A blistering ball of napalm swelled between her blurring hands as Charles-Meladoquiel reached Next Door.
I didn’t just stand there and let her craft an Ashes-killer. I hooked my foot under the edge of the bed and flipped it over; the heavy wooden footboard whacked her directly in the face, and with a pop of audible, dispersing static, the spell dissipated. Then I lunged past the bed and punched Charles square in the nose, staggering the possessed wizard.
One set of my claws were still out. For an instant, his torso was completely vulnerable.
I let the blood-rusted blades dissipate into the air.
“Oh, come on,” Meladoquiel exclaimed. As I tried to deck her again, she caught my fist, dead flesh slapping into the palm of Charles’ large hand. Charles-Meladoquiel trembled, human and Ur-demon enhanced strength not quite enough to stalemate Strigoi might. “No...fun...at all.” Charles lashed out with a kick, knocking one of my legs out from under me. As I tumbled to my knees, his fist slammed down, blurring intensely, and cracked across my jaw like a giant’s sledgehammer.
Caught off guard, I let her bludgeon me once, then twice, before she planted one of Charles’ army surplus boots in my face and launched me backwards. My fingers dug into plush carpet, dragging myself to a halt, and I looked up—
—just in time to receive a miniature cyclone to the chest.
A condensed vortex of wind threw me across the bedroom like a rag doll, pinning me to the wall. The room’s walls shook and reverberated like a train was passing just outside, bland pictures of flowers and countrysides leaping off the walls to commit suicide on the floor.
Helpless, I could only watch as Charles-Meladoquiel sauntered across the room, a thin lance of flame forming in the wizard’s free hand while the other maintained the tiny tornado.
I hadn’t even known a magician could control two spells at once like that, and this was a shitty was to find out. In a moment, the possessed wizard stood over me, Meladoquiel looking down at me from behind my friend’s eyes. I tried to pry myself free of the intense wind’s grip, to press forward against it or back into the wall, but I found no reprieve as the heat of the deadly flame hovered closer and closer.
“Ah, well,” she sighed. “Nice try, I guess.”
Panic spiked as she thrust the blazing lance toward my chest—
—And stopped.
Charles gazed down at me with agonized cinnamon eyes.
“The hell are you waiting for?” He snapped. The vortex of condensed wind dissipated with a crack, though the flames lingered. “Fucking kill me already.”
Horrified, I shook my head. “No way in hell.”
Charles shook, trembling like a leaf as sweat popped out all over his forehead. “Dammit, don’t leave me like this! I don’t...want...can’t…” I heard his heart rate spike in a thunderous rush, watched the veins stand out on his throat and at his temples.
“I can do this,” I rasped in reply. “Have I ever let you down before?”
For a moment, Charles’ face looked truly panicked, his eyes wide and his bushy brows knitted together in worry.
Then the expression was gone, annihilated by Meladoquiel’s undying grin.
“Where were we?” She raised her arm, and the lance in her hand blazed bright, forming into a full-length, five-foot-long weapon in an instant, complete with bladed edges of translucent, gilded flame.
“Leaving,” I replied, setting my feet and pushing backward through the wall.
Wooden paneling and thick wall studs gave way, and I stumbled back into the living room, breaking line of sight before she could spear me like a flammable fish. The plush maroon carpet was nervewrackingly aflame in several places, but thankfully neither my tall boots nor my cardigan were easy to burn, and I darted toward the safety of the kitchen’s fancy stone tile before either one could prove me wrong.
So far, last night’s plan wasn’t going so well.
“Wow!” I heard Meladoquiel’s voice as she followed me, not bothering to hurry. “I mean, I thought I had him put away, but you’re both just full of surprises.”
She stepped through the doorway into the kitchen, and I hit her in the face with a thrown dinner plate.
Before the broken pieces hit the floor, I rammed into her, pushing her most of the way across the smoke-tinged living room before she could dig in Charles’ heels and slow my momentum to a crawl. Grinning, Charles-Meladoquiel hooked one of his legs behind mine, applying pressure on the back of my knee while we wrestled and clinched, the demon trying to lever me down toward the burning carpet.
I headbutted him carefully in the face, bloodying his nose and busting his lip.
It was one hell of a mistake.
Bloodlust crept into my eyes unbidden, tinting the world a hungry shade of crimson. The remains of over three months’ worth of hunger rushed to the surface, and before I knew it, I’d already bared my thick double set of Strigoi fangs.
“Ooooo, yessss,” the Ur-demon hissed intently, abruptly halting her efforts to drag me toward the closest patch of burning carpet. “What about this? So appropriate. A truly tragic ending.”
I froze, going still as my muscles tensed and I fought the sudden onslaught of my own vampiric instincts.
“Oh no, no, no,” Meladoquiel whispered intimately into my ear, dragging herself up against me and pressing Charles’ neck closer to my trembling teeth. So close I could feel his steady, stolen pulse. “You brought me out here, you clever girl. Got me all to yourself,” she purred. “You knew you’d have to evict me somehow, to hope to drive me back to my own realm.”
I glanced out the window.
“Why not like this?” Charles’ pulse thumped in my ears as Meladoquiel’s tainted whispers scraped insidiously at my mind. I looked down, met his ink-riddled cinnamon eyes, saw the demon grinning at me from within their depths.
With a snarl, I threw Charles across the room. He smashed through the wooden door that led to the apartment’s home office with a crash of splintering oak and tumbled to a stop against the room’s far wall.
“Will you just fuck off already,” I roared angrily as I stomped after her, stepping around the patches of flame as best I could. Somewhere above my head, a smoke alarm shrilled loudly, desperate for attention.
The Ur-demon met me at the door with a frozen spear to the heart. The tip shattered on my breastplate, slowing just enough for me to wrap a fist around it and stop it dead.
Charles ducked as I threw it right back at him, and it cracked window glass instead.
“Oh, please,” Meladoquiel chuckled as Charles sprang to his feet. “This is such fun.” Charles’ hands blurred, reaching Next Door and coming away with a scoop of white-hot flame. “Besides, what is Charles to you, for you to fight so hard for him? I can see how he treated you when you met, how he treats you still.” With a casual air, she lobbed the blue-white glob of fire underhand in my direction.
“Sure,” I rushed forward, snatching up the office desk near the door, “he’s an asshole.” I swatted the fireball aside, leaving pieces of it dripping down the wall and from the end of my desk. “But he’s our asshole.”
With a laugh and a shrug, the Ur-demon tossed another bundle of deadly flame my way, then another, obviously toying with me. I swatted them both aside like the first, only to have her blast my legs out from under me with a rippling blade of condensed air. My face bounced off the carpet, and I picked myself back up as an immense wave of static rolled outward, burning along my skin and standing my hair on end.
Dark blood flew as a glassy, inky blade cut across me diagonally from hip to collarbone, splitting shirt, bra, breastplate and metal band apart with ease. The super sharp edge dug into hardened Strigoi skin, shearing into my flesh as Charles’ hands blurred an ominous purple-black. The desk tumbled from my hands as the air warped, a tenebrous burst of energy slamming me into the wall. The air above me blurred and shifted, reality writhing in agony as an icy lance plunged forth from Next Door and punched through my enchanted cardigan
, then through the meat of my shoulder, pinning me to the wall.
Another burst from Next Door and dug into my side, drawing more blood as it tore my skin and scraped across a rib. I turned my head at the last instant as a third frozen spear cut across the side of my face, an inch from burying itself in my eye socket instead.
Dazed and semi-crucified, I watched the broken remnants of the blue-white fireballs as they steadily crawled across the carpet toward me, hungry. Somewhere outside, a massive bell tolled the first solemn tones of midnight.
“Phew!” Across the room from me, Charles-Meladoquiel posed, one hand on his hip, the other upraised and surrounded by dancing flames tinged in a nebulous, corrosive blue-black aura. “You’re not looking so well.” The demon grinned, watching me hang from the wall. “Last chance! So who’s it gonna be, Ashley or Charles?” She took in an excited breath, her stolen, inky eyes flickering. “Though I don’t really see how you can get out of this one.”
I met her eyes with a defiant snarl and spat blood.
“Get wrecked, Beelzebub,” I said. “I’ve done this before.”
As she cocked her head, a tint of confusion in the depths of Charles’ eyes, I tore myself free of the dark ice, leaving strips of dead flesh and magic cardigan behind. As I lunged forward, I scooped up the fallen, burning desk along the way and hurled it at her.
The possessed wizard swatted it easily aside, wincing as a bone cracked in his arm, the conjured flames dissipating.
I slammed into her and threw us both out the window.
Glass burst around us, glittering as we arced out into the empty night.
“Too close,” she winked, dirty black fire forming in her fingers between us, right next to my heart.
The heat and flame blinked out of existence an instant later as we, still airborne, passed over the wrought iron boundary into High Hill cemetery.
The Ur-demon and I screamed together as pain washed over us. I choked down a howl as it blindsided me, unfamiliar and intense, my sudden anguish trying to claw its way out of my throat. It felt like I was burning alive, every nerve alight with agony as the torment worked its way through my skin and down into my blood and bones.
Our screams only intensified as a sharp iron fence-tip shredded Charles’ knee, then tore through mine immediately afterward as the sanctified ground stripped me of my unnatural resilience.
We slammed into the ground hard, and I could only briefly hope that the Ur-demon’s possession had lasted long enough to protect Charles from the brunt of the bone-breaking fall, before ravenous, relentless agony washed coherent thought from my mind.
I curled into a fetal ball as the hallowed ground seared at my skin, my enchanted cardigan no protection at all, and screamed as only the dead can scream.
Dimly, I remembered my skin smoking as I lay on the cold earth, my blood boiling away as it dripped from my battered body.
Distantly, thick arms encircled me, lifting me from the unforgiving embrace of the earth.
I felt static surge, heard the wrench and squeal of twisting metal.
Ever so slowly, the punishing pain subsided as Charles carried me from the graveyard, a smoking hole blasted in the wrought iron fence behind us.
Unceremoniously, he dropped me onto the hard asphalt of the same parking lot we’d stopped in weeks ago, then fell down next to me.
Battered and breathing hard, Charles glanced over at me. “You’re an idiot,” he finally said.
I laughed through the pain, waiting for my skin to stop burning, waiting for the sharp spikes in my core to subside.
It took what felt like a long, long time.
“Huh,” Charles said eventually. “I guess I need to bandage my damn knee.”
“Ashley! Charles!” Tamara’s voice rang out, a clarion call that helped shear through the haze in my head. I propped myself up on an elbow to see, and beside me, Charles did the same, wincing in pain.
As she emerged from the open double doors of the apartment building next to us, the approaching Moroi was a sight for sore eyes indeed—but what truly drew my gaze was the woman on her arm.
Like Tamara, Lori was battered and bruised, dirty and unfed, her clothes worn and torn.
But for me, there’d never been a more beautiful sight.
“A...Ashley?” she called out, music to my ears.
I found myself on my feet, testing the weakness in my ravaged knee and finding once more that ripped ligaments and torn tendons didn’t do much to a walking corpse. I staggered to meet the two women, holding my arms open wide, grinning like a loon.
Lori, clinging to Tamara’s arm, screamed at the sight of me.
I staggered to a stop, confused, watching her wide, horrified eyes scour my face, linger over the laceration running the length of my chest, and focus on the ragged hole in my knee, still weeping dark blood onto the asphalt.
Slowly, I raised a bloody hand to my face, feeling at the jagged rent under my jaw where the bone lay exposed. I touched at the hole eaten into my cheek during my extended float, where my Strigoi fangs and blood-stained teeth lay visible from the outside. If I concentrated, I could feel the tears in my flesh caused by stake-happy Sanguinarians and Meladoquiel’s conjured ice, as well as the frayed skin and flesh around many of my joints.
I supposed I would have screamed too.
“Hey, Lor,” I rasped, shuffling closer. Even my voice sounded like a monster’s. “I’m fine, it’s not as bad as it looks, we can make this okay—”
I watched my girlfriend cower behind Tamara, shaking her head. “It’s not okay, Ash,” she responded, her voice tight with emotion, tears in her gleaming slate gray eyes. “One of your best friends kidnapped me.”
Because of me, I finished for her. Tamara’s face darkened as well, no doubt mirroring some of the same guilt I felt.
“She—it—burrowed into my head, made me...do...things…” Lori breathed deep, panic gnawing at her voice. “Everyone was hunting us,” She shook her head violently, as if trying to clear the clinging cobwebs of memory. “We almost starved. Tamara had to—” her voice choked off and was slow to return. “You were gone. I thought I watched you die, damn it…” Those shimmering tears plummeted to the earth as she clutched at the back of Tamara’s shirt.
I wanted to go to her, to hold her tight and hug this out.
I’d wanted nothing more than for this whole nightmare to be over, for things to be okay again.
But that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
“I...I…” Lori’s breath shuddered in and out; I remembered the times I’d held her through similar panics, knowing that this time, I was helpless to do anything at all. “I can’t do this. I can’t deal with this, not again and again...And you’re…” She looked at my face, cringed, and looked away.
“I…” I did this for you. “...I understand.” I smiled, for once glad I couldn’t cry.
Lori was right. I wasn’t...good for her, not anymore. I’ll always remind her. Of everything that’s happened. Of everything that could happen again. I couldn’t keep doing this either. Not to the woman I loved—
“No.” Tamara suddenly twisted, shaking Lori off of her arm, her pale alabaster cheeks flushing an angry red. “No fucking way.” The Moroi Princess stepped out from between us, leaving my lover standing alone, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “You’re seriously going to let her go like this? When you know what she’s going through?”
“Tam! Please, don’t.” Lori sniffed, rubbing at her eyes. “This is hard enough, you promised—”
“Well, you can fuck my promise,” Tamara snapped. “Cousin.”
I went still; it felt like ice water ran raw through my veins as everything suddenly snapped into focus. I stared at my love’s pale face, at her bright slate gray eyes, shimmering like liquid as they ran with tears.
“You lied to me,” I rasped softly. “From the beginning.”
“Would you have believed I was a vampire when we met?” Lori shook her head, distraught. “And I ne
ver knew how to tell you...I never wanted you to know. I gave everything to leave that life behind, to build another life where I wasn’t a—”
“Monster,” I finished quietly.
The sadness in her eyes was nearly palpable. She nodded. “I never asked...to be born what I was. I just wanted out. And right after I found a way, I found you...you helped me through it all. You made me feel...human.”
“And then I became a monster instead,” I rasped. “A worse one.”
Lori winced at my choice of words. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quickly, forcing the words out between sobs. “But I’ve been kidnapped, tortured, and I wanted to make things right, but I just can’t leave the past behind and—”
With a deafening roar that shattered the nearest windows, I let out the rage, the frustration devouring my insides. Lori squeaked and shied away, and even Tamara winced and covered her ears.
My fist went a dozen inches into the nearby wall, crunching red brickwork to powder.
As I ripped my arm free, shattered bricks tumbling to the ground, my eyes fell on Tamara.
My friend.
“You knew,” I stated. “All...along.” Realization struck me like a hammer. “You didn’t run into me by accident when we met and decide to help me. You were looking for Lori.”
Tamara shook her head but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Furious, I wheeled around, raking my gaze across Charles, now leaning against the battered brick wall, and the two young shifters, who had apparently returned while I was distracted.
“You!” I snapped at the three of them. “Did all of you know too?”
Charles met my eyes, his own weary almost beyond recognition. “It wasn’t my business,” he replied quietly. “But yes.”
Jason shifted uneasily. “Chica, we didn’t—”
“We smelled it on her,” Rain said softly, not looking up from where he was wrapping shredded strips of cloth around Charles’ equally shredded knee. “When we were hunting her and Tamara. While you were gone. But we didn’t know what to say or if we should.”
I slammed my fist into the wall again, inciting a shower of shattering brick.
Shattered Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 3) Page 25
