Scattered Ashes Read online

  His buddy is still standing, though, and in full tactical gear save the Kevlar helmet. Since he’s also a Soldier, he seems to have lost his shirt so he can be a douchebag and display his Legion markings. Like the rest of us, they cover his entire right arm, his right pectoral, and right scapula. The markings and placement are similar to a Pauldron in a piece of armor. He probably skipped the helmet so he wouldn’t fuck up his hair as evidenced by the shiny, nearly Ken-like plastic quality to his coif. He even has the blonde hair to match.

  He’s wounded too, with a few metal slivers as thin as knitting needles impaled in his left shoulder, thigh, and shin. He has Aurelia pinned down behind another I-beam, peppering gunfire from two Desert Eagle .50 cal handguns in each of his hands.

  Oh, give me a fucking break. The poor bastard must have a penis the size of a cashew.

  Since he seems to have limited training and from what I’ve witnessed the training came from bad 80s’ action flicks, he has quickly run out of bullets and is taking a small eon to reload. I raise my weapon, ready to sever this douche turd’s spinal cord with my .40 cal hollow points.

  Before I have a chance to pull the trigger, Aurelia has abandoned her sanctuary of steel and has launched herself at him. She is wearing a blue, floaty top, black slacks that cup her tight ass like the hand of God, and wicked black shoes. Her arms are covered in ink, roped slender muscle, and what looks like someone else’s blood. Her hair is loose and wild, flowing down her shoulders to her waist, black as a raven’s wing.

  And she looks furious.

  Her eyes are glowing white, even behind the fool contacts she has to wear. She has the hilt of one throwing knife in her left hand, and her right hand is empty, her fingers pulled into a tight fist.

  Three bounds cross the ten yards that separated them and she’s on him, leaping to hook her legs around his shoulders and hauling his carcass to the ground in an MMA maneuver I’ve forgotten the name of. The Eagles are history, having skid across the room in the takedown, and Aurelia has him pinned with a knife to his throat. Her right hand is now grasping his jaw, her fingers digging into his flesh.

  Knowing she’s most likely going to fry the fuck out of this dude, I look around to see if I’m standing on something conductive (which I am because this whole damn building is concrete and steel), and I know I’m about to fry too.

  And if I burn, so does she. I need to stop her before she disintegrates this asshole. You know, questioning him might be beneficial.

  “Aurelia, stop!” I shout. But she’s not listening.

  Of course, she’s not listening. This is going to hurt.

  As quick as I can, I rush her, hooking my arm around her waist, keeping her from lighting up this whole building like Christmas morning. I flip her over, trying to keep her hands away from me while also trying to keep from knocking her around. I’m only marginally successful, and now we have matching cuts on our left cheek. I’m lucky she didn’t take out my eye. But now we’ve got bigger problems than some piddly little nick.

  Skippy, the Douche Clown, has reached one of the Eagles, albeit he’s hobbling like an old man. It’s completely possible she damaged his spine in that move. Only he seems to be having trouble concentrating because he is still trying to chamber a round. Seriously? Did Iva send the bottom of the barrel, or what?

  “Time to go,” I say as I try to scoop her compact little body up, but she’s having none of it.

  “Don’t touch me, you abominable prick!” she screams at the same time she realizes it’s me. She slaps my hands from her waist.

  Normally, she’d try and kill me. Again. But I think Skippy is a bigger threat than I am at this point.

  “I was trying to keep you from frying me. Don’t blame me for attempting to save your damn life. Again”, I growl, irritated I can’t even be the good fucking Samaritan with this woman.

  “I wasn’t in danger of losing my life, you moron. I am perfectly aware of where I am and the simple fact I’m basically in a fucking metal box. I’m also aware of how the laws of conductivity work as well as a vast number of other laws of motherfucking physics. I’m not trying to kill anyone else, and there are some wounded people still here. I was just going to slit his throat like a good little girl.”

  Well, that takes the righteous wind right out of my sails. “Oh. Well. I’m sorry?” I shrug just as Skippy finally figures out how to work his compensation for a minuscule penis.

  “You plan on killing this guy or are you waiting for him to try and blow my head off with that hand cannon?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at me.

  I raise my weapon and fire two rounds into Skippy’s shoulder. I glance back at her and quip, “I’d planned on questioning him first.”

  “Oh. That’s smart,” she frowns.

  “You can be smart on the physics, I’ll be smart on the tactics, Gorgeous.” She rolls her eyes at me but strides over to Skippy hauling his huge body up off the floor with one hand to the collar of his vest like a pissed off mama cat. She shakes him viciously, and his whole body flops with the movement.

  “Alright, shit stain. Want to tell me why you’re shooting up my friend’s gallery? Or shall I kill you now, hmm?” His mouth tightens into a grimace, his heavy brow pulling into a frown.

  “I don’t think he’s going to talk to you,” I quip, with a hard-won look of earnestness on my face. Aurelia’s gaze goes from the poor bastard dangling from her grip to me, and I wish I hadn’t said anything at all.

  “Oh, he’ll talk to me. Or I’ll take out the Morganite knife stuck in your right boot and carve him like a fucking pumpkin.” Skippy pales at the glow of Aurelia’s eyes and the slightly sadistic quality to the curve of her lips.

  He should be worried. Very worried. She drops him to the concrete with a mighty thud.

  “How’d you know I had a knife in my right boot?”

  She points to her chest and says, “Seer. Duh.”

  “So you knew I was here, huh?”

  “Of course I did. I know every time you’re here, what weapons you carry and even what color your socks are. Navy and black do not match, BTW. It’s the important shit I can’t see. Like who sent this dipshit, but I bet I can guess. Let me see,” she says as she reaches to his left shoulder to twist the spike, inciting a pained howl from Skippy. “Wanna tell me your name?”

  “Thad,” he gasps, “My name is Thad.” Wow. His name is douchier than his hair, and I didn’t think that was even possible.

  “And who sent you, Thad?” she asks sweetly, which is all the more frightening given the malevolent expression on her face. To tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little excluded from this interrogation, so when Thad refuses to answer her, I rip out the spike still sticking out of his thigh with a vicious jerk. The agonized scream turns my stomach a little, but it does the job because now Thad can’t stop talking.

  “Iva. Iva sent me,” he gasps, “She sent me to stall you because she has more Soldiers coming. She’s going to capture you this time, and it doesn’t matter what he,” he nods at me, “does to try and save you. He has a price on his head too.” He’s breathing hard, gasping as if his lungs have decided this very minute is the time to quit.

  Iva. That slippery little bitch. I’ve been dodging our Primary – our leader – for over one hundred and fifty years. Just her name sends a shudder down my spine. The things she has done…

  Aurelia reaches into my shoulder holster and pulls the Ruger out. She chambers a round and pumps it into his head with enough quickness I don’t have the chance to stop her.

  I’d yell at her since we still needed more info, but the look of pure unadulterated terror on Aurelia’s face is enough to make me shut up and move. “We have to go. Now,” I say as I take the Ruger from her and re-holster it.

  I grab her ice-cold hand in mine and head for the back of the gallery towards the back parking lot while asking, “Where’s Evan?”

  “She was losing it, so I made her go ahead of me to ready a safe house. She’s safe.”
r />   “Thanks. She’s like the sister I never had. Thank you for keeping her safe.”

  “Me too,” she swallows thickly, “She’s a better sister than I ever got.”

  Aurelia’s family shit is the stuff of freaking legend. I’ve never seen a mother as uptight or unrelenting as hers. Nothing was ever good enough. Aurelia wasn’t polite enough, she wasn’t proper. It didn’t help that she didn’t want the role she was born to… It didn’t matter to her family what kind of daughter they had, they’d rather have her sister.

  A sister, as time went on, who shunned her just like her parents did.

  We reach the door, and she pulls me toward a slate gray, new model Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. She drops my hand suddenly as if she’d forgotten she hates me for those few minutes and has just remembered. To ease the newly forming ache in my chest, I take a split second to admire the awesomeness of the vehicle before me holding my hand out for the keys.

  She gives me a look of indignation before reaching under the front driver’s side wheel well for her spare key. She shakes her head, beeps the locks and opens the door to slide in behind the wheel.

  “Nobody drives my baby but me.”

  I throw my hands up in surrender and slip into the passenger seat. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  She shrugs as if to give me the point while pushing the ignition button. She peels out of the lot and weaves into traffic with an ease I’ve never seen any driver pull off. She drives better than I do which is irritating to say the very least. I’d never tell her, though; she’d have to torture it out of me first.

  The wail of sirens start just as we reach the third block out, and four squad cars followed by a SWAT bus scream past us in a blur of speed. It’s not like in the movies. No one looks at us. No one suspects we had anything to do with the carnage those poor fellows will walk into.

  From what I can feel and see, I know she is uninjured. I need to know she is alright, though.

  “We’re going to be fine, you know that, right?” I say, trying to reassure her. Her face is a blank mask, so her thoughts and emotions are expertly hidden from me. Her only tell is the grayish white cast to her knuckles as they grip the wheel.

  “I know we will. It’s the next part that worries me.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” I ask, on edge because knowing Aurelia, it could be anything.

  “We have to be in the same car. Together. And driver picks the music,” she quips with an evil smile.

  Dear God, please not—

  Of course. Taylor Swift comes out of the speakers just to torture me. Aurelia shimmies in her seat as she punches the beautiful beast into fifth gear.

  “You’re the Devil,” I grouse, crossing my arms, doing my damnedest not to stare at her boobs as she laughs in her seat.

  “Well, I can’t kill you, or inflict any wounds without hurting myself, so Tay-Tay is what you get. Suck it up, buttercup,” she smiles as she pops the P with her lips. I feel like she’s going to torture me forever.

  I hate that she hates me. I hate she can’t see my side of things.

  “You could have just left me there, you know,” I grumble like a scolded child.

  “I know. I could have. But if they caught you, they’d kill you to kill me. It’s a no-brainer, really. I’m helping you to save my own ass. And as soon as I figure out how to remove our binding, I’ll never see your face again. Sound like a plan?”

  She glances my way, but I school my features long enough to nod. That little quip turns the knife in my chest. Removing the binding, even as hard as it is to bear, would be like cutting off a limb – like cutting out my heart.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” I murmur as I look out the window at the passing traffic as we head north on I-25 out of town.

  I know this for certain. I am going to get this girl to forgive me if it’s the last thing I do.

  3

  Things Just Aren’t Going My Way

  AURELIA

  After five and a half hours of driving, one fuel stop, and a roundabout route, we’ve made it to the safe house in Grand Lake, or the ‘cabin-mansion-on-steroids’ as Evan calls it. The ‘safe house’ is more her father’s vacation cabin than anything else. I’ve only seen pictures of the house, but they didn’t do it justice.

  The exterior can only be described as a log cabin’s hotter, older, manlier brother. Thick logs run the perimeter of the four-story house, only broken up by large picture windows lit up in the gloom of the night sky. There are also rough, craggy stone columns. The porch is solidly constructed of immense limestone slabs and broad vertical logs. The very top floor seems much smaller than the other floors of the house, possibly serving as a loft or crow’s nest for surveillance.

  Security doesn’t appear to be a concern here. The house is alone on the top of a large foothill surrounded on three sides by the Rocky Mountain National Park, with the closest neighbor a mile out in any direction. The hundred-acre property is solidly enclosed by a rough stone wall that is tall enough to classify the place as a fortress.

  Getting through the gate was easier than I expected, especially since the security panel at the eight-foot, iron entry gate required my thumbprint. I’m going to have to talk to Evan about her lack-of-privacy shtick. My thumbprint, really?

  There are several cars and trucks of every make, model, and year filling the cabin’s half-mile driveway, shiny Jaguars interspersed with late model Fords, new Audis mixed with rusted-out Chevys. I park in the only open spot, incidentally only twenty feet from the front door and roughly punch the button to turn off the ignition after shifting my baby into park. Man, I miss the days when you could turn a key. Simply pressing a button just doesn’t have the same air of purpose.

  I groan as I open the car door and pull my body to standing. I rub my eyes, so happy I ditched the contacts and shake out my legs before going to the trunk to pull out my go-bag. Every vehicle I own (even the boat and four-wheelers) has a small duffel bag stashed somewhere in them. They contain cash, clothes, one day of rations (beef jerky and a flask of Jameson, don’t give me too much credit), and a new identity.

  The identity I probably won’t need just yet, but I do need the set of clothes. My suit jacket was lost to some poor male patron with a gut shot, and my pants and shirt are ruined by some lady’s blood and the remnants of what I did to Thad during his interrogation. I feel guilty for not using the Morganite knife and killing him for real since I know he’ll heal in the next couple of days. My only solace is that it will take a few days to regrow his whole fucking head.

  Dick.

  I knew I shouldn’t have gone to my stupid exhibit. I swear it’s the last time I let Evan talk me into anything.

  I mean it this time.

  Rhys has been quiet most of the drive, and it’s a blessing because I have no idea what to say to him. But it’s a curse as well due to the barbed guilt running through my veins. I’ve spent little time with him that hasn’t included me trying to rip him limb from limb, so a conversation might be impossible. I’m also a little disturbed having him so close hasn’t been the hardship I thought it would be. He’s been quiet, considerate, and he pumped the gas when we stopped because me getting out of the car would have caused a stir.

  We both get out of the car and walk to the trunk, which I’ve popped with the key fob.

  “You want me to carry that?” he asks, chivalrously reaching past me to lift my duffel out of the trunk. The bastard. I really wish he’d cooperate and be an asshole so I could hate him appropriately. I grind my teeth together in an attempt to avoid screaming and give a jerky nod, letting him take the bag. It takes some effort, but I gently close my trunk, careful not to hurt my baby even though I want to smash something.

  I stride towards the front door behind Rhys, vigilantly trying not to stomp my feet and pout like a toddler. My anger only grows when I notice how fucking spectacular he looks in a suit. Holy shit balls. He’s easily six foot three, maybe taller. I’m five-three on a good
day, so he’s at least an entire foot taller than me. The crisp dark charcoal gray suit emphasizes the wideness of his shoulders and the line of his body as it flows from his strong neck to his lean waist and tight ass. People I hate are not supposed to be this fucking hot in a suit.

  I’m pretty sure being pissed at Rhys is all that’s holding me together at this point. I keep seeing flashes of the wounded humans, blood leaking through fingers, gasps of final breaths. I screw my eyes shut and try to blot out the horror on the faces of the humans running past me. The sight of the young woman who fell close to the back entrance and got stomped on by fifteen people before someone was brave enough to haul her up. The look of unadulterated fear on Evan’s face when I slapped the shit out of her, snapping her out of her shock and told her to go ready the safe house because I knew we’d need it. Worse, when the look of fear for herself and those around her turned into her fear of me.

  That look will curse me for the rest of my life.

  Before Rhys can reach the porch, Evan bursts out of the front door like a jack-in-the-box, followed at a more sedate pace by a very large man. Evan’s long curly blonde hair flies out behind her as she sprints toward me, her wide blue eyes set with determination, and a frown pulls at her elfin face. She runs right past Rhys, shouldering him out of the way with enough force he nearly biffs it on the asphalt driveway. He’s saved at the last second by the burly dude, who could give Paul Bunyan a run for his money in the height department.

  Instead of the fear I expect, she practically climbs me like a tree and attack-hugs me with enough strength to bruise my ribs and squeeze the breath from my lungs. I never knew the little blonde pixie had it in her. And I do mean pixie. If Evan says she’s over five feet, she’s lying her ass off.

  “I’m so sorry, Ari, please forgive me,” she whisper-sobs in my ear as she fully latches on to me like a baby koala.

  “For what, baby doll?” I whisper, gently rubbing her back, trying to calm her down. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, even though the look I saw on her face after my hand cracked against her cheek will haunt me until the day I die.