Blood Red Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 2)

by Annathesa Nikola Darksbane

  I nodded. I’d do it again too, and I knew that.

  “What gives us the right to decide that for somebody?” Rain continued, meeting my eyes solidly despite a shiver that made his slender frame tremble. “He should’ve gone to jail. Should have had a trial or something.” He shook his head, short dark hair flying everywhere. “I didn’t want to be a part of that.” His amber-flashing eyes were accusing, angry, but no longer seemed addled by the Blood Man’s magic. “You just killed him. You even seemed to enjoy it. How is that any better than what he did?”

  I was quiet for a long moment, avoiding the young man’s eyes. Everyone else was silent too, save for heightened heartbeats and Rain’s shuddering breaths.

  “I dunno,” I replied finally. “But the alternative was worse. If that makes me the bad guy too, then so be it.”

  “Dude, calm down.” Jason’s quick defense caught me off guard. The older shifter stretched, yawned, and sat up, patting his friend on the leg. “I get where you’re coming from, manito. But you gotta think: what do the police do with somebody like that? What’s to keep him from just grabbing hold of their blood, making them kill themselves, and waltzing out of prison whistling? Is he even something that we’d want around other people? Even other criminals?”

  “It’s still not right,” Rain protested, but he seemed less certain, less vehement.

  Jason shrugged. “Nope, bro. But none of this was. Somebody had to do something. I’m thinking of the way he...made me feel inside. What if whatever was wrong with his ass spread or something?” Jason shuddered, looking a little pale himself. “We nearly died because of that guy, manito. We were helpless. I don’t want anybody to have to feel like that again. And if that takes acting outside the law, so be it.” I returned his respectful nod, and he gave Rain a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. “It’d be nice if all this could be handled the right way, by the right people. But those don’t always exist.”

  “And mistakes were made, for I was weary, not wary; while winter found me weeping over worries, not working righting wrongs, leaving lessons unlearned.” Charles finished his recital with a sigh born of weariness and gave his head a heavy shake. “If the Blood Man could get to me, even tired and hurting—especially before I realized what was going on—then most other mortals wouldn’t stand a chance.” He eyed Tamara suspiciously. “Most.”

  She winked at him, her eyes almost back to normal again. “Girl’s gotta have some secrets, Charles.” Then she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Seriously? I’m a Moroi. I’m more than a little used to emotional manipulation.” Tamara looked off, the hint of a smile she’d worn fading away.

  I thought about the implications of that for a moment before looking up. “So, what was he, Charles? He was using blood magic. But he sure as hell wasn’t a Sanguinarian.” Too delicious.

  Charles groaned his way to his feet. “Sanguinarian? No. Blood magic? Yes. Sanguinarians don’t have a monopoly on it, not quite.” He took a cloth out of his coat and started cleaning the grime off of his staff. “And as for the Blood Man, I believe the saying goes: ‘Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.’”

  “The Tempest,” I replied from my perch on the table. “Shakespeare.”

  Charles nodded. “Mark Twain said it too, that it was humans who were the real monsters. Of course, we all know that’s not quite true.” He glanced at me, then at Tamara. “But it holds a modicum of truth nonetheless.”

  “You’re saying...that he was human?” Rain’s eyes were wide with shock. “But, all the things he talked about, all the things he did…”

  Charles’ face softened. “It’s not pretty, but it’s true. Manson. Torquemada. Himmler. The Blood Man was once human. Until he became something else.”

  “Something more?” Jason asked.

  “Something less,” Charles replied.

  “It’s not the first time someone has become more of an ideal, or an emotion, than a person,” Tamara said softly. She put a gentle hand on Rain’s shoulder, then Jason’s. I watched them both relax. “But it’s not always so bad. Mother Teresa. Mahatma Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Ideals more than people, but for the good of all.”

  I only let the following silence linger for a moment. “We don’t need to stay here. Lingering here isn’t good for any of us.” Tamara nodded her agreement. “Not to mention, Maggie is still at large. Unless avenging her murder set her to rest.” I glanced at the Blood Man’s corpse. I still needed to dispose of it properly, more thoroughly, but it could wait until we were done here instead of making the others watch.

  Charles made a thoughtful sound. “It may well have. Especially here, at the site of her death. But there’s no way to know right now, unless she shows back up.” He looked around, his cinnamon eyes jaded. “Maggie Keys. His first victim. I can’t imagine what she must’ve gone through here to warp her into what her spirit became. We should burn this place to the ground.” Jason nodded his wholehearted agreement.

  “We can’t yet,” Rain protested. “What about the kids he kidnapped? What about Rena? What about Tamara’s sister?” His anger seemed to have faded into exhaustion and concern.

  Charles and I exchanged a long, grim look as Tamara’s eyes grew wet and she turned away. We both knew the answer.

  There were only five heartbeats, if you included my dead, infrequent one. Everything smelt of blood, painting our environment in different shades of old gore and human agony.

  I shook my head.

  “What is it?” Rain held out a hand, and his friend helped him to his feet. “Where are the survivors? What aren’t you guys telling us?”

  No one wanted to say anything, so I did. “There aren’t any,” I rasped.

  The young boy stared at me, realization slowly overwhelming his innocent eyes.

  I knew my eyes were hard, that my voice was harsh. But I couldn’t help it. “We’re too late. No one who was brought here survived.”

  We could search, we could hope, but it was pointless. The death hanging in the air and the look in the Blood Man’s hungry eyes had told me everything.

  The remnant of the wooden door slammed against the wall as Tamara ran outside, overwhelmed with grief.

  - - -

  “I found what we’re looking for,” I called. And I kinda wish I hadn’t.

  Charles, obviously close to exhaustion, had hung back while Tamara and I had torn the place apart looking for any clues to the fate of the missing children. Rain and Jason had offered to help as well, but the younger boy’s resolve had faltered after the second time our gruesome discoveries had relieved him of his dinner, and Jason had stayed with him.

  I kept looking over my shoulder for Maggie’s specter, but she never rematerialized. Perhaps she was gone after all. In the meanwhile, I’d overturned appliances, torn the doors off of cabinets; even ripped up floorboards in case the rickety cabin’s previous owner had read too much Tell-tale Heart. All to no avail.

  So we’d taken the search outside, and that was where I’d found it. In a little clearing behind the house, surrounded by hard, packed earth where nothing grew, was a pond. A small pond. A small, utterly disturbing pond.

  A pond full of blood.

  As I approached it, the very air started to warp and blur a little around me. Tall silhouettes of scrap and distant skyscrapers became the shadows of gargantuan obsidian stone obelisks, taller than the sky itself. Near the edges of the sluggish pond, tiny tufts of gray grass waved back and forth in a nonexistent wind.

  “Careful!” Charles called at my back. “The Walls are thin here. We come close to stepping Next Door.”

  “That can happen?” I asked as the magician came cautiously closer, leaning wearily on his staff.

  “Of course,” he replied easily. “That's why I’m telling you to be careful.”

  “I’m pretty certain I recognize the area Next Door,” I told him. “It’s the same one that kept showing up when I encountered Maggie.”

  “Almost like they’re connected,” he replied quietly
.

  I felt her presence before Tamara joined us. Her grief had hung over the group like a cloud, fallout from where the beautiful Moroi was obviously unable to control her emotions. “Is that...blood?” She asked softly.

  I was pretty certain it wasn’t really made out of blood. Sticking my fingers into it showed it to have a consistency more like regular old dirty water, but I wouldn’t have known from the way it looked, smelt, or clung to my flesh.

  “What is that?” Rain asked, an undercurrent of horror marring his voice.

  “There’s no way that’s actually blood,” Jason agreed. “Right? You’d need way too much of it.” He looked disgusted nonetheless.

  Charles knelt by the bloody pool, shaking his head. “Normally, this is the kind of thing I’d record and send back to the Magisterium. It’s that rare and noteworthy.” He took a deep breath, considering. “This is a place nearly Next Door, where energies leak constantly across and the rules of Home begin to lose coherence.” He gestured at the shadows of distant obelisks, backed by a foreign, bloody sky. This close to the pool itself, the piles of scrap looked more like tangles of bone, and I could smell blood in the air. “But did the Blood Man make it? And if so, to what purpose?”

  “Or did it simply manifest due to his actions?” I rasped, and Charles nodded approvingly. The unnatural blood pool didn’t just smell like blood; it reeked of death, more than any other place in the whole scrapyard—even more than Maggie herself had. Which meant…

  “I know where his victims are,” I said grimly.

  I stripped off my shoes and battered outerwear, leaving my tank top, pants, and my duct-taped, pallid, skinny glory. I stretched my dead muscles, feeling the scrapes and cuts and broken bones, and took a step into the blood pool.

  “Holy shit,” Tamara said, her tone haunted. She wasn’t the only one who turned away, looking ill.

  - - -

  The aura of the pool was part death and part bloody suffering. That meant it didn’t entirely belong to me, but it was close enough to make me strong.

  I needed that strength—in more ways than one—as we spent the next hour and a half dredging the bloody little pond.

  It was deeper than it looked, deeper than it had any right to be. As the blood-water rose to chest level, I became paranoid that I was going to take a step and fall through a hole in the world, ending up somewhere Next Door. As if to enhance those fears, I saw strange, bony protrusions deep in the water, somewhere between bone, gristle, and teeth.

  With my will, I clung as tightly as I knew how to my Home. Something told me that there was a place nearby I did not want to end up.

  By the time I managed my way to the center, the liquid was up to my neck, and I felt something touching my foot.

  I ducked underneath and retrieved the first body.

  The facts that I could see in the dark and didn’t have to breathe were enormously helpful, and the only reasons that stopped a weary Charles from diving in to help. Thankfully, I managed to stop him while the water only lapped at his waist.

  Corpse after small corpse I tirelessly retrieved and passed to Charles, who dutifully waded back to shore with each, laying them tenderly on the grass beside the pond. Over each, he said some prayers I didn’t understand, one in Hopi, one in Latin.

  I pretended I didn’t see him crying.

  Three in, Rain got violently sick once more. Four in, he and Jason both retreated a safe distance, overwhelmed by their own enhanced senses. Six in, Charles tied a cloth around his face, covering his nose and mouth. Tamara continued helping Charles settle them on the ground and out of the way, but even she trembled as the body count steadily rose. Ten in, Charles was beginning to visibly pale and had to periodically stop and rest.

  I kept working.

  It was the least I could do.

  The police had been wrong. Nearly twenty corpses were laid out by the time I emerged, dripping and completely saturated from the not-blood of the pool. Scanning over the children’s remains was a grisly affair, to put it lightly; the “water” hadn’t worked wonders for preservation. Many weren’t intact, and sometimes the selection of pieces that were missing was enough to chill even cold dead me.

  But it was the sight of little Rena Redgrave: blood-soaked, still, and horrifically recognizable, that hurt most of all.

  “We should destroy this thing,” I growled, gesturing toward the pool. “Maggie’s gone. The Blood Man’s gone. Even that damn mist is gone. There’s nothing stopping us.” I glanced at Charles. “Assuming we can, that is.”

  He sat in the dirt, his face streaked with liquid. “There’s one thing stopping us: the end of my rope.” His breathing was heavy. “I’m too tired, Ashley. Nothing left. And it would need a ritual I’m not prepared for, anyway.”

  “We will soon,” Tamara stated, her eyes shimmering. “We’ll come back and do it.”

  “What...what do we do now?” Rain asked, his voice small. “There’s so many…”

  “They need to be laid to rest, manito.” Jason spoke up, somber and weary, for the first time in a while. “They deserve some peace at least.”

  Charles nodded. “Their spirits can’t possibly rest easy here after all they’ve been through. They need more than simple last rites. It might do wonders to clear up the atmosphere here.”

  “Even the air here is thick with the scars of emotion,” Tamara said distantly, her sapphire eyes gleaming with a light of their own. “And we’re not helping.”

  I looked to Charles. “You know who we need to call.”

  After a long moment, he nodded. “You still have Mama Flora’s number, right?”

  I handed him my phone.

  - - -

  I loaded the bodies into Charles’ truck and covered them with a tarp, then Tamara took me home. The skyline was already harboring the first faint hints of light, and getting stuck in some sort of early morning construction or traffic would be the last mistake I ever made.

  We rode in somber silence, right up until she pulled into the church parking lot.

  “Sorry about your car.” I gestured to the big splatter of blood-water-stuff I’d left behind in her passenger seat. The longer the water was separated from the pond, the more it returned to normal—albeit really putrid—water. But it was still a gross mess either way.

  “Happens all the time,” Tamara replied. She made a face. “That was funnier in my head. I guess even my sense of humor’s exhausted.” She gave me a weak smile; even a weak one lit up her face like the dawn I was so vigilantly avoiding.

  I’m also sorry about your sister. I couldn’t bring myself to voice the words. Instead I just told her goodnight. We stared at each other for a moment, then she slid out of the car and hugged me tightly, both of us simply out of words. We leaned against each other for a couple of minutes, as if the only thing holding one another upright.

  Then she left.

  Tomorrow would be a hard day too. Figuring out what Tamara was going to tell the Moroi and what disaster to prepare for afterward. What to tell the Redgraves, and what, if anything, to tell the many other families that likely knew absolutely nothing of the supernatural. We still needed to lay the victims to rest. Disposing of the Blood Man’s corpse—Charles had insisted we incinerate it, which I wanted no part of—and checking to see if Maggie’s dangerous specter really was gone.

  All I wanted was to fall into my sleeping corner and lose myself to the oblivion; I barely managed to peel off my nasty clothes before crawling into my blanket. I propped myself up against the wall and settled in for the day, checking my messages as I put my phone on charge.

  One message from Lori.

  I turned the phone off. There was nothing in my head tonight that she needed to hear. Besides, I was still supposed to see her tomorrow. Hopefully.

  I settled in for the dawn, and prepared to sleep like the dead I was. I was hoping for another blissful nothing with no dreams or nightmares to disturb the peace of the void.

  I figured if I managed to someh
ow have nightmares again tonight, I already knew what they would be about.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mama knows best

  I didn’t wake to my lonely underground of stone and silence.

  I woke to the angry hiss of tattered air and the towering spires of Monument Valley.

  “You killed him!” Maggie’s claws reached for my eyes, and I was glad that vampires rarely woke up groggy. I slapped her hands aside without thinking, but it was difficult. She felt nearly as strong as I was.

  “How could you!” Her hiss rang in my ears and mind at the same time, grating angrily, an assault on my senses. A tiny bundle of rags with a child’s face flung itself at me, more dangerous blades than I could count bristling from the spidery appendages on her back and from where her fingers should have been.

  “He trusted you!” I held up an arm to fend off her ferocity, swiping at her with claws in an attempt to back her off. She didn’t seem to care. “Father came to you for help.”

  I caught her and slammed her into the packed earth, right at my feet. “Your ‘father’ was a crazy asshole murderer,” I snapped as my temper flared. I stomped one foot down on her, pinning her in place and grinding her into the dirt. “And if you weren’t a crazy asshole ghost, you’d see that he needed to be put down.”

  “You didn’t know him!” The spirit flailed at me with the chitinous appendages jutting from the rags that made up its back, and I kicked her off into the distance lest she shred my leg-flesh. She reappeared before me in an instant, flitting around me with vengeance in her rusty, doll-like eyes. “He was good to me! He made me!” she wailed, the distraught echoes of her voice bouncing off the nearest monuments.

  My temper cooled as I realized I was throwing anger and insults at what was essentially a child—and a traumatized child at that. I took a deep breath. “Look—”

  Maggie wasn’t interested in looking or listening; I rolled out of the way as she darted at me, blades bared. She stopped her momentum in midair and pivoted, intent on pursuing me.