Shattered Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 3)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  “Where? How?”

  “Wish...I knew.” She sighed, long and shallow. For a moment, I almost thought she’d stopped breathing. “Sil...and I...we did it to save us all, you know. Save...the Moroi.” I stared at her. I could feel the woman’s spirit unraveling as her lifeblood pumped onto the cold concrete.

  I was helpless to do anything but watch her die.

  Even if I could have helped, she undoubtedly would have just tried to kill me again. But I could keep her company in her last moments.

  “From who?” I asked quietly.

  “Sanguinarians,” she wheezed. “They’re going to kill us...all of us. Plans already in motion, even if...it takes a few decades. We can’t...beat their numbers. Can’t...breed fast enough to match them. The others...thought it was stupid, but we hoped to show...we could work together.” She shifted against the pallets, as if trying to get comfortable.

  Carefully, I moved in close, helped her to lean back.

  “We also wanted...to show Mother’s eldest that we half-bloods could help, too.”

  “By brokering the beginnings of a truce, you wanted to show your worth,” I reasoned.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes, mostly glassy, slowly closed. “But how much...was the demon’s idea, and we just...thought it was ours? Besides...you and your friends...ruined it all.”

  I looked away. The fires were getting too close, some even working their way across the barren concrete to get me. “Why tell me all of this?” I asked quietly, not really expecting her to hear or to answer.

  “Because...I know you won’t let it go. And because...it’s going to get you killed.”

  Petra died with a smile on her face.

  I left her behind in the burning warehouse; no doubt the flames would consume her, and no one would even know. Maybe no one but Tamara and I would even care.

  She deserved a better fate, but she wasn’t going to get it.

  But a thought occurred to me as I carefully picked and shadow-stepped my way through the inferno, cautious of the omnipresent flame but ignoring the thick clouds of roiling smoke.

  Petra hadn’t told me who the traitorous Moroi was or how to find them, but there weren’t very many options. And while, as far as I was concerned, her death was a tragedy...

  ...I could use it.

  I cut my way through the wall and stumbled out into the night, clutching tightly at my ribs. I felt the hostile eyes lock onto me almost immediately as I staggered and almost fell to the dirt, trailing streamers of smoke.

  Less than a minute passed before Sanguinarians dropped down all around me, and one drove a silvery metal spike into my heart.

  It was an act of will not to grin.

  Chapter Twenty

  Should have hit her with the chair

  With my limbs splayed wide and completely rigid, the group of Sanguinarians spent a good five minutes bitching about how to get me into their trunk, but they finally managed.

  Once alone in the dark, I could grin all I wanted.

  Even when alive, I’d never had a top-notch sense of orientation. My Lori had often joked that I had the directional sense of a slightly used scrub brush. Now I was a dead, slightly used scrub brush locked in a dark trunk and about as aware of my surroundings and location.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t the one who needed to be paying attention to where we were going.

  We weren’t on the road terribly long before we rolled to a halt. As they hauled me—with difficulty—back out of the trunk, I noticed that we were in one of the absolute worst neighborhoods in Birmingham, surrounded by rundown, almost-collapsed houses, some of which probably didn’t even have working water or power: a part of town where several people pulling a woman out of a trunk in the middle of the night probably wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.

  Huh. I bet my church is somewhere around here.

  Ah, well. At least out here, I wouldn't have a run-in with someone’s damn pool again.

  “Hey,” a female Sanguinarian asked, dropping me unceremoniously on the ground and tugging at her loose cloth assassin’s mask. “Was she smiling before?”

  While she glanced away and nudged one of the others, I channeled the essence of Charles as best I could.

  “It’s just your imagination,” replied a male vampire in a nice suit. “Now come on. She stinks, and this part of town smells like smog, sweat, and piss. I want to leave.”

  Two of them easily lifted me by the arms, while another opened the front door. I counted six altogether, but the sound of inhuman heartbeats told me that a few more lurked in and around the premises. And another, slightly different inhuman heart lurked within: just the person I’d come to see.

  They had to turn me sideways to fit me through the doorway; it might have been silly, but I took my amusement where I could find it.

  I noted as they hauled me inside that the interior was much more nicely appointed than the exterior implied: nice couches and lounge seats, a big TV, plenty of idling, well-dressed Sanguinarian guards, and probably a lot of blood snacks in the fridge. Vampires or no, I was kinda surprised the place hadn’t been robbed blind yet.

  I was going to have fun wrecking the place.

  My pair of Sanguinarian arm candies forced me through the doorway into the kitchen, which had been repurposed into an honest-to-goodness tactical command center of sorts. One vampire worked quickly and adroitly at the kitchen counter, which had been transformed into a chemistry lab assembly line for whatever their unwholesome product was. Money and a sheaf of loose papers lay on the kitchen table, right next to the big-ass four-foot wide touch screen currently displaying an interactive map of Birmingham.

  Across the table, Davora Alilovic stood, eyeing the ridiculous position I’d frozen in with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well, here she is,” Nice Suit commented, running a hand through short, rusty brown hair. “First Strigoi capture in about two hundred years.”

  “You certainly took your time about it,” Davora replied, tugging her low-neck, too-short ebony dress into place and making her way around the table. “You sure you’ve done this before?”

  I didn’t have to be a Moroi to see the sliver of anger glitter in Nice Suit’s eyes before he smothered it. “She’s all alone.” He shrugged. “In the old days, we had the others they were bonded to that we could exploit. Also, she’s rather strong for such a young age.”

  Bonded? What?

  “Excuses, excuses,” Davora replied, waving a hand dismissively in his direction. She stood directly in front of me, hand on hip, and studied me. “Let’s just say I’m not impressed.”

  Nice Suit’s fist tightened at his side. “Watch your tone.” A note of controlled anger leaked from his own voice. “I’m over four goddamn centuries your elder, and—”

  “And yet, I’m the one they left in charge of this project. So buck up and smile, buttercup.” Davora put a long, pale finger underneath my chin as she spoke, frowning as she tried to lift my chin to look in my eyes. But, of course, I didn’t budge, my muscles stiffer than steel bridge cables.

  When the nice-suited vampire didn’t retort, Davora diverted her gaze to him with a wink and a smile. Then she turned her eyes back to me, as I still dangled from the arms of her Sanguinarian henchmen. “And you disappoint me too, Strigoi. When I showed up at Tamara’s club to recruit the thick-headed bitch, I thought, ‘Hey, Davora. It’s our lucky goddamn day. We can use that one.’ You could have been an ally to us, you know.” I tried as hard as I could not to let her make me angry, since now I knew it was what she wanted. Davora bent her knees, peering at me and narrowing her own gleaming, vicious hazel eyes. “Well, through Tamara, at least. But now you know too much.”

  The Moroi said the last words in a casual, sing-song tone as she flicked a lighter on, a foot from my face.

  I almost flinched, only held in place by rigidly locked muscles. Nice Suit wasted no time in stepping closer, holding out a cautioning hand, though all the other equally-flammable Sanguinarians took a step or two away. Even t
he ones holding my arms shifted as far away from the open fire as possible.

  “Dammit, Alilovic,” he hissed. “My people need her, as close to alive as possible. That was part of the deal Ca-Lethe brokered.”

  “Oh, I know.” Davora’s eyes were cruel and amused as she waved the flickering lighter back and forth in front of my face. The flame waved and danced, reaching for me as if it could somehow sense my presence, flammability, and lingering ripple of fear. “But are you sure you still need her? I mean,” her beautiful face grew deadly serious, “you can’t deny she’s dangerous.”

  But I wasn’t the only one in the room who was dangerous. Suit eyed Davora like a viper about to strike, obviously sizing up the Moroi. The other Sanguinarians shifted uneasily. If what Aine had said was true, Davora could literally torch part of their plans right here and now—by torching me.

  “But I probably shouldn’t,” Davora finished with a sigh. “Though something tells me it’d be the smartest idea. And maybe as punishment.”

  “Punishment?” In my peripheral vision, Nice Suit breathed his own sigh of relief.

  The hazel-eyed Moroi nodded. “I mean, fucked up by my little half-breed cousin? I expected her to try a lot harder than that, at least.”

  “What makes you think,” I growled through gritted teeth, “that I’ve been trying at all?”

  Davora’s eyes went wide, suddenly sensing the danger she was in, and the lighter tumbled from her fingers, its flame winking out. “Get down!” she bellowed, dropping to the floor—

  —as a rain of bullets split glass and dove through thin walls.

  Windows exploded inward as a hail of high velocity lead tore Sanguinarians and furniture apart. It was no random spray-and-pray, however; each initial shot was carefully placed. Bullets burst through Sanguinarian chests, high-caliber exit wounds obliterating vampiric blood-organs. To my right and left, Sanguinarian skulls shattered, and flecks of bone bounced off my skin as a pair of headshots took out the pair holding me, instantaneously demolishing everything from the neck up.

  With an awkward spasm of effort, I wrapped my fingers around the stake jutting from my chest and tugged it free. While the Sanguinarians had made certain to drive it through my protective metal plate, the band of galvanized steel I’d wrapped around my chest to reinforce it had kept all but the tip out of my vulnerable bits.

  I stomped the lighter flat with the toe of my boot as Davora reached for it.

  “Shit!” The Moroi rolled away from me, keeping low, followed closely by the uninjured Suit as they retreated toward the next room. I darted after them, but one of my captors from the car ride accidentally got in my way, bleeding profusely from a blown-out hole in her ribs.

  I stuck my metal stake in her neck and shoved her in front of a broken window, turning away just as a bullet tore out her throat, its passage nearly taking her head clean off.

  I caught up with Suit and Davora before they could slip out the back, the Moroi’s hand on the door, hesitating as she listened to gunfire outside. The Suited Sanguinarian caught her arm and spun her around, pointing the Moroi back my way.

  “Stand and fight, dammit,” he said, his voice clear and calm, but not confident. “Or she’ll just kill us while we run.”

  “Well, one of you, anyway.” I grinned as eighteen-inch claws burst from my fingers. “I only need one of you alive.”

  Intermittent gunfire continued as they both swallowed hard.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Davora straightened, her eyes growing luminous. “Or your friends out there.”

  A wayward bullet smashed through the ceiling at a sharp angle, hit me in the side, and tumbled to the floor. I glanced at it and raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” I rasped at the two of them.

  We collided in the middle of the room, Davora darting one way while the Sanguinarian circled adroitly in the other direction. The Moroi planted a powerful kick in my back, driving me toward her companion’s outstretched, bloody claws as they darted toward my eyes like jagged crimson spear points. I ducked and raised a shoulder, catching one set of claws on my cardigan, the enchanted fabric fraying but converting the blow to useless blunt force. I swatted his other hand aside and kneed him in the ribs, almost knocking him over, then spun and backhanded Davora across the face.

  Both of them staggered back, and my two opponents shared a glance.

  “Now it makes sense. I never thought in all my days I’d see another Lifedrinker,” Suit commented. With a flick of his wrists, twin slender tonfa appeared from somewhere in his outfit, both ends of each weapon tipped with a bloody crystal pared down to an ultra-keen point.

  I hesitated. He almost sounded...admiring? Respectful?

  “The hell is a Lifedrinker?” Davora spat blood and rubbed at her jaw, echoing my own thoughts.

  Suit shook his head. “Fight now. Talk later.”

  He dove at me without hesitation, rifling off strikes with either end of his batons like a master, quicker than my eyes could keep up with. One strike glanced off of my breastplate and the metal band running underneath it, denting it and tearing my shirt, and I saw Suit nod, as if immediately catching on. His next strike went low, diving for my gut instead and angling upward, but I somehow managed to stick my foot awkwardly in the way. I backpedaled and swatted at his strikes, trying to keep him at bay, but he chased me around the room, almost tripping over furniture as he hammered me from every angle at once.

  Easily slipping into my blind spot, Davora slammed into me from behind, rocking me on my feet, but doing little else. From the corner of my eye, I saw her snap off an aerial roundhouse, but I caught it in the side and shrugged it off. “Dammit,” she breathed, backing off as I ran from Suit. “You’re as hard to beat as Tamara’s kill count.”

  Despite myself, I twitched.

  “Oh, did that bother you?” Davora grinned like a shark, sensing the blood in the water. An electric tingle ran down my spine. “Lose any friends? Shame it wasn’t that girlfriend of yours.”

  I growled and kicked a footstool at Suit, but he saw it coming and flipped elegantly over it like a fucking ninja.

  “Yeah, we know Little Lori,” Davora’s eyes shifted, glowing brighter and brighter as she taunted me, the irises expanding rapidly. “I was gonna pay her a visit, but I guess Tam-Tam took care of that too, huh?”

  Red rippled around the edges of my vision as I caught a sharp crystal tip in the meat of my forearm. The point bit into my cardigan, then into my flesh, but I surged forward, catching Suit off guard with a brutal headbutt that crushed his nose and broke his momentum. “Davora!” he snapped, a hand rising to the blood dripping in globs from his face. “The hell are you doing?”

  “Helping,” she replied, her eyes rippling as hazel ran to liquid gold.

  I blinked in surprise as the Moroi rushed me head-on, only to drop low and drive a heel upward into my abdomen, rocking me off my feet. Suit followed up immediately with a sharp kick to my chest, tumbling me backward into the wall. Davora snapped a heavy boot across my face, twisting my head to the side and blinding me for a moment, then hopped into the air and landed a lightning-fast push kick into my throat, driving me forcefully into the wall itself.

  My arms went out wide; I dug my claws into the wood and braced myself instinctively as the shitty, rot-worn wall started to give way. Suit was on me in an instant, bracing one baton with both hands and driving it into my chest.

  I growled, feeling my rage burning out of control, as the ruby crystal tip punched through both layers of hardened metal, stalling on tough Strigoi skin long enough for me to brace my forearm against his and just barely halt his progress.

  With my other hand, I waved my claws randomly in Davora’s direction, trying to keep the Moroi off of me by threat of accidentally impaling herself.

  She landed a snap kick into the side of my knee, almost buckling it, then another to my ribs, almost causing me to lose my clinch with the straining Sanguinarian.

  “Well, fuck,” she commented casua
lly, sweeping sweat from her brow as she watched for another opening. “If you knew what you were doing, you might be able to avoid watching your friends die.”

  Crimson glazed over my vision; my skin burned hot, then icy cold as a spark of pseudo-electricity ran through my body. Davora recoiled, her face suddenly sour, though her eyes still glowed like lanterns. But I barely noticed.

  With a roar of rage that shook the room, I lunged forward, pressing Suit back on his heels, and my claws tore Davora’s leg nearly in half at the thigh.

  Her squawk of shock and pain fell on deaf ears as Suit braced himself against my push and drove his other tonfa up into my throat.

  The ruby tip sliced in under my jaw, the weapon grating along my jawbone and digging through the flesh where Meladoquiel and I had already savaged it, dark blood already dripping down the handle.

  I didn’t notice.

  The rage—and the fresh death in the air—made me strong. As his weapon ground to a halt in my flesh, Suit’s eyes widened at his mistake.

  We both knew what was coming.

  I kneed him in the thigh, snapping the bone inside like a tree branch, his eyes flashing a bloody red in pain. As he fell to a knee, I slammed my free hand directly down on the crown of his head like a hammer, splitting his skull with the bottom of my fist. His neck snapped from the force with a sick crack, lolling to the side as blood-colored eyes lost their focus.

  Just to be certain, and because I could, I rammed my claws through his chest and flung him against the far wall, his spine shattering audibly on a rusted AC unit.

  “Holy shit,” Davora hissed, her eyes wide and glowing gold. Her leg had sealed shut, but the pale flesh had healed unevenly, and seemed reluctant to hold her weight. Blood still drenched her designer shoe along with the fine rug and battered floorboards.

  I turned toward her, seething, as the front and back doors burst open.