Rising Ashes Read online

  I give him a long look telling him everything he needs to know. Yes. They will start this war, maybe not today or tomorrow, but…

  War is coming.

  I don’t want this for her. I don’t want this darkness in her light.

  I feel it clawing at my back, and the worry chokes my throat. The worry for Evangeline. The worry for all we have built and the peace we have so tentatively held onto. It is coming to an end, and I can kill and slash and fight, but I can’t protect her like I used to. I can’t be there every second.

  And it’s my own fault.

  I try and fail to swallow against the lump of bitter guilt. Escaping the roof, I travel back to a hidden crevasse, waiting for the beginning of this little war.

  It was almost unbearable to watch Evangeline tear up as she sent her parents on, and even worse, I couldn’t hear her voice from up here. More so, I wasn’t there with them to send my friends – my family – to their peace. My chest burns again, but I refuse to rub away the ache. Instead, I ball my fists, cracking my knuckles in the process, and get ready for the shit to hit the fan.

  I’ve tested my weapons more than once, making sure the blades are sharp, my armor is secure. I don’t need to go through it all again, but my hands ache to do something. I can’t stand another moment of inaction. I adjust my favorite ivory-hilted Kukris, the blades secured in an inverted holster crisscrossed behind my back.

  I have never been one to lie in wait. Usually, when people are sent to me, it is because they needed killing. More often than not, the people who needed killing, needed it done to send a message.

  Delicacy is not my forte, but I understand why I need to wait for them to make the first move – sniper rifles and all. If this group of stupid soon-to-be-dead fucks decides the fight’s not worth it, I can’t just rip into them – no matter how much I want to. I have to have a reason… even if that reason might blow my whole plan to hell and back.

  It isn’t long before they give me one.

  Three men ruin their fancy tuxes as they lie in the dirt to line up their shots. Time to move. I use the skills I honed early in my childhood and make my way slowly but surely through the throng, picking off the outliers like a big cat stalking prey.

  To call my past dysfunctional is like slapping a coat of paint on a condemned house, using a pretty word won’t make it any better.

  Fuck.

  Dysfunctional would be a step up.

  Then again, anything would be a step up from where I came from.

  The first ones give me no trouble, quickly snuffing out their flames with my knife. I suppose it's hard to hear me over the sound of the rifle or, perhaps, no one expected there to be a real fight at a funeral.

  Go figure.

  No one notices when the early ones go, poor bastards, and I move on to the shitheads that are doing the actual harm. Popping in and out like a ghost, I steal them away before their buddies even know what hit them. I don’t bother to consume them now; I’ll wait until I’m done for that.

  The next round is slightly more tiresome than the first. I guess when most of your friends are missing, you start to notice, but really, how effective can you be in a tuxedo?

  My cockiness bites me in the ass, then, when a little weasel in an expensive suit stabs me in the back. He misjudges my armor and hits Kevlar instead of the lung he was aiming for, the bastard. He slashes again, hitting my forearm as I go to block him, but he doesn’t get to keep his weapon. I snatch it from him as easily as if I was taking it from a child. He appears apologetic, and he’s so young, I’d probably let him live if it weren’t for the blood running down my back.

  The dark side starts their recruiting early, I see.

  I kill him quickly, painlessly, and it hurts me to do so. I hate killing young ones – the ones just barely past maturity. While not the worst soul I’ve ever seen, he still had time to turn it around. Well, if he weren’t on the wrong side of a war, he would have.

  This will just have to be another score on my soul added to the mountain of scars from a past I can’t change. Really, what’s one more?

  In that second of self-pity, I lose my grip on the upper hand when three men attack me at once, stabbing and slicing with their talons like a pack of raptors. Fear trickles into my brain, and I try to beat it back, but…

  It’s funny, but I’m not afraid of death. Not for death or hell. In this life, I did what I did, and I can’t change it. I always did what I thought was right, and if it makes me evil, then so be it. No, the fear I feel is for her, my Angel. Because she deserves so much better in this life than this. Than me.

  It is not to say I don’t fight back. I do.

  With every breath in me, I fight.

  For her. For her smile and laugh and light. I fight. To my very last breath, I will, and even when I die, I’ll fight some more.

  For her. For that smile, that laugh, that light.

  As I dirty my soul, taking more and more life, killing the men who try to snuff out my flame, the thunder of the fifty-cal makes its presence known, earning me precious seconds that will save my fucking hide.

  I stab. I slash. I kill, and as I rip my blade against the last throat of the last of what is left of the Wraiths on top of the cliff, I feel a warring sense of disgust for myself and a little satisfaction at a job well done.

  No one saw me. I was sure of it. Well, no one who could live to tell the tale, anyway. It is the satisfaction that kills me a little more each day. I shouldn’t be proud of this. I shouldn’t feel a sense of accomplishment at stomping out life.

  Even if the souls I took were on the expressway straight to hell. And they were, believe me. I don’t kill innocents.

  Never again, you mean, my mind snidely whispers, reminding me of mistakes from a previous life.

  I look to the gritty, rocky shore of the river, and feel the cold slap of regret.

  I’m an asshole. A lousy good-for-nothing steaming pile of shit. I know this. But I didn’t think she did until I see her face scanning the blackness for me in the dark of the gorge.

  I should have shown my face. I should have fought beside her instead of taking out these motherfuckers from the shadows up here.

  But it would blow my cover, and before I can fix the shit I started – eliminate the threat to her life – I have to walk right into the snake pit. And those slimy bastards don’t need to know my only weakness.

  Her.

  2

  This Queen Crap Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

  EVAN

  I’m livid.

  This isn’t a new thing for me, I get angry at the drop of a hat lately. It’s no surprise, I mean come on. Who wouldn’t be mad? Hell, I’d figure today of all days I would get to just be sad.

  I put my parents to rest today. I should be crying into a big glass of bourbon right about now.

  Nope.

  Not me.

  Instead, on the first day of my rule, I not only had to fight for my life, but I also had to fight to fight for my life. I was treated like a child by the very men I am supposed to lead. Sure, I killed the men who conspired to murder my parents in probably the worst way I can think of, but in the grand scheme, I didn’t get the head of the snake. I don’t even know who the fucking snake is.

  That will have to come later.

  And then I have Idiot One and Idiot Two trying to keep me from fighting alongside my family.

  I don’t fucking think so.

  I take a look around at the aftermath of the gorge. Other than some scorched rock, you’d never know so many lost their lives here. In the silence, now that the guns have spent their rounds and the weapons have all been sheathed, the only sound apart from the rush of the water over the rock is the faint beat of Mena’s wings as she searches for another threat.

  She won’t find one.

  Wraiths rarely fight if they think they can’t win. This is why we’ve lived in ‘peace’ for so many years. Why start a war when you can just kill someone in the dead of night and blame some
body else?

  Wraith logic. We are a sunny bunch, aren’t we?

  Mena circles once, twice, and then finally lands on a large boulder jutting into the water from the shore. Phasing almost immediately, she jumps from the rock into Asher’s arms, and a new ache wrenches in my chest. West.

  He didn’t come.

  He didn’t stay.

  He didn’t help.

  The ragged edges of my heart start bleeding once again. I know I released him. I know I told him I never wanted to see him again, and it’s true – I don’t. I couldn’t keep relying on someone who was never going to choose me – who was never going to stay with me.

  I can barely wrap my mind around the fact that he knew we were mates. He felt it with me and decided to deny me. For one hundred and nine years he’s denied me.

  You’d think I’d know better by now.

  I guess I finally wised up. Only a little, though, because I’m still shocked he didn’t even come to the funeral.

  Shocked.

  How fucking stupid can I be?

  A lot, apparently, because I’m still stinging with jealousy from watching Mena and Asher, and I just can’t take one more thing today. Before I can leave, my best friend in the entire universe grabs my hand. I’m not looking at her, but I know it’s Aurelia. The pain in my chest eases for a moment, and I have never been more glad she is here with me.

  Saving me from the fire from the very first day we met, Aurelia knows me better than anyone – even if I’ve been keeping huge secrets from her.

  “I’ll only be able to stall them for a few minutes so you can get your shit together, but only a few minutes. The house is empty, so use your time wisely,” she whispers into my ear.

  I can work with a few minutes. That is just enough time to sling back a shot of bourbon and get out of this stupid gown. Who decided to make funerals formal attire only, for fuck’s sake? I don’t take the time to ponder this. Instead, I travel from the multicolored rock floor of the gorge to my room in the cliff house.

  It is an opulent room – far too rich for my blood – but Mama decorated it for me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t to my taste. Now, I can’t imagine changing it. The walls are papered in a lightly textured, luminescent cream. In fact, most of the room is in shades of white and silver from the wallpaper to the mirrored side tables. The only color – and my only contribution to the design of the room – is from a plush magenta area rug that is begging me to walk on it. I detour around the white leather sitting chairs just so I can walk across the soft shag on my way to the liquor nook hidden away by an antique-white paneled cabinet.

  My mother and the white. I’m not a virgin, Mama. That ship sailed a long time ago.

  I pull a squat tumbler from the lowest shelf and splash a healthy measure in the glass. I only get a single swallow in before Cam and Aidan bust my door open like an episode of Cops. They file in my room like they are my wardens, and I realize now, letting them get away with the shit they pulled in the gorge was a mistake on my part.

  “Well, that was unnecessary,” I say before I can stop myself, and I’m happy it comes out calm as you please instead of the seething rage bubbling in my chest.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Evangeline?” Cam thunders, his hulking form fills the doorway, the black of his clothes making him look only more ominous. He is chastising me like a naughty toddler.

  Yep, big mistake on my part. Sorry, Papa.

  I take another swallow of my bourbon, carelessly fling the glass back in the cabinet, and before the tumbler can stop spinning on the bar top, I’ve traveled to the pair of them and have Cam face first on the tile with his hand pinned behind his back.

  First my parents, then West, now this. I am already shitting the bed at this whole leader thing. I am done failing, and if there is anything I learned from my father, it was sometimes lessons need to be taught the hard way.

  As my talons gouge into Cam’s face, I turn my black eyes to Aidan, and by his expression, I can tell he didn’t expect me to know how to fight nor did he know I could take someone much bigger than myself down.

  He should have. We have fought together. He should know better.

  “I assume this tantrum is because I left the gorge?” I ask, and Aidan hesitantly nods. Cam doesn’t move an inch, and I don’t blame him. One wrong move and his eye is going bye-bye.

  “I have some issues with your behavior in the gorge. First and foremost, you held me back from fighting,” I say calmly.

  “We did our job. We were keeping you safe,” Aidan gently pleads and while I appreciate the sentiment, I can’t abide by it.

  “Would you have refused to let my father fight? Would you have tried to take that away from him?” I ask, and I can tell my question hits home. He has undermined me without meaning to.

  Aidan and Cam have been with my family long before I was born. They see me as a child, a little sister, and while I trust them with my life, I can’t trust them to guard me against the dangers of this reign for another second without this lesson.

  “No. You wouldn’t,” I scold.

  “But you…” Cam begins.

  “Do. Not. Presume to tell me what I can and cannot do. I am your Queen, your leader, and you will treat me as such or I will make you regret it.” I say through gritted teeth, and while I feel slightly guilty for smashing his face on the hardwood floor, it has to be done.

  I love Cam, he is the big brother I never had. He has tended to more scraped knees than any grown man should, but family or not, he cannot keep playing big brother.

  It will get us both killed.

  “I love you both, but I will release you and get someone else if you can’t get it through your thick fucking skulls that I’m not a delicate little flower. I know how to handle myself. And if you undermine me again, I will make your release the permanent kind. Do you understand me?” I question as I retract my talons from his face and travel to my feet.

  I get a reluctant nod from Cam as little bubbles of blood well from the cuts in his cheek. Cam and Aidan both take a knee of supplication, and when they rise, five little ribbons of red have made their way down Cam’s cheek.

  “Good. If it makes you feel better, I will continue my sparring sessions with Aurelia to keep my skills sharp. She’s been training me for a decade already, I see no reason to change things up now,” I admit to a stunned Aidan.

  “West let you…” Aidan says, and his eyes widen as he trails off realizing his mistake. Just the sound of his name slices into my chest, and I steady myself against the blow.

  “West was not aware. He was my Guardian, not my keeper. I don’t want to hear his name again. Now, no offense guys, but I need some time alone. I’m going to go drown my sorrows in some bourbon and take a bath. I want the door fixed before I get out. Oh, and if you bust in my room again, I’ll cut your dicks off. Understood?” I ask, but it isn’t really a question. They both got a freebie pass for pulling that bullshit in the gorge. I can’t be that lenient again.

  I walk back to the cabinet, snag the bourbon and my glass from the bar top and head to the en suite bathroom, gently closing the door when I want to slam it. Flipping on the taps before moving to the walk-in, I pull the zipper down on my dress and slip it from my shoulders. Carefully putting it on the thick, wooden hanger, my mind finally catches up with me. Black gauzy fabric, heavy, black beading, I hate this fucking dress.

  I want to burn it. I want to rip it to shreds. This is the last thing I wore when I saw my parents for the final time.

  It’s tainted.

  It’s infected with the bitter loss I’m trying so hard to stomp down into nothing. It’s then that I let myself break a little and hug the now-cold dress to me as I crumple to the plush carpet.

  I allow myself three minutes. Just three to vent some of this agony. I have to let it out now – where no one can see. I can’t be weak. I can’t break completely.

  I stem the flow of the pain leaking from me and climb to my
feet, hanging the dress on the rung. I can’t let it go now. It was the last thing my mother picked out for me, the last thing we ever shopped for. Had I known at the time it was going to be my funeral dress, I wouldn’t have ever bought it.

  I reach up and straighten the strap on the hanger before running my fingers down the bodice.

  Miss you, Mama.

  I suck in a huge breath and let it out in a gust, shoring up my walls again and turn from the closet to turn the taps of the large claw-footed tub off. Filling the tumbler to the brim, I set it in the fancy teak bath tray spanning the width of the tub, and before I can think better of it, I plop the bottle of bourbon right next to it.

  One night to grieve.

  I need this time. Time to deal with losing my parents. Time to put on my big girl panties and rule as good or better than my father did. My father had to worry about his mate, and that guided his decisions. Some of those, I hate to say, treaded the safe path rather than the right one. He stayed safe to keep his mate alive. I don’t have one of those, and I probably never will.

  Nope.

  Safe is not for me.

  I’ll do the right thing instead.

  3

  Baser Instincts

  WEST

  I hate waiting.

  I especially hate waiting when it’s for pompous shitheads like Voyt Garrison. I wouldn’t even talk to the smarmy fucker, but unfortunately, I need his help.

  Perched on a stool in my garage in front of the most beautifully beat-up wreck of a motorcycle – a newer model Triumph Bonneville some stupid fucker decided to neglect – I should feel at home. This is my place – my safe haven. The fact that my garage is twice the size of my cabin is a testament to how much I love it here. It makes me wonder why I even have a house.

  I don’t sleep there.

  I don’t eat there. And I’m thoroughly afraid of opening the refrigerator, because who knows what’s growing in it.