Follow the Ashes: Book 1 of the Executioner Trilogy

by Kindra Sowder

  He stalked towards me, probably thinking I was a defenseless woman with no way to take care of myself. I couldn’t help but laugh on the inside. Wasn’t he going to be shocked when he realized he was wrong?

  He started with a right hook that I blocked. I grabbed his arm and gave it a good twist backwards. I heard and felt bones crack as he screamed out. This let his comrades know that I was the one they should all be afraid of. I was what vampires feared in the dark.

  I reached behind my back, grabbing the wooden stake I always kept there just in case I might need it. I was going to dust this vampire quickly, and just as quickly take care of the rest of his pack. I raised the stake in the air, about to strike him in the heart as the rest of his pack began to make a move toward me. Bad mistake.

  After their first steps the ground began to shake violently and I lost my grip on the alpha and stumbled back a few steps. I almost lost my balance completely. I gained my footing quickly but froze in horror as the ground between my feet began to crack. A blinding light shot out of it. Earthquake? I was deathly sure it wasn’t just an ordinary earthquake. All my life there in California, I had never seen orange light coming out of the cracks a quake left behind. My hands moved to cover my eyes as the light resonating from beneath my feet grew brighter. The buzz I had been feeling got stronger and the ground shook, splitting further to form a small chasm. I still had the stake firmly grasped in my hand, even though I felt that buzzing may cause me to drop it entirely.

  The ground exploded violently where the pack leader stood. It obliterated him and turned him to smoldering ash. The ash flew around me like snow in a shower of sparks, fire, and scorched flesh. I felt like my chest took most of the blow as I was hurled thirty yards backward. It felt like a sledge hammer had landed dead center, and I felt a few ribs bruise. They were even close to breaking. The other three vampires had landed not too far from me, but they were up quickly like they had never even been on the ground. At first their eyes were wide with fright, but then they were on their knees and their expressions had turned from complete fear to utter love and worship. I was trying to understand what had changed to turn them from scared to worshipping imps.

  Pieces of earth and cement flew in all directions, missing me by mere inches as they landed all around me and the remaining vampires. They still knelt before the lonely gaping hole. I sat, hoping to catch a glance of the explosion’s source. My ears rang and my head ached as I moved, making the ringing even more pronounced. I felt like my head was about to slide off my shoulders.

  A woman began to crawl out of the crater-like hole, dressed in a black chiffon dress. The edges of the crater were smoldering and crackling as the flames rose and could not be extinguished. It was almost like something from a Korean horror film. Her blonde hair was covered in soot, making it look black except where the sleek gold was exposed and shining. She had smudges of the same substance all over her unprotected skin and darkness surrounding her. There was a growing feeling of death and fear as she crawled from the crater like a spider from hiding.

  I stood as I watched her emerge, but couldn’t muster up any words for her beauty or the ache I felt in my rib cage. Her face reminded me so much of my mother’s in its delicacy. It was perfectly balanced with a darkness that shook you to your core. She erected herself and began to crack every single bone of her body with ease. The popping sounds coming from her were enough to send shattering chills down my spine. All I knew is that she was evil in its purist form, and she had to be stopped. I didn’t know how, but I would definitely try. Yes, I would definitely give a crack at it right now. In that moment, her dark worshipers seemed to remember I was there. It was just like they could hear my thoughts.

  They rushed at me in a blur of color before I had even fully processed the act. That small surprise gave one of them the edge to grab me by the hair, sending a searing pain through my scalp that radiated down to my knees. It was like he could yank it off without effort. He held me there like I was a lifeline. Of course, I was. My blood would make him so much stronger, and for a longer period of time than someone else’s.

  His fangs began to sink into my neck with a penetrating sting and I felt a trickle of blood seep from the wounds. A burning pain flooded through my entire body. Yes, I would make quick work of these three and then take out the source of their affectionate worship as soon as I could get myself free from his gnarly grasp. The bite would have to be purified, and soon.

  I put my hand to his forehead and I generated enough heat through my palm to turn the spot where my hand made contact with his cold skin into an ashy hole. That hole began to slowly crumble. Jerking my head back hard, I made contact with that hole, sending cracks throughout the rest of his face. He would be gone in a matter of seconds.

  The other two came towards me. Our fight was a series of punches and kicks. There were maybe even a few frustrated grunts from the vampires. The first was an easy kill. He left his heart vulnerable and I was able to stab him with the stake. His now ashy form collapsed to the ground with a sizzle and that loud and fearful demonic scream. The last of the entourage punched me right in the gut, sending all of the air out of my lungs with a loud gasp. The gasp was shortly followed by a series of coughs that I couldn’t stop. As I fought to regain my composure, chunks of ashy remains blew in the slight breeze around our feet.

  The one still alive had a hold on the back of my neck and brought me easily to a standing position to look him in the eyes. I definitely didn’t want to do that. Once you looked into them, you were frozen in place and nothing could break the trance. The deep red of his eyes was the exact same color of the river pouring from my neck, and he looked at it with a passionate hunger that was unmistakable.

  Between gritted teeth he spat out, “I will have much pleasure in killing you, Executioner. All for my dark mother in her splendor and grace.”

  The shock in my face was hard to conceal. Dark mother? Who was this dark mother and how did she have the power to enthrall this vampire without so much as a single glance? I wasn’t going to let this happen. I wasn’t going to become a midnight snack he could brag about to his friends later. I sent him flying with a kick and made quick work of him, driving the stake into the dead center of his chest. I could admit I was making a small show out of it by spinning my stake in my hand as I walked up to him. If that wasn’t intimidating, I didn’t know what was.

  She didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. This was when I made my move to take her down just as quickly as I took her sloppy worshipers. I walked towards her, stake still in hand. I had it slightly hidden behind my back just in case she noticed me before I even got close enough to do the deed. I wasn’t sure exactly what she was, but this was the only weapon I had at my disposal. Well, besides myself. I wasn’t going to reveal the fact I had other weapons inside of me until I was sure they were needed. At that moment I didn’t feel they were. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what she had in her personal arsenal. Good battle strategy. Don’t reveal all you have until you absolutely have to.

  As soon as I was in front of her I raised the stake high for the kill. I had the feeling it would take all the strength I had to destroy her. Her eyes were closed as if she were recharging. Literally as if she was recharging her batteries. Her eyes snapped open as soon as the stake was in prime striking position, like she had somehow known what my plan was. They were that same demonic red that vampires possessed, but something was different about them. There was a black ring around the iris that I had never seen before with gold flecks sprinkled throughout the crimson pool. Those eyes petrified me as soon as I saw them.

  Her arms snapped out and she took hold of my throat and the arm that was holding the stake. If she really wanted to, she could’ve snapped my neck like a twig. I couldn’t have done anything about it but let it happen. There was that much power in her grip and I had a feeling she wasn’t really even trying. I was fighting with all of my strength to get free of her iron hands, but it didn’t faze her. I was weak.

  I cou
ldn’t breathe in, and the feeling of being strangled was unbearable. Kind of like drowning without the water. With her hands on me I could feel the hollowness in her, but the hollowness masked an evil I had never experienced, one I’m sure had never been seen before. And if it had before surfaced, it had been a very long time, possibly thousands of years. If not millions.

  The fear in me was nearly as unbearable as the oxygen deprivation, and almost as agonizing. Then she did something I thought she was incapable of. She smiled.

  The wickedness was bleeding out from between her lips and oozing down to the very earth we stood on like lava. The fangs she exposed were porcelain, perfect and white. There was a gleam in her eyes, and you could see years upon years in those gold-flecked pools. Years upon years of wickedness and evil. The same evil my mother, a devout Catholic, had believed in her whole life.

  “Executioner,” she stated in a very shocked and very giddy voice like she had received a present. She was a child that couldn’t wait to open her presents on Christmas morning. She was very happy to have me in her grasp, ready to be killed at that instant. Her voice had a slight edge to it, like that same malicious intent seeped into every crevice of her being. It was truly the deepest part of her, if not all she was.

  I wrenched my hand holding the stake out of her grasp with all the strength I had and brought it down with all the momentum I could muster. This was much harder to do while the life was being strangled out of you. I felt it make contact with her shoulder and burrow into her flesh and muscle. I believed I had even felt it hit bone.

  She screeched in pain and threw me with more strength than I had ever witnessed before in my life besides my own. The landing knocked all of the breath I had regained out of my lungs, breaking my already damaged ribs. I tried to choke in more air, but with the broken ribs it felt next to impossible. I was in pure agony. As I lay there trying to pull in ragged breaths I could hear her pull the stake out of her shoulder and drop it on the ground with a hollow sound. I could feel agitation oozing out of her every pore like a festering wound that would swallow me whole. I wanted to make a last ditch effort to turn her to a pile of dust before I gave up entirely and ran for cover. The effort it took to breathe almost stopped me, but I knew it had to be done. I was going to take this ancient thing down no matter what it took or how much pain I was in.

  As I tried to stand, the tightness, broken bones, and bruises in my chest felt much more painful than when I was lying down. So I rolled onto my side instead. In that moment, my whole body burned and sufficiently broken, I knew I’d reached the end.

  Chapter 5: Saving Grace

  My whole body burned. Every muscle fiber, every bone, every vessel was on fire. My chest felt broken but squeezed together like a huge hand was holding me. I couldn’t get a breath in, but could easily get a breath out. Lying there on my side I continued to try to choke in gasps, each one harder and more excruciating than the last. Blood was still seeping from the two puncture wounds on my neck. Some of that blood had even made its way into my hair and down my shirt. That was just great.

  I could hear her footsteps coming closer to me. Or was that the heavy thud of my heart beating in my ears? With every step she took I knew I had to fight back. I could either fight for my life or lose it by being a coward and giving into the pain. I was choosing life and I was going to fight for it with all the strength I had left. That’s if it was enough to even stand. If it wasn’t, fighting would be a different story altogether.

  I rose to my knees and my body protested with agonizing pain. I let the fire build up inside of me and it began to take me over like a tidal wave. This fire would save my life.

  The woman’s steps stopped and I looked up at her, vowing vengeance and justice without even speaking a word. I didn’t see a flicker of fear in her eyes as she looked at me. I saw a gleam in her eyes that said she saw me as waste. Filth beneath her feet that she could just walk all over without batting an eye. I was something not worth her time and something to be swiftly snuffed out. She had a plan, and she only needed to get rid of me to be able to fulfill it. I was going to be an easy kill to her, but I hadn’t yet revealed the rest of what I had in my arsenal. This fire inside of me wasn’t all I had. I had a will that no one could rival. Not even her.

  My hand seemed to rise of its own volition, and the scream came out on instinct. The scream contained that familiar demonic edge that had distorted my voice the first time I let it overtake me. Fire blazed out of my hand and enveloped her in flicking light and heat that was unforgiving. Her screams echoed through the night, and I let it pour out of me until every ounce of power had drained from my body, and I was nothing but a frail and hollow person. My vision began to fade, but I knew with everything I had that the demon was down on the ground. She was almost burnt to the point of being a charcoal briquette, but by some means still alive. I could still feel that strong buzz of her power throughout my entire body. No matter how much I wanted to extinguish that blaze inside of her, I determined I wouldn’t have the strength to do so.

  I felt myself collapse, and as my body made contact with the unforgiving ground, every part of me cried with pain. I heard that same whimper come from between my parted lips. My vision was slowly fading, and as it faded completely to blackness I caught a glimpse of the man with an angel’s face coming to my rescue. Then everything went dark.

  As I regained a moment’s consciousness I could feel myself being carried, and heard two distinct and panicked voices. I knew that I was definitely being carried by the man that I saw hovering over me as I blacked out. Thank you, powers of deduction. I could hear him right next to my head. Then I heard a door being opened with a squeak and somehow I knew it was the door to my home. The familiar smell of the herbs Beth used in her spells hung in the air. It was mostly the scent of burned sage that we used to banish the evil spirits of anything we had killed since we met. They had a tendency to stick around.

  The other voice was certainly Beth’s and I knew she was terrified for me, but she was scared by the man she had never met barging into our home. I could tell only that much. Every smell, sound, and sensation was muffled to the point that I almost couldn’t tell if I was really processing any of it at all. I even tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t. My eyelids felt like they had been sewn shut, and held down by heavy weight. It was like someone wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be opening them ever again. I wanted to be able to tear them open, and that same panic I heard in Beth’s voice started to rise in me as well. I was stuck in a darkness I couldn’t pull myself out of. As it overwhelmed me, my body began to quiver and shake.

  Then a new panic set in as another thought crossed my mind. How did this man know where I lived? What were his motives? But I realized I couldn’t worry about that at that moment. I had more important things to worry about. Like becoming completely conscious again and being able to communicate with Beth. I had to tell her about this mysterious creature that I had come across.

  “I’m not sure what she was, but this woman has knocked her out cold. I’m not even sure how long she’ll be out for,” was all I could make out from the man carrying me into my home. I felt hair being moved away from the bite on my neck. It stuck sickly to my skin. “This will need to be purified. Now!” I could feel every ounce of pain in my body that I had felt before I drifted into darkness, and it was excruciating. I could feel the familiar buzz of terror from this man as he seemed to realize I could possibly die from this encounter. Wouldn’t that be a relief from what I was feeling at this moment? But no. I could possibly turn tonight. That woman wasn’t just anything; she was a vampire, and a very old one at that.

  I was swiftly taken through our home and my eyes were able to drift open long enough for me to see our kitchen doorway as I was laid on the kitchen island. I felt very large, warm hands that rolled me onto my side. One hand moved to my shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze as I heard rummaging through a cabinet. I knew what was coming. A holy water shower, followed by a silver nitrate shot
. This was going to hurt.

  I heard glass moving around and knew Beth had found the bottles of holy water. I was already shaking because I had experienced this pain before. We both had, but she wasn’t the one who had almost burned the house down because of it.

  Fear gripped me and my eyes shot open and met his. Beth laid a glass syringe and an amber glass bottle on the corner of the island next to the three bottles of holy water it would take for the process. She glanced at me, and when her eyes met mine I saw pity and concern. She knew exactly what I was about to endure, and she felt sorry for me. I half expected her not to be able to do it herself, but she picked up one bottle of holy water, removed the lid and gave me a reassuring look. I turned onto my stomach and gripped both sides of the island, bracing myself for what was going to happen next.

  Beth held the bottle over the wounds and hesitated. I could see her arm shaking as well. She didn’t want to do this, but she had to. If she didn’t, I was going to turn and they would be my first victims. I’d kill myself before I let that happen. I would not be one of the monsters.

  I looked her directly in the eyes and nodded, giving her the okay. It had to be done. I gripped the counter even harder and squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath. Every muscle in my body tensed up, and she hadn’t even poured anything yet. Then I felt the first sting as a few drops landed on my skin, and I gripped the edges of the counter even harder. Those few drops weren’t as bad as the barrage of acid that was about to be poured onto me.

  A river of holy water touched my skin and sizzled. It felt like acid was being poured onto me and I was barely able to stifle my screams. The river stopped, and then another started. I couldn’t stop myself this time. Screams of agony ripped through the air and filled every corner of the house. There was no way to fight it. It stopped again. I opened my eyes and Beth was standing there, holding the bottle but not daring to pour anymore. I gave her another nod and closed my eyes. She then poured the whole bottle and then moved on to bottle number two, then three. I was sweating and soaking wet and could barely breathe by the time that was done. Now came the worst part. The syringe full of silver nitrate.