Falling Ashes

by Annie Anderson

  I was only raped the once – not for a lack of trying – and it kills me that my mind drifts back there after the beauty Asher showed me. It makes me feel dirty and soiled for a moment before I shove it back. In my soul, I know the difference between what that guard took from me and what Asher and I did. I was a participant with Asher. I wanted it – more, I needed it. Fifty years is a long time to come to grips with sexual assault, and even though I didn’t have anyone to talk it out with, I was taught enough about love to know what was taken from me wasn’t my fault.

  I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t deserve it.

  If I’d venture a guess, Iva probably coerced or brainwashed that guard to rape me – not that it stopped me from killing him when he tried to do it again or his friends when they attempted it. Even if they were coerced, I still don’t feel a single iota of guilt for killing them. I don’t give a flying monkey’s butt if that makes me a bloodthirsty devil – I’m allowed to save myself from going through that again.

  Heaven and Hell be damned.

  In truth, I place the blame squarely on Iva’s shoulders where it belongs. What I do blame myself for are my parent’s deaths. If I’d had more control, if I hadn’t had to hide my abilities for so much of my life, I might have been able to save them. I might have been able to stop myself. But when I cast my mind back to the deep pulsing agony of the aftermath of my assault, I am unsure of any control I could have obtained in my long life that would have made even a little bit of difference. That scenario was orchestrated with only one inevitable outcome. Iva made sure she did the most horrible thing right out of the gate. She was just pleased she only had to do it once to get what she wanted. At some point, I’m going to have to tell Aurelia, but I dread it. She has been estranged from them for so long, I’m not sure how she’ll react when I tell her they’ve been gone from this earth for a very long time.

  Will she hate me? Will she even care?

  I dress in a sapphire blue tank top, dark jeans that have a slight flare to the hem, silver t-strap sandals, and a thin, pale blue, floral print cardigan. I’m not sure I’ll ever be comfortable dressing in anything that doesn’t cover my arms and back. The more I think about it, the more I want them covered with tattoos. My sister had a good idea to take her pain and make it beautiful. I’ll have to think about what I’d want inked into my skin for a while, though. I find a brown leather weekender bag on a shelf in the generous walk-in closet. I’d packed enough clothes for at least three days, and I’m on my way back from the bathroom with a full-to-bursting toiletry bag when the door busts open. My sister looks fit to be tied standing in the doorway.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Aurelia? Or do you enter every room like a battering ram?” I ask as I stuff the toiletries in the weekender and zip it shut.

  “You’re leaving?” she half-yells, her chest heaving in a way that looks supremely unhealthy. Out of the two of us, she should be the most adjusted, but right now, I seriously doubt it.

  “I’m taking a few days with Asher.”

  “And what happens when the King dies, Mena? Because he will. Asher is the King’s Guardian and will die right along with him! I can’t let you tie yourself to him only to lose him, Mena-girl,” she says through tears, but I feel like she just shot me in the chest.

  “Asher is going to die?” I breathe in a daze as I stumble back, my knees hitting the mattress as I plop down. A loud buzzing in my ears blots out her voice, but I don’t need her to speak to know my decision.

  “Yes,” I say, my voice cracking.

  “Yes, what?” she asks.

  “Yes, I’d go with him even if he was sentenced to die. Yes, I’d tie myself to him even if our days are numbered,” I tell her, my voice barely audible.

  She looks dumbfounded for a moment before her voice goes soft and she asks, “And how many of those numbered days are you going to deal with the fact that you were raped under Iva’s care?”

  “How do you know that? Did Rhys tell you?” I ask accusingly through my tears.

  “Rhys knew?” she asks shocked.

  “He guessed. He wasn’t with me for more than five minutes before he figured it out. If he didn’t tell you, how did you know?”

  “I’m not stupid, maybe? You shocked Rhys when he tried to touch you, you wouldn’t let Ian examine you without a serious pep talk even though you had a major injury. Cam scares the shit out of you, but you don’t fear Evan or me. You don’t fear Asher either, which freaks me out. I don’t know if it’s the bond or him or you. I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to be so intimate with him so early. And none of that tells me how you’re going to deal with it. I don’t want you to go through any more pain than you already have. It’s not fair to you.”

  “With Asher, I feel a warmth in my chest that has been missing my whole life. I feel… happy. I can see he cares for me. I can see it in his eyes and hear it in the hum of his voice. I know because he puts himself in front of me, protects me…he jumped off a damn cliff after me. So, I don’t care if he has days or weeks or millennium. I’ll spend that time with him and deal with the fallout later.”

  Her face tells me she is unconvinced.

  “What would you say if I told you I killed my rapist? And the fifteen other men that tried after him? That I’m more afraid of Iva than I am of any man?”

  “I’d say that you were well within your right to do so and that you were smart,” she says without blinking, and if there were ever a time to not bring this up, it would be now, but I have to tell her. If I wait, she would hate me for it.

  “And what would you say if I told you I killed our parents by accident after I was raped? That I am more scarred by that, than I am of the single element of torture that Iva used as a catalyst?”

  “I’d say there are some things you can’t take back, some things where a hypothetical just won’t work. I’d say I need the facts,” she says, and the shock and agony on her face make me flinch. Well, I opened this can of worms, I might as well tell her.

  This is going to rip me to shreds.

  “I was taken in 1965. I’d been working as a Gentry at a funeral home. One night after my shift, I was walking home, and someone came up behind me and snapped my neck. I couldn’t tell you how many days I was stuck in the dark, alone in my cell, before a Soldier brought Mama and Papa in and chained them to the floor. It took days before they were awake, and we knew pretty early on it was because of me that we were there. Why else would they put an Aegis in the same room with Papa, if they didn’t want to make sure that he wouldn’t see a way out? They tried to make plans to escape, but I think we all knew that we weren’t making it out of there,” I pause, taking a deep breath through the choking ache in my throat from my tears. “T-then a Soldier came in,” I rasp, “and he r-raped me right in front of our parents on the dirty stone floor. And h-he made sure it hurt. Afterward, I t-tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t - I couldn’t hold it. I blew up that r-room. When I woke up, Mama and Papa were… ash and Iva was sitting there clapping, congratulating me on a job well done,” I pause, trying to hold back my tears. “Are those enough facts for you?”

  Aurelia appears angry and lost like I just took something from her. I suppose I have. But I have enough guilt on my shoulders; I don’t need hers too. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even blink.

  “I’d say you’ve given her enough,” Asher rumbles from the doorway. He looks murderous, fully phased and if I didn’t know better, he seems to be ready to rip my sister limb from limb. She shakes from her stupor and meets his hard stare. He doesn’t move his black eyes from hers when he asks, “Are you packed?”

  “Anything else I need, we can buy,” I say, ready to get out of this room and this house. I’ve done all I came here to do. I don’t need to come back for anything. He holds out his hand for mine saying, “Then, let’s get out of here.”

  I nod and look to Aurelia saying, “I love you, twin. Even if I didn’t show it. I kept secrets to protect you and our family,
and it kills me that you were mistreated because of them. I will regret my abilities and my part in our parents’ death until the day I die. And I will love you even if you can’t forgive me.”

  I move around her, snatching my bag as I go, taking Asher’s hand with my free one. As my freezing fingers make contact with his smoking taloned ones, a sharp tendril of dread snakes down my spine. Not from his phase or his anger, but the realization that is just dawning on me.

  He heard. Everything.

  The tears I tried to hold back crest the dam of my eyelids and fall unbidden down my cheeks. While he may be my safe place for now, our bond and our relationship will be scarred by this. I never wanted to tell him.

  Other than telling Aurelia about our parents, I never wanted to divulge my shame to anyone else. Not that I thought I would be around people. I’d planned on going away in seclusion, avoiding relationships and anyone else who I could possibly hurt or kill. And if Ash can’t forgive my past, I still might.

  He meets my eyes, his ink-like orbs piercing my thoughts and my heart, and we travel together, smoking out of the room in a swirl of black. The trip is short, and he releases my hand once we’re outside to open the passenger door of a large coal-black vehicle with the word Sahara on the side of the wheel well in silver lettering.

  “Get in, Princess, and let’s get the fuck out of here,” his low voice rasps, sending a surge of hope through me as I climb into the vehicle using the steel runner board to hoist myself into the black leather seat. Maybe I don’t have to worry about him not wanting me. Maybe I don’t have to let him go. If he only has so few days left, I’ll spend every single second I can with him before I lose what’s left of my heart when he goes.

  14

  I’m Not Sure I’m Good in Public

  ASHER

  I do my best to focus on the pavement in front of me, making sure the large all-terrain tires of my Sahara stay between the perforated yellow lines of the winding mountain road. I haven’t said a word since I started the SUV and pointed the tires away from the cabin and toward my house on the outskirts of Fraser. I’m holding onto my rage by a fragile, fraying thread. I want to hate Aurelia for making Mena tell her what is most likely the worst sin on her soul, but I can’t. I have this needling suspicion that if Mena could have, she would have kept that horror from me, she would have never told me a single shred of the horror she lived through. It makes me simultaneously need to hide her away to keep her safe and to let her fly free. She has been cooped up in a cage for so long, I don’t want my hands to suffocate her. I don’t want to be another cage.

  But I also want to go to the depths of hell just to rip the flesh from the bones of the bastards who touched her and then kill them all over again. Slowly. Painfully. In ways that would haunt them and make the Devil himself shudder in horror. It scares me that I have that much depravity in my soul, but then again it doesn’t. John has done the same or worse for Olivia, and for better or worse, he taught me how to be a man.

  “How much did you hear?” she asks, her voice a quiet rasp in the silence of the cab.

  “I came in at ‘what would you say if I told you I killed my rapist?’ and it was a fight to stay sane after that. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t make myself leave,” I admit, shifting my eyes from the road for the first time since I turned over the ignition. She’s stopped crying, but her cheeks are still damp. I take my hand off the gearshift and reach for one of the hands trapped in between her knees. She weaves her slender fingers with mine, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Are you angry I heard?” I ask, hoping if she is, she forgives me soon.

  “No. If the tables were turned, and I heard something so… horrible happened to you, I wouldn’t have been able to leave either. You and I do our best to protect one another. I can’t explain it, but I can’t stand to see you hurt, and I know you can’t live with seeing me in pain either.”

  “I’m sorry you had to tell her that. I’m sorry it happened to you. I don’t know how much guilt you have weighing you down, but I know you don’t deserve to carry it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, maybe. You were put in a situation where there was zero chance of a happy ending. You were put there on purpose by a woman who wanted to punish you for some dreamed up infraction that had nothing to do with who you are as a person and everything to do with what you are. If the shoe were on the other foot, Aurelia would have been in the same boat as you in that cell.”

  “Maybe,” she whispers, her brow puckered in a deep frown, and she is silent for a long while.

  “You hungry?” I ask trying to get her mind off all that has happened in just a few short hours since the sun came up. It’s not too far past lunch and I can’t remember the last time I ate.

  “Yeah,” she mutters, aloof, but she still rubs her thumb against my forefinger.

  “We can stop in Granby to pick up some supplies before heading to the house.”

  “I’m not sure how good I’m going to be in public.”

  “Things have changed quite a bit since the last time you’ve been around other people. If you don’t want to go in, you can stay in the car while I get what we need and I can get something quick to make at the house,” I suggest.

  Her mouth twists as if she’s tasted something bad and she shakes her head no. I don’t blame her. Leaving her in the car would sting, but I would have if she needed me to. I’m glad she doesn’t want to be without me, as conceded as that sounds in my head. The shortcut to Granby is open for the next month or two until the snows move over the mountain and this pass closes for the winter months. I pull into one of the few grocery stores in this small mountain town and thrust the gearshift to neutral before setting the emergency brake. Mena is practically plastered to the window, taking in the cars and signs and people.

  Granby is a small ski town, only about two thousand people in permanent residence with plenty of transient tourists in the winter months.

  When I get out of the SUV and round the hood, she is still staring out the glass slack-jawed. I try to cast my mind back to the 1960’s to what this town might have looked like then. So many decades have passed in my lifetime that I have trouble singling out just one, and it makes me want to ask what her life was like before her capture – before her life went to hell.

  “You coming?” I ask as I open her door.

  “Yeah,” she says, shaking her head and jumping down from the cab. She shivers a bit in the brisk mountain air, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders. Our steps fall in sync, her long legs matching my pace with ease. I grab a cart at the entrance and start at the non-perishables, picking up paper products, a pack of extra light bulbs, replacement batteries for the flashlights and alcohol.

  “What did you do before?” I ask, not elaborating on what ‘before’ means.

  “I was a Gentry,” she says absently as she inspects a package of disposable lighters as if they are the strangest thing in the whole world. “I worked in funeral homes or hospitals – though it is much harder to phase at a hospital – and ferried souls. I lived quietly, moving every five years or so.”

  We weave through the entire store, mostly to let Mena inspect each item that catches her eye, and I ask her questions when she’s semi-distracted, learning little snippets of her life. The flu pandemic she lived through in 1918 New Orleans, the consumption outbreaks in 1880 and 1890. Most of her stories are about the work she did, but not much about her or her family.

  Even peppering her with questions, Mena is still a mystery to me.

  We load up with everything we’ll need for at least a week at the house. Mena can’t believe how many choices there are in products from the different kinds of toilet paper to the fact that there is more than one brand of light bulb. When the store starts to get busy, her questions dry up and she sticks even closer to me, wedging herself between the cart and the shelves, avoiding people as much as she can. I pick up the pace, grabbing the things I think we’ll need and skipping the crap I know
we won’t. The checkout process mystifies her, I can tell by her wide eyes and the eyebrows that have practically crept into her hairline, but she doesn’t ask any questions. We leave after paying a sum that makes her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets, and load the Jeep to the brim before driving the last twenty-five minutes to my secluded home on the banks of the Fraser River.

  I escape here every chance I can get, which isn’t much. I come here so rarely. I’m not sure why I bought a house separate from John and Olivia. Maybe it is because here I feel myself. I feel like this place is mine. It is a modest home in comparison to the Grand Lake cabin, with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a nice two-car garage to house my cars and toys. It is peaceful, my closest neighbor is maybe a few football fields away – a small foothill separating us from view. The river is low here, practically a creek in some places, but this year the snows melted late and the waters rose higher than I’d seen them in the last five years.

  Mena assesses the house; a gentle upturn of her mouth tells me she likes the look of my home, but she stops herself from crossing the threshold, stepping back off the porch and retreating to the open space near the Jeep.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her, worried.

  “I need to bleed my power. I used to do it daily before I was captured. It helps me keep myself under control. I’d hate to blow up your beautiful house,” she says with a self-deprecating twist to her mouth. “Where can I go?”

  “Any place is good, there isn’t anyone with a line of sight to this house. Just not too close to the Jeep, if you don’t mind. Cars nowadays are mostly run on electronics.”

  “Duly noted,” she says as she walks beyond the Sahara, putting about a hundred yards between herself and the SUV. She considers it for another moment before walking just a bit further and then she stops. I unload the groceries as she paces back and forth in the tall grass near the bank of the river. I put the milk, eggs, ice cream and butter in the fridge and abandon the rest to go back out to watch her. She finally stops pacing and picks a spot a little farther from the water.