Blood Red Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 2)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  When I returned Home, Charles was waiting for me at the end of the alley, a tall, dour specter in a long, heavy coat.

  I stopped, unnaturally motionless, and we traded long stares as he leaned against the wall at the end of the alley, his deadly sigil-carved and metal-inlaid staff gripped in one hand, vibrating quietly with hidden power. His face was a sun-tanned mix of partial native heritage blended with an impassive expression of judgment. It was an expression I was pretty used to by now.

  We eyed each other, trading disapproving looks until he finally broke the silence. “Come on,” he said, pushing off of the wall and adjusting his thick leather trench coat. “I’ve found us some more trouble.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sewer Details

  “Oh, hells yeah.” I wasted no time tossing myself into the passenger side of Charles’ durable, black, 70’s Silverado pickup, slamming the door hard enough to leave five faint finger-indentions in the interior metal handle. Charles tossed his staff into the truck bed as he rounded the back, the length of deadly wood landing beside a heavy duffle bag I knew to be stuffed full of magical instruments and apparatuses, the arcane and esoteric tools of his wizardly trade.

  Charles ducked as he hopped in on the other side; he was a tall man, with big hands and heavy, plain clothes that hid a surprisingly fit physique for a guy who, as far as I knew, spent most of his time reading books and growing pot plants. He glanced at the door on my side and let out a long-suffering sigh as he turned the key, the powerful old engine roaring eagerly to life.

  “What’s the news?” I rasped roughly, my voice raw and harsh as if someone had replaced my vocal cords with sandpaper. A lot had changed since I’d died, but my voice returning to what it was before some asshole had strangled me to death wasn’t one of them. No matter what I did or how much time passed, it always sounded like I practiced gargling rocks in my spare time. “Any leads?”

  Charles snorted, taking a hand off the wheel just long enough to run it roughly through his shapeless, short, brown hair, a subtle sign of his own frustration. We took off, the Chevy’s thick, all-terrain tires tearing up the darkened night as quickly as was safe for him to drive. “If I knew it, you’d know it,” he replied gruffly. “Nothing solid. Just more of what you found weeks ago: blood trails and death.”

  “Feels like we’re playing darts in the dark,” I croaked, cracking my knuckles loudly. “Except every time we miss, people die. Where are we headed, then?”

  “I was clued in on a Sang hideout for vamps trying to stay low key, who don’t want to show up on the main Sanguinarian radar.” He kept his eyes on the dark and the road. “Here’s hoping we can find some answers there.”

  “So a Sang club for losers.”

  The tall wizard grunted noncommittally. “We’re about ten minutes out. This one’s in the old industrial district; literally an underground club. No nearby neighbors, and it’s hidden right in plain sight on abandoned CCOS property.” He cracked the hint of a rare grin, a vicious one, justice simmering in his intelligent, cinnamon eyes.

  “Plenty of room to have fun, then.” I bared my fangs in a similar expression to Charles’.

  - - -

  One, two...sixty. I smashed through the reinforced metal door like the Kool-Aid man, ripping it clear off its hinges with a short-lived shriek of tortured metal. The thick steel didn’t even slow me down.

  Inside, my appearance had stopped time. I had the sudden, undivided attention of the ten or so Sanguinarian vampires inside, all of them frozen motionless, all of them staring at me. At the long bar along the right-hand side of the room, a wide-eyed vampire bartender poured a continuous stream of ruby-red “wine” into an already overflowing cup.

  I gave them my best grin.

  “So, hey,” I gestured around hopefully at the superbly remodeled and crimson furnished section of industrial storm drain. “I wanted to ask you guys some questions.”

  For a moment, the air was as still and dead as I was. Then a distinguished-looking Sanguinarian with a Mediterranean skin tone and dark, silver-streaked hair stood up from a table in the back that he shared with four others. As he stood, so did almost everyone else in the room.

  He adjusted his tailored silk vest with a sharp tug. “Don’t let her leave.” He pointed directly at me, as if there might be some confusion about who he meant.

  “I’m not—” I started, but my raspy words were cut off by the squeak of bar stools and the skidding of chairs across crimson carpet as the whole room burst into violent motion, claws and fangs abruptly bared.

  As the first well-dressed, hissing Sanguinarian lunged for me, I planted a steel-toed work boot heel first in their torso. The kick propelled them backwards through the air, splintering the encroaching ring of vampires and leaving the first volunteer on the floor twenty feet away, gasping for air.

  Everyone paused.

  “I’m not trying to leave,” I sighed. I knew Sanguinarians couldn’t see auras or the currents of Next Door energies like, say, Charles could. But I’d assumed that they could still tell when something was pretty obviously wrong, such as when a solitary, badly dressed woman with a thick metal rod busts down the door of your private blood club. But the mob of Sanguinarians merely glanced at one another again. Then their momentary doubt was gone, washed away as the red tide surged forward once more.

  Since no one was listening anyway, I drove that point home as I hit the closest one with the metal street signpost I’d brought in with me, a baseball swing with as much force as my undead body could muster—which was a lot.

  I hit a home run; the blow crushed her chest cavity outright and sent her bowling through the rest as they tried to converge on me, scattering suits, ties, and pretentious dress clothes everywhere in a tangle of cloth, limbs, and shouts of protest. But Sanguinarians were used to getting their way, overpowering their foes physically, politically, or supernaturally, and they stubbornly got back on their feet and kept coming.

  Right into the meat grinder. Bludgeoner. Whatever.

  I didn’t stop moving, didn’t give them a chance to latch onto me with their liquid-blood claws and poisonous, snake-like fangs. “Sanguinarian!” I yelled at the next closest, a dumbfounded Caucasian man with a perfect complexion and neatly trimmed beard, still holding a half-empty whiskey bottle in one hand. He blinked at me. “Pole!” I shouted. His eyes widened in surprise as the unexpected signpost connected with his face, and he and his whiskey bottle both went flying away into the chaos I was creating.

  As blood vampires, Sanguinarians were supernaturally resistant to even copious amounts of trauma and could repair damage within seconds—that is, assuming they had enough stolen blood in their systems to fuel the regeneration. Another caveat was that if you hit them as hard as I could, you stood a solid chance of rupturing the blood-storing organs inside, then they’d simply roll on the ground and die like anyone else.

  Grinning, I waded into the tide.

  Barreling into the group, I laid into them with great clanging sweeps of my makeshift, city-issue club, driving them back or crumpling them to the floor. I growled as Strigoi rage bubbled to the surface, other emotions peeling away in its wake, justified bloodlust slipping free of its willpower-forged chains link by link. Weapons came out: knives, a gun or two, and several of their black, diamond-shaped, three foot metal bars that Sanguinarians used to capture prey alive and “prepare” their sacrifices. I ignored them all; they were useless against me.

  It wasn’t that I was combat trained or even very skilled, not really. But I’d spent a lot of the last several months in one fight or another—when I wasn’t fighting my own hungers, that is. Between hunting mortal criminals for food, skirmishing with Sanguinarians, tracking down the leftover Hollow Men my progenitors had left behind in the city, and dealing with aggressive spirits trying to cross over at the metaphysically damaged Sloss Furnaces…let’s just say there’d been a lot to keep up with. And in the process, I’d picked up enough street fighting experience do one th
ing well enough: overwhelm foes with brute strength and aggression. My metal pole deformed from impact after impact as I battered the crowd of vampires around, keeping the Sanguinarians disoriented and busy regenerating, fully intent on crushing the lot of them and then getting my answers from whatever was left.

  I moved to cut them off from fleeing through the back door, further into what—knowing my luck—was probably a maze-like continuation of the original storm drain system. But despite my efforts, a blond-haired Sanguinarian bolted past me instead of engaging, and I threw my now-warped street sign at her as hard as I could, connecting with her spine in a bone-shattering impact that dropped her to the plush red carpet.

  Of course, as soon as the weapon had left my hands, another vampire was on top of me, latching onto my back and tearing savagely at me with finger-length claws formed from shards of pure blood.

  Sanguinarian blood claws could, technically, break the Strigoi armor that nearly immunized me to mundane weapons. However, as strong as they or Moroi were above normal humans, I was at least that much stronger than them. I tore the vampire on my back free easily and slung her on the ground at my feet, cringing a little deep inside even as I raised a heavy boot to stomp down and crush her flat.

  I didn’t get the chance to finish her off. A powerful roundhouse kick blindsided me, snapping my head to the side. As was typical, I felt no pain, but the force was enough to stagger me and force me to put both feet back on the ground, giving the vampire at my feet enough time to scramble desperately away. I twisted to face my newest challenger, another vampire in the guise of a young, dark-skinned male, already poised in a fighting stance and ready to rumble.

  He snapped off several quick, skillful punches that I couldn’t have blocked if I’d wanted to, rifling them one after another into what should have been sensitive spots like my throat and diaphragm. When I didn’t flinch, he hit me even harder, with many times the force a human his size could possibly have mustered, ramming a shoulder into my ribs with everything he had.

  I set my feet against the plush carpet, feeling the unyielding concrete underneath, and didn’t budge an inch.

  He looked up at me in surprise, his momentum abolished before it had even begun. We locked eyes for an instant, the young-looking Sanguinarian’s gaze already heavily bloodshot and red-rimmed from exertion. Then I grabbed him by the shoulders and slung him into the roll-down metal grating between us and the expensive looking wine and whiskey racks behind the granite-topped bar. His crimson-tinged eyes were wide with surprise as the decorative cage bent and flexed from the impact, glass bottles shattering outward in an expanding wave. The scent of high quality alcohol and stale blood permeated the air as he rebounded off of the metal and came flying helplessly right back at me.

  Instinctively, I tucked in toward the vampire and caught him in the sternum with a headbutt. His chest bone broke with a dull, visceral crack, and he crumpled to the ground in a whining pile. His skin was already losing its air of perfection, paling as his features sharpened and became more monstrous, his body drawing further on his reserves of blood to repair itself. Left like this, he’d survive, just like most of them would, unless I did something more drastic about it.

  It wasn’t necessary. The girl he’d rescued a moment before, her eyes red and bloody and already feral, saved me the trouble, pouncing on him with blinding speed while he was vulnerable. Her curved fangs, dripping with dark venom, extended and plunged into his neck, hasty and hungry.

  I left them to it. I didn’t have time to spend dwelling on how freakish and brutal my enemies were once you peeled back the veneer of their humanity.

  Another rose to confront me, her skin already ash gray as blood spurted from her fingertips and formed into jagged crescent claws. Her head twitched; her crimson, crazed eyes watching me with an aggressive hunger as a broad, pole-shaped bruise across the side of her face rapidly faded away.

  With unnatural speed, she surged at me, ragged bloody edges of her claws searching for my throat. I caught her by the arm, mid-lunge, and showed her what real claws were like. Eighteen inches of blood-rusted iron burst from every fingertip on my right hand, a couple of drops of dark blood flying from each exit they tore in my dead flesh. I pulled her into a brutal embrace, ramming the blades into her chest and out her back, skewering her blood-organs in the process. She hissed weakly in pain as air escaped her punctured lungs, and I felt the front of my clothes soaking with her vanishing blood supply. She still tried to bite me, serpentine fangs piercing my coat and scraping weakly across my skin, but it was way too little and far too late. I dropped her almost gently to the floor, breathing out a useless, heavy breath of my own.

  I still wasn’t done, not yet. Poking his silver-streaked head up from behind the far end of the battered bar was one vampire I’d completely missed, the distinguished, middle-aged Sanguinarian in the well-tailored black suit and vest. Despite having instigated this whole brawl, he remained completely unharmed, his dark skin still boasting its gold undertones and not a touch of pallor or gray. He rolled smoothly over the bar and froze when he saw me watching him, only a handful of feet between him and freedom. He faced me with caution and curiosity, but not overt fear; his dark, murky brown eyes locked with mine. One hand touched his well-maintained, stereotypically diabolical goatee thoughtfully, while the other extended to the side, ready and motionless, with long, precisely formed blood claws that rippled gently, pulsing with bloody light of their own.

  He glanced to the side, toward the doorless exit.

  I growled and started forward, daring him to make a dash for it.

  A heavy metal Sanguinarian club slammed into my back, the weapon creaking as it crashed into my shoulder blades. Snarling, I whipped around and backhanded its unlucky owner through the bar. I felt the real danger before I saw it, an electric tingle dancing down my spine as someone drew energy from Next Door. I snapped my attention back to the older Sanguinarian just in time. The tips of his claws danced in the air with the precision of a puppetmaster’s fingers, the curved, bloody daggers slicing at nothing, weaving a great blade of pure blood right in front of my face.

  That blade whipped down, and I stepped to the side, quicker than the Sanguinarian directing it. The blood-made weapon sliced effortlessly through the soft, thick layer of carpet, cutting a line traced in blood into the poured concrete beneath. The next slash came across and I ducked, feeling it pass just over my head, taking a few dark strands of my hair with it. Behind the bloody blade, the Sanguinarian backed toward the open doorway, his eyes locked on me.

  Awww helllll no, I thought. I sidestepped smoothly around the conjured weapon and moved to pursue, but the magic simply broke apart behind me and streamed back together in a surge of sanguine fluid, blocking my path once more. It cleaved the air, the razor-sharp edge seeking my face, leaving me no room to dodge. Acting on instinct, I threw both arms up to protect my head; I lost part of my left sleeve as the weapon cut into my arm, biting in and grinding to a halt half an inch deep in dead flesh.

  Dark brown eyes widened with surprise, a little sudden fear, and possibly a hint of recognition. The enemy Sanguinarian gestured sharply and his conjuration abruptly burst apart, streaming back to his hand and sinking into his flesh.

  All except one small, floating vermilion globule, a perfect orb of blood so dark red it was nearly black.

  My blood.

  Shit.

  I threw myself forward as the Sanguinarian drew a line in the air above his head with one bloody claw. I couldn’t hear it rending the Wall between realities, but I could feel it somewhere deep inside my gut instead, the air tingling with sudden electrical discharge.

  Sanguinarians didn’t have an attunement to any energy or place Next Door like I did or like a Moroi would. They couldn’t channel its power outright like a human magician could, either. Instead, they had their blood magic and their blood rituals, powers whose ancient secrets they held close to their hearts—literally. All Sanguinarians were blood magicians to so
me extent—but some were much more powerful than others.

  In a split second, the well-dressed vampire’s savage claw of liquid blood rent a jagged, gut-wrenching tear in the membrane that kept Home and Next Door apart. My hair stood on end as energy flooded through and static saturated the air, prickling at my skin. It wasn’t exactly a safe or healthy magic to execute. It would make a proper, responsible wizard like Charles have an apoplectic fit, but it did what it was supposed to.

  A solid wall of moss-overgrown stone dropped out of the empty air as the rift snapped shut, and my leap came up short as I smashed face-first into it, inches from the Sanguinarian magician I was trying to tackle. I bounced off of unyielding rock and fell flat on my ass as a torrent of electrical discharge flooded out in every direction, releasing enough excess static to fry every vaguely electronic device active within a thousand yards. The lights in the storm drain-turned-vampire-club burst as one, plunging the room into sudden darkness—not that it mattered to me, not with my own magical vampire vision that ignored the black.

  I cursed. Not only was the vampire magician escaping with news of my assault on their gathering place, he had my blood. Charles often informed me there were any number of malicious things a spellcaster could do with someone's blood. Even if I broke down this strange Next Door barricade in the next few seconds, the Sanguinarian would be long gone by then. The frumpy Magisterium wizard was nearby and ready for action, but his phone was either already off, or bricked by the sudden power surge, so no help there.

  I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the groans and growls of bloodied Sanguinarians all around me in the dark and scanning the barrier for weaknesses. It was the glint of recognition in the Sanguinarian’s dark eyes that worried me the most. The Blood Vampires thought my kind were extinct; they’d orchestrated our genocide centuries ago. Could he use that sample of my blood as proof of—