine. I understand.” I remembered that feeling all too well as well as the regrets it had driven me to. “But I will not let you double my mistakes with your own.” Slowly, his grip slipped, yielding in the face of my superior strength and determination.

  “You sure talk…a righteous talk,” he snapped, his eyes darting between the spear digging into his flesh and my face. “Where were those morals the night you left me dead in a dumpster?”

  “Forgotten,” I whispered.

  The admission only seemed to stir his rage. “And how many have you killed then, to call me out? At least I was doing what was right, cleaning the streets of the filth and predators you seem all too eager to fucking ally with.”

  “It seems so clear from where you are, doesn't it?” My voice was quiet and cold if not calm. “Eventually that goes away, and you find there’s no dawn, no dusk, no fucking white knights. Only shades of gray and bigger monsters.” He snarled again, an incoherent rebuttal, and I shook my head. “In the end, you made the same damn mistake I did on the night you died: you killed people you thought were guilty. And like me, you were wrong.”

  For the first time, my words made him flinch, and his grip slipped again as he fell to one knee with a thump. The wrath in his eyes flickered as the realization sunk in, too late to be of any use to anyone.

  I grounded myself for the final thrust, to put an end to this—to him—for good. Dead muscles tensed as I made the final decision.

  One more mark for my book of sins.

  WHOOOP-WHOOOP-WHOOOP!

  The sudden screech of a siren startled me; I glanced back at the wrong moment as a wash of blue and red light drenched the interior of the workout spot. My finishing thrust scraped aside, cutting across his chest as he twisted, the spear edge leaving a thick trail of dark blood but failing to find his heart. Hand on the weight bar and eyes full of desperation, he yanked me in close, his jagged, tarnished claws going for my face.

  I managed to duck the strike, then braced myself and spun, twirling him around while still he still clutched at the end of my spear, knocking over free weights, Bowflexes, and treadmills alike, sending more barbells bouncing and clattering as I cleared the area and slung him across the room. I ducked instinctively behind a counter as the siren wailed again, a piercing WEEEEEOOOO that sounded like it was right in my ears. Floodlights blazed brilliantly, banishing the bulk of the shadows, and I heard familiar cop-phrases from the shattered window shouting for me to “freeze.”

  Instead, I hid, crawling from cover to cover, unable to summon my shadows and unwilling to terrify two policemen in the line of duty. Across from me, I saw the broken hole in the plasterboard where my scion had struck the wall, and beyond it, a suspicious knot of shadows moving swiftly away from me.

  Not this time you don’t. I can’t let you.

  Bullets bounced off cardigan and flesh as I dove through the hole in the wall and tackled the shadow. Bits of darkness fluttered away as he kicked me free; shouted warnings from the gym heralded the policemen hot on our heels as the other Strigoi turned to leap away.

/>   Not. This. Time.

  I slapped a hand down on his leg as I tumbled and fell, locked my eyes on a dark spot further down the street, and pulled.

  The world wrenched and went sideways, disorienting me worse than the first time I’d ever walked through the shadows Next Door. I tumbled across a polished floor in a lightless room—

  —and he came with me.

  Any glee at stopping his flight would have to wait as he kicked me in the face; I fell heavily against a desk, demolishing it and breaking the desktop monitor that fell on my head. My scion turned to flee through the nearby second-story window, and I chucked the first thing I grabbed—a beefy, outdated desktop pc—against the back of his legs, taking out his knees and sending him sliding face-first across the slick floor tile. As I shrugged off the crumpled remains of the desk, I was inside and rose, he rolled to the side, disappearing behind a cubicle wall.

  I turned the corner an instant later and couldn’t see him.

  I didn’t despair quite yet, though, as the thin walls failed to muffle the lonely, conspicuous sound of a single Strigoi heart beat.

  It didn’t tell me where he was though.

  With the echoes of sirens and flashing lights now a couple of blocks away, I took my time, stalking from one tiny office to another, looking for one unearthly shadow in a small sea of pitch-dark cubicles. Was I inside a bank office? An insurance company? A slavish CCOS IT cube-farm? I didn’t know; but I did know that between the two Strigoi playing hide-and-seek amongst the cubbies and computers…only one of us was walking out again.

  There was no other way forward. For either of us.

  Another heartbeat echoed, and I followed the sound, even as my own dead, wounded organ seemed to respond in kind. One corner, then another, and another, lost in the maze. Each identical room I passed put me closer to the center; I knew he was evading, running from me, but also running out of space. Time was almost up.

  I finally found him, cloaked in shadow, back to the wall, crammed in between two long-empty water coolers, a half-hearted rage still simmering in his clear, smart, dead eyes.

  We both knew the chase was over; he stood, tall and defiant, and pushed away from the wall, pointing a battered metal claw at me. “If you think I’m going to just—”

  “Catch!” I tossed him a printer.

  Startled, he caught it reflexively in both arms. As he did, I went low and tackled him again, then tore his legs out from under him before he could react.

  Gripping one leg in both hands and digging in my claws, I spun him around, flattening every cubicle within reach, sending broken printers and crushed computers flying. Then I slammed him into the floor, crunching the tile and the floor underneath, then tore him free and did it again.

  And again, and again, and again, until impact craters marred the floor all around me. And further, until I could hear his bones crack from the repeated impacts. Until I’d crushed the will to fight from him.

  As he lay there, battered, dazed, and defeated, I thought about Aine, about the other dead humans and Sanguinarians, and tried to summon the icy, consuming rage I’d felt earlier.

  I pinned my scion to the floor with a boot, crushing him further into the crumbled tile, and drew Lan’s stake from my belt, the same one the Jiangshi had almost killed me with.

  In one quick move, I knelt and plunged the silvered stake down.

  And stopped.

  I tried again to summon my rage, my justification, and my monochrome vision tinted an angry red—only to slip away again a moment later.

  Normally, I had to fight to shake my unnatural anger…and now it wouldn’t come when I called?

  “Just end me already,” he rasped from beneath my boot, his voice weary.

  I raised the stake high overhead, the silver glinting blue, then red with wayward flickers of police lights.

  “I…can’t,” I rasped finally. The stake tumbled from my dead fingers and rolled across the floor, its borrowed luster gone. “I…I can’t fix one mistake by…making another.”

  He stared at me, confusion, anger, and relief warring in his eyes. I stared back. Neither of us blinked.

  “What now?” he croaked. “Do you expect me to forgive you?” His lip curled a little at the word.

  “No.” I stood, my knee protesting the action, and let him move. First, I’d have to forgive myself. “Just saying the truth. At the same time,” I pinned him with my gaze as he slowly scrambled out of my immediate reach, “I cannot let you continue with what you’re doing.” I held his gaze. I still didn’t blink.

  But he did. Then he looked away completely. “You wouldn't stop them. So I stopped them. I might not can stop you, but…”

  It sounded like he was trying to convince himself, not me.

  “It’s my fault, too. All of it.” I gestured at him. “I did this to you. I botched handling it. I didn’t even stop you in the graveyard when I had the chance.”

  “Do you regret that now?” He didn’t sound accusing, or angry. Almost…curious?

  “Yes,” I answered honestly. “The people you killed tonight…” I put a bloody hand to my face, the realization of Aine’s death only now beginning to truly sink in. “They weren’t good people. But they were helping me do something…to make things better than they are now. To fix the same problems—Ruby on the streets, the vampires’ control, and far more—that you were trying to fix.”

  “There’s no proof…how do I know any of this is true?” His eyes glimmered with a hint of uncontrolled, undirected anger. He finally sat up, leaning against the only surviving, upright water cooler.

  “They weren’t good people,” I continued like he hadn’t spoken. “But they were people, trying to do good.” I’d lost my face wrap in the string of struggles, and my grin was ragged and self-mocking. “Not so different from either of us, I think.”

  For a long minute or two, the cubicle farm was even more lifeless and quiet that it normally was.

  “I’ve followed you for a while, you know,” he finally said. He didn’t look at me. “Didn’t know what to make of you. Still don’t. Wanted to hate you.” He glanced up, then away. “Still do.”

  I nodded. “That’s fine.” I could hardly blame him.

  “You finally caught my trail that night with the wolves, and that other…vampire guy. Or whatever he is. The one with the sword.”

  “You mean Lan?”

  He shrugged. “Thought you were going to catch up to me, then you stopped and broke into that guy’s house with your friend.”

  I had to lean against the wall for emotional support. “So, that night…I wasn’t following Lan’s trail at all? We only stumbled on all of this because of you?”

  “Still don’t know what all of that’s about,” he glanced at me. “And now I’m not sure I want to.”

  “If Charles were here, he’d remind me that there are no coincidences…” When he glanced at me, confused, I just shook my head.

  “So, what now?” the Strigoi asked again. “I wanted to…fix something. Make something out of…” He gestured at his own dead body. “…this. But…I don’t think I did. Not really.” He hooked his claws into the empty water cooler and hauled himself upright. “And seeing as I can’t kill you…” I offered him a flat, humorless smile. “I don’t really know what to do with myself.”

  I went quiet alongside him—until the answer came to me. “There is one thing that you can do. Something that will help make things better.” He stared at me, waiting, one eyebrow raised. Untrusting. Not quite hopeful, but close. “If you’re interested,” I smiled a cold, crooked smile, “I know where the real villains are. You can decide the rest of your future after that.”

  o o o

  I returned to the site of the massacre—to the site of Aine’s death—and sat down next to her corpse.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not that it means much, I know. I feel like I never really got you, you know? But you tried to protect your people. You tried to help…somebody more than just yourself, I thin
k. And you trusted me.” I forced a bitter sigh. “And look where that got you. And them.”

  “Apology accepted,” she replied.

  I leapt halfway up the backhoe. “What the fuck!” I bellowed at her from my new perch. It wasn’t even a question, just sheer shock.

  As I watched, Aine rose stiffly, her violet eyes stained red, and took a deep, rasping breath. I couldn’t see the grievous puncture wounds underneath her blood-soaked t-shirt, but I knew what I’d seen.

  “How are you alive?” I shouted at her. “Are…you alive?”

  The thin Sanguinarian shrugged. “That’s the question o’ the age, now ain’t it?” She stood, stretched, and stared up at me, her blood-tinted eyes sparkling with grim humor. “Us bein’ vampires and all. But if you’re wantin’ philosophy, you’re knockin’ on the wrong door tonight.”

  With the extended screetch of claws on metal, I slid down the backhoe, hoping my raised voice hadn’t already attracted the cops—they weren’t that far away, after all. “I still don’t understand. How are you…I mean, what happened…” I trailed off, looking at all the other Sanguinarian corpses, at the young girl with the empty eyes.

  And I got angry.

  “You—” My voice shook, enough for me to have to start over. “You. You fucking planned this.”

  “Glad t’see you’re not the slowest shit in the toilet,” she replied.

  “You sacrificed them.” Quick as dead lightning, I snatched her up by the neck, spun her around, and slammed her into the backhoe. Hard. She winced in pain as her skull struck steel, but I didn’t care. “You led him here, let him kill them—”

  “Well, you weren’t going to do anything ‘bout it,” her eyes were redder, angrier. “He was just gonna keep killin’ us, an’ you were just gonna keep lettin’ ‘im—”

  “You. Let. Them. Die.” I snarled the words into her face, uncaring of the volume. “Sacrificed them, and—”

  “And so. Did. You,” she snapped back, her own rage hot against my tattered face. “You’re eyein’ me like I’m different from you, or somethin.’ You ain’t special, love. This is both our sins, come ‘ome. Or did you think that, somehow, they weren’t gonna die anyway, when—look,” she gestured at the dead, dismembered vampires, “Look, dammit. He was just gonna keep comin’ back. You knew that, same as me.”