The Heart's Ashes

by A. M. Hudson

  All I could do was cry, louder and more broken than I’d ever cried before, and even that wouldn’t save me.

  He left me, and in the rotation of time passing, the weight of everything to come bared down on me, the fear of pain to come making the room feel open, full of things I couldn’t imagine. Once I was on the other side, once he’d cut me or struck me, I’d know how bad it could get, but now, like this, just waiting, I had no idea.

  The worst pain I could remember was when I broke my arm falling off Dad’s roof. Everything Jason did to me at the masquerade had somehow escaped me; I couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t recall what it felt like, no matter how hard I tried. I remembered the emotion, the fear, the feeling that so much was lost—more than just my life. I remember that, but not the pain.

  With my arms bound to the chair, outstretched, and my legs tied, sitting slightly apart, I felt too exposed, as if waiting for a sack of flour to drop on my midsection. There was no way to cover myself, to block whatever he might think to do to me. I just wanted to roll over and hug my knees to my chest.

  “Finished your little temper tantrum?”

  I looked across the room to Jason, one foot tucked up where he leaned on the wall, his arms folded, a smug grin warming his face.

  “Not if it means you stay over there.”

  He appeared beside me. “There will come a point where I will be obliged to do my job, tantrums or none.”

  I studied his face, unable to see any sign of the monster that tortured me last year. “I don’t think you can hurt me, Jason.”

  Releasing a sigh, his whole demeanour changed. “Wow, you are naive, aren’t you?”

  “I hope not.” I focused on his eyes, on the dark green ring encircling the bright colour, hoping somewhere in there he might realise how, in all his pretending, maybe he really did love me.

  He pressed a fist to hide his laughter, looking away. “You know I can read all those thoughts, don’t you?”

  “So?”

  “Okay. Fine—you’re not getting it. I’ll show you.”

  The urge to break free tightened my collarbones as Jason reached into the realm of the unknown, behind me, grabbed a stool and sat by my side, flipping a pair of pliers in the air.

  “I’ve been given permission to perform any number of tortures on you. Of course—” he shrugged, taking my fingertips in his, “—I have a list I must follow, but this—” He rested the pliers to my fingernail. “This one I’ll throw in for free.”

  My throat knotted with realisation. “Please,” I cried, my weary voice trembling. “Jase? Don’t?”

  He shook his head, smiling down at my hand; “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  Each breath came from my lungs, voiced with the sobbing despair of fact; he’s got to be kidding. He can’t do this. People don’t just go around pulling out other people’s nails. The pliers clamped and a rush of liquid lead flooded my arms.

  “Don’t. Don’t.” I curled my fingers, wishing to pull away.

  He inched the pliers further under the rim of my nail, sending tears out over my unblinking lashes. Please. You can’t really be doing this. This isn’t real.

  “Oh, but it is.” He leaned over my hand, his head blocking my view. A hot rush of panic rose up inside me with a sharp, tight stinging under the nail bed—pulsing then numbing as he tugged downward. My hand seized up, locked, wide eyes bulging as the shaking in my elbow spread out, dragging a searing vein of agony behind it.

  I screamed, ploughing my elbow into the arm of the chair. He only gripped tighter, kept wriggling those damn pliers from side to side, the tugging sensation coming from somewhere bone deep.

  “Please. Please stop!”

  Jason released his hold, leaving my nail attached. Cold blood rushed through, throbbing in the tip of my finger, threatening to push the dislodged nail out.

  It is real. All of it. It’s real. He lied to me. He really lied. He trapped me, and I’m stupid for believing him.

  The pain seared, pulsing around my elbow and my pinkie, of all places. My finger involuntarily straightened, shaking on its own.

  I just want the pain to stop. I just want to feel normal again.

  “It’s not going to stop, Ara. There is much, much worse to come.” He sat back down and stroked his fingers over my arm. I couldn’t feel his touch under the pain, only see him doing it. “This is what torture is. Now, it’s time for another round.”

  No! No more—I can’t take it. My mouth gaped; a wavering sound of desperation curdled in the back of my throat as Jason lifted the throbbing finger and rested the pliers to it. My lips pressed together, trying to form a word, but a spluttering mess of spit and tears only came out instead.

  Please, my mind managed, Please, no more.

  “Oh, we get it now, do we?” he asked and pulled the pliers away.

  The shaking of my shoulders masked my nodding head, but he knew. How could he not know I agreed to his terms? No more. No more.

  “So, there will be no more of this hoping-I’ll-rescue-you business, no more believing I loved you?”

  No. No more. I breathed heavily, shaking, cold all over. No more.

  The pliers clinked on the tinny-sounding thing behind me, and my mind focused only on the sear through the bone of my finger as it vibrated up my arm, making the raw burn around my wrists and ankles, probably torn from kicking against the cuffs, throb.

  “Stop crying,” he said apathetically, “you brought this upon yourself.

  “No. You’re just a monster,” I whimpered.

  “Yes,” he said, and sighed. “I tried to tell you this, but you just see the good in everything, don’t you?”

  “Why?” I asked with a jagged inhalation. “Why did you lie to me—” why did you kiss me, hold me, save me?

  “The wicked games we play with our prey.” He took my hand in his; the numbing under the tip of my sore finger pulsed like a bulbous cyst. “I expect David never demonstrated the hunt.”

  I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. Waves of heat, thrashing in bursts of contempt and malice, rolled through me. Games. I was just a game? That’s not fair!

  With a tight breath through my teeth, I turned my head to look at him. Let me go! You let me go, now. You have no right to do this.

  “It needs no justification, Ara. We do this because we can, because you don’t belong in this world. You were never supposed to exist. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Choice,” I said, throwing the full weight of definition behind it.

  He smiled simply. “Yes. I was given a choice. I chose to do this. I chose to be your torturer.”

  The orange glow of light flickered across the room, making dancing shadows on the round roof. I looked to the stairs, knowing that, through the arch, up, all the way up, they led to another world; bright, airy, open, free. I imagined myself breaking the cuffs, stowing my sore hand against my chest as I scampered up those stairs—away. Away from all this.

  “Is that the worst?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Is that...the worst pain?”

  He laughed. “Oh, Ara. So naive.” Jason dropped my hand, and the burn in my finger eased. “No. It’s not. I have tests to perform. They will hurt. And when I’m done with you, the Council gets to play with you for a while. Once they finish—you go to Drake.”

  Dread tightened my chest. “Will he really use that thing on me?”

  Jason looked down at me. Despite him being the enemy, despite his hatred for me, I still knew him and he still knew me. Familiarity was safe in this room. I could pretend, as we talked, that he still cared. Pretend, if nothing else.

  “I don’t know what he’ll do to you, Ara.” There was something hidden in his tone, a kind of softness, pity maybe. “I only go on experience and stories. And we all know what rumours are like.”

  I smiled incredulously. “Well, I really don’t think he’ll be sitting down to have a cup of frickin tea with me.”

  Jason nodded, the sympathy I
thought I heard in his voice showing in his eyes. He patted my hand and wandered away. “Okay. Let’s get things started.”

  I relaxed back, forced by exhaustion. Seconds spread out to minutes. I counted in my head when it felt like he’d been gone for too long, doing who knows what behind me. But each shift or clank of a tool was only a few seconds apart, despite feeling longer.

  I closed my eyes. Cold. So cold. Like opening a freezer and digging around to get the ice-cream at the back. The frost is something that stays with you your whole life. That first time you went to the snow, or the coldest winter day you can remember. But when you look back, think about the icy chill around your knees and the way the air made your cheeks even feel pink, you can smile. It was good to remember being cold, to remember the feeling of going home and putting on dry socks or pulling my hair off my face and snuggling up somewhere comfy. Good memories.

  At only seventeen, I had already made more bad memories than good. Two years later, that hadn’t changed. It seemed almost as if my mind were designed to focus on things that, when I looked back, only brought a pang of dread or that wake-in-the night feeling of being trapped, unable to escape.

  When I look back on my first day in the snow, I see my dad and my mum. I see them carefully sliding my blue glove off my pink little hand. They placed a small ball of hard, icy, wet stuff there, and stood back to watch my face. I hated it. I dropped it and wiped my hand on my leg. Good memory.

  But as soon as a smile entered, Dad and Mum fizzled away, and the cold crept up, causing goosebumps I didn’t want, forcing me to remember where I was and how the cold got so bitter my body actually gave up shaking for periods of time, too tired to even save its own life.

  The squeaky, rickety wobbling of a wheel rolled across stone, and a sound like pebbles on a tin roof rattled as Jason positioned a table beside me. My eyes shifted first, then my head, to look at it.

  Oh God. I looked away, shutting my eyes instantly.

  A knot twisted from my leg to my stomach, as a flash image remained; all I recognised on that tray of sharp, twisty objects were scissors, a scalpel and a needle. The rest, I’d never seen before, but had a sickening feeling I’d find out exactly what they all do.

  “Jase?”

  “Stop talking.”

  I fought for my breath, keeping my eyes closed. “I know you hate me. But surely, after all the time we spent together, surely you don’t want to do this. Surely—” I looked back over the memory of soft Jason, his kind touch, his lips, his kiss. “Surely you had to have felt something for me.”

  “I said stop talking.”

  The odd tone in his voice forced my eyes open. “Jase?”

  He sighed and placed his hands on the sides of the cart, rolling it closer to the chair. My heart broke at the sight of the smooth skin, golden, covering fingertips that had gently tickled my spine, tracing over my collarbones, smoothing over my hips as his lips, his teeth, gently caressed my neck, kissing me in curved lines around my face. My betrayal to David went so much deeper than just the actions I took with this man, because in those dreams, despite denying it, I felt for him—felt for Jason, and I know, I just know he felt for me.

  I looked up from the cart into Jason’s tightly-shut eyes. He turned his head away, his brow furrowed so deeply.

  “Jase?” I said again, hope filling my voice.

  His eyes flashed open, the bright colour I love faded away to a dense, murky green.

  “Please? Just tell me it’s not true. Tell me you weren’t pretending the whole time.” I watched him move back to the tray. “I promise, I won’t scream if you tell me the truth.”

  “You won’t scream.” He smiled coldly. “Because I’ll cut out your voice box if you do.”

  “What are you doing with that?” I watched him wipe an old, rusted syringe—the needle as long as a finger.

  “It will do no good to ask questions, my dear.” He sighed. “Now,” he said right into my face, pushing my forehead back with his hand. “This is going to hurt—just a bit.”

  I shook my head, muttering a long-sounding “No” through pursed lips.

  “Don’t make this harder, Ara.” He slipped a cold, stiff finger between my teeth and forced them apart, quickly jamming a block as a wedge to keep my mouth open.

  Tremors rose up from my elbows with voiceless panic and shook my jaw as the big needle disappeared from my line of sight, headed right toward my lips. “Ah.” I thrust my arms against the cuffs when a bone crunching pop jolted into the deepest cavity of my skull; my gum feeling pushed and bunched.

  “Stop wriggling.” He held my head with one hand. “Goddamn it, Ara, if you don’t stop I’ll have to do this all over again.”

  As a flowing, cold sensation flooded from deep within my gum, like sipping iced water through a thin straw, I cried out, finding my voice further under the drowning, sludgy liquid in my throat; my nails burned—digging into the splintering wood of the chair, but I did not still. I couldn’t hold still. What a stupid thing to ask of me.

  “Quiet down.” Jason gripped my cheeks firmly, stopping my cry, leaving the needle flailing around between my lips. “Those who can hear you scream will not help you; and those who would help you, cannot hear you scream.”

  Someone will hear me. Someone will help me.

  Hot tears cascaded down the sides of my face.

  Jason. Please stop? Please? You loved me. Just love me again like you did that night. Please.

  “It’s okay, Ara,” Jason said as he slid the needle in one slow, grinding movement from my mouth; my skull seemed unwilling to release, giving a small pop as it scraped out past my teeth. “Only three more to go.”

  “Isn’t there another way?” I took a breath, running my tongue over the empty swelling in my gum. “Like they do with snakes? Please? I’ll give you the venom—just—just don’t hurt me anymore.”

  “This is the only way to extract vampire venom, Ara. If there was another way—” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “This is the ruling of the king,” he yelled. “Now be quiet, or he will order much worse for you.”

  “No—no. No!” I screamed again as he walked toward me with another needle.

  Chapter 22

  A nagging ache in the back of my neck, resonating from within the deepest cavity of my jaw, pulsed, waking my mind with every beat. Somewhere on the other side of the darkness, a constant drip, like an artificially-generated water drop, stirred dormant irritation. “David?” I said, too heavy to move. “The tap.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “David? I’m so tired. Please can you—” I tensed, white shock melting through me, becoming dread as I tried to roll over and felt the pull of metal against my raw wrists.

  It wasn’t a dream. None of it. It’s real. I’m here. I’m cuffed, aching. Oh, God. I closed my eyes, rolling my head back a little, as if to send my tears to the heavens.

  David’s not here. He’s not here.

  My plan to roll over and snuggle into his chest, feel his fingers in my hair as I recalled my dream, suddenly fell away, leaving me with only jagged sniffles, too deep to become tears. But all self-pity stopped, like a door being slammed shut, when something tickly, small as the head of a dried flower, crawled into the cup of my palm. I held a tight breath, my eyes slowly growing larger when the crawly thing showed itself, scampering purposefully across my elbow, up my arm, into the dip of my armpit; its fat black body then disappearing.

  My tummy muscles and spine fought back—stiff and sore, trying to keep me flat—but I rolled my neck up, searching my torso for the creepy little bugger. My hands had been locked up so tight for so long that the pulsing and gathering of blood around the muscle under the thumb made it completely numb, the numbness tightening with the pressure of my arching body.

  When the spider finally re-emerged, rising to the ceiling on an invisible string, I flopped back, laughing breathily.

  As soon as I get my hands free, the first thing I’m gonna do is wrap them around Jason’s
neck—after I scratch my lip...and maybe my knee, and my nose.

  I wriggled my nose, shifting my lips one side to the other to make it move, but the itch stayed fast on my skin.

  Above me, my wriggly friend showed himself again, probably planning to spin a web on my immobile body. In the dark, I could only see him every few seconds when his abdomen turned against the dim red glow of the torch across the room. I wondered if he had friends—if there could be more like him scuttling around on me. Maybe I could get him to crawl onto my nose and scratch it.

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I breathed out slowly, making soft, foggy clouds of frost in the air above my lips. It was like someone had left a door open somewhere, letting the chill in, or as if someone had died in here and their ghost was haunting the air. Although it was a kind of fresh cool, it also made me even more exhausted, my lungs strained to draw a full breath and my blood felt like honey, thick and sludgy. But the bangle of dried blood and grated skin under my cuffs, where I’d tugged so hard to get away, hurt like ice on a scratch, dragging my attention to the imagery—the red ring of chafing, flaking skin. I closed my eyes again and focused on the tingling in my lips.

  “Need a bathroom break?”

  “God, yes,” I said and sat up, swinging my legs fast over the side of the chair.

  I ran to the white door beside me and shut my eyes tight as bright sunlight burst through the window. All I could make out through the tears was a polished porcelain throne, waiting in the middle of the room. I lifted my dress and sat down, feeling instant relief.

  But when I looked for the toilet paper, found only cuffs on the walls—my hands suddenly bound, leaving me exposed, half bare on a toilet seat, my knees slightly apart.

  Screaming out, I tried to break free, but darkness overtook again and my eyes flashed open to the fat body of the spider, spinning his web over my body.