Heart of Ash

by Kim Liggett

  A stab of remorse came over me when I thought about what happened last night. I wanted to believe I was genuinely fooled, caught up in the moment, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that, on some level, I knew and did it anyway. The darkest part of me, reaching out for what I thought I truly deserved.

  Grabbing one of the chemical tanks, I raised it over my head to bash her head in, when the light turned green. I dropped the canister. “You don’t deserve a swift death. You should suffer.”

  “For once we agree on something.” She looked up at me, the pain in her dark eyes piercing right into my soul. I knew that pain . . . the seething guilt pouring out of her matched my own.

  37

  I YANKED OPEN the metal door, only to find a sterile white room with two hospital beds surrounded by medical equipment. It was sparkling clean, but the smell of blood, urine, morphine, and fear told me everything I couldn’t see. But Rhys wasn’t there. Just when I was about to turn back to beat the truth out of Lucinda, I heard something—a sound coming from behind a privacy screen—the susurration of breath.

  As I stepped toward it, an IV pole came swinging toward my ribs.

  Beth reached out to stop it. “It’s okay. It’s just Ash.”

  Rhys collapsed in my arms. His head was shaved and he was emaciated to the point where I didn’t want to hug him too hard; I didn’t want to break him.

  Tears streamed down my face. Here he was. My brother. My twin. The better half of me.

  He gave me a faint smile, his lips cracking open with the strain.

  I wanted him to yell at me. I wanted him to hate me, but he seemed so grateful just to see me. And here I was, in this tiny room with his captor’s scent all over my skin. And the worst part was that I could still feel Coronado—his mouth against mine, his hands in my hair. Just thinking about last night made me feel all the more wretched and depraved.

  “Look,” Beth said, “I can touch Rhys . . . I can kiss him. Your blood is magic.”

  “I’m happy for both of you,” I whispered, desperately trying to keep it together.

  There was so much hanging between us. I had no idea where to start. How much he remembered . . . how much he knew.

  “There’s something I need to tell you about Mom . . . she’s—”

  “I know,” he replied.

  “How?”

  “I felt it. I felt you, too. Slipping away. Every day you became more and more faint. I thought it was me, disappearing, but it was more than that.”

  And I knew he was speaking of the darkness, taking over. The darkness inside of me that came alive in Coronado’s presence.

  “But when you came here, I heard your voice. Your footsteps. Your laughter. I knew you’d come for me.”

  It pained me to think that he was here, underfoot, while I . . . well, I couldn’t even go there.

  “Can you ever forgive me?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” He looked up at me with love in his eyes. “We’re together now. That’s all that matters.”

  “That’s not all that matters.” I felt my blood pressure rise. “Coronado has to pay for what he’s done.”

  “I know he hurt you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you—”

  “This isn’t about me. What he did to me. This is about you. I can’t even think about what he did to you. It’s inhuman . . . unforgivable.”

  He glanced back at the hospital bed, shivering at the sight of it.

  “You don’t have to talk about what happened, but if you ever need—”

  “When I ran out of the corn that day, I was going to get help. I found Teresa and Spencer. I told them everything that was happening and they said they wanted to help me, help us. He made a phone call . . . said it was someone he knew . . . someone who could help. About twenty minutes later, a black SUV pulled up; we got in. I saw the mark on the driver’s wrist—the same mark that Dane had—and that’s the last time I remember walking, talking, feeling the wind, feeling the sun,” he said as he looked longingly toward the exit.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said, thinking of Coronado, what he would do if he found us.

  “We’ve been trying, but he can’t walk,” Beth said.

  “Why?” I looked over his legs. They were thin, but there didn’t seem to be any breaks.

  “He hasn’t been out of that bed for a year.”

  “B-but I saw him on the footage,” I sputtered. “In the wheelchair, that was a week ago.”

  “That was from a year ago,” Beth said. “When Spencer first delivered Rhys to Coronado.”

  My chin quivered. “You mean . . . he’s been here all this time?”

  Beth nodded.

  I thought of all the times I passed by the entrance, without even a glimmer of recognition. Finding him was everything I’d longed for in the past year, to feel whole again, but the darkness must’ve clouded my senses.

  “I can walk,” Rhys said as he tried to stand, but he only folded in on himself like a newborn colt. Beth and I tried to brace him, but he groaned in anguish when we made contact with his back.

  I looked to see what was causing him so much pain, and when I saw the bedsores, I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from going into the other room to beat the last bit of life out of Lucinda. How could anyone do this to another human being . . . and to someone as good as Rhys?

  “What can we do?” Beth asked.

  “My blood,” I said as I grabbed a scalpel from one of the trays to cut my wrist, but my brother stopped me.

  I could’ve forced it down his throat, but I didn’t want him to have to endure one more thing against his will.

  “It will heal you,” I explained. “You’ll be able to walk out of here on your own two feet.”

  “I don’t want it. No more blood.”

  “Rhys, you have open wounds. A lot of them,” I said as I looked down at the needle marks all over his body, some infected, some well on their way.

  “To leave this place, you’re going to come in contact with a lot of people. If anyone besides us has contact with your blood, they’ll die.”

  Watching the realization come over him, the reminder of what he was, what his blood could do, was like a dagger in the heart.

  “Just close your eyes if you’re squeamish.”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m over my fear of blood. That’s been my entire life this past year,” he said as he glanced over at the endless array of extraction equipment.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t want to be . . .”

  “Oh,” I whispered, the realization crushing down on me like a heavy weight. He was afraid of becoming like Dane or Lucinda. He was afraid of becoming like me. I swallowed back my tears.

  “My blood will heal you. Nothing more. You won’t become immortal. All it will do is make you feel strong for a little while, seal any open wounds, help with the atrophy and the morphine withdrawal. But it won’t prevent you from getting hurt in the future.”

  Rhys looked to Beth.

  She smiled at him, chipped tooth and all. She didn’t see his hollow cheeks, his sunken eyes, his decaying flesh. She saw Rhys, the way he was before. And I thought: This is what real love looks like. This.

  “I won’t do it to ease my pain,” Rhys said. “But I’ll do it so I won’t hurt anyone else. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  He leaned back against Beth; I slit my wrist, then placed it up to his mouth. “Just this once,” he said.

  As my blood flowed into him, I tried to bury my feelings of guilt and rage and remorse—there would be no secrets between us after this, but at least my blood could do something good for a change.

  Watching the wounds on Rhys’s body heal brought fresh tears to my eyes. And when the soft peach color returned to his face, I knew he was going to be okay. He had a long way
to go until he was completely healthy again, but this was a start. Beth helped him to his feet. He was stiff and slow, but able to walk.

  We had to pass through the decontamination chamber to leave. As we closed the heavy metal door behind us, the mist began to fall.

  “Are we going home?” Rhys asked.

  I thought about what that would be like, taking him back to New York City. Without our mother there, and with Timmons gone, it was just an apartment. Nothing more. But we also had to worry about Coronado now. And New York City would be the first place he’d look.

  “We have money. Lots of it. Maybe we can buy an island somewhere. Just the three of us—”

  “He’ll find you, Ashlyn,” Lucinda said from the back corner.

  Rhys cowered at the sound of her voice.

  “Coronado will never let you go. He will use your love for Rhys and Beth to control you. They will never be safe. You must end this now or accept the consequences.”

  “Shut your mouth.” I glared at Lucinda, whose breath had become so shallow, her color so pale, that I knew she was barely clinging to life.

  “I know a way . . . a way you can all be together again. A way that I can be with Coronado.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” I said as I stared up at the light over the door, willing it to change.

  “Ironic that this is where I’ll die. No matter how many times that disinfection cycle goes off, I will never be clean. I will never be clean of what I’ve done to you and Rhys. The sins I’ve committed in my own brother’s name.”

  I was trying to ignore her, but Rhys whispered, “Can you help her?”

  “Help her?” I balked. “Isn’t this the woman who helped torture you for the past year, drained your blood, starved you, drugged you?”

  Rhys swallowed hard. “That’s true. But she’s also the one who brought Beth down here to find me. She wants to do the right thing.”

  “She deserves to die.”

  As the light changed from red to green, and the mist stopped, I opened the door.

  “Please, Ash.” Rhys placed his emaciated hand on my shoulder and looked back at Lucinda. “I don’t want my blood to be the cause of any more deaths.”

  I would’ve been happy to let her drown in a pool of her own fetid blood, but I couldn’t turn my back on my brother’s wishes. If this would help ease his conscience, I’d do it.

  I walked over to Lucinda, kicking the canister out of my way.

  “You have my brother to thank for your pathetic life,” I said, revealing the scalpel secreted in the palm of my hand.

  “I know how to make amends.” The words rattled from the depths of her throat. “The alchemist . . . he told me a way.”

  I couldn’t stand listening to one more lie come out of her mouth. Using the scalpel, I slit open her palm, and then my own, grasping her hand in violent mercy.

  I wanted to hate her . . . I wanted to despise her, but as my blood penetrated her heart, a powerful wave of memories and emotions washed over me.

  Holding a young boy in the dark, protecting him from a man stalking the halls with a whip in his hands.

  Lying in bed, burning up with fever, as a beautiful young man tended to her, feeding her tiny sips of immortal blood from the same amulet she carried now. The young man was Coronado, before he met Katia, before this darkness befell their house. “I’m going to find the immortal whose blood this belongs to,” he whispered. “And then we can be together forever.”

  For years she waited, growing frailer by the day, and when he finally returned to the crumbling castle, he hadn’t aged a day, but he had certainly changed. A cruelty she hardly recognized. Dragging the alchemist behind him, he’d forced him to make Lucinda immortal.

  Promises were made . . . and broken. Whispers in the dark were contorted into the ultimate taboo. Isolation led to madness.

  And when Katia’s portrait was hung in the study, I felt her rage every time she gazed upon it.

  But when Beth and I arrived at the castle, doubt began to slip under her skin. Along with a guilt so crushing, I thought it might bury me alive.

  In the early morning hours, she stole away to visit Rennert at the apothecary. I heard his words of warning. “You’re twins, the perfect vessel. There isn’t a better match to be made in heaven or hell. There will be deep sacrifice. You must accept the light in order to step into darkness. But in that darkness, you will be whole again. You will be new. You will find redemption and peace inside the pain.”

  Lucinda was telling the truth about everything. I could feel it. See it. She was just as much a victim of Coronado as the rest of us. Maybe more. To be betrayed by your family . . . your twin . . . I couldn’t even fathom that kind of despair.

  As we started to heal, I wanted to keep cutting deeper and deeper, to see every last detail, but when I looked into Lucinda’s eyes, I knew she’d seen my memories as well. I knew she’d had enough.

  “I saw what your mother did for you,” Lucinda said. “The light she left inside you. You can use it to take Coronado from Dane’s body and place him inside of me. I can be his vessel.”

  “And then what?” I asked. “He’ll take you the same way he’s taken Dane. I know firsthand what it’s like to be the vessel for another soul, and there’s only darkness.”

  “We can control him with pain.” She squeezed my hands. “Coronado will run from it, but I can take it long enough—”

  “Long enough for what? You’re immortal, and you now carry my blood. I won’t be able to stop you.”

  “It’s true. I cannot die. But there are worse things than death for an immortal.”

  The house seemed to groan in accord.

  Our eyes locked, and in that moment, I knew exactly what she meant. Immurement.

  I always thought Katia was the one who left something inside of me, but it was really my mother. Her light. And now I realized that I could use that light to take Coronado from Dane’s body and bind him to Lucinda, but if I gave away my light, it would mean darkness for me, and Lucinda knew it, too. But when I looked back at my brother and Beth, when I thought of Dane being at the mercy of Coronado’s cruel whims, I knew what I had to do.

  “If we go through with this, I have one demand,” I said to Lucinda.

  “Anything.”

  “When I use the light inside of me to do this, and the darkness takes over, I need you to take me with you. The three of us will be immured together. I’ve seen what the darkness can do to a person. I won’t replace one monster for another.”

  She looked at me in quiet anguish. “You have my word.”

  My eyes welled up with tears. It was confirmation of everything I’d feared. She’d seen into my soul. What I would become. And it scared her.

  38

  AS BETH TOOK Rhys outside, Lucinda and I loaded up as many canisters as we could carry, placing them strategically around the main floor.

  Grabbing a butcher’s knife, a box of matches, and a large tin of kerosene from the kitchen, Lucinda left a trail of accelerant behind her. “This should draw Dane to the surface. Burns take the longest to heal.”

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” I asked her. “Maybe there’s another way, in time—”

  “Coronado and I should’ve died long ago,” Lucinda replied. “This is where we belong. Together. Forever.”

  “Blood and salt,” I whispered. Theirs was an intense love, a destructive kind of love that I didn’t want anymore. We’d all done enough damage to one another.

  “I’ll let you do the honors,” she said, handing me the box of matches.

  Taking one last look, at the grandeur, the history around me, I opened the doors to Coronado’s study and regarded Katia’s portrait. The original sin. The way she was looking over her shoulder, waiting with bated breath for the touch of a man who would be her ruin.

  And in
that moment, I knew what had driven her to make an alliance with the Dark Spirit in the first place. I understood it better than anyone.

  Doing this might destroy me, but I’d have to take that chance. For Rhys and Beth and Dane . . . but also for Katia, my mother, and every Larkin girl who’d fallen before me.

  I’d rather go dark in a blaze of glory than waste a hundred years stoking a dying ember.

  I struck a flame, the smell of phosphorous and fear nipping at the edge of my senses. Instead of tossing the match haphazardly, I moved in close, setting flame to the far corner of the painting, watching it spread and grow, not unlike the poison Coronado sowed through my bloodline.

  In a daze, I watched the fire catch the trail of kerosene, tracking it all the way up the grand staircase to his quarters.

  “Fool me once, shame on me.

  “Fool me twice . . .

  “I burn your shit to the ground.”

  As I crossed the threshold, the flames licked my skin, my hair, but I welcomed the pain.

  Pain was the only thing that would keep Dane with me.

  39

  IT WAS JUST before dawn when I stepped outside. Night was still desperately trying to hang on to the horizon, but the sun was unstoppable.

  And that’s exactly how I felt.

  Caught between the light and the dark.