Dance of Ashes and Smoke (Age of Monsters Book 1)

by Harley Gordon

  I couldn’t deny the truth of her words. “He’s made it a little easier, hasn’t he? He’s not too hard to look at either.”

  She faked a gasp. “Did you just say something nice about him?”

  “She did. I heard it.”

  We jumped, then ripped the covers off to see Jackson, a goofy grin taking up most of his face. My face heated up as I scrambled for a way to take it back.

  The bed shook beneath me as Liv laughed into the pillow. I cleared my throat and dove for my bag and weapons, hugging my favorite sword to my chest. It was the kind that broke into two. Mom had bought it for me for my fifteenth birthday. I’d always loved swords.

  Needing to be surrounded by stuff from home, I dumped out my bag on the floor and sat in the middle of it. A few favorite books with photos shoved between the pages I wasn’t ready to see, duct tape, ammo, my Clash tee like the one I’d borrowed from Jax, camping gear, burner phones and chargers, and a dozen other odds and ends we might need.

  Most of our stuff from home went up in flames—other than the few things Liv and I grabbed. Mostly clothes and blankets. I tried not to be disappointed, knowing we’d need everything I’d packed, but I had hoped for more precious objects. I guessed there hadn’t been enough room especially since we’d traveled by motorcycles.

  Jackson cleared his throat. “I thought you might want to look through this.”

  I looked up and fought tears as I took Alcott’s bag from him. “Thanks.” He and Liv left the room.

  I shoved everything back into mine first, leaving the books on top to look through later. I’d need the reminder; I’d need the courage. I didn’t dump Al’s, but reached in and pulled items out one at a time.

  Most of it was the same as mine, useful stuff to keep us alive. But at the bottom I found his treasures. Mom’s copy of Little Women by her favorite author who she and Dad named Alcott after. Tucked inside was Dad’s favorite print of Monet’s, the one with poppy fields. It was small, the size of a greeting card, but he’d thought to stick it in the book. Why had he never told me?

  I stroked the picture, thinking of the large copy hanging above our fireplace back at our real home. Was it still there? Or had it been ripped from the wall and burned for being too subversive? In other words, too hopeful.

  The monsters wanted us downtrodden and hopeless, no spark fueling us to rise up. But it would be generations before we forgot the stories and beauty we’d spent our lives seeing and hearing and reading. The spark would take a long time to die off and fade and we just had to keep the flame lit.

  It’s what Alcott wanted. He was determined to do whatever it took to heal our world, to inspire others.

  And the only way I knew how to start was making sure the sorceress could never hurt anyone again the way she’d hurt us.

  I put his treasures in my pack and reached for the packet. Whatever was inside better be worth my brother’s life. I frowned at the stack of papers. The top sheet called it The Book of Thoth. It rang a bell from research long ago, but I had a hard time placing it. I turned the page where a small synopsis was typed.

  This is all the information we could gather from the long lost Books of Thoth. Only a few spells remain, useful but mostly incomplete. Little information beyond Thoth’s philosophies remain. Many believe that Thoth was the writer of the Book of the Dead so the list of spells is included.

  What use did we have for spells? We had no magic, and I had no interest in playing around with it. Magic was for monsters and I refused to sully myself with it.

  I flipped through the rest of the pages, skimming parables and spells and runes littered throughout in no clear order. Most of it was nonsense or useless unless we found ourselves in the underworld. Which I wasn’t certain we weren’t trapped in already.

  Nothing in it would help us with the sorceress or the chimera.

  I tossed it in my bag, figuring we should take it along just in case. At least the C-4 would be helpful.

  Olivia and Jackson burst back in the bedroom, excitement brimming in their eyes. “Someone just posted on the message board asking for help. There’s a small town in Virginia the monsters missed and they said a magic arrived and is causing trouble.”

  “Are you sure it’s her?” I asked.

  Jax grimaced. “No, but the timeline fits. They didn’t go into detail, the message seemed hurried.”

  “It’s worth a shot. It’s the only lead we have.” Liv sank to the floor beside me.

  “We were planning on busting out of here anyway, so at least we have a place to start. And Tashia moves on fast, so it has to be tomorrow.”

  “How are we going to manage that?”

  I grinned, slow and big. “I have just the thing.”

  The C4 set off a massive explosion, billows of flames and smoke rose to the darkening sky. A grim smile unfurled on my face as the church burned. They’d have to find a new place to defile, a new place to watch the puppets perform.

  We zoomed through the streets on the motorcycles, Jax driving Al’s. We were mostly ignored as everyone ran for or away from the church which was what we counted on.

  A dragon shifter shrieked overhead and dove for Jax. I pulled my gun from the thigh holster and shot at it. Guns wouldn’t kill it, but the force of the bullet knocked the dragon off-course and it crashed into a skyscraper, giving us a chance to get away.

  We screeched to a halt under the cover of trees a couple blocks from the church, where Liv already waited for us. She leapt onto the back of Al’s bike behind Jackson since I’d made sure my bike carried all the bags, and we burned rubber towards the fence.

  Werewolves came at us on all sides, snapping teeth and sharp claws desperate to rip our flesh from us. Liv slashed at them with her sword while I fired my gun, glad the bullets were dipped in holy water. The reek of burnt flesh and blood filled the air as the bullets seared through them.

  One got a lucky slice in, ripping a hole in my jacket, but thankfully not my skin. I shot it point-blank in the head in response, taking a dull satisfaction from his crumpled body as I ran right over him.

  I pushed into the lead as we neared the fence, reaching for the grenade hooked into my belt, almost wrecking as I yanked out the pin and threw with every ounce of strength in me, grateful for years of baseball in the backyard. It sailed through the air and we soared, waited, prayed.

  The fence and the assortment of monsters by it didn’t stand a chance.

  We zoomed through the dance of ashes and smoke, into the clear air on the other side, pushing the bikes to the limits, leaving the city behind as the monsters scrambled to follow us.

  We rode long into the night, determined to put as many miles between us and Philly—and fewer miles between us and the sorceress—as we could.

  We stopped once we passed the Virginia border, after going the long way to avoid DC, which wasn’t taken over and turned into a prison camp like Philly. It was a graveyard the monsters had leveled, wanting to take out any leadership who survived the initial attacks.

  Olivia disappeared into the woods, muttered something about dinner, leaving Jax and I to set up camp. I ordered him to put up the tents while I started a fire, annoyed with his presence.

  I hadn’t been able to convince him to stay behind or Liv to leave him. She was under the crazy notion he’d be helpful. I still couldn’t believe she’d let him drive Al’s bike.

  She’d always had a soft spot for abandoned puppies.

  I wished Alcott were here, the ache of missing him twisted and sharp. He was a natural in the woods, living off the land, camping, hiking, fishing, hunting. I had loved it too. Except the hunting. If he were here, we’d probably be eating deer or at least squirrel for dinner. A pang stabbed my chest at the memories of the fun we’d had in the woods all our lives.

  Dad was such a survivalist and Mom had loved being outside. She’d spent more time in her garden and hiking up the mountains in our backyard than she had inside the house. Our house showed it too. From the outside it looked l
ike a storybook cottage, nestled in a grove of trees, mountains rising up in the background, huge hydrangea bushes and other flowers forming a secret garden. Fruit trees and bushes gave off their sweet scent. Vegetable rows surrounded by a little brown fence.

  Inside though, was a mess. Books everywhere, a mix of decorative tastes made it look at best eclectic, but really just crazy. It was kind of funny, actually. Mom had loved bright colors and the modern look, but she’d loved the antiques too. And just goofy stuff. Like a dancing and singing bear or her chair shaped like a shoe. Dad was great about it all, he just shook his head in fondness at whatever new thing she put in the house. I had always been embarrassed to bring people home even though I’d loved it. Tears blinded me as I collected wood. I missed them so much it gave me physical pain.

  Shaking it off, I reminded myself I wasn’t alone in this pain.

  The two tents were up and the fire blazed by the time Liv returned with a limp rabbit she’d already skinned. A slight smile ghosted across my lips. She’d always tagged along with our family in the woods.

  She got it set up on a crude spit and sank beside me on a fallen log I’d brought over.

  The campfire did little to warm me, so I huddled closer to her as we cleaned our weapons while waiting for dinner to finish cooking. It was our first real, fresh meat in a long time, my taste buds and stomach trying to talk me into food poisoning, not caring if the meat wasn’t cooked through. Most of the farms were abandoned and factories closed down, leaving little fresh food other than what we could grow on balconies and window boxes.

  Staring into the flames, it was hard to stop myself from remembering our apartment on fire, everything taken from us except the motorcycles and weapons and a few treasured possessions.

  It was hard not to see the shapes of my family’s faces in the flames.

  I turned my focus back to my disassembled gun and wiped my filthy rag across the barrel. Beside me, Liv cleaned the black blood of a werewolf from her short sword, her hands moving in graceful arcs, hands used to holding a bow and flying across the neck of a cello in an intricate dance so powerful she should have been performing onstage at Julliard.

  The woods were quiet, creatures holed up against the cold night. We’d wake up covered in frost the next morning. Winter was headed into its harshest months and they looked to be hard on us with only tents for shelter and motorcycles for transportation. Jax was strangely quiet as well. I peeked over at him and he appeared to be taking a nap, his back against the log, but I wasn’t fooled.

  Liv sighed.

  “You okay?” I asked. Was she missing her cello, left behind, hidden in Jax’s apartment? It had to be like leaving behind a limb, a part of herself. Maybe we should have stolen a van or truck.

  She nodded, her black hair falling in a curtain between us, her voice weary. “I didn’t bring enough clothes. That stupid wolf and his nasty blood ruined my favorite shirt.” She plucked mournfully at her red shirt with Hermione Granger’s face on it. She’d had that shirt for years, wearing it at least twice a month since it came in the mail.

  “Stop moping. We’ll hit a laundromat and try to fix it.”

  She bumped me with her shoulder. “Talk to me about moping when your Clash shirt gets splattered with monster blood.”

  “Won’t happen because I don’t wear it to fight monsters.” I threw a grin at her when her pout grew.

  “Instead of camping, we should have stayed in a town. One that has a Hot Topic.”

  “I’m not sure that’d be too safe.”

  “Don’t be such a downer. The monsters hate suburbs.”

  The monsters did hate the suburbs and small towns. They went through and wiped out the humans who lived in them or carted them off to the cities where they were kept as cattle.

  Liv bumped me again. “Stop it. You’re ruining my excitement. You don’t have to be so maudlin. We’re about to eat a rabbit that I so brilliantly ensnared. You’re taking me shopping soon. We kicked ass today against those monsters who tried to stop us on our way out of town. We have a solid lead on the sorceress. Take the win.”

  I smiled, but doubted I fooled her. I’d take the win once that sorceress was in the ground. I’d take a vacation once I banished her from this world and sent her back to whatever hell she crawled out of. I’d stop being so maudlin when I could dance again.

  We rode into town at lunchtime with loud revving motors, opting for a splashy entrance instead of sneaking in. Olivia and Jax had disagreed, but I wanted to instill confidence in those who asked for our help. If we slunk in under the cover of night looking like a trio of bedraggled orphans, they wouldn’t trust us to handle things. Instead, they’d want to take care of us.

  It had happened before.

  This time, we knew what we were up against, so there was no need for subtlety.

  I wasn’t in the mood for it anyway. I was in the mood for dropped jaws and gasps of hope and awe and then, I was in the mood for dead monsters.

  Decorated with half our arsenal, we made an impressive sight riding through the country roads even with Jax hanging off the back of Liv’s bike with only my steel baseball bat. It had taken a ridiculous amount of threats and pleading for him to agree to even that.

  Maybe we could dump him here once we dealt with their little problem. From the looks on the gaunt and haunted faces of those who came out on their porches and front stoops to watch us ride through, they needed a healer.

  I turned onto the driveway with the right number on the mailbox where a man and his young daughter walked out to meet us with wide eyes while we parked and dismounted. Olivia handled the introductions, better at putting people at ease than I was.

  She smiled brightly, her tinkling voice at odds with her fierce appearance. “Hello. We’re here in response to what you posted on the message board. You have a sorceress problem?”

  The man nodded, shifting on his feet, keeping himself between us and his daughter. “And you have experience with them?”

  Liv’s smile dimmed. “We have a lot of experience if it’s who we think it is. And we just dealt with a jersey devil, an enchanter, and some werewolves in Pennsylvania, so we have all the confidence we can take care of it.”

  He didn’t appear too impressed or like he believed us, but desperation was a strong force. He nodded again and waved us towards his house. “Come on inside and we’ll feed you and explain everything. Not much for you to do till nightfall anyhow. And don’t worry. No one will touch your stuff.”

  I didn’t want to take his word for it, but I didn’t want them to think we were worried about it—we needed to appear confident. I also didn’t want to cause offense. Offended people weren’t very generous with their information. All my most treasured and important belongings were hidden or attached to my person. Shrugging in response to Olivia and Jax’s raised brows, I followed the guy up his front porch and inside.

  A cheery fire crackled in the fireplace with books lining the walls of the living room, the house infused with the scents of fresh bread and bubbling stew. My stomach roared in response, the rabbit and cream of chicken from last night long gone.

  The man’s lips quirked. “How about I explain while we eat? I’m afraid it’s only vegetable soup. With the witch out there, we’ll be using our canned goods till spring harvest.”

  Jax smiled in delight. “That will be more than fine. Thank you.”

  The man gestured at the large table in the dining area attached to the kitchen. “Have a seat. I’m Jeremy, by the way, and this is Adele.”

  We introduced ourselves and got through the pleasantries. Adele stayed silent, watching us with big eyes as we took our seats. I made sure to choose a chair on the far end, away from Jax and his dancing forest eyes.

  “How do you still have power?”

  Jeremy pointed at the roof of his house. “Solar panels and a generator. We have a couple gas stations we’ve been able to siphon gas from to keep us fine for now.”

  “It’s amazing this is the first
problem you’ve had.” I hurried to add, “Not that it’s a small problem.”

  “No, we’ve been pretty lucky. All we have is a post office, those two gas stations, and a Dollar General, so it isn’t surprising they haven’t found or bothered us. So far, at least.” He placed steaming, fragrant bowls before each of us, vegetables swimming in a dark red broth.

  It took everything within me not to shove my face into the food like it was a trough instead of waiting for Jeremy to serve Adele and himself and sit down. He bowed his head and whispered a prayer with his daughter. A lump climbed up into my throat as I remembered my own family prayers around a different table. Liv’s hand found mine, and we held on tight to our last anchor in the world.

  Each other.

  After his amen, we dug in, saying little as we inhaled the meal. He had an even bigger surprise for us at the end. Cups of real coffee. Not instant. And even better, a homemade chocolate cake.

  I’d thought it would be forever before I got to taste real coffee again. And I’d thought I’d never get to taste chocolate cake again.

  I almost swooned like a Victorian virgin at the first bite. I would’ve felt guilty over taking some of his stash if it wasn’t so heavenly. Once I got over myself and focused, I speared Jeremy with a look. “How bad has it been?”

  “It started two days ago. Children started disappearing from their beds. No signs of a struggle or broken locks. It’s like they got up and left on their own.”

  It didn’t sound like our sorceress. “So, you’ve seen no sign of a monster or witch or sorceress? Just disappearing kids?” Liv and I exchanged a glance. “From the post on the message board, it sounded like a sorceress had arrived.”

  He bobbed his head. “That’s what we thought. We thought it was a spell affecting children. Until this morning. We found one child dead from hypothermia. He was the first one who disappeared.”

  I gulped hard at the information to keep the anger from boiling over and sizzling across the table. “Whatever it is doing this, it’ll be dead before sunrise.” My promise was dark and certain and filled with blood-rage.