Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel)

by Sabol, Suzanne M.

  “Deliver him to Derek. Someone needs to answer for those two women’s deaths,” I said in-between sobs.

  Patrick and Alex both turned and stared at me through a dark crimson sheen.

  “She’s got a point,” Dean agreed as he approached the edge of my circle on Danny’s other side. He knelt on the floor and met my eyes.

  “He’ll tell the police?” Alex raised her eyebrows.

  “Which part would they believe?” Patrick her with a conciliatory tone. “The vampires or the ninjas?”

  Patrick approached, reaching out to touch the blood-red protection surrounding me.

  I pressed my body against Danny’s. I couldn’t bear the thought of them taking him away from me. I screamed, my voice reverberating off the blood wall around us. I shook my head as tears streamed down my cheeks. I’d lost it and I knew it but I couldn’t stop any of it.

  Dean reached over and grazed his fingers across the blood sheen. His touch tingled through me like my entire body was on fire.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “She’s done it before. Some type of protective circle,” Alex snapped.

  I heard the confusion and the hint of fear in her voice.

  “It’s her magic,” Patrick whispered, kneeling behind me. “Dahlia, sweetheart, will you let me in?”

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t think beyond the feel of Danny’s body growing colder in my arms.

  “Dahlia?” Dean whispered, still caressing the outside of the blood wall.

  I gazed up into soft olive-green eyes that seemed to see straight to the pain I couldn’t wipe away, couldn’t bury. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d reached my hand out and through the wall.

  Blood fell, splattering us all in the deep crimson droplets that sparkled with faint midnight-blue ash.

  Dean reached across the body to me.

  Oh God, the body. Danny.

  He cupped his large hands on either side of my face, grasping my cheeks in his hands, and tilted my face up as he forced me to focus on him. He stroked my cheeks with his thumbs, wiping the tears away.

  “Dahlia,” he whispered.

  He’s gone. We didn’t protect him, she howled in my mind.

  If they took him away from me, it would be real. Danny would be dead and never come back.

  “I won’t let anything happen to him,” Dean promised, reassuring me.

  I met his eyes, searching for something I couldn’t name. His olive-green eyes were warm and filled with the same pain that overwhelmed me.

  He won’t let anything happen to what is ours, she whispered through me, and her howling subsided. He is ours, too.

  I slumped back into Patrick and out of Dean’s reach. I couldn’t take the burning warmth of his hands on my face. It felt too good. I didn’t deserve it. I buried my face in my hands and cried as Patrick wrapped his arms around me and clung to me. I didn’t notice Dean and Alex lift Danny.

  Patrick picked me up in his arms like I weighed nothing and cradled me against his chest. He just let me cry.

  “It’ll be all right, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  I heard his words and knew that they were a lie. We’d survived but nothing would be all right again.

  I wanted to be clean. I wanted all of this blood off of me, to crawl into bed and disappear. I wanted to pretend that this day had never happened. There was already a hole, somewhere, festering inside me.

  Chapter 21

  Dean, the Pack, and Patrick paid for the entire funeral service. Derek had found the hearts of the dead women in Simon Tacoma’s hotel room. He was being considered criminally insane and under suicide watch. He kept spouting something about ninja vampires. The only person who believed him was Derek but he wasn’t talking. The arrest got Derek noticed. He was taking the test for Detective in a month. That would be helpful.

  I’d also learned that there was a very big difference between being marked and being a human servant. A human servant, as Patrick explained it to me, does not share blood and retains their mortality. They are delicate and that’s why they are to be protected. Being marked is a closer bond and requires a blood ceremony. I was glad he explained it but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care about anything. I was completely and utterly numb.

  Chapter 22

  I hid in the back of the crowd with my sunglasses covering my tear-stained face as the afternoon sun faded into sunset. The minister gave his sermon. I barely heard any of it. The sun seemed dull and the clouds thinner now that Heaven had taken Danny back. That day of all days, I needed to believe in Heaven.

  Danny’s mother and sister huddled together alongside the coffin, tears staining their faces, too. It was my fault. I couldn’t protect what was mine and now Danny was gone.

  So many people there came to see him; distant relatives, coworkers, Pack members, and strangers that Danny had helped at one time or another. Danny’s mother and sister placed roses on his casket. His mother openly sobbed, hiccupping with each breath. Danny’s sister pulled the older woman into her arms and escorted her from her son’s last resting place. Amblan stood beside me, silent with her arm around my shoulders in a steadying embrace.

  The crowd thinned out. I knew I should leave but I . . . just . . . couldn’t. The mourners left, making their way to Danny’s wake. The Pack was taking care of all the guests and escorting them to Danny’s house.

  “Come on,” Amblan whispered to me. “We should go.”

  I didn’t want to be caught in a room with all of those endearing stories of Danny. I couldn’t listen to them. I wanted to remember him in my arms and grieve in my own solitude. If I heard how much everyone loved Danny, I’d lose it.

  “You go ahead. I’ll be fine here for a while,” I said with a reassuring, but fake, smile.

  Amblan didn’t believe me. She pulled my sunglasses back from my face, exposing the red puffiness of my eyes.

  “Please,” I begged. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked with skepticism thick in her husky voice. She’d cried, too. She barely knew Danny but she knew how much he’d meant to me.

  “Yeah.”

  She sighed but did what I asked. Once everyone was gone, I closed the distance on shaking legs to the row of seats that had been left for the immediate family. I sat down and was glad that I was finally alone with him. I’d been surrounded by people when he died, at the calling hours, and then again at the funeral but now, he was mine. We were finally alone.

  “I’m so sorry.” I ran my hand along his shiny oak coffin, half expecting him to answer me, to sit up and say that it would all be right in a day or two. “I never told you how much you meant to me.”

  After two days of crying in the privacy of my own home, I was sure that I didn’t have any tears left. I was wrong.

  “I let you down. I wish I could take everything back. You deserved better than me, better than what happened to you.”

  “None of this was your fault,” Dean rasped from behind me, striding back up the slight hill to the gravesite. He took the seat beside me without invitation. I watched him with relief for telling me what I wanted to hear and anger for interrupting my time alone with Danny. I didn’t want him there but then again I was glad not to be alone with myself.

  “Can you honestly sit there and tell me that none of this was my fault?” I asked, my voice hitching as I spoke unable to hold back the emotion. At least if I was angry, the horrid feelings of loss and guilt got buried. I understood anger.

  “Danny knew what he was doing,” he said, staring at the coffin like he would memorize every inch of it.

  “But if it hadn’t been for me, Danny wouldn’t have been there and he’d still be alive,” I whispered. I was mad. Mad at myself and mad at Danny. That’s right. I was mad as hell at him. He left me. He hadn’t been strong
enough to survive.

  “It’s not your fault. Danny was my friend but he wasn’t like us,” he said in a softer, more regretful tone.

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t prepared to kill, Dahlia. You and I are more pragmatic. Sometimes blood needs to be spilled. Danny was our conscience,” he said in a far-off tone. “We’ll survive without him. Too many people depend on us not to.” His eyes fixated on the coffin in front of us, his hands clasped tight between his knees.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled with a fresh wave of silent tears.

  “I never told him how I felt about him,” I admitted in-between heavy sobs as my breath hitched in my throat.

  Dean wrapped me in his arms. I hadn’t realized how much I needed someone to just hug me.

  Safe . . . warm . . . home, echoed through my mind like a mantra from that other voice.

  I pulled myself together and sniffled back my tears. He was right. People depended on us and I couldn’t be a weakling. I needed to get control so that others wouldn’t suffer as Danny had. I wiped a tear away and leaned away from his embrace. His strong arms felt more like home than I cared to admit. I slid my sunglasses back into place, shutting out the rest of the world.

  He stared at me with a deep and evaluating glare.

  “You don’t have to be strong all the time,” he said, standing. He towered over me and I shifted to meet his gaze. He rested his hands on my shoulders as he peered down at me with pity in his eyes. I felt small and insignificant next to him.

  “Yes, I do, or people die. I was too weak. Too slow. I lost Danny. I almost lost Alex,” I said, raising my chin in the air.

  The light had disappeared behind the horizon as Dean and I had talked. The sun had set and Patrick arrived with his own entourage to mourn Danny’s passing. Nova seemed really upset as he stepped up next to me and pressed a light kiss on my cheek.

  Patrick and the rest paid their respects in silence as they moved around Dean and me. The Pack flanked Dean and fell silent.

  “Dahlia,” Dean said as he scanned the Pack around him. “I ordered him there. Danny’s death is on my shoulders. We fight with Patrick as we’ll now fight with you,” he said, wiping a tear from my cheek with the soft pad of his thumb. “You’ve taken Danny’s power into you. You’re Pack,” he said.

  Patrick stepped up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders.

  Dean turned on his heels with a quirky grin curving the corner of his mouth and left. The Pack followed him.

  “Come, we need to make an appearance,” Patrick said against my ear.

  “Can I stay at your house?” I asked. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be in the house where I remembered Danny watching TV, eating, touching me. I wanted to sleep away from all those memories and the faint scent of him that I kept picking up everywhere I went.

  “Of course, Sweetheart,” he said, brushing his full lips across my hair.

  I followed Patrick and Alex to the car and slipped in silently between them. He wrapped his arm around me and I laid my head on his shoulder.

  I mourned one boyfriend while being comforted by the other but there he was, stroking my arm and trying to chase the pain away. It was unfair to him and I knew it. I’d been unfair to both of them.

  I waited until the door was closed behind him before the tears started again. I felt horrible that Danny was dead. I felt horrible that I was crying on Patrick’s shoulder about how much I missed Danny. I felt horrible that I was hurting Patrick every time I shed a tear for Danny but I couldn’t stop it. Any of it.

  I was half awake and half asleep. I don’t know how long I’d been like that, drifting, lost. I floated in that in-between state for a while when I heard their voices waft through the door.

  Patrick was angry, his voice sharp. Alex matched him snip for snip. I heard my name on Alex’s lips and I snapped awake.

  “You’re mad,” Patrick said. He paced on the other side of the door, his shoes clicking on the hardwood floors. “You called me away from her for this?”

  “I’m not crazy,” she snapped back at him. “You saw what Dahlia did. You saw the power she pulled from Danny’s blood and from your own blood. You’ve come one step closer to making her completely yours but more importantly,” she said with a sharp edge to her voice, “I think she’s Fertiri.”

  The silence stretched out between them forever and a chill crawled over me. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like them talking about me behind closed doors.

  “You’re talking about something that hasn’t existed in over a millennium. It’s not possible,” Patrick said with a deep exhalation but there was a question in his voice that overshadowed his disbelief. “That line died a thousand years ago.”

  “Patrick, she is your equal. You have found your living half,” Alex said, excitement lacing her words. “That’s why Ethan wanted her. He knew what she was.”

  “Do you know what that would mean?”

  “You have a power base with you, Dahlia, and Dean. No one could rival any of you if you capitalize on it.”

  “Except the board. Do you know what they’d do if they thought she was Fertiri? To all of us?” Patrick asked with a weighty tone.

  Panic filled me, tightening my gut and making my palms sweat. I clutched the sheet in my hand in a white-knuckle grip.

  How could I let this happen? How could I put them in danger again? I couldn’t let anything happen. They were all I had left.

  “She’s awake,” Patrick said in a hushed tone.

  A set of soft footfalls moved down the hall, away from the bedroom in a rush as the door creaked open.

  Patrick hovered silent in the doorway, the light framing his tall, lean body. He appeared intimidating with his face in shadow as he loomed in the darkness.

  “I . . .” I wanted to say that I was sorry. I wanted to tell him to leave me and save himself. I didn’t want to be the cause of so much death and destruction.

  “Hush,” he whispered. He sauntered across the room in smooth, graceful strides. He reached down and stroked my face with his fingertips, trailing his cool touch along my warm jaw line. “We’ll deal with whatever happens. We always will,” he added softly.

  I felt like I was lost in the dark and couldn’t find my way out. But, there were those who still hadn’t paid for Danny’s death. They would, if it was the last thing I did. A calm passed over me as a plan formed in my mind. Patrick, sensing my peace, relaxed. The less he knew the better.

  Chapter 23

  Alex sat across the desk from me in open-mouthed astonishment, scrunching her face into an unattractive expression.

  “You know it needs to be done,” I snapped. She was either going to help me or not but she wasn’t going to dissuade me.

  “I know,” she said finally, her full lips drawn in a thin line across her heart-shaped face. She removed a sheet of paper from the desk in Patrick’s home office and silently closed the drawer. Her chestnut eyes cool and unemotional, she had the calculated movements of determination outlined in her posture as she wrote on the slip of paper in an ultra-feminine, but legible, hand.

  After Midnight Ash’s dramatic entrance, Patrick had closed Damsel for renovation. Patrick was out of the Mansion, meeting with a contractor after hours, arguing about the estimate. This was the first chance I’d had to get a moment alone with Alex. Patrick had been watching me like a hawk for the last several weeks. He even had Dean and Kurt stopping in to check on me, too. He didn’t want me alone . . . thinking too much.

  I had a focus. Killing Arthur and Darshan was more important than my pain and my emotions. I managed to avoid going catatonic, using their impending deaths as my motivation. Vengeance was too tempting a carrot. Danny would never have understood that, or my need to shed their blood. Dean had been right. Danny hadn’t been vicious, like me
.

  Alex scribbled a few things down on the sheet of paper in her loopy cursive hand with flourishes that hadn’t been used since the seventeenth century and slid it across the desk. She reached inside the top desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  I took a quick glance at the address and slipped it into my pocket as she lit a cigarette.

  “Thank you.” I turned to leave the office. There were a hundred things to take care of before I left and I needed to talk to Jade. I had to get to New York as soon as possible. The longer I waited, the more danger we were in.

  “If anything happens to you, he will kill me,” she said on an exhale, filling the office with the tangy, harsh scent of cigarette smoke.

  “I know,” I admitted. I didn’t turn to face her.

  She’d just approved a death sentence for a board member without consulting Patrick. Patrick could kill her for usurping his authority but Alex was like me. She knew what needed to be done and she’d do it. We understood each other. I turned to see the same resolute expression that I knew was mirrored on my face.

  “Be careful,” she said finally.

  “You, too.”

  Chapter 24

  Jade called her father for the use of his private jet so I could travel with weapons. Going through airport security with a gun, bowie knife, and Midnight Ash’s katana would’ve been difficult. I also didn’t want my name on any plane manifest list. I didn’t want the board tying me to anything that happened in New York and through me, Patrick. As far as anyone knew I was Jade.

  I sat in a hired car, watching the skyscrapers and billboards of New York City pass me by as we crossed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. I couldn’t think about any it. All of my thoughts were focused on Arthur. Darshan would come second. The plane’s scheduled return flight plan had us stopping over in Pittsburgh. I was scared out of my mind but vengeance and rage drove me beyond the fear.