Shattered Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 3)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  “So you in?” he asked flatly.

  I nodded slowly, trying to put my lingering sense of unease aside. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

  Between wizard magic and coyote nose magic, we caught up to Tamara near the Summit, a couple of streets over from the main shopping plaza. I watched as she slipped out the back door of some fancy BBQ place, a heavy brown paper sack in hand.

  “What is she doing?” Tamara looked a lot different than I remembered. Her vibrant violet hair had grown out, leaving faded purple tips beneath the natural raven black—I hadn’t even known for certain what her normal hair color was until now. A black newsboy’s cap perched crookedly on her head, and thick, dark sunglasses shut away the brilliant blue—and inky irises—of her eyes. I recognized her favorite pair of leather hip huggers, but a long, black shirt with a broad neckline that revealed one pale shoulder concealed most of the open, laced sides.

  “I dunno,” Charles replied. “But this is our chance. Let’s see where she goes.”

  Charles’ Silverado growled softly as it crept across the parking lot, the area still a little busy even at this late hour. I watched as Tamara cast furtive glances all around her and pulled her hat lower, but we kept our distance, and she didn’t seem to notice us.

  I was pleased to see that Tamara veered away from the more populated areas, heading toward one of the recently-constructed subdivisions just a block or so away. After all, I’d borrowed a T-shirt from a grudging wizard and cleaned up before we left—our capture efforts could only be hindered by me looking like I’d recently bathed in the blood of the innocent—but I knew full well that my recent ordeal had left me the worse for the wear. Tonight, crowds could only get in the way.

  We tailed her slowly down a quiet side road and made it halfway toward her apparent destination before I detected a subtle shift in her walk and her heartbeat.

  Charles caught on about the same time I did, cursing under his breath. “I think she senses us,” he rumbled. Across the street and ahead of us, Tamara’s stride quickened. He glared at me. “Don’t just sit there, go get her.”

  I popped open the passenger door, and Tamara-Meladoquiel broke into a run.

  “Go, go, go!” Charles shoved me out the door, not even bothering to slow the truck down.

  I hit the gravel running, the sound of the Silverado’s door slamming almost smothered by the roar of its engine coming to life.

  Tamara’s pace accelerated as she heard the predatory growl of the engine, and she immediately veered away from the road, darting across the nearest yard and between two buildings, where Charles’s truck couldn’t follow. My own feet pounded the asphalt so hard I thought it might crack as I rushed across the road after her.

  I felt a momentary twinge of nervousness as I entered the first manicured yard; I could only hope that since no one was living here yet, that there wouldn’t be any hidden lawn-snakes ready to spray me in the face and send me tumbling into a nearby pool.

  We raced across shadowed yards, Tamara cutting between a tall, unoccupied apartment building and an empty house with darkened windows, motion-triggered lights snapping on in our wake but too slow to catch us. Ahead of me, I saw her tuck the brown paper bag securely under one arm and tug the hat down tightly onto her head.

  She poured on the speed, but despite the demon enhancing her agility, I was catching up, even faster than I would have expected.

  With a quick glance back, she realized it too. Tamara took a sharp turn to the right, as if she knew exactly where she was going, and I stumbled, squandering precious seconds.

  But I was back in the chase almost instantly. Tamara-Meladoquiel headed straight for the side of a two-story mini-mansion, a sprawling home at the end of the sub-division with—I cringed internally—a U-shaped pool out front. I slid to a stop a house-length away as she threw herself at the wall, planting a foot on a windowsill and using it to propel herself further upwards.

  I popped out of the shadows beneath her with a quiet poof of darkness and leapt upward, my fingers closing on empty air a couple of inches beneath her foot.

  Tamara grabbed an open windowsill on the second story and fluidly tossed herself inside like a parkour expert. I slammed bodily into the wall and stuck there like a giant, creepy lizard, my strength and grip enough to hold me in place even without using my claws. I hauled myself upward and tossed myself in after her, landing in a tangle of my own limbs.

  I barely had time to register the nice-ass master bedroom I found myself in before Tamara-Meladoquiel ambushed me—with her voice.

  “Ashley! Stop!” From the hallway, her words lashed out like weapons and pierced the air, turning it icy cold.

  Rolling to my feet, I met the command and smashed headlong through it, Ur-demon enhancement or no. Tamara slammed the door to the hall in my face, and I smashed through that too, growling in defiance. So close, I reached out to grab her, but the possessed Moroi slipped just out of my fingers and leapt over the banister, landing on the first floor with barely a flexed knee.

  I glanced at where she was headed and pulled the shadow in around me, popping back out in her path—or so I thought. Once again, Meladoquiel anticipated me, and I appeared at the front door ready to grab, only to see Tamara running down the hall instead. Clutching hat and brown bag, she ducked her head low and leapt through the window at the end of the hall, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards.

  Charles stepped out of nowhere to confront her, the tip of his staff blazing bright.

  Tamara stumbled, caught off guard, and the wizard grabbed for her with a hand that blurred and rippled with Next Door energy.

  I growled, this time with frustration, as she sucked in her stomach and dodged that too, slipping away from Charles’ touch and magic by barely a hair’s breadth.

  I tried to throw myself out the window after her, but my muscles were still a little stiff from waking up—I slammed headfirst into the windowsill instead, and busted through the wall with a resounding crash, tumbling face-first to the dirt. I picked myself up and scrambled to resume the chase as Tamara raced toward a thick strip of tall trees that served as a curtain separating the residential area from the Summit’s strip of high-priced stores and expansive parking lots.

  Tamara darted into the trees as I left a panting wizard in the dust, but Charles was far from out of the fight. Ahead of me, a tree trunk the size of my waist exploded into splinters a split second after Tamara passed it, Charles’ conjured windblast obliterating it.

  I glanced back to see another spell forming around the end of his weathered staff, and wisely got out of the way.

  Tamara veered sharply to the side at the last moment, and the shaped lance of condensed air merely clipped her ribs, ripping a rent in her black shirt and tearing the pale flesh underneath. The force of its impact still slammed her into an unyielding tree shoulder-first, and I dimly heard her bones crack, even over the distance and sound of wind.

  But she picked herself up and kept running with barely a pause, one arm dangling limp.

  Knowing the injury wouldn’t hinder her for long, I rejoined the chase, leaping over the falling top of the shattered tree. I cursed as Tamara disappeared into the trees, then cursed again as my reflexes failed me and I bounced off of one myself, scraping off a swath of bark and undoubtedly doing more damage to it that it could do to me.

  And in the space of twenty or thirty feet of woodland, I lost her.

  I stopped, scanning the half-lit expanse of parking lot for Tamara, listening for her heartbeat and finding nothing.

  I startled as two small animals shot by my boots, furry blurs in the night.

  “This way! Hurry!” One called out with Rain’s voice.

  Sprinting at top speed along the edge of the treeline, I followed the two coyotes around the edge of the parking lot, my ears homing in on the sound of Tamara’s racing pulse, well ahead of me in the trees. I cursed one more time as I saw where our path was leading: toward the sound and noise of the well-lit Majestic Cine
mas movie theater.

  Rain and Jason slowed and dropped behind, disappearing into the trees themselves as I closed in on the Moroi, but I was simply too far behind to catch up before Tamara darted out of the treeline, cutting behind a closed used games store and toward the crowded theater, her shoulder and side already healed.

  I managed to turn the corner just in time to see her steps slow as she plunged into the crowd and vanished.

  Only hesitating for a moment, I pulled down my hood to hide my face and followed her.

  I couldn’t see Tamara-Meladoquiel in the crowd, and the press of assorted heartbeats assailed me from all sides relentlessly. The incessant thump-thump-thump quickly lost all rhythm and tugged at the unsated edges of my hunger; after all, one meal, no matter how filling, was far too little for three months or more of Strigoi hunger.

  Still, I pushed it down and pressed on, forcing my way through the crowd almost blindly, searching for my possessed friend.

  I didn’t have to push through for long. The crowd progressively opened up around me, mortals unwittingly giving me a wider and wider berth and shivering in my wake. Some hastened to get away from me as the unease spread until one man cut through the bubble surrounding me and bumped heavily into me in his haste to brush past.

  He bounced off of me, stumbled, and sat down heavily on the sidewalk. “Sorry,” I rasped, pushing on into the building, but it was too late. The spell was broken; I’d accidentally made a scene, and people were already turning to stare. Behind me, the man stammered out something, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of the heartbeats separating us.

  I could hear some of the other comments though. Comments like “Look at her!” “Hey, what’s wrong with her?” and “Did you see her face?” spread through the crowd like ripples. Reaching up, I found my hood where the collision had jostled it free and pulled it down once more, but it was too little too late. Over the noisy bedlam of mortal hearts, I dimly heard an employee calling for security, then what I assumed was security call out to me a moment later.

  With no sign of Tamara in sight, I ducked into the women’s bathroom and locked the door behind me, ignoring the startled looks of legitimate moviegoers. I quickly stepped into one of the center stalls, locked it as well, and stepped up onto the seat, even as security began to bang on the door.

  I didn’t wait for some helpful patron to unlock the door and let him in; I cracked open the narrow, cloudy glass window above the stall and peered out into the night.

  With a puff of smoky shadow, I reappeared under the boughs of the distant treeline, having failed once more.

  “God damn it,” Charles cursed as we argued back and forth in his truck, Rain and Jason trapped in the middle and trying to be as invisible as possible while mom and dad fought. “I thought you could handle this, but you just let her slip away.”

  “I didn’t let her do anything,” I growled in return, my own ire getting the better of me. “Demon-powered, remember? And what was I supposed to do, barrel through the goddamn crowd like a freaking bowling ball? She was using innocent people as a shield, for fucking out loud.”

  “Yes!” Charles snapped, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “If you had to, yes!”

  I stared across the cab at him, a bit shocked. “You...wanted me to hurt innocent people?”

  “No, dammit,” he retorted. “Of course not. But this is a case of the greater good. How many more will she hurt or kill until we track her down again? If we track her down again?”

  I frowned. I wasn’t certain if I disliked his point more or the fact that he was making it in the first place. “Besides, you weren’t exactly winning gold goddamn medals out there. You could have speared her with Rhongomyniad when you surprised her, and I bet that would have stopped her. But instead you tried to grapple a freaking Moroi.” I could feel the angry heat rising in my core.

  Rain and Jason sank a little further into the leather seat.

  “That wasn’t the plan,” he snapped. “We were trying not to kill her.” Charles exhaled in frustration, and the four of us enjoyed a tense, irritably silent ride back to the wizard’s sanctum.

  We both took the time to cool off on the ride home. Or at least, I assumed so, since the first words out of his mouth when we arrived were an apology.

  “I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” Charles grumbled reluctantly, slamming the door shut before collapsing into his crappy couch and kicking his heels up on the coffee table. An empty bottle of Jack Daniels tumbled to the floor. “It’s just… Like I said, it’s been…”

  “A rough couple months,” I finished for him sympathetically. The magician nodded. “S’okay. I’m sorry too. Takes two to argue.” I glanced around at everyone; the teens looked exhausted too. “So where do we go from here?”

  “We failed. Now we start over,” Charles replied, tugging the bush hat down over his tired cinnamon eyes. He peeked at me from the shadows of its brim. “She engineered the whole thing, you know. Leading you there, probably even getting someone to run into you. Betting that you’d give up instead of risking innocents.”

  “By which you mean, I shouldn’t let it happen next time,” I rasped in reply. I wasn’t certain I liked the new the-ends-justify-the-means Charles.

  He just lowered the hat and closed his eyes again.

  I considered what to do now, mulling over a dozen thoughts at once. “Charles?” I finally asked quietly. “Why didn’t you find me with your magic? With the blood vial I left you?”

  The hat snorted. “Would have loved to. But you were surrounded by water, remember?”

  I nodded slowly. “Grounds out energies. Right.” I should have thought of that.

  I took another look around before I left, my eyes lingering on Charles’ staff, once more propped against the side of the couch. The sundered wood had been soldered back together, fused together with what looked like tarnished, molten silver dribbled into the crevices and left to harden. It filled the fissures like frozen quicksilver, veins written into the hard gray wood where once damage had been done to save a friend. The scorched runes and sigils had been carved anew over the old ones, in hard, aggressive lines. Nothing now adorned its head, save a hardened, haphazard cap of the same silvery metal, etched in flowing lines and eddying currents.

  Broken, and reforged hard, I thought. If a staff really does speak of its owner, what does this one say of Charles now?

  I said my goodbyes and left, still worried and lost in thought. I went around back and listened to the insects and passing cars, knowing I needed to act, but trying to find a direction.

  The door opened and closed as Jason joined me. I stood, motionless, staring off into the night as he pulled a rusting lawn chair up beside me.

  I shuffled a step away as I felt him light up a cigarette.

  “Sorry, yo.”

  “It’s fine.” I shuffled another half step away. “I see what you mean,” I added finally.

  He snorted, a humorless chuckle. “Yeah, chica. I’m not loving angry Charles, either.” He shrugged. “But whatcha gonna do?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” I wheezed out a hoarse sigh. I could still feel some water in my lungs. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  “Shoot.” The changeling took a long drag off the cigarette, the cherry red end burning brightly in the dark.

  “How’d Garibaldi know exactly where Rain and I were, back when he picked me up off the street?”

  “Had guys watching us, I suppose,” the boy replied without missing a beat. His heartbeat barely changed; it was only the unconscious, inhuman flicking of an ear back toward the house that let me know I was on the right track. “Right?”

  “He also knew exactly what we were up to,” I added. “And it got me wondering. Not only that, but someone skilled—and fast—had to have tracked Petra down that night. Someone able to track a super-powered Moroi on a moment’s notice, when I don’t think anyone knew who was going to be running out of that house until it
happened.”

  The changeling stayed silent, puffing smoke.

  “Someone also knew about us being watched and the Sanguinarian attacks,” I finished. He remained quiet. “You gotta tell Rain eventually,” I said finally, lowering my voice to a whispery rasp. “That you work for Garibaldi, I mean.”

  “So you figured it out.” Jason sighed out another cloud of smoke and leaned over to grind his cigarette out on Charles’ patio table. “You’re not gonna rat me out are you, chica?”

  “I’d be lying if I said I liked secrets like this,” I replied, “but it’s not my tale to tell. Besides, whatever’s going on here, it’s obvious you care about him.”

  Jason nodded. “Damn right I do. He’s my best friend.” He glanced over, meeting my eyes, for the first time tonight not wincing away from whatever he saw. “But thanks for not saying anything, all the same. And don’t stress out about us; I’ll work things out when the time comes. I’m not worried.”

  “What are we not worried about?” Rain called from the back door, opening it with a creak. “Are you done killing your lungs yet?”

  Jason yawned and stretched. “Si, manito. I’m done. And yeah, I’m not worried, ‘cause shifters heal from stuff like that.” He grinned back over his shoulder at his friend. “So unless I start smoking silver or some shit, I should be fine.” He looked to me, leaning his chair back precariously on two legs. “So, we gave it our all, but tonight was a bust. What’s next for you, chica?”

  I didn’t have an immediate answer. Instead, I watched as Rain snuck up behind his friend, and placed two fingers on the back of Jason’s chair, stealthily applying pressure.

  The older changeling squawked as he suddenly overbalanced and flipped over, but figured the prank out quickly as he rolled to his feet, unharmed. Popping back up behind Rain, the older, taller boy quickly caught his friend in a headlock, mercilessly ruffling his hair, ignoring both complaints and laughter.