Embers and Echoes

by Karsten Knight

  Ash was still just a month fresh out of tennis season, and rapidly gained on the less-athletic Eve now that they were on foot. Perhaps sensing this, Eve grabbed the golden luggage-packed cart from a bellhop and spun it in Ash’s direction.

  Direct hit. The cart toppled over onto Ash, and heavy luggage cascaded down onto her.

  By the time Ash had unburied herself from underneath the luggage, Eve was at the end of the blue-carpeted corridor and turning the corner. Ash waved away the bellhop, who was trying to help her up, and charged after her sister again.

  When she rounded the corner, the door directly in front of her was slowly listing closed. The spa beyond lay in darkness, but Ash wasn’t about to let a little trespassing stop her. The hotel staff was no doubt already on red alert to find the suspicious girls who’d transformed the hotel lobby into a violent foot race, but after squaring off against bloodthirsty gods and gun-toting mercenaries, the threat of being caught by underpaid security guards was laughable.

  Inside the spa’s waiting room the only light was what filtered through the opaque spa doors, but it was enough for Ash to make her way to the steam room beyond. A thick steam was already beginning to fill the space, its hissing echoing off the tile walls.

  Ash’s caution had returned, now that her sister had corralled her into a dark and cloudy enclosed space. She ignited one of her hands enough to form a halo around her, a lantern in the mist. At least her torch could double as a weapon should Eve launch herself out of a dark corner. “You know, Eve . . . ,” Ash called out. Her words echoed with a twang off the tile. “You could have just asked me to go to the spa with you. Hell, between my fire and your storms, we could have just made our own.”

  There was no answer from the shadows.

  In the next room, which was even narrower than the steam room, Ash spotted a series of drains on the ground. What the hell was this room for?

  Something clicked at the end of the hall. The spouts overhead pulsed on. It was a rain room, sending a network of light showers, cold and hot, hot and cold, down onto Ash, drenching her shirt and jeans within seconds. “Come on,” Ash shouted again. “Flipping a switch to make rain? That’s far too conventional for the sister I know.”

  And that, Ash realized, was a problem. None of this chase was like Eve. Sure, between Scarsdale and Blackwood, Ash’s sister had always enjoyed making dramatic entries back into her life. But Eve was also in love with the sound of her voice and prone to grandiose speeches whenever she reappeared. Eve was the type of girl who cornered her opponents, not the type who led them on a wild sprint halfway across a city in the dead of night.

  Ash’s blood began to pump faster when she reached the third room, which contained a long mineral pool and a parade of reclining beach chairs. It also had some ambient light, courtesy of the moon as it streamed through the French windows that opened out onto the spa’s patio. Ash let the flames of her torch peter out to a soft glow.

  One item was out of place in the mineral pool—Eve’s bright red backpack, which was tucked against one of the beach chairs. Another warning flag. Eve, label snob that she was, wouldn’t have been caught dead (or in this case, alive again) wearing a knapsack the color of a fire engine.

  Ash pried open the rope clasp and withdrew the soft contents within. The backpack contained a black shirt and jeans, the same clothes that Eve had been wearing just minutes ago. Ash held the shirt up to the light. Unless Eve is running around the resort naked somewhere . . .

  A hand clutched her elbow.

  Ash screamed and brought her fist around to attack, her whole hand bursting into flames on sheer survival instinct.

  Wes caught her by the forearm. “Jesus,” he said, eyeing the ball of flames that had nearly seared his face. “Let’s try not to burn down any billion-dollar four-star resorts. Or me, for that matter.”

  Ash huffed, but let her arm cool until the flames extinguished. “One word of warning could have prevented you from becoming a human barbecue,” she snapped at him. “How the hell did you even find me here?”

  He took a cautious step away from her. “I nearly didn’t, thanks to your Indy 500 race through half of Miami Beach,” he said. “Thankfully I just kept my eyes peeled for two abandoned scooters and a valet who looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack, and—”

  Ash held up her hand to cut him off. She was staring through one of the French doors out at the sky, which was still immaculate, as though the moonbeams had vaporized any clouds over Miami. “The weather . . .”

  “Is perfect?” Wes finished for her. “It’s exactly the same as it’s been all night.”

  “That’s the problem,” Ash replied. “A cloudless star-filled night? If Eve is truly back, Miami should be either in the middle of a category-twelve monsoon or under two feet of snow. States of emergency are how she celebrates.” She cocked her head back and smelled the air. “That girl I just chased was not my sister.”

  “Why are you sniffing the air now?” Wes put a hand on her arm. “It’s dark here. Let’s get back inside where we can at least see a little better.”

  Ash pivoted on her heel, grabbed Wes by the lapel, and used all her strength to heave his enormous body toward the pool. With Wes caught off guard, his foot snagged on one of the beach chairs and he crashed into the water.

  Ash was at the mineral pool’s edge before he could even resurface. She plunged her arms into the water up to her elbows.

  When Wes bobbed to the top, he floundered and attempted to swim for the opposite side of the pool.

  “Don’t move,” Ash growled at him, “or I will happily bring the temperature of this water up to boiling in a matter of seconds.”

  “A-Ash,” Wes stuttered, treading water. He was blinking uncontrollably. “It’s me. It’s Wes—”

  Ash balled her hands into fists and sent a lance of heat that torpedoed through the water. When the trail of hot water hit Wes’s legs, he screamed.

  And then he transformed.

  His face shuddered with a violent seizure before it melted into blankness. His arms, which were still thrashing about in the water, shortened by nearly six inches, withdrawing back into his body while the bones beneath them rearranged.

  When his face restructured itself, the person it revealed underneath had a broad, flat nose and slicked-back hair. It certainly wasn’t Wesley Towers.

  Ash opened her hands again and allowed the water to simmer. “You should remember next time that no self-respecting Aztec night god is afraid of the dark. Also,” she added, “whatever fragrance is coming off you certainly isn’t Wes’s cologne. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

  Gradually the shifter stopped floundering. He floated and said nothing.

  “You have ten seconds to tell me who you are, who you’re working with, and why you’re impersonating my sister,” Ash said. “Otherwise you better transform yourself into a lobster or a deviled egg. Ten—”

  “My name is Proteus,” the shifter blurted out. “I work independently, but I lend my unique . . . services to those willing to pay. In this case I was e-mailed a file with orders to carry out tonight.”

  Ash let the temperature of the pool rise a few degrees, literally turning up the heat of her interrogation. “What sort of orders?”

  Proteus cast a panicked look at the simmering water. “They sent me everything I would need to carry out their wishes. Full-body and facial close-up photos of you, Wes, and Aurora. Approximate height and weight measurements. MP3 samples of your voices.”

  Ash frowned. His yet-to-be-named employers—the Four Seasons, no doubt—had provided Proteus with all the information to forge their identities, yet he’d appeared in the nightclub as her sister, who, imprisoned in hell, was nowhere around to be photographed or wiretapped for a vocal sample. “Then why did you come as my sister?”

  “Only Aurora was supposed to be at the nightclub. When all three of you showed up, I received an auxiliary plan from my employer—a series of old photos of some Polynesian gi
rl—your sister, apparently—that I would use to lead you away from the mark.”

  “Auxiliary plan? The mark?” Ash felt her temper rising. Her blood was turning to lava, starting at her heart and pumping out through her bloodstream. “What the hell was the original plan? What was it?” She drove another spear of boiling water into the shape-shifter’s torso.

  This time Proteus wrapped his arms around his stomach and sank for a few moments before he resurfaced, gulping for air. After he’d spit up the hot water, he stammered, “I—I was supposed to pretend to be you or the tall guy, and lead the winged one outside. But when you showed up, they changed tactics. My new instructions were to get you as far away from the nightclub as possible. They said if you left, Towers would follow, which would allow them to . . .” He trailed off and went still.

  “Allow them to what?” Ash echoed, then louder, “To what, Proteus?” Her rage was billowing out of control, and she had to force herself to withdraw her hands from the pool so she wouldn’t boil the shifter to death before he could tell her what she needed to know. “TO WHAT?” She ignited her arms and moved to plunge them into the water again.

  “To extract the winged girl!” he confessed. “She’s the one they wanted.”

  Ash dropped back onto her haunches. It all made sense now.

  The Four Seasons had planned their sacrifice for tonight.

  Ash, Wes, and Aurora had stolen their sacrificial victim from them.

  Ash had killed one of their own.

  And now they were going to retaliate.

  If they truly intended to televise the murder, then Aurora made the most sense. Whereas Ash and Wes had powers that made them dangerous to the Four Seasons, Aurora had only a pair of wings. Not only would she be no match against the more powerful gods, but the wings would also provide convenient, visible evidence to any viewers that Aurora was in fact a goddess.

  With Ash temporarily distracted, Proteus was stealthily making a move for the edge of the pool, but Ash pointed a flaming finger at him. “Don’t you dare move.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Three missed calls from Wes. She hit the callback button.

  Wes picked up before it finished ringing once. “Ash, where the hell are you?”

  “Where are you?” Ash said. “Please say you’re still at the club.” The silence on the other end of the call said otherwise.

  Wes paused. “I came out looking for you. I’m in the Cadillac driving north now, and—”

  “You have to go back!” Ash dropped her face into her other hand. “You have to go back to the club right now.”

  “It’s too late,” Proteus said quietly.

  Ash held the phone away from her mouth. “What did you say?”

  Proteus cleared his throat. “It’s too late. They drugged Aurora’s drink before you even left. If the big guy left for even a minute . . . then it’s too late.”

  Ash slowly brought the phone back to her face, her eyes glued to the shifter in the pool. She could hear Wes asking questions about who she was talking to, but she was having trouble hearing him over the intense ringing in her own ears. “Come pick me up outside the Fontainebleau resort as soon as you can,” she instructed him, her voice hollow. “I have to go right now.”

  She clicked the phone closed. It immediately started to vibrate again. She ignored it and knelt down next to the pool. “Where are they taking her?”

  “I—” Proteus’s eyes shifted, like he was about to lie, but then he stopped himself. “They told me I could lead you anywhere, as long as it was in the opposite direction from some condemned movie theater. Palmetto Bay, south of the city. I swear that’s all I know! I—”

  “Get out of the pool,” she said calmly. “Get. Out. Now.”

  Now that she actually wanted him to climb out of the mineral bath, it was the first time he looked like he wanted to stay put. His hesitation broke when she made a come hither motion with her finger, and he reluctantly paddled to the edge.

  He had just put his hand on the rim of the pool when Ash flashed over. She seized him by the wrist, and with a strength that came to her only in moments of true rage, she lifted him out of the pool by his arm. He squirmed in the air like a cat that had been caught in the chicken coop and was dangling by the scruff of his neck.

  Ash channeled all her heat into the hand holding him up. Proteus screamed as the fire bit into his skin. She let the heat smolder against his flesh for several seconds before she tossed him onto the pool deck.

  Proteus writhed on his back, gripping his burned forearm, just below where Ash’s fingers and palm were now branded deeply into his skin.

  “Since you’re a shape-shifter,” Ash said, “you may be able to cover up that scar with a little bit of concentration.” She took three steps forward until she was standing directly over his body. “But now every time you have to erase the scars, every time it takes that much more effort to transform into someone else, you’re going to think of me. And if I ever see you again, a little second-degree burn will be the least of your problems.”

  Then she stepped over him and didn’t look back as she made a run for the French doors leading out of the spa. Before she closed the door behind her, she heard a splash and a whimper as Proteus rolled into the pool to submerge his branded arm in the mineral water.

  Wes was just swerving into the drive leading up to the Fontainebleau when Ash emerged around the side of the building. The two abandoned scooters still lay in front of the valet, who was looking twitchy. Ash sprinted past him, threw open the door to Wes’s Cadillac, and slipped in. The Cadillac never even fully stopped moving as it whipped around the circular drive and back out onto the road.

  “There’s an old . . . condemned movie theater . . . south of the city,” Ash said between breaths. “Someplace called . . . Palmetto Bay.”

  Wes, who had just come to a hard stop at a red light, stalled the sport utility just shy of the intersection. “There’s an antique theater that just got purchased last month . . . with plans to turn it into a steak house.” He paused. “It was bought by the Vanderbilt Estates. But why? Aurora’s back at CHAOS waiting, and . . . ” His words trailed off, as though he could sense that something was terribly off.

  Ash put a hand on his wrist. “We don’t have much time, Wes. If I’m wrong and Aurora is back where we left her, we can all have a drink about this and laugh.” She didn’t have the heart to go down the path of But if I’m right . . .

  Wes studied her for several moments, and when she wouldn’t meet his gaze, he sped through the red light, heading west—toward the highway.

  Ash just rolled down her window for fresh air that she knew didn’t have a chance of clearing her mind.

  After the initial explanation of what was going on, Wes and Ash fell into tense silence. There wasn’t much to discuss.

  Proteus had no reason to lie, with no loyalty to the Four Seasons and under the threat of being boiled to death by Ash.

  Aurora wasn’t answering her phone.

  They both knew this could be a trap.

  They both knew they had no choice but to go anyway.

  Twenty-five minutes later, after they’d flown down the South Dixie Highway in record time, Wes swerved onto an off-ramp so fast that the Cadillac rocked briefly up onto two wheels. Soon they were blowing red lights through the suburbs of Palmetto Bay, down narrow palm-lined avenues and past a parade of uniform one-level Spanish houses.

  At last, when all the streets were blending together to the point where Ash thought they might be driving in circles, Wes tugged the steering wheel toward a weed-filled parking lot. The Cadillac bucked hard as they popped up over the curb, and then rumbled over a minefield of potholes before Wes threw the car into park in front of the old theater.

  It may have once been regal, but the white art deco theater looked like it was half a century past its heyday. A long chain was braided through the handles of the decrepit front doors. For a moment Ash thought they may have been duped. But then she tugged on the chain.
It slipped free of the door, not padlocked, and then coiled on the ground with a series of clinks.

  Inside, a dingy backlit menu flickered over the concession counter. The popcorn machines were lined against the back wall, empty coffins of glass, the soda fountains dry and silent as well. The NOW PLAYING sign over the ticket counter listed movies that hadn’t seen the inside of a movie theater since Ash was in middle school.

  In the hallway beyond, between the old framed movie posters, there were three doors, one for each screen. But as Ash listened carefully, a faint mechanical whining could be heard from the far door.

  Theater number three was small compared to the megaplexes Ash was accustomed to back in New York. A light shone out of the booth window in the back of the theater, projecting a shivering black mass onto the screen.

  Eeriest of all, when they reached the front row of the empty theater, two of the chairs had been folded down as though people had already been sitting in them. A soda cup had been tucked in each of their cup holders, and a big bucket of popcorn was balanced on the armrest between them. The smell of butter and salt was fresh, and Ash could hear the soda carbonation still crackling.

  On the screen the black background switched to the image of a man’s face. As the projectionist, hidden in his booth, focused the image on the screen, the distorted pixels gradually refined until Ash could see Thorne. He wore a subdued smile, and his twenty-foot-tall face was looking down at them as if he knew exactly where in the theater they were standing.

  “Ah, you made it,” Thorne said around the cigar clenched in his teeth. “As you can see, I’ve reserved two front-row seats for you to watch tonight’s entertainment. It’s just a shame that you’re in the wrong place to enjoy it live and in person.”

  “Where is Aurora?” Wes growled at the screen.

  But it must have been a one-way transmission, because Thorne’s only response was to blow a smoke ring into the camera lens. “You see,” he continued, “this plan could really only be a total success if the two of you—and not just Ashline—ended up at that movie theater. Because that means that Wesley Towers, our beloved Aztec god of the night, has chosen to protect the girl who didn’t need protecting, while the other one . . .” He trailed off, and stepped out of the frame.