The Age of Embers {Book 3): The Age of Reprisal

by Schow, Ryan

  “Easy, dear,” Eudora said.

  By the second and third stairs, Carolina got the hang of it and by the last stair, she lowered Eudora down with practiced ease.

  Draven now saw his grandmother. He smiled at Carolina and put two hands over his heart to say thank you. Carolina gave him a thumb’s up.

  She’d done it.

  I did it.

  Turning to Orlando, Draven said, “Is everyone out?”

  “We’re all out,” Orlando said, “but this ginger twat burned everything.”

  “Not everything,” Draven said, looking again at Eudora. “Where are the girls?”

  “Around back,” Orlando said. “They’re safe.”

  To Chase, Draven put out his hand and said, “Give me the bat.”

  “She killed Tim,” Chase said, making no move to relinquish the bat. “She killed Tim and she burned our houses!”

  “You don’t want this on your conscience,” he warned.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Give me the bat!” Draven barked, serious, snapping his fingers.

  Finally, the boy relented.

  Orlando turned to Veronica and said, “Go check on the girls.”

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m good.”

  Veronica took the long way around the burning house to get to the girls, but Orlando walked up to the woman—who was now on her knees and thoroughly broken—grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. Her face was full of gashes, lacerations, flapped open skin from where she’d been struck by rocks. One of her eye sockets was completely red, the eyeball looking cracked and goopy.

  She did not concede defeat, though.

  Rather, this hideous woman bore a cruel grin, one stained red, her mouth half darkened with broken and missing teeth.

  “You killed Tim,” Orlando said to her, echoing Chase’s words.

  “He was a junkie.”

  “He was also a person,” Orlando replied, his tone quickening. “Just like all of us. But not like you. You’re not human. You’re a monster.”

  The woman fidgeted her mouth around, then slowly opened it. Three broken teeth came tumbling out. Her head still held back by her hair, blood drizzled from her mouth out onto her chin.

  “So what? A kid is dead.”

  “You don’t have the right to go and do what you did,” Orlando said, giving her head a proper jerk.

  “I am the way I am,” she finally said. “That’s all the right I need.”

  “Turn away, kids,” Draven said.

  No one turned their head.

  “Stand back,” he told Orlando. Only Orlando moved, which set Draven off. Roaring at them, he said, “TURN AWAY!”

  Now everyone looked away. Everyone but Carolina.

  She watched it all.

  The redhead started to laugh, but no one was laughing with her. When he looked over, Draven saw Eudora watching. Carolina looked down, saw the older woman give him a nod of approval. Draven turned back to the ugly redhead, saw her face looking up at his.

  “I warned you, didn’t I,” Draven said, not a question, more like a statement.

  And with that he swung the bat down with all his might, cringing at the pulped, hollow sound of the wood crushing her skull.

  The woman fell forward, her back twitching. Draven leaned down, put a foot on her shoulder, wiggled and yanked the spiked bat out of her head, then swung it again.

  She finally stopped moving.

  When he pulled the bat back again, it came with a chunk of red hair and skin. Draven yanked it out, tossed it aside, then handed the bat back to Chase.

  “Thanks,” he said. The boy took the bat, stared at it for a long second, then he looked down at the woman.

  This was when Carolina saw Morgan and the two boys emerging from her house. She was holding the boys close to her, her hands covering their eyes, both of them pulled into her. Morgan was looking down on the grisly scene. Then up at the burning homes. She had a stern look on her face, but it wasn’t for Draven as Carolina first suspected. Morgan and the boys walked down to where they were at, stood next to Draven and said, “I couldn’t have done what you just did.”

  “I don’t recommend trying,” he said, his eyes not on the woman but on their burning homes. The air out there was getting hot.

  “That’s why we decided to come with you,” Morgan said. “People like you, men like you, you’re important. We need you.”

  “We need you, too,” he said.

  Seeing the boys looking at the dead redhead, Orlando grabbed her by the shoulder and started to drag her back to the burning house.

  “What are you doing?” Draven asked him, but by now the noise of the raging inferno drowned out his voice.

  Risking his own safety, Orlando dragged her close enough to the flames to shove her into them. A few minutes later, her body caught fire, burning along with everything else.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Xavier sat in the seat directly behind Adeline as she navigated the bus back to the house. He had to admit, for an old hunk of crap, the bus was sounding and moving pretty good.

  “How does it feel?” Xavier asked Adeline.

  “Handles like a dream,” she joked. He laughed and she said, “Well, it’s not the Audi, but it’ll do for now.”

  They were a block out from the house when they saw the flames.

  “Fiyero!” Adeline shouted.

  Fire and Isadoro rushed up the aisle, got a good look through the windshield at the neighborhood ahead. Eliana was practically hanging over Ice’s shoulder for a look as well.

  “Is that us?” she said.

  “I think so,” Fire replied, an odd stillness in his voice. “Hurry!”

  The second they hit the street, they saw everyone standing out front. Adeline slowed to a stop and pulled the doors open. She hurried out to the others with the rest of them.

  Xavier shut off the engine, pocketed the key.

  Out front, Fire was standing back in awe. With his hands in his hair, his eyes on the flames, he stood there, watching everything burn.

  “We still had supplies inside,” he turned and shouted.

  “We have the trailer in back, Dad,” Orlando said. “And I got your car far enough away.”

  This stopped him.

  “You did?” Fire asked. Orlando nodded his head. Fire went to him, wrapped him in a big hug and said, “Good man! How’s your head?”

  “Feels like an elephant is standing on it,” Orlando replied.

  “Everyone on the bus,” Ice called out.

  “Chase, you and your brothers head to my house, ASAP,” Morgan said. “Grab what you can in less than five minutes. We can come back for anything else that survives.”

  By now the fire was spreading.

  In the next hour, most of the neighborhood would be engulfed in flames. It was hard to say how long and how hard the fire would burn, but with a slight breeze and the heat, there was no telling which homes would be consumed and which would be left standing.

  Morgan and the boys got moving while Eliana ushered everyone else in the bus. Draven said he’d wheel Eudora around back and meet Xavier and Fire there. Xavier started the bus and they drove around to the back of the house where the purple beast and the trailer awaited. The trailer was packed to go, but not fully. There was plenty of room for Eudora’s wheelchair.

  “Adeline, Orlando, you’re in the Barracuda with me,” Fire said. “Xavier, we’ll wait for Morgan, then follow me.”

  “I’ll help Draven with Eudora,” Ice said.

  They saw Draven wheeling his grandmother toward them. Ice took Eudora’s wheelchair and said, “There’s a space for this if you can get her on the bus.”

  “Sounds good,” Draven said.

  When everyone was ready, when the trailer was hooked up to the hitch on the bus, they pulled out of there. The smoke was thick and the air crackling with fire. This was not how anyone wanted to leave. But they were all leaving, and most important
, they were leaving alive.

  Xavier knew that was Fire’s and Adeline’s dream home. He knew it was Draven’s and Eudora’s home, too—the one they refused to abandon. Knowing this made the drive out of there both sad and surreal.

  Some time later, they pulled up to a big, beautiful home. Fire got out of the purple beast, told them to wait, then went and knocked on the front door. It opened a few minutes later, but everything was dark so Xavier didn’t see much.

  A moment later, Fire started their way. Xavier opened the bus door and Fire said, “We’re good. Let’s get everyone inside.”

  When he went inside, Xavier saw a house lit by candles. He also saw Nyanath, Nasr and his older brother, Kamal. Nyanath was gathering some food for Alma and Bianca, and asking if anyone else needed food. No one spoke up. Either they weren’t hungry, or they were too in shock to think about being hungry. It was impossible to say.

  Fire and Nyanath talked quite a bit, but Xavier needed space from everyone. He walked out onto the back porch where it was dark enough to see the stars.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” Nyanath said, coming out the door behind him a few minutes later

  “It is.”

  “It’s nice to see you again,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I understand you lost your wife?” she said. “I lost my husband and my child.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her. He was looking at her through the dark, thinking he was happy she was there. If anyone would understand his pain, it would be her.

  “I miss them,” she said.

  He heard the agony in her voice, knew that any minute, one of them was going to say the wrong thing and then they’d both start crying.

  “We’ll be out of your hair in the morning,” Xavier told her. “I appreciate you letting us stay here.”

  “There’s no rush,” she said. “You can stay longer if you want.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. He felt her shrug her shoulders in the darkness. “Do you have a plan?”

  “We just got a car,” she said, brightness in her voice.

  “What did you find?”

  “Dodge Pioneer,” she replied. “A total rust bucket, but it runs.”

  “Why don’t you leave with us?” he asked. “You can’t just stay here and make things up as you go. At least with us, we have a plan, and we’ve been strategizing pretty much since you came and got Nasr.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” Xavier replied. “If you want, I can run it by Fire, see what he thinks.”

  “He already offered.”

  “Well then, you have to come with us. If not for you, do this for your brothers.”

  “After everything that happened, after what my father did to Fiyero’s family, I don’t know how he can be so generous.”

  “Fire is gruff and sometimes mean, but he has a huge heart and he loves his family. Guys like that tend to have soft spots for others, too. That’s why I think you should consider what we’re offering. It would be good for all of us.”

  “I’ll think about it tonight,” she said. Then: “It was nice to see you again.”

  When the night started to get that chill, he went inside, saw Eudora asleep in her chair, heard the others snoring on the couches and nearby chairs. He went to the front room, laid down on the floor on his bedroll, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  His first dreams left him restless and twitching. Somehow, he woke himself back up and couldn’t go back to sleep. Taking a few deep breaths, he finally did what he always did to clear his mind. He imagined the day he just had, but he did this in reverse. By the time he worked his way back to him opening his eyes that morning, he said, “I had a great day.”

  He didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

  This was the exercise.

  When he fell back to sleep a few minutes later, he saw Giselle as clearly as if she’d been standing right in front of her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  She smiled that beautiful, reassuring smile.

  “I am.”

  “I’m not,” he said, his eyes dropping.

  She put her hand to his face, gave him that sad, tender look. The one she gave him after a long week, or some sort of tragedy.

  Then he said, “Am I supposed to stay here?”

  She smiled again.

  “I met a woman,” he admitted, speaking about Nyanath.

  “You did,” she said.

  He didn’t know what else to say, and she just looked at him.

  “I don’t know how to do this life,” he admitted.

  “You just do.”

  “I don’t know how to feel after you,” he said, his eyes growing moist, his heart aching so hard he felt like it would just about collapse.

  “You open yourself up here,” she said, placing a hand on his chest.

  Her touch was a weight he felt both in the dream and suddenly closer to reality.

  Feeling himself pulling out of sleep once more, he opened his eyes to the sounds of breathing. Looking down, he saw the head of Nyanath’s little brother, Nasr, lying upon him.

  Sometime in the night, the boy had come to him, curled up on him. Now he was fast asleep on Xavier’s chest, his head resting exactly where Giselle had touched him.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Before they turned in for the night, Brooklyn asked again if she could get Eudora into a bed.

  “Let me just sleep in my chair,” she told Brooklyn. “Anything else will just wreck my back. You know how it is.”

  Draven laid a blanket around her shoulders and another across her legs. When he left, Eudora heard her grandson quietly talking to Brooklyn in the other room.

  “I like the way you care for my grandmother,” he said.

  “She’s sweet,” Brooklyn replied.

  “Well, she’s all I have and I’m not sure I can do this on my own. She’s a handful, you know.”

  “Yes, but she loves you.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

  “Are you okay?” Brooklyn asked him, not turning in just yet. “Because what happened tonight, what you did…”

  “Had to be done,” he said, finishing her sentence. “I’ll be okay.”

  “You know,” Brooklyn said, a slight change to her voice, “I underestimated you.”

  “Most people do,” he said.

  And with that, Eudora knew Draven would be okay, that he would be just fine.

  Everyone fell asleep rather quickly. She only felt herself relax when Xavier came back inside for the night. When he was fully settled in, she waited another half an hour and then she slowly and quietly wheeled herself past the sleeping, snoring bodies into the kitchen.

  There she found a knife.

  A minute later, she managed to get the back door open, enough that she could wheel herself out onto the patio.

  Looking up at the skies, it was an incredibly peaceful sky. The stars were bright and beautiful. For awhile she just sat there, smiling, thinking of her husband, of Draven.

  A wayward tear drifted down her cheek.

  She turned and looked inside the house, seeing only darkness. He’ll be okay, she thought. They’ll all be okay. Draven had Brooklyn, and the others. They all had each other. Looking down at her legs, feeling like their perpetual uselessness, their lifelessness, was for the first time going to come in handy, she slowly nodded her head.

  It’s okay…

  Her eyes drifted from her leg to the knife in her hand. Going with them would be a burden, too big of a thing for her to carry. And keeping Draven back would rob him of so many opportunities.

  She refused to do that to him.

  This wasn’t about her legs, or her wheelchair. It was about her failing health. Her heart was ailing, the pressure on her chest worrisome as of late. And the pain now spreading throughout her body felt like a pain she didn’t want any longer, especially if it conti
nued to hurt like this.

  Taking a deep breath, she pressed the knife deep into her leg, pulled it out, then did it again several more times.

  She would miss him terribly, and the others, but this was her doing her part to help them live, to free Draven of the burden of caring for her, to free herself of the burden of this now unwanted life.

  Leaning back, she lost herself in the night, gazing up at the stars as she waited for a different kind of darkness to settle in. For a moment she felt the feeling of her husband, and then she smiled as a cold calm spread throughout her limbs, her chest and finally her head.

  She was so tired.

  She just needed to sleep, only for a moment.

  Closing her eyes, Eudora knew that when she was gone the world would change, as it always did, but this time for the worse.

  She didn’t mind leaving it behind.

  She knew that if there was a heaven, she’d probably make it in, but only barely. If not, she wouldn’t go to hell. Maybe she’d just come back as a cat in the next life, or someone’s dog. Or maybe she’d be reborn as a little girl or boy, and see a new world and all the things she’d missed.

  A hand suddenly came to rest on her shoulder, filling her with an impossible warmth, the kind of presence that seemed to set her at ease.

  Brooklyn.

  “Sweetie,” she said, her voice distant and slurring, prepared to tell her to go back to bed but running out of steam. But there was no return voice, only a bitter chill now battling back the brief charge of warmth in her body.

  When did it get so cold?

  She drew a breath, closed her eyes, then heard the word, “Come.”

  Looking up, she saw nothing. Then she felt everything. Like a sea of hands reaching out for her, wanting her to take just one of them. She lifted her arm into the night sky, even though it weighed about a thousand pounds.

  That’s when the layers of her future and her past merged, one overlapping the other. Whomever was reaching for her hand took it, lifted her up.

  “Stand,” the familiar voice said.

  “I can’t,” she heard her mouth say from a million miles away.

  “Just try.”

  When she stood, she found her legs did not fail her. When the feeling of this presence became fully known, she heard herself whisper, “Oh, I’ve missed you terribly.”