Ashes (The Slayer Chronicles Book 3)

by Val St. Crowe

  But I wasn’t sure how I felt about all of it right now, after the Sonya revelation.

  Logan seemed to sense that and started off for his own room. He went inside, but he didn’t close the door. I trailed after him, standing in the doorway.

  He went over to the window, peered outside.

  I watched him. He was beautiful from behind—his powerful shoulders, his sculpted wings. “Listen, Logan…” But then I didn’t know what to say.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “it’s just so bright in the daytime.”

  “What?” I said, making my way into his room.

  He continued to stare out the window. “When Cunningham made it so that I could stop being stone, it was the first time I’d ever seen daylight, you realize that?”

  “Oh,” I said. I suppose that I hadn’t.

  “I mean, sure, I’ve seen it on television and movies. In photos. I thought I knew what to expect. But sometimes the sun… it’s so damned bright. I find myself missing the dark, missing the cool moonlight.”

  “I guess you must,” I said.

  He turned to look at me. “Do you want to sleep alone tonight?”

  “I think I might,” I said. “I know we didn’t actually make love during our last night, so I’m sorry, but it’s not as if you didn’t…” I stuck my hands into my pockets.

  “It is about the Sonya business, then?”

  “What else would it be about?”

  “That stuff you were saying the other morning, about what Cunningham did to us, using each other’s bodies. I know that he would make me do things that were physically painful to you.”

  “No,” I said. “They weren’t.”

  “You told me that they were when we were in that room.”

  I was quiet. “I don’t like to think about that.”

  “No?” said Logan. “Because it was awful for me—for us—Naelen and me. Worse than watching the other one with you was all of us at once. And Cunningham would ask you if you liked it, and you would say—”

  “Don’t.” My voice broke.

  “I just don’t understand, Clarke. Either you hated it, and you were being violated or it was your deepest fantasy come to life. Which is it?”

  “Neither,” I said. I backed up.

  “Clarke.” He was coming after me.

  I turned away from him and ran. I needed to get away from all of this. I ran into my room and shut the door.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I sunk my hands into my hair and started to pace.

  I had never wanted the things that Cunningham had made me do. Left to myself, I would have lived out my entire life without experiencing most of it. In that way, it had been a violation of my body and myself.

  I didn’t even want to think of this anymore. I wanted to think of anything else and go to sleep. Down here, there would be no footsteps in the attic, and so I should be able to drift off just fine. But now my head seemed clogged full of thoughts that I didn’t want, and I didn’t know how to fight it.

  My bag with my clothes was sitting on my bed, and I ripped it open. I’d put on my pajamas and lie down and I’d force myself to sleep.

  But the first thing I saw was that monocle that Dasher had given me.

  I snatched that up, turning it over in my hands. I started to pace again.

  Maybe… if I was really honest with myself, the truth was that some part of me had wanted the things Cunningham made us do. Not in a real way, though. It had been a fantasy, but not a fantasy I actually wanted to come true.

  The reality had been painful and messy, and now everything was turned upside down.

  But as I turned the monocle over in my hands, I wondered if that wasn’t the thing that had been bothering me all along.

  Cunningham had said to me over and over that he was doing this for me, that he was giving me what I really wanted, deep down.

  And I had told myself that he was wrong.

  But maybe he was right. Maybe I did want two men at once.

  No, okay, it was time to cut the crap. I was in a relationship with two men, and I wasn’t running screaming for the hills. I stopped and peered in the mirror that hung on the wall next to my door.

  “I want them both,” I whispered to my reflection.

  And now I had them both. No matter how it had come about, they were mine, and I needed to stop being in denial about my desires and try to enjoy this.

  I put the monocle to my eye.

  And the talisman hanging around my neck came alive with multi-colored, interwoven threads.

  I took the monocle off.

  Normal talisman.

  Put the monocle back on.

  Crazy thready talisman.

  Huh.

  What was that all about?

  I looked around the rest of the room through the monocle. Everything else looked the same. Why was it my talisman that looked different?

  Well, everything in my room was normal, but my talisman was magic.

  I wondered…. I went over to the window, fished the ward out from behind the curtain. Yup. It was the same thing, surrounded by interwoven threads, made of all different vibrant colors. The thing practically seemed to glow in my hands. And it looked like it would be so easy to unweave those threads. There was a little thread hanging down right there. I bet if I pulled it, the whole thing would unravel.

  I pulled the thread.

  I was right. The threads unraveled. As they did, they lost their color, grew bland, and then turned black. And then they disappeared.

  Whoa. What had I just done?

  I had a bad feeling that I had made the ward here worthless. I peered out the window. “Don’t come in here, crazy brother.”

  No, Riley’s brother was probably in the attic. And the attic door was locked, very possibly by magic.

  If this monocle allowed me to unravel magic, then maybe I could get in that door.

  I hurried out into the hallway. I thought about waking the guys, but I wanted to test this on my own to be sure that it worked before I got their hopes up. I ran down the hallway and into the foyer. Then I hurried up all the steps. As I ran, I looked around for anything magic that I might have missed before, but I didn’t see anything except the occasional ward, and I didn’t want to mess with those.

  I got to the top floor, and I looked down into the wing where the dragons had attacked us. Why was the damage that they’d caused isolated to that area? It was almost as if someone had known we were up there and had directed the dragons to attack accordingly.

  Had to have been the brother.

  I considered going up into the strange attic room we’d found, but I didn’t think the brother was up there, so I went to the other attic entrance again.

  However, when I got to the top of the steps, there were two gargoyles standing there.

  But the gargoyles looked so strange. They were completely covered in tightly woven threads. The threads were bright, bright colors, making halos around their bodies. There were also threads trailing off of them, reaching further back into the attic.

  The trailing threads were compulsion threads! I’d actually felt compulsion threads. Back in Highpoint, the first time I’d met Cunningham, he had compelled me to go back to the hotel where I was staying and get the arrowhead for him. I hadn’t been meant to touch it, but Naelen had helped me. When I’d ended Cunningham’s compulsion, I’d felt tethers break.

  Whoever was compelling those gargoyles, if I broke those compulsion threads, I’d be able to set them free.

  “You can’t be up here,” said one of the gargoyles. “Mr. Chapman was very clear to us that we had to keep you away.”

  “Which Mr. Chapman?” I said. “Riley? Or his brother?”

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” said another of the gargoyles.

  Abruptly, I threw myself onto the floor and slid on my stomach. Behind them, I stood up and reached for the threads.

  Damn, they were strong. I tried to break them, but they held. Instea
d, the thread began to unravel from where it was interwoven with other threads—threads that seemed to reach into the gargoyle’s heads.

  I let go of the thread. Gargoyles were constructed of magic. I had to be careful. If I unraveled the wrong thing, I could completely destroy them.

  One of them seized me by the arm. “You can’t be back here,” he said again, dragging me back to the steps.

  Damn it, damn it. I couldn’t even get to the door to see if it was sealed with magic, could I? But I wasn’t willing to sacrifice these gargoyle’s lives. I’d come back in the daylight, when they were stone.

  I put my hands up. “Okay, okay, sorry. I’m going. I’m going.”

  * * *

  When I was going back through the hallway, I stopped at Logan’s room. I knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  Had he left to go watch TV again? I tried the door knob. It turned in my hands, and I eased the door open.

  I could see that Logan was lying in his bed on his side, his wings facing me. He was stone.

  I entered the room and closed the door behind me. And then I went over to the other side of the bed and stared down at Logan’s stone features. I reached out and brushed his cheek.

  All at once, he came to life, seizing my wrist.

  I let out a little cry.

  “Clarke,” he said, letting out a breath of relief.

  “H-how did you do that? It usually takes you a few minutes to wake up when you’re stone.”

  “I’ve been practicing,” he said. “I thought that being stone could be a liability if I couldn’t switch back quickly enough. I’m vulnerable in that in-between time. So, I did it over and over again until I could do it quick. What’s up? What are you doing with that monocle?”

  “I think you did something to it.” I held it up. “Because now, when I look through it, I can see magic.”

  “What?” He pushed himself into a sitting position.

  “Here, look,” I said, handing it to him.

  He put it to his eye.

  “Look at my talisman,” I said. “Look at yourself.”

  “I don’t see anything,” he said, handing it back.

  I put it back up to my eye. Logan was comprised of tons of interlocking brilliant threads. “You don’t see the threads?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Didn’t see anything. Must only work for you.”

  “Weird,” I said, taking it away from my eye. I explained to him about the threads and about dismantling the magic on the ward, about confirming that the gargoyles were, in fact, under compulsion, and that I couldn’t figure out how to break the compulsion threads without taking them completely apart.

  “Wow, this is crazy, Clarke,” he said. “This thing is awesome.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You think we should wake Naelen up and tell him?”

  “Um…” I twisted my hands together. “Well, we can’t do anything until the morning, and it is your night.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you were pissed off over the Sonya thing.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was at first, but now it doesn’t seem as big of a deal. I needed some time to get used to it. It made me feel special to be the only person you’d ever been with, I guess. I didn’t realize how much. But it’s crazy to ask that of you. You’re not the only person I’ve ever been with. Anyway, I’m not angry anymore.” And I wasn’t. I wanted Logan to be happy. If I couldn’t always be there to make him happy, then it was okay. I could live with that. I cocked my head to one side. “Is that how you feel about me and Naelen?”

  “Actually, yeah,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy to accept, but I know that he makes you happy.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “And that’s the most important thing. That you’re happy. I want you to be happy.”

  “That’s all I want for you.”

  I smiled at him. “One other thing?”

  “What?”

  I took a deep breath. “If I’m being truly honest, I did get a charge out being with both of you at the some time. So, never worry about hurting me. There wasn’t any pain that wasn’t balanced by pleasure.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Not that I would ever have chosen to do that on my own, and I never will again,” I said. “But I do love both of you, and I have you both now, so—however we got here—I just want to make it work as best as we can.”

  “Okay,” he said again.

  I kissed him, running my fingers over his broad, strong shoulders. “I love you.” I let my hands travel over his pecks. “I want you.”

  He pulled me into his lap.

  Our lips met.

  * * *

  But afterward, lying there with Logan, I was still struck by how different it felt to be with him than it did with Naelen. I still felt that there was a more intense and profound connection between me and Naelen, and that Logan and I were separate in some way that I couldn’t quite define.

  Did that mean something?

  Or was it simply that I had a different relationship with both of the men? Maybe my sexual connection with Naelen was more intense, but I was bonded to Logan in other ways—through our shared history, through our long-term friendship. Maybe it was silly to expect things to be the same between me and each of the guys.

  I was going to stop thinking about this, stop looking for problems.

  This was our life. These were my boyfriends. It was time to own it.

  First thing in the morning, we didn’t even go look for breakfast. We weren’t sure if it would be there, anyway. The gargoyles hadn’t much seemed interested in doing dinner for us the night before. Maybe they hadn’t left breakfast, anyway.

  Logan and I woke Naelen up, and we made him come up to the attic with us. As we walked, I explained about the monocle and what I’d done last night.

  “So, let me get this straight,” said Naelen, turning the monocle over in his hands. “This allows you to see magic threads that you can unweave and undo the magic.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “How weird,” said Naelen, putting the monocle up to his eye. “I don’t see anything.” He handed it back to me.

  “I didn’t see anything through it either,” said Logan. “Must only work for Clarke.”

  “I swear you switched it on or something, Logan. I’ve looked through it a zillion times. What are the odds that I never saw any magic through it?” I put it up to my eye to check out Naelen.

  Unlike Logan, who was wrapped in woven threads, Naelen had brightly colored strings attached to his body and they were streaming out behind him as if they were blowing in the wind. It looked as if he was wearing a multi-colored cape. I guessed that because dragons created magic, the magic was raw and unwoven. I wouldn’t be able to undo the magic that was in Naelen. I could only undo the interlaced magic, magic that had been used to do something.

  Wanting to test my theory, I made us all stop. We were all the way on the top floor of the house by now, and we were heading down the hallway toward the steps to the attic.

  “Naelen, use magic to lift something.”

  He shrugged. “Uh. Sure.” He pointed at an old looking dagger in an ornate sheath. It floated into the air, but through the monocle, I could see that threads were emanating from Naelen’s finger and weaving their way around the dagger, keeping it afloat.

  I went over and plucked at one of the threads.

  The dagger bobbed in the air.

  I tugged at the thread and the magic began to unravel. I tugged and tugged.

  The dagger fell to the ground with a clatter.

  “Whoa,” I said. And then I felt light-headed and began to waver on my feet.

  Logan and Naelen were next to me, holding me up.

  “You completely undid my magic,” said Naelen.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cool, huh?” My stomach picked that moment to growl viciously. “Ugh. Maybe it was a bad idea to skip breakfast.”

  “We’re not going down all
those steps now,” said Logan.

  I took the monocle away from my eye, stretching the muscles in my face. “It’s kind of a pain keeping it up on my eye. Hurts to keep squinting like that.”

  “Maybe it works like a talisman,” said Logan. “Maybe if it’s touching your skin, you can use it.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m holding it now and I’m not seeing anything.”

  “Huh,” said Logan, thinking about it.

  “Maybe like this,” said Naelen, holding out his palm and laying the monocle flat on it. “Maybe all the edges of the circle have to be against flesh, like if it was on your face.”

  I snatched it back and placed it on my palm.

  I could see the threads again. “Cool,” I said, wrapping my hand around it. “Maybe I could make the chain wrap around my neck, and I could just put it inside my shirt when I wanted to be able to use it.”

  “Can we keep going to the attic?” said Logan.

  “Oh, definitely,” I said. “Let’s go.” I hurried off, taking the lead.

  The guys caught up to me right away.

  We got to the attic steps and climbed up them. At the top, there were no gargoyle guards, stone or otherwise. We went down the narrow corridor to the closed door.

  Except this time, the door was open.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  We all stopped in our tracks.

  I didn’t think any of us had been expecting that.

  Naelen moved forward. “I’ll go first, okay? Whatever’s in there, I breathe fire.”

  “If that room was containing someone,” I said, “like a crazy woman, I bet she’s out and about in the house now.”

  We all turned to look behind us.

  I didn’t have my bow and arrows. I’d been too excited to bother bringing them. Anyway, I’d been pretty sure that I could handle anything with my newfound magic-dismantling powers. But now I wondered what we’d do if something came at us that wasn’t magic at all, just deadly and violent.

  “We have to see what’s inside,” Logan breathed. We’d all suddenly started whispering, as if anyone inside that room hadn’t already heard us.

  Naelen started to inch forward.