Grave Signs (Hellgate Guardians Book 4)

by Ivy Asher

  The only thing is, I don’t know what I’ll be shaped into, or whose hands are guiding the molten substance melting my insides. I feel like I’m liquified and reshaped in less than a minute, and all I can hope is that I come out whole and that I don’t come out looking like a dolphin figurine jumping over water, but something harder, designed to withstand the test of time. Something strong enough to withstand Morax.

  Wings shove out of my back. Each hair follicle flares with heat and then cools like the shaft of each hair is imbued with power now. Parts of myself I never knew were locked away break open, and I find things like vengeance, power, and innate knowledge unfurling inside of me.

  I fall to my knees with the heaviness of it all, and I’m torn from Medley’s grasp. A weight alights in my palm, and I clutch my newly fire-baptized hand around the scythe as I lay it across my lap. I look down at the weapon in my grasp, and it’s like I know exactly what I need to do. Like my hands are moving of their own accord with knowledge I didn’t have before, I open my other palm and use Toreon’s weapon to slice open my hand. With a bloody palm, I wrap my fingers around the scythe and seal myself to it, somehow knowing that this will bond us together forever.

  I’ll honor the weapon by mastering it just like all my ancestors did before me. I’ll learn the lessons waiting for me in the grain of its wood and the composition of the blades. I have no doubt I’ll become so much more than I am under its guidance, and pure gratitude washes through me.

  Little by little, the heat recedes, and I feel my malleable body harden. Seconds pass, and a deep shuddering breath flows in my lungs. When I blink, my transition is done, and I dash away the tears that had slipped down my cheeks.

  I carefully take a moment to feel the weight of my weapon in my hands, and then I easily send it away, just in case someone comes to snoop. I wrap up this new, powerful part of me and hide it beneath my skin, biding my time until the moment I can make Morax feel the arc of my blade across his soul.

  “Whoa. That sure was somethin’,” Medley whispers, and I look over to find her kneeling in front of me.

  “Did you melt too?” I ask, the question sounding oddly silly, and yet there’s really no other way to put what just happened.

  Her gray eyes widen, and she brings a healed hand up to her chest. “I can feel you, Sable,” she tells me with a tearful gasp, patting just over her heart. “I can feel you and Delta where you should have always been.”

  A tear escapes her eye, and she bows her head reverently, her hand over our connection like an extra layer of protection. I nod, knowing exactly what she means, only for me, they were always there in my soul. But the connection is stronger now. I can feel the bonds that braid us together as one. Nefta’s wards may have tried to block us from each other, but we’re reunited now, and there’s no way Delta didn’t feel that, wherever she is.

  Medley gasps and her eyes widen in surprise when they snap up to mine. “The blackness. I can feel it now too.”

  “You can?” I ask with excitement, because just as she says that, I reach out in my mind, and I can feel it too. It’s like a calm wave, ready to move where I need it. “Try to practice with it,” I say with budding hope. “See if you can cocoon yourself.”

  A small smile curves her lips. “This is crazy. It’s right there, so easy to use,” she says in a rush, and I notice her gray eyes darkening. “Yeah, there it is. I can—”

  Before she can finish those words, she suddenly slumps over. “Medley!” I reach out and catch her before she can hurt herself, my arms extended through the bars. Panic pumps hard through my veins as I lay her on her side. I call her name quietly as lifeless dark gray eyes stare back at me. Terror takes over, and I check her pulse, beyond relieved when I feel it steady and strong in her neck.

  What in the world just happened? It’s like someone just flipped her off switch.

  And then it dawns on me. This is what I must look like when I’m wearing my darkness like a cloak. She looks like someone just turned her off, because that’s exactly what happened. I realize I probably should’ve warned her about the paralysis part that I usually experience when my dark cocoon kicks in.

  I quickly move into Medley’s line of sight where her head is pressed against the stone floor. “You’re going to be just fine,” I reassure her. “This is what happens to me too. You can’t move or feel, but it wears off,” I explain. “We’ll have to figure out a way to protect ourselves while still allowing us to function. This pause mode we seem to do isn’t as effective as we need it to be if we’re going to use it to get out of here. But I bet we can learn how to change it now that we have full control,” I tell her as I brush hair out of her face.

  I feel bad that I didn’t warn her about the shutdown part, but I’m elated that she was able to do what I did. Hopefully that means she can make herself impervious to Morax like I can.

  I accidentally leave a smudge of blood on Medley’s cheek from where I cut my hand open, but before I can wipe it away, it soaks into her skin. I watch her for a second more and then get up and walk to the other side of my cage.

  “Thank you for letting us use this,” I tell Toreon, holding out his obsidian weapon, feeling hurried to return something that I’m sure is precious to him.

  He looks as apathetic as ever, but his eyes swirl with molten interest. I have a sudden desire to crack him open like an egg, just so I can see what’s going on in that head of his, but I try to push it aside. What he’s thinking is none of my business.

  As I hand it over, he plucks it from my grasp, but then he looks down at it with a frown.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say quickly, realizing I didn’t wipe it off. “I kind of bled on it a little, it might be a little sticky.” I cringe, wondering if he’s going to be irritated at the less than pristine condition.

  I look around my cell for something he can use to wipe it off, and pick up a piece of my shredded tattered blanket. “You can use this to wipe it?” I offer, but he doesn’t look up at me. Instead, he keeps staring at the tool. A barely-there noise escapes him, and I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been so intent on him. His golden gaze is fixed on his hand like he’s witnessing something that he doesn’t know how to comprehend.

  Sheesh, it’s just a little blood. He could always go run it under his own barely dripping sink and wash it off, but the guy just stares at it. I try to dismiss it, but then I remember my reaction when I thought I was going to have to drink Medley’s blood, and I guess I can’t really blame him for being icked out.

  “Here,” I tell him, wriggling the blanket in front of him.

  “It’s fine,” Toreon finally says, his voice just above a whisper.

  With a shrug, I toss the blanket on the floor behind me as he slips the weapon in the pocket of his ripped up pants, and then he looks down at his hand again.

  I watch, confused by his reaction. He doesn’t look grossed out so much as shocked. He presses back into the corner of the shadows, shrouding any more of his strange reactions, and I hear him take several deep breaths like he’s trying to calm himself.

  “Thank you again,” I offer as I make my way back and slip behind the stone wall of my tiny enclosure where my toilet and sink is. I do my business and try to clean up a little, but the trickles coming from the spout aren’t very effective.

  Coming back out, I head over to Medley and sit next to her, in hopes that my body heat will help warm her a little until she can get up and move around again. Not that I’m exactly warm myself since I’m still mostly naked, but I hope at least that my presence will keep her calm. I’d put the blanket on her, but the last time I offered, she refused it.

  “It seems it worked.” Toreon’s disembodied voice floats over to me from the shadows he’s sitting in. I’m surprised by his comment and by the fact that he’s even talking at all.

  I press back against the wall behind me, trying to get comfortable, and my wings help shield me from the cold of the stone behind me.

  “Yeah, it definitely did som
ething. If I don’t blink back into the wingless girl with black hair, then we’ll know for sure,” I joke, but I have no doubt that I’ll never see that version of myself again.

  Good riddance.

  That old Sable was lost and broken and human. But this new Sable? She’s whole and found. A powerful hybrid. Not a delusional patient. I never want to go back to that other part of me, that scared little girl, or that conflicted woman. I wish I could purge the memories of her altogether.

  “You should get some rest,” Toreon says, drawing my eyes over to the direction of his cage. “There’s no telling when Morax will come back, and you need to keep up your strength.”

  I nod as I slide down to the ground, not even bothering to go get the sad excuse for a blanket. My dark wings come around me, one of them acting like my very own cushion, and the other wrapping around me like a blanket, and I fall into a deep sleep with the feel of feathers against my cheek.

  11

  I’m in one of those dreams where I know that I’m dreaming. Normally, those are great because they feature a hot guy who’s usually game to get down and dirty, but I can tell right away that this isn’t one of those kinds of dreams.

  Turning around, I check out the backdrop that my subconscious created for me, and I’m immediately flooded by a sense of dread. Monochromatic walls in a tiny apartment that smells like stale coffee and cigarettes. I see the room, see the cardboard box of secondhand toys pushed haphazardly against the TV stand.

  The sound of voices has me looking around, and I see a faceless couple, both blonde and tan, Charlie Brown voices blubbering back and forth.

  Frowning, I watch their blurry forms move, talking to each other with impassioned hand gestures as they argue in the kitchen, and I know right then that this is them. My adoptive parents. The people who gave me up at three years old.

  I back up, my heels hitting that cardboard box of toys behind me. But when I turn around to look, I see three-year-old me standing at my feet. My mouth goes dry as I stare down at me—because there’s no doubt that’s who this is.

  Large gray eyes, too big for my small face, are haunted against pale skin and short, straight black hair. I stare at her, and she stares at me, and while everything else in this dream is muted and blurry, she’s vivid. Some might even think she looks creepy, but I know what’s behind those haunted eyes and tired dark circles.

  Her mouth moves, and I kneel down in front of her, suddenly feeling like I want to cry. “What did you say?” I ask, forcing myself to hear her.

  She looks at me steadily, no smile, no fidgeting one might expect from a little kid. “The monsters made me do it.”

  Chills skate over my arms, and when she looks down, I look with her, only to see that she’s now holding a dead cat in her arms. Nausea roils up in my stomach, and I shoot up to my feet, willing this dream to go away, because I don’t want to remember what happens next. But my mind doesn’t seem to care.

  Time flashes forward, and I’m not in the tiny apartment anymore, but outside a foreboding building, and this place I do recognize. Hyde Pediatric Psychiatry Ward.

  The screams of my three-year-old self erupt around me, and I see me being carried into the ward, kicking and screaming, by Dr. Fallows. “He’s a monster! They’re all monsters!” I cry, but there’s no one there to advocate for me because my adoptive parents are already gone.

  I know my file. I know the justifications. I was a danger to myself and others. I killed a pet. I threw myself down a flight of stairs. I wasn’t normal. I creeped people out. I constantly screamed and cried and spoke about the monsters.

  But...now I know that none of it was in my head. Dr. Fallows was just another demon, and I was being taken away by the very monsters I was so terrified of.

  The scene flashes away as a sob gets caught in my throat.

  “Wake up,” I tell myself, but it doesn’t work. I’m in too deep. Just the thought of trying to dig myself out makes exhaustion wrap around me like ropes tossed over my body, yanking me further down.

  When the scene bounces away to a new time and place, it’s smack dab in the middle of the fight. The last time I saw my one and only steady boyfriend of two years.

  I see my twenty-four-year-old self standing with her hands braced on the metal countertop, a pane of thick plastic separating me from Matt while he screams at me on the other side, calling me all kinds of names, like psycho, crazy, bitch.

  My jaw grinds as I listen to him yell about all the empty bottles of alcohol he found hidden beneath the sink of our apartment—the ones I hadn’t been able to get rid of because I was in jail. Then he harps on me about the weed and the sleeping pills, as he spills all my secrets to the people around us, all the things I’d hidden from him. I tried to self-medicate, desperately attempting to ignore the monsters that I constantly saw every damn day of my life. But I always slipped up sooner or later. And that time, I slipped worst of all.

  I can’t hear everything Matt’s saying, but I don’t know if that’s because I’ve truly forgotten or if I’ve just blocked that encounter enough that I’ve blotted it out by now. But I remember the gist. I was a liar, insane, and he was glad I’d gotten arrested. Glad that I was declared mentally unfit and would be taken away. He was glad, I was devastated. That right there should’ve told me what kind of man he was.

  After Matt storms out, it’s only the correction officers standing there in matching uniforms, staring at me with eyes filled to the brim with judgment and condemnation. I see myself of four years ago as I crumble into a ball on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest as I sob. My heart pangs in my chest at the sight, and even though tears track down my cheeks, anger rises like flames.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I hear my past self whimper, and my temper flares even hotter.

  “Nothing is wrong with you,” I say, even though she can’t hear me. “That monster you chased away deserved to be shoved in front of that car. You were protecting that little boy you took from him.”

  That knowledge is too late now, though. A lifetime too late.

  My childhood, my sisters, my young adult life, all stolen from me. And now the rest of my adult life has been stolen too. By another bastard monster.

  No.

  I’ve let demons ruin my life for long enough, and I refuse to let Morax or anyone else steal more from me.

  “I’ve had enough.” My words are quiet, but they sound heavy, like thudding footsteps. “I’ve had enough!” I shout, and my voice rents through the air and cracks the walls of the scene, making it crumble at my feet until I’m standing in nothing but a black shadow.

  My chest rises and falls quickly as I look around, and I realize with a jolt that this isn’t just any shadow. This is my darkness. The black vision that ebbs over my eyes and protects my mind from harm. This is what lives in the recesses of my head, this pulsing, omnipotent power that I never realized I always had access to.

  “Impressive.”

  I whirl around at the abrupt voice, and there, standing a few paces away, is a male I’ve never seen before. He’s standing in the darkness—in my darkness—and looking around it as it moves like liquid in a lava lamp, with a hint of fascination on his face.

  He has taupe skin, shades darker than mine, with a feathered pair of ginger-colored wings at his back. His hair looks like espresso, with just the faintest hint of orange to go with his wings, and he has short horns at the edge of his hairline. A pair of severely straight eyebrows lift up at the ends, giving him a sinister Mr. Spock-like edge. The scar that cuts through one of his brows and down the corner of his eye makes him look all the more tough and menacing.

  Chiseled jawline, aquiline nose, both features harsh enough that the tiniest hint of fangs peeking over his thick bottom lip makes him look more handsome than monstrous, because it all fits him somehow. He carries an edge of threat, but oddly, I’m not afraid of him.

  “Who are you?”

  He finally turns to me, and I can see the flash of black piercing through
his septum, and another scar that runs from the corner of his lip and stretches over his jaw. “Don’t you know?” he asks with a frown, and I’m trapped by a pair of the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen.

  I’m staring—I know I am, but for a second, I can’t make myself look away. “Should I?” I ask, my voice a little wobblier than I’d like.

  He arches his scarred brow like he’s annoyed, but the glint in his eye tells me otherwise. “You keep calling.”

  I blink as his words register, and then my mouth drops open. “You!” I exclaim, taking a step back. It’s him. The voice that keeps butting into my head.

  “I prefer the name Ire over you, but whatever tickles your wings, Snarls,” he says arrogantly, his blue eyes dipping down to take me in.

  I should care that even here in my dream-darkness, I’m in my underwear, just like I am in Morax’s cell. I should care that I’m dirty, and even though you can’t see the evidence of what’s been done to me on the outside, my inside is scarred beyond recognition.

  “Ire? Is that some kind of joke? I have Ire in my dreams? That’s not ironic at all.”

  He looks around the shadows again with contemplation. “Is that what this is? You’re dreaming?”

  “Well, I was. Now I don’t know what this is,” I admit. I do know that this isn’t a figment of my imagination, though. He’s too real. Too...present. I also know that this is different from my dream memories. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. “Just go away,” I tell him, suddenly feeling vulnerable. The darkness is for me, and it feels intimate for him to be here inside of it with me. Inside of this protective, pulsing part of me.

  He narrows those bright blues on me. “We’ve been over this, again and again, Snarls. You keep calling to me. Do you know how forward that is? You keep throwing yourself at me. It’s a little much.”

  My mouth drops open, and I glare at him, batting away the fumes of arrogance wafting off of him in heady waves. “News flash, Ire, this is not what it looks like when a girl throws herself at you. Clearly, you have little experience on the subject, so I’ll forgive your confusion...just this once,” I snark, and a spark of challenge alights in his eyes.