Dead Girl's Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 1)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  I might have been able to dive out of the way if I’d tried, but instead of dodging, I braced for impact. I’d noticed my startling lack of common sense before, but never was it so readily apparent as when staring down the horns of a charging demon larger than Charles’ truck. But if I tried to save myself, I abandoned everyone else to the Next Door equivalent of being run over by a big, hairy bus that smelt like raw meat.

  My self-preservation and fear were dead, and I didn’t care.

  Come get some, you furry asshole.

  I set my feet a moment before impact, the force of our contact shuddering through my unfeeling body and shaking our bony surroundings. Lethal horns longer and thicker than my arms slapped into my pale, dead palms. I gripped them hard, forcing them away from my face and torso. My boots scraped hard on the bone-covered floor, grinding heavily as layers of human remains dislodged and scattered everywhere. I felt myself bump solidly into someone else as I slid, felt their weight thrown aside by the momentum of our struggle, and hoped they were alright.

  But I didn’t glance aside, didn’t give way.

  I slid backward five feet, ten feet, a dozen...and no more. We ground to a halt and I roared my defiance directly into its ugly, surprised face. Behind me, more bones clattered as everyone else scattered, putting distance between themselves and the massive demon. But not me.

  The Rawhead growled, surprise melting into wrath, and set its feet. I felt my own feet start to leave the ground as it raised its bloody head and I nearly panicked. I’d never really wrestled an angry, disgusting monster the size of my father’s living room before, but I’d watched enough wrestling to know that if it broke my footing and ruined my leverage, I was done for. I flexed, dead muscles and tendons straining as I wrenched the massive head down by the horns. My feet settled solidly back down as it roared again, this time in anger and pain.

  Its response only encouraged me further. Grinning like a madwoman, I twisted its horns, forcing its head down and to the side, then suddenly yanked it forward and off balance despite its braced weight. The creature snarled and struggled, but I had the demon by the horns.

  Six clawed paws, each bigger than my head, dug in, raking stubborn furrows in the bony floor. It dragged me across the chamber, but I kept twisting its neck and jerking its horns every time, destroying its balance, staggering it again and again. Our struggles brought us to the wall, and over its tensed, straining haunches, I caught a glimpse into the next room. Specifically, I saw the rows and rows of iron cages set into the walls beyond, and I saw the movement of forms inside.

  My raw, damaged throat rumbling with a growl of my own, I pivoted suddenly, slamming it face-first into the cavern’s side with terrific force, shaking the walls and sending a rain of ribs and bleached, gnawed bones raining down from the arched ceiling. It recoiled, stunned, and I risked my footing long enough to kick it squarely in one plate-sized, lambent green eye.

  To one side, I could hear Charles and Corey yelling, but I couldn’t keep track of where they were or what they were saying. A flash of movement startled me until I realized it was Tamara darting past me, an alabaster bolt of lightning. A coil of what looked like wire unfurled from her hands, and she wasted no time in lashing the Rawhead around the face and throat, where it lacked any protective fur. Where the wire whip fell, bleeding lacerations blossomed, successively cutting deeper and deeper.

  My body went rigid as instinctive fear suddenly made an appearance. Flares of light stained the chamber orange as a thick, fiery lance and a twisting serpent of flame smashed into the Rawhead’s side. I hauled at the huge head, forcing the bulk of the monstrosity’s body between me and the consuming flames. It bellowed in savage fury and agony, my unyielding grip seemingly the only thing keeping it from flopping and writhing on the floor.

  The Rawhead tried dislodge me and twist and face the three mortals pummeling it with everything they had; murderous intent in its eyes directed at each of them in turn. But I wasn’t going to let it hurt them, and I wasn’t going to let it run. I wrenched its head erratically in any direction I could, forcing it to plant all six feet and concentrate on me lest I snap its neck. Meanwhile, Tamara and the two wizards mercilessly pounded the living shit out of it.

  I grinned more and more viciously, swept away by the thrill of the fight. This powerful demon had hurt people, eaten people, even taken away my lover. And I was not only fighting it but winning.

  “That all you got?” I bellowed in its face. With a hoarse roar of my own and a Herculean show of force, I wrenched backward suddenly as hard as I possibly could, lifting the front end of the monster clear off of the ground. I could feel the distant and strange sensation of unnecessary ligaments tearing— but I didn’t care. With an audible snap that resounded through the chamber and down the tight tunnel, one of the creature’s thick, twisting horns broke free, the appendage tearing away a chunk of raw flesh before snapping raggedly off near the base. I grinned triumphantly, baring my fangs in its dreadful face.

  As the horn ripped bloodily free, its colossal roar of agony and fury probably deafened everyone else in the tight confines except for me. I was just as angry as it was, so if it didn’t hurt, it didn’t matter. So I matched its roar with another ragged one of my own, my deceased lungs pumping air for that sole purpose.

  But for all my sense of impending triumph, all of my righteous anger and determination, my inexperience had already handed it the keys to defeating me. The Rawhead threw its full weight away from me, nearly dragging me to the floor. I held on, but barely, and without the leverage of both horns to control its head, I stumbled, giving it the upper hand.

  I spotted Corey, down on the ground and dazed; I could clearly smell the scent of human blood as he pulled his hands away from his ears, stained with drops of red. Tamara leapt free of the monster’s path, dragging Charles with her to safety as it thrashed and dragged me across the room.

  Suddenly, it reversed its momentum, catching me completely off guard as it launched its significant weight into me instead of away. I slapped wetly into its sticky, skinless forehead and down I went, the Rawhead towering over me with that awful, voracious smile, my death grip on its remaining horn the only conceivable reason I wasn’t already in its mouth.

  I snarled and smashed the beast in the mouth with its own heavy horn, erasing that smile and sending a collection of those sharp, rot-coated teeth spinning down the dark hole of its cavernous throat. My impromptu club came away stained in crimson, and I smiled right in its burning eyes as I reared back for another blow.

  The monster tossed its head, sending me effortlessly into the air, and spun its long, powerful body in a tight circle. The world became a blur of abrupt acceleration as I lost my bearings. Despite my strength, my grip slipped due to the blood dripping down its lone remaining horn and I went flying. I had just enough time to register what had happened before a wall plowed into my spine from out of nowhere like a runaway locomotive. I seriously hoped the liberal crunch of shattering bones had come from the walls and floor, and not my own skeleton. I still needed that.

  Stones fractured, bone chips flew, and I dropped to the churned debris of the floor, disoriented. I tried desperately to push myself to my feet, helplessly awaiting the impact of its next charge, knowing full well how stupidly vulnerable I was.

  My muscles froze up as fear suddenly seized control of them. I curled into a ball instinctively as a massive sword of flame clove the air overhead, a blast of dangerously hot air hitting my face as the conjured inferno struck something and exploded. I fought back against the sudden, unreasoning fear, uncurling and raising my head just in time to see the Rawhead, on fire and in full flight, taking off down one of the larger tunnels and disappearing before I could even get off of my knees.

  And just like that, the demon was gone.

  I didn’t need to push my strained, stiff muscles to rise to my feet. Charles took three quick strides over to me and lifted me to the tips of my toes by the front of my ichor-stained hoodie.
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  “What the fuck did you do that for?” he snarled in my face, staff trembling in his other hand. “I had this under control!”

  “If by in control you mean you were making fucking deals with it!” I snapped right back. “Five more fucking minutes and you would have had a dinner date and its fucking phone number!” My fists curled into tight balls, trembling like his staff.

  “I was going to trick it into letting us go, then come back with whatever I researched would kill it!” His breath hit me in the face, hot, fearful and angry as he bellowed the words. “You stupidly endangered all of our lives! Mine, Tamara’s, Corey’s!”

  That took me aback for a moment, sapping some of the rage, but it flooded right back. “You said we were going to walk in here and kick its ass, and that’s exactly what I did! You wanted to go back and prep and research while it ate more innocent people!” My heart pounded once, thunder inside my head. “How many lives would that have cost? Or what if it hid? What if we couldn’t get back here? Or if it set a fucking trap for us! You really think that was a better idea?”

  I rocked back on my heels as Charles dropped me. “It was all I had.” His face fell, the anger bleeding out of him.

  I blinked, remembering where I was. The floor of bone lay disturbed, pits and troughs and piles of human remains everywhere, the mounds of detritus decor obliterated by our struggle. The cavern’s motley stone walls were cracked and scorched, and a dusting of crushed bone and dry mortar floated on the air. Corey stood, apprehensive and tired, on one side of us, Tamara close at hand on the other.

  “Guys?” Tamara put a hand on her hip, watching us with concern. “If you’ve both got that out of your systems, there are people that need us.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed with unnatural light. “Really need us.” She nodded toward the room I’d peeked into during the fight.

  I nodded as I finally heard it, too. With no roaring, yelling, or hitting going on, the only sounds echoing in the chambered cavern were a multitude of heartbeats and a chorus of plaintive, desperate sobs.

  18

  What the heart wants

  “I’ll be there in a minute.” Charles turned aside, checking Corey over quietly while the boy tried to wave him away. The scent of blood abruptly cut off as the wizard started stuffing wads of gauze in the young magician’s ears.

  I glanced at Tamara. “You okay?”

  She flashed me a dazzling smile, though her eyes were still bigger than natural, touched with a hint of that vibrant, liquid energy. “Not a scratch. It was mostly focused on you, anyway.” The Moroi shifted, stopping just shy of hugging herself. “There’s a lot of emotion here. So much it’s hard to focus. Hard to shut it out.” She tapped her head and frowned, the liquid blue of her eyes shimmering with empathy, with sadness. “Pain, despair, anguish and agony echoes from the walls, soaks into the bones…” She trailed off and swallowed thickly, closed her eyes for a beat, then opened them again, forcing a hopeful smile. “Let’s go see what we can do about that.” I nodded, and we headed toward the opening to the other chamber, side by side. “You were great, by the way. What you did back there was amazing.”

  My smile drained away, stolen as the smell of blood hit me anew, slapping me in the face like it had been lurking in ambush, just inside the next room. This room reeked of blood and other, worse things, some new, most age-old. A few ensconced torches kept the room dimly lit with a cold, blue light, letting us clearly see the cages that lined the walls. There must have been dozens, most with a moving body inside, some few with just a body. Another scattered handful stood empty, some of those gaping and open. I decided that the empty ones were empty because the Rawhead hadn’t gotten around to filling them yet. Not because they used to be full.

  “We shouldn’t tell them it got away,” Tamara’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Not yet. We don't want them to panic.”

  “Not to mention, it said it had work buddies,” I grumbled.

  She nodded. “We’ll piece all of that together later. Let’s focus on the rescue for now. Just… Keep your guard up, just in case.”

  I was already focused on it. Lori was here, somewhere. I knew it. The volume in the bleak grotto spiked as someone spotted us, a muddled cacophony of women's voices, some crying out for help, many simply crying. Some of them grabbed the bars, having obviously heard the fight and now shouting, pleading for us to let them go.

  I didn’t know where to start. The chorus of voices only grew, indecipherable and dizzying. “Lori!” I shouted, cutting across the din. The voices quieted but only a little and only for a moment. “Lori!” My voice raked across my wrecked vocal cords, rough and harsh and not my own. Was she even—

  “Ashley!”

  I could barely hear the reply, but hear it I did. Turning, I somehow pinpointed the direction in the confusion and rushed heedlessly toward it, a cell in the very back corner, squeezed in next to the wall and some object covered in a faded, moldering tapestry. I stumbled as I smacked face first into a mess of rusty chains and hooks dangling from a hole in the ceiling, stained with old blood, but thankfully, nothing fresh hung from those sharp barbs. They plucked harmlessly, hungrily at my clothes, unable to find purchase in Strigoi flesh. I growled, tearing them free from their anchor high above, a chunk of the ceiling coming down as I tossed them aside in disgust. The falling stone bounced off of me harmlessly, too.

  Nothing else stood in my way as I rushed to Lori’s cage.

  “Ashley!” Clear, sky-blue, shimmering eyes stared up at me from within the cage.

  Lori. The tears wouldn’t come. Couldn’t.

  She looked just like I remembered: pale—though not as pale as myself or Tamara—and beautiful, with her heart-shaped face and long lashes, perfect soft lips and long, platinum hair. But not everything was as I remembered it; her flawless complexion and skin was marred by scrapes and streaked with blood and dirt. Her slender waist was even thinner than normal, and I could see hints of her ribs shift under her skin when she breathed. Trails where tears had washed her beautiful face clean again and again stood out like emotional war paint.

  I twitched, fighting a sudden burst of rage. If I ever saw that… abomination again—

  “Ashley.” My whole world focused to that one point when she spoke, and I smiled through everything, the rage fleeing into the shadows as she cautiously crept forward into the light, closer to the bars. “Ashley! Oh my God! What are you doing here? Are you okay? What about that...thing…” Her voice shuddered and failed, torn apart by tremors of fear, of memory.

  “It’s okay, Lor. I’m here.” My voice cracked, too and only partly because of the damage to my throat. “You’re safe now. I promise.”

  She crawled closer, the ambient blue light tinting her soft skin like a bruise. Lori wrapped one slender, delicate hand around the thick, corroded bars, then raised the other, stretching it out toward me. I lifted my own bloodied, weathered hand, softly placing it palm to palm with hers, meeting gently in the center of the bars locking her away.

  “It really is you…” Her voice was cast in tones of wonder, but her eyes shone wetly with exhausted relief.

  As one, we pressed as close as we could to one another, the bars be damned. I thumped my forehead against hers, so very careful to keep my strength to a minimum.

  “Ow,” she chuckled, eyes shimmering with unfallen tears. “Ashley… The whole time… You were all I could think of. I couldn’t...with what that…what it did to us…” My other arm went through the bars, wrapped around her shoulders as I leaned my weight against the iron. “You were all I had to keep me going.” The bright blue of her eyes asked the questions her voice didn’t, their depths haunted by shadows that hadn’t been there a couple of days ago.

  “I know what you mean,” I croaked, wrestling my voice with pathetic success. “Been looking for you ever since… Ever since I came home and realized you were gone.”

  “Ashley…” Worry flickered across her features; I wanted nothing more than to wipe it away. “Why didn’t you
come home? I couldn’t call you, your work didn’t know, you were just gone…” She shuddered, glancing away. And when she looked back, it was with a frown. “Are you okay? Something… Something doesn't feel right.”

  I shook my head. “Later,” I rasped with a smile. “Let’s get you out first, okay?”

  Her eyes went wide, pleading. “Oh, God, please.” Her eyes darted around, frantic. “But how? Only...Only he, only that thing could—”

  “Wanna see something cool?” I grinned, the best closed-mouthed grin I could manage. No fangs, I reminded myself.

  Knitting her brow together, she smiled a familiar, fond smile, and nodded.

  Somewhere behind me, I could hear Tamara talking to the girls, loudly addressing them all before moving from cage to cage, checking each one and leaving them far calmer in her wake. But Lori and I only had eyes for each other.

  The cages were simple squares carved into the very walls, several feet deep, but not even tall enough for Lori to sit without ducking her head awkwardly. Dark little holes. The thick, iron bars were set directly into the stone itself, with nothing that resembled locks, hinges, or doors.

  Not nearly enough to stop me.

  I ripped the rusted metal from the stone that gripped it with a shower of stony bits and so much violence that one of the strips of iron flew out of my hand, shooting across the chamber to bounce and clang across the stone and bone, narrowly missing Charles’ foot. He glared at me, then went back to peeling a heavy, moth-eaten tapestry off of a huge, polished mirror, seven feet tall and heavily gilt with a broad frame of tarnished steel and fluid, ambiguously sculpted shapes.

  I spared him a brief, sheepish grin before turning back to Lori and forgetting him completely. Her moment of astonished shock faded as she realized she was truly free, and she surged from the stone and iron cage faster than I would have thought possible, tucking her head against my chest and throwing her arms around me. Hugging me tightly, as if I might slip away at any moment.