Blood Red Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 2)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  We made our way quickly through the innards of the junkyard; I rapidly lost track of which way we’d come, Tamara and I both working to make sure the three guys didn’t lose us in the twists and turns. No more vengeful spirits tried to stop us or kill us.

  But that didn’t mean we were safe. A hulking shadow loomed abruptly out of the fog—since when had there been so much freaking fog?— ahead of us, hunched and more massive than the largest of the scrap heaps.

  A decrepit old house, little more than an oversized shack. On a tall hill. In the middle of a jungle of junk in the middle of nowhere. This whole place looked like it should be condemned, in more ways than one.

  Well, this doesn't look like a horror movie at all. But we only picked up more speed as Charles and the others beelined for it, Tamara and I hustling to bring up the rear. Curling tendrils of wispy, gloomy vapor grasped ephemerally at our legs as we wove back and forth along a crooked, sloping path up the hill, the only route in sight clear of waist-high debris. Our trail rapidly narrowed to a single person’s width; shards of twisted, rusty scrap reached out from the mist-shrouded dim to catch at my already battered clothes and scrape harmlessly off of my dead skin. I had no idea if the mere mortals along with me were as lucky, but no one cried out or even commented.

  I figured that meant they were fine, until I smelled fresh blood.

  I shook my head, stumbling over my own feet, glancing around with sudden clarity. It was like the scent had cut through a haze to reach me. My injured arm blazed again, cold and pain reaching up along my veins and toward my heart, and I quickly lost track of my train of thought.

  That’s right. We’re headed to the house. Absently, I noted how strangely red the fog had become, and wondered what that could possibly mean.

  We burst free of the narrow confines of the pathway, only a few mounds of warped metal and the low crest of a hill between us and the house itself. With angry cries, both boys burst into a run, charging the house with bloodlust in their eyes. I heard Tamara curse sharply as Charles broke free of her grasp and followed suit, his eyes dark and menacing.

  How strange. It really wasn’t like Charles to rush in without some sort of plan or to have an escape clause in case things went south.

  I should go in the house too. But I hesitated. I took a quick look at the home, where one single light burned in a broken window with a flickering unsteadiness. It was small, one floor, and not many rooms; really, only one questionably sturdy door kept us from our prey. I could hear a single, steady heartbeat from within—but only one.

  That’s...not good. Weren’t we here for someone?

  I felt the air surge with energy, and Charles blew the shack’s wooden door squarely off its hinges with conjured, otherworldly force. The three of them rushed inside, barely waiting for each other to clear the way.

  Then, silence.

  I knew I should go in and help them, but something held me back. Something wasn't right, but what?

  “Ashes? Ashley!” Tamara hissed my name forcefully, pulling me down behind a low pile of scrap. I glanced around. I didn’t remember getting this close to the house. I looked over at Tamara and smiled.

  “Ashes,” Tamara shook her head, her brilliant blue eyes wide. “Don’t. Something’s wrong.” The beautiful Moroi stepped even closer, putting her hands on my shoulders and catching my eyes, drawing me in. “You can see something’s wrong, can’t you?” Slowly, I nodded. Silence reigned from inside the small building, and my hackles rose. “Well, I can feel it. There’s a…pull or emotion, hanging in the air somehow. Everywhere. I think…” She trailed off, glancing at the house worriedly, then back at me with even more concern. “I think it’s got a hold on you too.” Her fingers tightened around my arm, as if she was afraid to let me go.

  I kept nodding slowly; her bottomless sapphire eyes made the words—and the world—make more sense. But it was hard to translate what she was saying into action.

  “Let’s go see what’s going on,” I said finally. She nodded, seeming relieved, and kept a hand on my arm as we ducked low and ran to the side of the shack, leaning against the wall right beneath the window. This close, with my head starting to clear, I could now catch the beats of three additional hearts from within the small structure: slow, placid, and steady. My friends were still alive.

  But I had a feeling they weren’t okay.

  I motioned Tamara to stay down while I peeked in; if anyone was going to be spotted, it was her; her skin was fine alabaster, and it both caught the light and stood out in the dark like an exquisite—

  I shook my head, pushing the surge of feelings back down. Now was not the time.

  “I know…you’re out there…” I recognized the voice immediately, the way he spoke, the inhuman pattern of the words as familiar as the sound of his voice, the voice from my dream. “Somewhere. Vampire…Why won’t you come in and meet me? I wanted…to meet you in person. My daughter...told me so much about you.”

  I shifted my weight, but caught myself before I could move toward the front door. Even here at Home, his voice was insidious. Slowly, I peeked over the edge of the window sill, peering through a spiderweb of cloudy, cracked glass teeth.

  Charles, Rain, and Jason stood, as if hypnotized, nearly shoulder to shoulder in a dirty, run-down kitchen. The interior looked like a place straight out of pre-World War Two, without even a modicum of maintenance. The cabinets and table were covered in decay and old stains. The counters and floor alike were pure accumulated filth. A rack hung from the center of the ceiling, a chandelier of various, dangling, keen-edged blades.

  Was that where I’d be standing too if Tamara hadn’t stopped me? Our three companions shifted from foot to foot and swayed, though Charles seemed the most unstable. I didn’t know if it was because he was hurt and tired, or because he was fighting for control of himself. I hoped for the latter.

  The Blood Man was there too, the same too-thin figure from my dreams. He was lit from the front by the solitary oil lamp that perched, burning merrily and obliviously away, on the blood-saturated kitchen table. He wore his coat, as thick and disgustingly dirty as ever, though it bore fresh stains.

  His hat was off, lying on the heavy wooden table in a sticky pool, its absence fully revealing his face for the first time. Straggly, unkempt dark hair and a blunt nose rounded out his otherwise unremarkable facial features, save the sallow, sickly look to his sweating skin. That, and his eyes. Those were like twin pools of liquid blood, and just like the real thing, they called to the hunger within me.

  Except for the eyes, he looked human.

  I dropped back down below the window. I felt my hunger stir, as it had in yesterday’s dreams, like a dragon searching for prey, for weakness. Tamara squeezed my arm, but I could only shake my head.

  “Vampire. Can you...hear me?” His voice slithered through the cracks in the window to reach my ears. “It’s been...so long…with only my Maggie to talk to.”

  The air here was dead silent. The only sounds were five heartbeats and Tamara’s breath. I could hear the Blood Man moving inside, hear the methodical scrape scrape scrape of metal on metal.

  Tamara’s eyes widened with alarm; I figured she could hear it too. I risked another glance through the dusty, dingy glass. The Blood Man stood with his side facing the window, and his arms were moving. Scrape scrape scrape scrape scrape.

  He was sharpening knives.

  “It’s so hard…keeping it to only one...or two...a year.” I could faintly hear his heavy breathing, even over the sound of steel on steel. “Surely you understand…how each one makes you…hungrier…for the next.” He shifted, and I tensed to leap through the window at him, but all he did was raise the blade, a notched, worn butcher’s knife, and examine the edge as it glinted in the ruddy, flickering light. He set it on the far edge of the table near his three captives, and went back to sharpening.

  “I know you know...what it is like…the long journey from human...to hunger…” Beside me, Tamara peeked up at the other
corner, her flawless face twisting in revulsion, her perfect nose crinkling, watching him as he continued. “One step...after another. After another. Leaving...myself behind. Becoming different.” He laid another blade on the far end of the table, hilt pointing outward. “She was the first...her fault. What was...innocent hunger before...became unbearable after. We were...partners in sin.”

  I stifled a growl as Tamara shuddered.

  “We went...further...together. My crafted daughter and I.” Both of us jumped a little as he slammed a cleaver down into the table, leaving it stuck there as he pulled a viciously curved skinning knife down from the hanging cutlery rack, then went back to sharpening. “We found...we were alone, but not alone. Other...monsters. Monsters that...pretend to not be...monsters. Even...humans...like the old me...hunted us. We were...careful. It was...so hard. But, eventually...he found us,” he hissed with a clear note of revulsion. “At first...we were...elated. ‘Take them,’ he said. ‘Take more,’ he...insisted. No more...secrets...no more...hiding. He would...hide us, he said, and protect us. ‘We will share,’ he said.”

  A long fillet knife with a gleaming edge went on the table, gently, handle outward. “I do not share.” The Blood Man’s voice dropped to an angry hiss. “I do not...follow orders. Who to take. Who to...watch, but not touch. Watch, watch, watch only, and...wait. But he took my control...away. Made me obey...with magic. And when I took...her, he made me watch as he took her away.”

  Scrape-scrape. Scrape-scrape. Scrape-scrape. A steady cadence of preparation.

  Tamara tapped my arm, her lambent sapphire eyes hard. She motioned to the front door, broken in half and dangling from one rusty hinge, then to herself. She tapped my chest, then jerked a thumb toward the window. It took a moment for me to wrap my head around her pantomime, but I hesitantly nodded. Silent as the night itself, Tamara slipped around the side of the building.

  “She was perfect...and he stole her.” The Blood Man’s words echoed in my ears. With Tamara gone, the fog closed back in, a vice around my mind. “He...lied...to me. We do not like...being lied to.” The scraping stopped, almost catching me off guard. “He made me...cover for him. To do his dirty work. We were a tool; we are...no one’s tools. It was time for the not-man...to go.” Peering inside, I saw the tall man lay out one more blade—an antique, blood-stained carving knife—close at hand and nod with satisfaction.

  Why did that matter again? I couldn’t remember.

  “Then I found...you.” The man in the window twisted, staring straight at me. His crimson eyes, twin pools of blood, pulled at me like the real thing. Suddenly, I was starving. “My daughter...told me of you. How he stalked you too. A monster, like us. A hunter, like us. A victim of the not-man, like us.” He shook his head, regretful. “You should have...joined us, vampire.”

  A hungry shudder wracked his body; through the glass, I could see him lick his lips, running his tongue over yellowed teeth. “You should not have brought your friends here...brought...children...into my home.” I tried to figure out why that sounded so bad. Inside the room, his hands were empty, grasping at the empty air like a puppet-master would strings. Jason held the butcher knife, Rain stared at the skinning blade, and Charles gazed blankly at the heavy cleaver in his fist. “I’ve never killed...a grown man before…” He raised his hands, and I felt the hairs on my neck raise in response. “I wonder…if it’s any good…”

  A whip’s crack split the air. I stood up.

  One heartbeat quickened.

  Charles’ blade tumbled from his fingers.

  Tamara stepped into the doorway.

  The Blood Man stopped, staring at the Moroi, tilting his head in an inhuman manner. “You are…not the right vampire.” He seemed almost confused.

  “But I’m the one you got, sweetheart,” Tamara said, unfurling her whip with a cocked hip and a smirk. She met my eyes with the barest of glances and gave me an ever so slight nod. “Lucky you.”

  The Blood Man laughed. “You think...other vampire...will help? We are...friends now.”

  Were we friends? I couldn't remember. It didn't feel right. Was he why I came here in the first place?

  “Ashley!” Tamara’s silvery voice split the heavy night air, pulling at me, but it was too far away. With a determined glare, she stepped into the doorway—

  —And bounced off the empty air with a hiss of pain.

  I watched as the Blood Man grinned. He raised his hands, and Rain and Jason raised their blades, the sharp edges hovering near their throats.

  No, we definitely weren’t friends.

  The compulsion snapped, stripping the fog away as Strigoi rage blossomed hotly inside me, consuming everything, even the fear for my friends’ lives.

  I slammed my fist against the window, to shatter it and throw myself across the room and eat him alive.

  Instead, my fist bounced off, my dead skin sizzling like I’d slapped a hot stove eye.

  His house had a freaking threshold—and we weren’t invited. Tamara and I were helpless.

  Inside the sanctity of his desecrated kitchen, he cackled, the laugh of a diseased madman. Charles twitched, raising a blurry hand. The Blood Man raised his own hands, like a maestro of death; the boys put blades to their throats as his eyes flashed like flares and a wave of crimson authority rolled out from him. Charles twitched, spasmed, and slumped, almost falling with a gasp onto the kitchen table. I felt his power grip at my blood, like Salvatore’s had, and my dead body went rigid.

  Tamara just grinned viciously as it washed over her impotently. “STOP.” Rain and Jason froze, beads of blood forming at their throats. Charles fell down. I couldn’t move anyway. I could only watch as the Blood Man struggled, one command against another, trying to make his own body move.

  “Sorry, hun,” Tamara said with feigned apology. “That isn’t going to work on a Moroi.” With a deep breath, Tamara put one hand out, pressing it against the empty air barring her entry. Her flesh sizzled like her palm was on a frying pan. Her perfect face twisted with pain, but her eyes shifted through a spectrum of endless blue and her alabaster flesh healed as quickly as it tried to melt away. “We’ve been through worse just growing up.”

  Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, she began to push her way past the Blood Man’s invisible threshold.

  With a snarl and jerky motions, the Blood Man moved again. Rain and Jason trembled. Tamara pushed harder, her eyes flickering with lightning flashes of silent agony.

  With a snap of displaced air, Maggie Keys manifested in front of Tamara, her multitude of inhumanly sharp blades cutting deep, nearly taking Tamara’s hand off at the wrist.

  The Blood Man held out his arms, triumphant.

  Rain and Jason’s muscles tensed.

  Trapped outside the window, I roared, straining against my own immobile blood, as if I could simply push my way to my friends’ rescue by sheer force of will.

  And, to my surprise, it worked.

  Charles had once said that shadows lay on the threshold of Next Door. When I called to them, they came to me, shifting along the edges of our world and the world of our Neighbors.

  I stepped sideways, but instead of going Next Door, I slipped along the cracks, death energy rich and thick all around me.

  In a puff of shadow, I was behind him.

  Arms like iron vices wrapped his up, halting any gestures as I crushed them to his body. The Blood Man touched my sides with his pallid, sickly hands, flooding my dead flesh with pain and sudden stiffness.

  Then I twisted his head to the side and thrust my fangs into his exposed throat.

  Maggie shifted in place, turning to face me, screaming in anguish and boundless rage. Before the specter could do anything more, Tamara tossed a bag full of powder—a mixture of salt, iron shavings, and grave dirt—through her ephemeral figure, blowing her apart like dust in the wind.

  Rain and Jason suddenly collapsed, their puppet strings suddenly severed. I smelled their blood, but it didn’t matter.

  I had all the food
I could want, right here in my arms.

  I ripped into his throat, unable to resist, and drank deep. He struggled for a moment, but his strength was like a human’s: insignificant. I think he screamed, but I wasn’t listening.

  He might not have been completely human anymore, but his blood—intoxicating, vital, and rich beyond my wildest imaginings—told a different tale.

  It was the best meal I’d ever had.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Noone wanted to go swimming

  I crouched on my haunches on the end of the bloodstained kitchen table, surrounded by a haze of comfortable satiation. I watched, helpless and useless, while Tamara cradled her injured arm. Her eyes were blazing wells of liquid blue as her wrist knitted back together from where Maggie had nearly severed it.

  With only a moment to restore her composure, she went and checked on the shifters’ wounds—though they seemed to have already healed. I relaxed in relief as she gave me a smile and a thumbs up; they were okay. The wash of relief only went so far though—I was only too aware of how close I’d come to letting them both die.

  Rain looked up at me, his face pale and accusing, as Tamara moved to check on Charles. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  I blinked. That wasn’t the accusation I had been expecting.

  Dimly, I remembered ripping my fangs free of the Blood Man’s dead, ruptured flesh, roaring with triumph and dominance. Then I’d snapped his neck like a twig for good measure.

  I could see how that might’ve upset someone.

  The younger boy sat up from where he leaned against the wall. He looked shaken, disturbed. “That...guy...he killed people, he attacked us. He would have killed us, too. I get that. But you just killed him. Tore out his throat. Without even hesitating.”