Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows)

by C. V. Larkin

  "How old are you, Tom?"

  "Twenty-seven."

  He shrugged and grabbed her hand hauling her towards the car. "You said you wanted to meet my Coven," he added when he caught her looking at him like a couple of bats had shaken loose from his belfry.

  She hadn't exactly said those words, but it was close enough to the result she'd been aiming for so she rolled with it.

  The woman in the car eyed them both with sour distaste as they slid into the back seat. "You're late," she said.

  "It's not even dark yet." Tom rolled his eyes in an overtly patronizing manor and put a proprietary hand on Tian's thigh. "Some of us last longer than others, Claire."

  "We both know that you're not one of them, Tom."

  Claire pulled away from the curb with a screech. She shot the warlock a venomous glare through the rearview and proceeded to exit the parking lot amid the chorus of blaring horns from the cars she'd cut off in the process. Warlock Tom continued to paw at Tian, who deflected by readjusting the angles of her body as they drove in uncomfortable silence. The sigils were burning clean, searing bone, and pulsing their encouragement. Tian gritted her teeth and rolled down her window to avoid filling the car with the stench of her own simmering flesh.

  The Camry coasted to a stop in the middle of a residential neighborhood not ten minutes later. The stucco houses were cookie cutter, difficult to differentiate from one another. Even so, Royal's spell barked in recognition, turning bits of muscle and bone in her wrists to pudding.

  "I had to get supplies," Clare said. "The least you and your 'guest' can do is help."

  The witch hit the release lever for the trunk and stalked up the walkway. Tom let out a long sigh and looked at Tian. "Baby, I've got a bad back. You can get those, right?"

  Tian cracked a shoulder and grabbed the bag in the trunk without a word. She followed Tom through the front door and down into the basement where a rag tag group of a dozen men and women were seated in various states of undress around a mottled pentagram drawn into the floor. Every face in the circle had the pursed, slightly constipated expression of blind concentration. If they hadn't been so fixated she would have sworn she'd stumbled into a real suburban eyes wide shut kind of acid trip. No one turned or acknowledged her presence. They were too focused on an object in the circle.

  Tian swore as the sigils exploded with recognition. They set the bag on fire and caused her to drop the damn thing on the floor. Several pairs of eyes turned to glare at the interruption. Tian ignored them. The Sidhe Chalice was unmistakable, banded in both silver and gold, alive with the kind of power that sparked legend.

  "What was that?"

  Tian dragged her eyes off the cup to glance at Warlock Tom where he stood at the top of the stairs. He slid the deadbolt to the basement door into place and removed the peacoat he was wearing.

  "You tell me," Tian answered. "You're the warlock."

  "You don't sound particularly impressed," said a voice from inside the room. The owner wasn't particularly impressive either.

  Warlock Tom still looked to him for assistance. "Was that supposed to happen?"

  The other guy shrugged, lanky auburn hair slipping into his eyes. He gestured for the chalice and took a sip of its contents. The air around him pulsed and he watched Tian with a fevered gaze. "Your desire is so strong that it physically manifests in the presence of magick. Pretty thing like you is going to make this the best ritual yet," he said, throwing his arms out wide. "Strip."

  The bastard obviously wasn't used to being disobeyed at this juncture of the program. He was also reaching. Tian got the inkling that the only thing most of these people had going for them magically was the possession of the Chalice. The danger was that they were deluded enough not to realize it. It was a damn miracle they'd gotten this far without having to account for their sins with the Preternatural powers that be.

  "Too bad about the scars," someone said from inside the circle.

  Tian cocked an eyebrow. "This bullshit you've got going on down here does what exactly?"

  The guy with the auburn hair glowered at her. "Don't make it rape."

  Tian unzipped her coat as the coven watched. "Sexual assault. Good job. All I want is the cup."

  "What's she talking about, Lenny?" a trembling female asked. "They want us. That's not assault, right?"

  "Shut up, Karen," Lenny told her. He grabbed a shitty looking hank of hair and shoved it out of his face.

  "Bad things happen to humans who dick around with free will," Tian continued. She palmed the handgrip to her gun and flicked the safety. "Especially when they use stolen power to do it."

  If any of them had ever seen violence up close, they would have known enough to get out of the line of fire. No one moved. They all just glared at her, full of self-righteous indignation and open hostility. The witch Claire made an angry topless grab for the Chalice as it was being passed around. Her breasts swung pendulously as she wrapped a delicate fist around the base and raised the cup to her lips. She paused. "You stupid bitch, this ritual is our power. This ritual makes us irresistible. It makes us GODS."

  Claire took a large slurp of whatever was in the cup, swallowed, and died, as the slug from Tian's 1911 plowed its way through the front of her skull. The fist-sized hole that exploded out the back, spewing bits of bone and brain matter, was less dainty. The limp body hit the ground with very little bounce or give.

  "It doesn't make you immortal," Tian said into the horrified silence.

  A high pitched keening started along with a flurry of panicked motion rippling out from Claire's corpse. Several members of the group began chanting in low tones. The sigils churned in Tian's wrists as a result of the low level power current, but as she'd suspected, they were impotent without being amped by the Chalice.

  "I don't want your blood, only the Chalice." Tian shot a hard look at ringleader Lenny. "Don't make me take it from you."

  She didn't want to kill anyone else, but she wasn't laboring under any illusions of her own decency. She'd slaughter every soul in the room if she had to.

  "It's a prop. I got it at an estate sale," the guy told her in a tone laced with undisguised hatred. Lenny glanced at Warlock Tom, who was wringing his hands in the corner, and gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

  "How could you do this to me," Tom wailed.

  The spindly bastard threw himself into Tian's gun arm as the rest of the coven bum-rushed her in a desperate bid to get up the steps and to the door. None of them were fighters, but they had zeal. Tian took a blow to the gut and several stinging and uncoordinated repeats to the face, which couldn't have been avoided given the number of assailants and the enclosed nature of the space. Fortunately, if there was one thing she could do, it was take a hit. She moved with the momentum of the assault, elbowing one of her attackers in the eye socket, and landing a solid strike with the butt of the 1911. The witch who'd been clocked with the gun hit the deck. The elbowed warlock gurgled, took one look at the blood spewing from his face and passed out.

  Tom wrapped himself around her knee caps in a half-hearted attempt at grappling as a burly rubber-clad goth threw himself across the dog-pile. The human condom clawed at the concrete for leverage and kicked hard. Tian holstered, and lunged after him, grabbing hold of his wildly swinging calf and getting belted in the face as he whipped around, connecting with the Sidhe Chalice, of all things. The force of the impact threw her and Tom back into the far wall and left her dazed. She wrenched herself back into focus as she was relieved of the 1911's holstered weight.

  "Everything I read says that sex and blood make for the most powerful rituals, and bitch, you have no idea what kinds of things we're going to do to you before you die."

  Lenny was right up in her face, gripping the front of her hair so he could hold her skull against the wall. He had her gun pointed at her chin. The copper taste of blood split her attention as it streamed from her nose and mouth. Tian slid the silver hunting knife from its sh
eath in her boot.

  "I already know what the tender mercies of a power hungry coven feel like."

  She buried the blade in his sternum. The gun went off and nicked her in the side of the jaw. She took back the 1911, breaking the corpse's index finger in her haste to get it out of the trigger guard.

  "Please don't kill me," Tom gasped. He was still wrapped like a toddler around her left leg.

  "Not unless you make me. Now let go," Tian said.

  The remaining members of the coven balked at the sound of her voice. The stragglers bolted up the stairs with the chalice in tow. Tom stumbled back, face puffed up and streaming with snot laced tears. Displaying the first glimpse of a self-preservation instinct she'd seen from him all night, he curled into the fetal position and stayed there. Tian hauled ass out of the basement. She threw herself out the front door of the house and down the walkway into the night. An ear splitting metal on metal whine preceded the gust from an airborne Buick that nearly took her head off. Tian hit the deck and rolled, coming to her feet and sprinting in the direction the thing had been thrown.

  A disheveled looking warlock stood slack jawed, marveling at his own inhuman display of false fae strength. His reverie didn't last long. She tackled him, putting him on the ground and wrenching his head around until it kissed the pavement. Rubber shrieked against asphalt to her left. She drew down, depressing the trigger in a series of smooth, controlled movements. The tires blew, throwing the vehicle off course and into the nearest light pole. Tian lunged for the car, hoping she had a couple of seconds before anyone got curious. She barreled straight over the trunk and dropped a combat boot through the already mangled moon roof. Tian crouched on top of the car and aimed the muzzle of her 1911 at the driver's skull.

  "All I want is the chalice."

  Whimpers and choking sobs echoed around the interior. A shaking hand held the cup up from the back seat through the opening she'd kicked in. Tian took it and the sigils exploded in her skin, bursting like black and gold road flares on contact. The occupants in the vehicle stared at her in terror.

  "What is that smell?" she heard someone from the cab whisper.

  "Me."

  She jumped off of the car and started jogging in the opposite direction. If they were lucky, the incident would look enough like a car accident that no one would question it. If they weren't, she wouldn't be the poor bastard who got stuck giving an explanation.

  Tian ran three miles and then waited for the latest motorist to bounce before ducking into the exterior bathroom of a local gas station. She locked the door behind her, dropped the Chalice on the floor, and gripped the sides of the sink. It was still early, so she didn't have to worry about getting stuck out on the fringes of the city. She did, however, have concerns about the hot mess staring back at her from the mirror. If she'd been built to be anything better than cannon fodder she would have been able to pull enough faerie glamour to make this pit stop unnecessary.

  She cranked the faucet, stripped her blood soaked motorcycle gloves, and began the arduous process of cleaning the shit out of her hair with the institution blue antibacterial hand soap available. It took a long time. Her face was next and she scrubbed the healing abrasions in her skin until they opened up and stung for all they were worth. There was a murky line between being violated and the violation of another. Hard to tell what tainted a soul worse.

  Tian wrung out her still damp gloves and shoved them back on. Methodically she wiped down the space. She sighed and picked up the Chalice. Dropping it on the floor had been disrespectful.

  Should have tossed it in the toilet instead.

  Tian slipped back out into the darkness and sprinted the rest of the way to the train. It took her six minutes to get there. It took thirty-seven minutes of uneventful jostling to get back to Powell Street Station. By the time she hit Geary Street her stomach was rolling with knots of dread in anticipation of the customary welcome from the Black Gate.

  She sped up, slipping the doorman a wad of hundreds as she got to the glass doors in front of the hotel. She started shucking her clothes the second she hit the lobby, dumping them in a pile in the corner of the fireplace. Tian lunged head first into the beckoning aether of the portal and a swift death.

  She should have been hoping for an expedient resurrection. When it happened, the glacial darkness gnawed at her from the inside out. It bit at the ends of her howling nervous system as she was wrenched piecemeal into existence and vomited onto the floor of the Oracle's Temple. Tian choked, spewing ichor from too many disturbing orifices to count. Desperation had her clutching the Chalice until her hands bled black where her nails dug into her palms. She was shaking so severely she thought the muscles would snap her bones. Barbarous unyielding hands tore at her, shoving past the rigor in her limbs as she struggled not to pass out under the torture of the new assault. The Oracle grabbed the Chalice and shook her, jerking her around like a pit bull with a squirrel. He was repeatedly chanting the phrase, "Miserable cunt mongrel" under his breath like it had become his new favorite mantra.

  She convinced her broken hands to let go to stop the abuse and uncurled a few fingers. It was enough. The Oracle wrenched the Chalice free with a victorious curse. Tian squeezed her eyes shut, still expelling large streams of blood tinged acid darkness in starts and stops. She dragged in shallow breaths during the rare non-vomiting moments in between. The Oracle, who seemed to have forgotten she existed, was muttering to himself several feet away.

  He may have been relieved to have the cup back in his possession, but he didn't sound happy. Tian leveraged herself onto hands and knees, sitting back on her heels because she was incapable of holding herself upright. The Oracle turned as if the movement had once again made her a target for his attention. She froze. He held the Chalice loosely in one hand and worried the filigree length of his pipe between the thumb and middle finger of the other.

  "If you could have anything you wanted, breed, what would it be?"

  Oblivion.

  She didn't answer right away. He wasn't looking at her when he'd posed the question. Those reptilian eyes of his were calculating, distant.

  "I would beg your permission to return to the mortal coil, Oracle," Tian answered. She averted her face and stared into the mist as not to incur any more of the psycho's wrath.

  He laughed and the sound echoed off the vast acoustics of their surroundings. "Oh, you'll have that. I will, however, require one more thing before you go."

  Tian looked up as the slender tube from the Oracle's pipe slammed through the front of her torso with a pop. Her jaw dropped. He worked the delicate cylinder deeper into her chest until she was impaled, punctured on one side like a juice box.

  "I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner," he said. "What better receptacle than an immortal mutt with no gift or ability to draw power."

  He leaned down and filled the Chalice with the shifting liquid at his feet. Mists rolled off it in colors Tian had never seen before. The Oracle smiled maliciously. Her chest burned around the point of insertion, the pain reasserting itself with every subtle shift of his arm. He lifted the cup to his lips and the metal went dark, consuming the light around itself as he began to drink. Oracle's eyes glinted, cycling through the spectrum a fraction of a second behind his mutable skin. When he spoke his voice came out distorted, metallic, and warped. Rusted.

  "I am slave to none, Little Death. Least of all her." The Oracle wrapped his lips around the end of the pipe that had been drooling her blood all over his chest and pushed.

  Suddenly she was weightless, formless, aware of everything in infinitesimal detail. Tian was filled to bursting by a wave of vast incomprehensible power. The long lost Goddess flared to life, unfurling in bright streamers of ecstatic pain; trailing satin barbs of sensation in the wake of her consciousness. The deity's joy in the newly forged connection was visceral and as much as Tian wanted to hate it, she couldn't. Possession, homecoming, it was the same, comforting and deeply disturb
ing. The only way out was in.

  The lost Goddess Danu's presence grew beyond the edges of infinity, consuming, feasting, and giving back until Tian couldn't separate herself from the otherworldly presence in her skull. Long extinct emotions rattled through cells, clicking into empty places like tumblers in a lock, making whole that which had been torn asunder.

  It hurt.

  It hurt more than death. More than resurrection.

  Tian screamed with the Goddess's golden voice ricocheting through her skull. She screamed until the sound lost its meaning and until the mists coalesced around her like a shroud. Tian screamed, and didn't stop until she was sucked back into the portal, and the racket was drowned in the infinite darkness of The Black Gate.

  Chapter 9

  Unmade

  Xavier was out of his mind with anxiety and it was a good goddamned thing the feeling wasn't a frequent occurrence. He sat piss drunk in the last armchair she'd been in, and worried at the star-spun alloy of the Angel Blade across his lap. The broadsword was a crutch. He cleaned it every time he got himself fucked up like this. If he were a normally anxious prick, Heaven's Middle Finger would be a nub by now.

  He strained to hear Royal's soft conversation over the curtain of classical music the demon had blaring in the room next door, and got nothing. The bastard didn't even like classical music. He only listened to the shit because he knew how irritating it could be. It was the icing on the cake that made the utter torture of the last twenty minutes twofold. Problem was, Xavier had no right to complain. He didn't have the balls to send Tian into an unknown situation that had the potential to destroy her soul...even if it gave her an equal shot at her own salvation.

  He loved her too much, had been in love with her for too long. It was a problem. The thought of losing what little was left of her made him selfish, squeamish, which was why the demon was the one doing the deed. Because as much as he couldn't bear the risk, it had to be done. She deserved the chance.