Shattered Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 3)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  “Anyways,” she continued, “what these guys meant by ‘shake things up’ was really ‘put ourselves in charge.’ Make some alliances. Use you to spook some folks. Discredit key people. Send everyone running to those able to solve the problems.”

  Never before had the term “problem solver” given me chills. But Ca-Lethe Meladoquiel had managed to give the phrase the necessary association.

  “But trust me,” her tone shifted, turning deadly serious and capturing my attention, “these are not the blokes you want in power.”

  “Why? How are they so different than those in power now? I thought all of you wanted to rule the world, as you say.”

  “Because they want to rule the world by any means necessary. Even if that means scorched earth tactics, destroying part of it to rule the leftovers. And even crazier shit that the rest of us shy away from, for a buncha damn good reasons.”

  “Oh.” Uh-oh.

  “I mean,” she paused, stretching and leaning casually back against the battered AC, “they came real close to killing those two little changeling kids you run around with, just running off the notion that you might get the younger one too close to the whole Moroi alliance thing. I think they were afraid that his dad might get involved. With his ‘city improvement’ plans, he just might decide to throw a big ol’ wrench in their whole ‘addict the entire bloody city to their supernatural drug scheme.’”

  I almost fell over. “Their what?”

  The Sanguinarian raised an eyebrow. “Shit, you never figured that out? Bloody hell. I didn’t take you for a slow one.”

  I continued to gape at her like a dead fish.

  She sighed. “Okay, here’s what I know: some us are helping the Moroi on the down-low to addict whole districts of the city’s druggie population to this experimental, magically-enhanced drug.” I started to say something, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand. “And no, I don’t know what the hell it does. I couldn’t get too close to it. My danger sense went off the charts the one time I tried to spy on their meetings.”

  Likely, she’d sensed Meladoquiel somehow and bugged out. Lucky her. “That...makes a lot of sense.” It had to be the “distribution” we’d overheard when we’d raided the Moroi sisters, which meant that T-shirt Girl’s info just took a turn for the legitimate.

  “I think it uses trace amounts of our venom, too, but that’s just a guess.” She tapped a wet, curving fang and watched me cringe. “And no, none of the people on the street level know what’s really up with it. I tried that weeks ago, but they’re running a tight ship with layers of insulation.”

  We got so tied up with Meladoquiel it slipped past us. Was that part of the point all along? What do we do now?

  The blood vampire was watching me closely. “Well, it’s too late to stop it now,” she commented. “At least with your patented ‘break shit first and ask questions later’ style of tactics.”

  I stared at my still-soggy boots. “I guess I’m a couple of months too late.”

  “Something like that.” She rested her chin on her knees. “Wondered where you went, if somebody managed to do you in. Musta been rough, floating out there for so long, sunlight, hunger, an’ all. Seems impossible, but damn if your people aren’t survivors.” Something similar to respect gleamed in the depths of her violet eyes.

  “Sure left its mark, though.” She glanced me over, then rose smoothly to her feet. She waited, as if to see if I was going to try and stop her, but I didn’t move. “S’pose that’s all I got for now. Guess I’ll be seeing you around. Maybe.”

  I popped my neck and stared up at the strange Sanguinarian. “So, what? Are we conspirators now? Allies? How do I even know I can trust anything you say? Every bit of this could be just reasonable sounding enough to lead me off track.”

  T-shirt Girl nodded. “Of fucking course it could.” She stuffed a hand deep into a pocket of her frayed-knee black jeans. “You want trust?” Something shiny flickered in the light as she tossed it to me. “Comes in liquid form.”

  I caught it carefully, looked down at my hand. A glass vial, slender and full of dark, viscous liquid, reflected the streetlights back at me.

  “This is my blood,” I rasped, staring at her.

  “And two plus two is fucking four,” the Sanguinarian retorted, hands on hips. “Bloody hell, don’t make me lead you through this by the nose.”

  “It was Salvatore’s,” I said, glancing between her and the vial. “You didn’t just run off with the footage, you took everything.”

  “Swiped it before he ran off to his private realm of crazy,” she confirmed.

  I had to respect that, at least a little. “So you used it to track me.” That also meant, whoever Tshirt Girl was, she also had some small talent in Sanguinarian blood magic. “That’s how come there seemed to be someone watching nearly everywhere I went.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think I need it anymore.” She tossed her dirty blond hair out of her face. “I can’t beat you up, and I can’t intimidate you, so I’m not gonna get much out of you personally. ‘Sides, I’m pretty sure you’re not the biggest danger around. If nothin’ else, you didn’t just pop into existence out of fucking nowhere. Your people have to have survived—and hid from us—this whole time.”

  I nodded. I didn’t mind confirming what she already knew. “I still can’t trust you, though.”

  She cracked a grin. With her fangs retracted, she looked like a normal girl in her early twenties, if a little pale and possessing an almost eerily flawless complexion. “Good. Means you’re not a complete waste of my time.” She turned to walk away.

  “Wait!” I stood and stepped toward her, even as she stopped and turned, wariness and a hint of bloody red in her violet eyes. I stuck out my hand; she stared at it. “I’m Ashley. Ashes.”

  “Duh. I bloody well know that.” She glanced from my offered grip to my face, as if it were her turn to search for the hook she couldn’t see. Finally, a little hesitantly, she took my hand, giving it a proper shake. “Aine. That’s all you’re getting.”

  I nodded. “That’s fine. Nice to meet you—I think. Third time’s a charm, I guess.”

  Aine snorted derisively, but I thought I detected a hint of a smirk. After a moment’s thought, she fished around in her hip pocket again and handed me a thin card with “Red Rock Pub” on one side and a phone number scrawled on the other. “In case of emergency,” she explained dryly. “Just don’t expect to be able to track me down with it. And probably don’t tell your friends all about me.” I nodded; I didn’t like the thought of keeping secrets, but I’d recently seen how some prejudices—even deserved ones—ran deep. “And with that, I’m out,” the vampire said, turning away again. “‘Fore someone sees me making all nice-and-polite with you and decides to rearrange my smiling face with a sniper rifle.”

  I watched the T-shirted Sanguinarian walk away and nonchalantly drop off the edge of the roof. Then I sat back down on the roof to think.

  Like I’d said to her, I couldn’t trust Aine.

  That would be stupid—right?

  I didn’t know what to make of the Moroi and Sanguinarians working together to addict people to drugs of their own concoction of all things, but I doubted I’d like whatever the intended results were. I started to wonder if Tamara would believe my “proof” that the Moroi really were working with their old enemies, then I remembered it didn’t matter right now either way.

  And it wouldn’t until we found a way to oust an Ur-demon from her body and clear her name. Until that happened, no one would believe her, either.

  The road ahead was clearly marked: whatever the rogue Moroi-Sanguinarian alliance was up to, it took a definitive backseat to dealing with Meladoquiel.

  I didn’t intend to keep Tamara waiting any longer than I had to.

  Lori still needed me, too. This was the only way to find out where the Ur-demon was keeping her and free her as well.

  I didn’t let myself think about the alternatives or what state she’d
be in after we found her. I could only handle so much.

  The threat of Sanguinarian assassins, however, was still a pertinent concern. Not for myself, but for Rain and Jason. Like Garibaldi had guessed, they’d been on the Sang hit-list because of me dragging them into stuff. Obviously, they’d backed off after I “died.” After all, why risk Garibaldi’s attention by attacking his son, when said son was off with Charles chasing a demon’s shadow all over the city?

  Unfortunately, now I was back, and thanks to Aine, I knew even more about their plans than before. So coyote might go right back on the menu. I needed to act before the Sanguinarians decided to. I just didn’t know how, not yet.

  But first, I needed to go chase that shadow too.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Exit stage right

  I stepped over the threshold into Charles’ home for the first time in months, though it still felt like only a day or so ago. Everything was nearly the same as I’d last seen it: dusty end tables, well-worn Hopi styled rugs, the two battered sofas staring at each other from across the coffee table, which was still littered with used-up liquor bottles.

  Just a lot more of them than I remembered.

  The man himself looked up as I entered; he looked more...haggard, I supposed was the best word for it. His untended stubble had run amok, turning into a rough, uneven quasi-beard that looked like it belonged on the king of the hobos, and his weathered bush hat hid the full grandeur of his disheveled brown hair, now grown all the way down to the nape of his neck. His bent back and the dark circles spoke of many sleepless nights.

  But it was the tired look deep in his cinnamon eyes that hit me the hardest.

  Charles stared at me. I stared back.

  “To be honest, I thought you were dead,” he said finally, his voice rough.

  “To be honest, I thought I was too,” I replied. “Turns out I was just mostly dead.”

  To my surprise, he snorted. “I actually get that reference.”

  Well, if the wizard was going to finally get a joke, at least it was from The Princess Bride. Ice seemingly broken, I advanced on him, arms spread wide in hope of a hug.

  He just stared at me.

  I dropped my arms with a sigh.

  “You look like a shitty serial killer,” he said. “And you stink. I suppose a shower would be too much to ask?”

  Glancing over his own untidy appearance and the stains on his undershirt, I shrugged. “Maybe I should say the same.” Still, I couldn’t help glancing down a little guiltily at the blood drenching my shirt, and noting how everything but my thin coat was worn out and battered to hell and back from my days spent drifting.

  Charles took the front of his collar between two fingers and pulled it forward, sniffing, then grunted and let it go. “Fair enough.” Brushing some crumbs off the map pinned to the coffee table in front of him, the worn-out wizard gestured down at it. “Well, now that you’re back on your feet, we have work to do. Time to put this whole thing to rest.”

  I frowned. “That’s it? Just ‘hey, I noticed you didn’t die, so back to work?’”

  He met my eyes for a long moment before dropping his head. “I’m...sorry. You don’t know how it’s been the last couple of months. But I’m glad you’re back.”

  I smiled. “It’s fine, yo. No worries.” Hell, I hadn’t expected an actual apology. I sat down across from him, moving bottles so I could see the map of Birmingham he’d laid out, thumbtacks scattered across it and protruding from the table. “Where’s Rain and Jason?”

  “On standby.” I watched his mask settle back over his features, though a glimmer of something lingered deep in his cinnamon eyes. He tapped the map. “Let me get you caught up on what we’re up against, and I’ll give them a call.” He glanced back up at me. “Hell, with some luck, maybe we can end this tonight, and no one else has to get hurt.”

  I was a little surprised that Charles wanted to go after Tamara-Meladoquiel so soon—at least until I saw the death toll.

  The killing spree hadn’t ended with the massacre at the Adventure. An FBI agent, two police officers, and a handful of civilians “in the wrong place at the wrong time” had also lost their lives to the Ur-demon during the hunt for Tamara.

  “No wonder her family dropped support for her,” I rasped. “This is big.”

  Charles chuckled darkly. “They’ve stuck by each other through worse. No, this has more to do with local family politics, I think.”

  I growled quietly under my breath.

  “Though now that you’re here, hopefully we can stop this and get her back,” Rain said, his eyes big and hopeful. When Charles had said the two shifters were on standby, he’d meant it; it’d taken less than ten minutes for them to come knocking on the door, bearing a sack of Randy’s cheeseburgers.

  I wondered if Garibaldi’s men were far behind. My two months on involuntary vacation left me out of the loop and playing a frantic game of catch up.

  “Why is everyone hinging this on me?” I asked, glancing at the three of them, my eyes lingering on Charles. “Not that I’m not determined to stop it, but I just woke up. In two months, you haven’t come close to catching her?”

  “Well, chica,” Jason said, casually leaning against the couch, “that’s a twofold problema.”

  Charles grunted his agreement. “We’ve come close, yes, but I haven’t been able to put a nail in it by myself.”

  “Takes us a few days to track her down,” Jason explained. “Then we can catch up to her, no problem.”

  “But what do we do when we catch her?” Rain finished.

  I caught on. “None of you are actually strong enough to hold her.”

  Charles nodded. “Ur-demons are magic resistant; I can’t fight her and hold her at the same time. But mostly, I can’t catch the fuck up to her. She’s too fast.” He nodded toward the two shifters. “And they could…”

  “But that’s an awful idea,” I finished. “Well, catch her and hold her down? That, at least, I can do. We almost had her last time.”

  “Don’t count on her not having an ace up her sleeve again,” Charles cautioned. He narrowed his eyes. “And don’t forget. Anything possessed by that demon is at least as strong as you are. If not far, far stronger.”

  I eyed Charles for a moment and finally shrugged. “I’ve fought her several times now, remember? I’ve got this.” I’d intended the statement more as a reassurance to my companions, especially Rain and Jason, than a “Hulk is strongest in world!” type of comment, but I could tell that the experienced wizard didn’t seem to be buying the confidence I was selling.

  But there was a grain of truth to it too. People were depending on me; I wasn’t going to let them down again.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t blame him for trying to restrain me. Our previous showdown with Meladoquiel hadn’t exactly gone swimmingly. “So are we still going off the same plan as last time?” I shifted the topic a little. “If we can break the chain of her hopping from host to host, she’ll have to pack her metaphysical bags and go home?” I glanced at Rain and Jason. “I mean, if so, isn’t carrying them along kinda a bad idea?”

  Charles shook his head. “No. I’ve got it under control.” I raised an eyebrow. “Trust me. Besides, that plan’s outdated.” He pulled a thick, yellowed piece of paper out of his coat and slapped it down on top of the Birmingham map. Its surface was adorned by thickly inked lines, a circle with intricate shapes and symbols all around the edges that seemed to squirm a little when I wasn’t looking right at them.

  “I take it this is some kinda spell?” I leaned forward, peering at it with interest, but no real understanding.

  “Exorcism!” Rain proclaimed. “If we can catch her and hold her in this for a few minutes, Charles can send her packing without anyone being hurt.”

  “Except, you know, possibly Tamara,” Jason grumbled.

  “Wait, what?” I rasped, confused.

  “It’s better than having to shoot her full of holes to get the demon out,” Rain
retorted. “She could have died last time! Don’t you think Charles’ magic is safer? When has it failed before?”

  I winced a little at the wording of Rain’s optimism and glanced at Charles.

  He took a deep breath, his face still inscrutable. “The ritual has a chance of killing Tamara in the process,” he admitted grudgingly. “Depending on how deeply Meladoquiel has her hooks in her.”

  I frowned. “Didn’t you say before that the longer she stays in someone—”

  “The stronger she becomes, and the more of herself she pulls over.” He took off his battered hat long enough to run a hand through his hair. “Yes. Believe me, I know. But there’s no better way, especially since she hasn’t been willing to leave the city again with thousands of potential victims at her fingertips.”

  “Still don’t like it,” Jason said. “Something just doesn't feel right.”

  I looked to Charles, but he shrugged.

  “Well, it means that we can come and help too,” Rain said. “That way you guys hopefully won’t get ambushed again, if we’re on the lookout.”

  I remembered the Sanguinarian assassins Meladoquiel had brought to the dam the first time, and how those same assassins might still want Garibaldi’s son dead.

  I slowly began to share Jason’s reservations.

  “So wait,” I said, continuing to chew the whole plan over. “Why hasn’t she changed hosts yet? Why stay in Tamara and ride out the whole manhunt thing? Why not swap to someone else and let Tamara deal with it?”

  “That’s a good question. For the challenge, probably.” Charles rubbed at his beardling. “But honestly? I don’t know.”

  I stared down at the swirling, crawling geometric symbols, thinking it over until Charles reached across the table and thumped me on the forehead.