King of Ash and Bone

by Melissa Wright

  She shook her head, blinking hard against tears that wouldn’t come. “This isn’t a finale for me; this isn’t something I can give up on. I only have one thing left in this world, this whole monster-riddled place. I have to help them find it, Hunter. I have to tell the authorities where those things came through. It’s the only way to help him now.”

  Her words hung in the space between them, a narrow strip of confession. She needed this stranger to confirm she’d not lost her mind.

  “Riley,” Hunter said.

  Mackenzie’s smile was sad as she reached into the box beside her, retrieving a plastic figure left behind from one of his games. It was a tiny gray soldier wearing body armor, his oversized, cherry-red ray gun at the ready. “My brother. Riley.” Her chest squeezed. He ran off in the night. The night, for God’s sake! What was he thinking? She wouldn’t let those fears run wild. She would only hope that he’d made it.

  She would only hope that he was alive.

  “He plans to fight them,” she continued. “To join the army and defeat the monsters so he can come home.” Her fingers curled tighter into the mattress, inching closer to Hunter’s side. “I have to help him. I don’t have any other choice.”

  Riley wasn’t a kid anymore, but she couldn’t abandon him. She had to protect him.

  Hunter stared at her for a long moment. His face was not the face of that boy she’d first thought she’d seen, not the peaceful features of the sleeping man sprawled across her kitchen floor. He was returned to himself now, fully awake, and in the glint of wavering candlelight, it was the face of a stranger.

  One whose expression did not mirror the desperate need of her own.

  “An army,” he said.

  Mackenzie nodded, swallowing the anguish of saying it out loud. “Yes. He saw it on the news feeds; they’re gathering troops in the city, taking volunteers. They aren’t even using the National Guard…” Memories of the broadcast lay sharp in her mind, the way officials had seemed to have already given up. They’d only posted soldiers at the city centers, defending water sources and government buildings. They’d not even bothered with the pretense of protecting suburbs or rural areas.

  They assumed they had already lost.

  “The power plants were struck first,” she said. “There were some reports that the magic… can you believe they even said that? Blaming magic. Anyway, the power and phone lines went down right away, poles ripped from the ground, power plants and substations showering sparks. And the internet servers fried. I suppose most of the people who want to get news out can’t, and most of those who need it are stranded. Like us.”

  His expression hadn’t changed, but Mackenzie was sure her spiel was getting through. He had to admit it. He had to tell her.

  “You can trust me,” she said again. “I just need to know that you saw it.” Without the photos, she needed another witness. She needed them to believe her.

  Hunter’s gaze traveled her face, slow and deliberate. It was as if he was testing her. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath. Please, she thought. Please.

  When she opened her eyes again, his gaze was on hers. “Yes,” he said. “I know where the gateway is.”

  Chapter 6

  Mackenzie’s heart was hammering in her chest. Yes, he’d said. Yes.

  She stood, reaching toward the washing machine where she’d stashed a second backpack and emergency supplies. “Okay, so all we have to do is find the army headquarters. On the news, it looked like Adamstown, which isn’t that far from here. It’d be a lot easier if we had gas for the car though.” She sorted which items belonged inside the backpack and which she’d stuff into jacket pockets or strap to a belt. “Riley saw this movie once, some kind of storm-of-the-century thing, and everyone tried to steal the last remaining cars to get out of the city. So he got this idea to take the distributor cap off, and it was genius, except that it wasn’t the car that got stolen. They just siphoned the gas.” She glanced over her shoulder with half a laugh.

  Hunter was staring at her.

  She turned to put a knee on the cot, sliding down to sit beside him and drawing the backpack onto her lap. “Don’t you see?” she asked. “We have to tell the army. To let them know where the monsters came from.”

  He was silent, and Mackenzie’s gaze caught on the blood of his shirt. “I know you were fighting the monsters, Hunter. But you don’t have to do it by yourself. We need to tell the army, we need to point this thing out so they can use it. The phones and the internet are down. We have to go to Adamstown ourselves.”

  He looked at the package of crackers in his hand, and then the freezer and slats blocking the doorway, expression unfathomable.

  “Please,” Mackenzie said. “It’s the only way.”

  “Tomorrow,” he answered. “We need to leave after sunset.”

  Mackenzie smiled, so grateful he’d agreed to help her that she hadn’t realized what he’d said. “You want to go in the dark?”

  “We’ll need to come into Adamstown in the midday sun. It will be too risky at night; if that’s where your army is, that’s where the Iron Bound will be headed.” He gestured toward his side. “We’re more than thirty miles outside of Adamstown, and it’s not as if we’re going to fly there. We’ll need time to find a vehicle, or to walk with supplies. Waiting isn’t the ideal scenario, but if neither of us makes it through, we aren’t doing anyone any good.”

  Mackenzie’s bottom lip pushed up. She blinked, reconsidering her opinion of this boy she’d found among monsters. “Are you some kind of rogue vampire-hunter or something?” Please don’t let him be into roleplaying, she thought. Please don’t let him think this is a game and Hunter is short for something really, really awful that has to do with wooden stakes and pointy teeth.

  “Do you believe in vampires, Mackenzie?” he asked her. There was something low, teasing in his tone, and she hoped it was only that he had picked up on her fear, understood that she’d needed him to see these were real monsters.

  “No, vampires don’t exist.” She smirked. “But if you’d told me two weeks ago we’d be invaded by flying beast-men, I probably wouldn’t have believed that, either.” Her eyes narrowed. “What did you call them… Iron Bound?”

  “It’s an old superstition. Didn’t you notice in all the debris? Your house is still standing. It’s not a coincidence it’s the only one left on the street.”

  She pushed away Riley’s concerns on that same point, the carved symbols on the rusted iron fencing lining their yard and trimming the base of the house, the broken-down metal bridge in the park. The symbols had been on their house when they’d moved there. They were strange, but surely just copied from some ancient architecture. And the park bridge, well Mackenzie couldn’t explain that. She didn’t have to. “Superstition doesn’t protect us. Those things aren’t fairies.”

  “Of course they aren’t fairies. Fairies don’t exist.”

  She’d gotten sidetracked again, lost in his strange, matter-of-fact bearing. “I really don’t think we should be out there after dark. Riley and I, we saw what happens at night.”

  He stood, lifting the hem of his shirt to check the elastic strips covering his wound. “So I suppose you imagine nothing bad can happen during daylight.”

  She wasn’t sure if it was a vampire joke, or if he’d been pointing to the fact that he’d been attacked by five of them in broad daylight, but Mackenzie didn’t respond. His eyes cut to hers, where she was openly staring at the exposed skin of his abdomen.

  She glanced down, picking at the threads on the strap of Riley’s middle-school backpack. The thing was pretty worn, but given that she’d lost hers at the park and Riley had taken his good one with him, she didn’t have a lot left to choose from.

  “We can stay here until dawn,” Hunter offered. “When day breaks, I’ll scout a few streets over, see if I can find a working car or some gasoline.”

  She nodded, not raising her head.

  “Superstition is more powerful than you t
hink, Mackenzie,” he said, reaching down to brush the tattered straps crossing her wrist. “Doesn’t hurt to keep that in mind when you’re up against beings from a world so different than your own.”

  She watched his finger trail over the leather and colored threads, stopping just shy of a small metal charm. “They aren’t magic,” she said. “They’re animals. Beasts.” She stood up, gripping the pack in her hands. “If they bleed, they can be killed. There’s nothing magical about that.”

  He smiled at her in the candlelight, tight-lipped as if the two of them shared some private joke, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

  There was something terribly unexpected about this boy, something in the slant of his eye or the curve of his lip. He was too good-looking, one of those guys who always ended up being more trouble than they were worth.

  “I’ll pack you a bag,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind if it’s covered in pink ponies and glittering hearts.”

  He glanced at the blue and black pack in her hands, back at her. “I like to travel light. If there’s something I can carry for you, though…”

  Mackenzie felt a tug at the corner of her mouth. “I’m only taking a few supplies, mostly water and what’s left of the food.” In fact, now that she’d lost the other pack at the park, the only truly sentimental item she had to carry was the photo of her mother. She wouldn’t count the snapshot of Riley as sentimental, because she was still half tempted to wring his neck. But she’d brought it along anyway, knowing she’d need something to show to the soldiers if she got a chance to search for him.

  When she got a chance to search for him.

  She took one final look around the darkened basement. “I guess this is it then. I’ve got some water and a few days’ worth of food, matches, a clean shirt…” Her words trailed off as her eyes fell on the metal shelf above the washer. She picked up a short screwdriver and tossed it into the bag, followed by a silver spool of tape. At Hunter’s questioning glance, she shrugged. “If anything can help save the world, it’s duct tape.”

  He gave her a look that might have matched the one she’d presented him when thinking his name was Doom’s Blade Dragon Hunter, and then turned to slide the freezer from in front of the door. The sound of its metal legs sliding across concrete sent a chill through Mackenzie, but not as much as the idea of what might be waiting on the other side.

  “Hunter,” she whispered. “Maybe we should wait a little longer, just to be sure.”

  In the flicker of candlelight, his eyes narrowed for a long moment, listening. “No.” He shook his head. “It’s clear.”

  He reached to remove the top board and Mackenzie leaned over, blowing the flame of the emergency candle out. There was a moment of light, the glow of ember and trail of smoke, before the whole of it disappeared, evaporated into the darkness.

  And then Hunter opened the door.

  Chapter 7

  Hunter had done a quick sweep of the upstairs, checking it was empty before he left the house. Mackenzie hadn’t noted the time. It was daybreak, dawn, and the tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock couldn’t change whether he returned or not.

  It wasn’t up to time. It was up to the monsters.

  Her backpack rested in the living room doorway, ready for a quick escape. They would be leaving her home, the one place that gave her any semblance of safety. She paced through the downstairs rooms, glancing one more time at family heirlooms, childhood memories. Her fingers traced the wall in the hallway, sliding up to straighten a storm-tilted frame that hadn’t been knocked free of its hook. A family portrait, the four of them. Little baby Riley stared back at her, his toothless grin making her smile, his eyes so like her mother’s she had to look away.

  Storms were random things, even without the monsters. Bits and pieces of the house lay undisturbed, frozen in the chaos as if it had never come. But the rest of it, the rest of their lives had been turned upside down, thrown into madness so that it became unrecognizable, no matter how familiar it might have once been. There was a strip of brown fabric caught on the broken ledge of a window, the same coffee-colored cotton that had in the past been her savior. No more than an apron in reality, but a symbol of her first job when they’d been too broke to afford even a loaf of bread. She’d been close to thirteen at the time, had lied about her age and forged her father’s signature so the diner would let her work three hours each week.

  It was the first time they’d been truly scared. The first time they’d realized they might be forced to separate.

  Things had gotten easier after that, though. The job had given her the few dollars they’d needed, but it had taught her something as well. It had taught Mackenzie that she could do it, if she had to. She could work and earn, she could keep Riley from starving. And it had taught her that, if she needed to, she could do things she thought were beyond her. It had taught her to take risks.

  She had worked odd jobs every season after that, keeping Riley in sports and summer classes despite his protests that he too could work. She’d insisted that he do all he could to earn a scholarship for the tuition her meager paychecks couldn’t cover. “You can help me out then, Ry. As soon as you graduate and get yourself an amazing job designing software or testing games.” Her tone had been too much like their mother’s and he’d sighed when Mackenzie had said it. But he had done his part, keeping his grades up and never, not in a million years, giving one hint of any of the trouble at home.

  “Dad can’t make it to the game,” he’d tell his coaches and teammates. “He’s helping Kenzie with her car. He’s got a late meeting at work.”

  The lies went on and on, but as long as neither of them got into trouble, it seemed the public was more than happy to let it go. Mackenzie saw the look in their eyes when she listed their father’s excuses. They might not have believed her, but they didn’t want to know. Not truly. They all remembered the accident, they all remembered the stories.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen her father. The first few years, he’d still managed to make a scene now and again. At the local tavern, or one of the downtown liquor stores, picking a fight with an innocent cashier.

  She was fine with letting them think he was drunk instead of absent. As long as it kept her and Riley out of a foster home.

  She nearly laughed at the thought now, all of that gone, every bit of their work and worry wasted. There was no college, no future. There were only monsters.

  She crossed in front of the stairway to the second level, wondering if she had the courage, the desire to see it again. Might as well change her clothes one last time, check her room for any last something that could help her on the road. She kicked off her Converse at the base of the steps, slipping sock-footed off the landing. One… two… three…

  Though they’d started with a slow, measured pace, the last half-dozen numbers blurred together in a rush, the same near-panicked rise she’d gotten as a child, creeping through the darkened basement on Riley’s dare after they’d snuck a horror movie their mother had forbidden them to watch. Monsters aren’t real, she’d told her eight-year-old self, monsters aren’t real.

  “Toss that,” she muttered, slipping through the hallway to peek around her bedroom doorframe. Eight-year-old Mackenzie hadn’t had it half right.

  She grabbed a clean shirt and jeans, tucking them under her arm to dig through her closet. She’d already packed Riley’s old pocket knife and some first-aid supplies, but somewhere among the faded photographs and childhood drawings, she still had that first sewing kit from her ninth birthday. The last birthday with her mother.

  Something thickened in her throat. There were days she hated this house, hated everything it stood for and everything it reminded her of.

  This was not one of those days.

  She knocked over a shoe box, dumping its contents onto the closet floor, and found the small fuchsia box with a crayoned kEnzi scrawled across it. She must have run out of room before she’d been able to fit the last letter in plac
e. Snapping the clasp free, she drew out the package with the thick, kid-safe needle and bright pink thread. Everything was pink when you were a girl, even your weapons.

  She smiled at the memory of her first princess sword. Riley had teased her about its pink-trimmed handle and jewel-encrusted pommel. But he’d only laughed once.

  Her fingers closed over the black leather boots beside her, and she stuffed everything else inside. Giving a silent goodbye to the soft violet comforter and her favorite old pillow, she made a hasty grab for a belt from the hook on the back of her door.

  Something moved at the edge of her vision, and her heart stopped.

  But there was nothing there, only the empty air outside a busted window. A chill ran up her spine at the remembered sound of rustling leaves the previous night.

  Because the trees were gone.

  Her white socks slipped on the polished wood of the hallway as she ran, nearly tumbling her headfirst into the banister before she made the turn for the stairs. If she’d tried counting the way down, she’d have gotten no further than one, her feet leaping over the discarded tennis shoes to land where the wood plank met carpet. In three long strides, she was in the downstairs bathroom, burden dropped haphazardly across the white tile floor as she leaned against the closed door.

  She coughed, wiping her palms over the thighs of her jeans as she chastised herself. “Get it together, Mackenzie.” If she couldn’t even go upstairs without a panic attack, there was no way she’d make it to Adamstown alone.

  He’s coming back, a voice in the back of her mind promised. He’s coming back.

  She sighed, puffing the loose bangs from her forehead as she glanced in the mirror. Mackenzie had had a lot of practice hiding her emotions, but for once, she actually looked like the mess she felt inside.