Rising Ashes Read online

  “I think Voyt had a good idea. I think if I gain support from the lower echelon of the Wraith community, I can face the head families with more than just my father’s word at my back. Vengeance can’t be the only goal here. If it is, then I will have nothing left when this is all over.”

  And I won’t give those bastards the satisfaction of beating me after I burn them to the fucking ground.

  5

  Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

  WEST

  The Emerson’s house makes me very uncomfortable. Like having an arm lopped off in shark-infested waters uncomfortable.

  It isn’t just the house – no, this structure could only be described as a mansion – is bigger than any house John and Olivia have ever owned. What looks to be three stories with an additional stone-faced basement level tucked into a man-made hill, the only word I can use to describe it is vast.

  And white.

  White paint, white stone, white columns.

  The ground level is ensconced in a true southern-style wrap around porch with open slotted railings, complete with ceiling fans and chaise loungers. The second story has more of the same, only with an open-air balcony. The abundance of white is intermittently broken up by tall cobalt planters spilling riots of flowers down their sides. It’s like a home and garden show vomited all over this place.

  It isn’t the lawn trimmed within an inch of its life, or that there isn’t a single out of place leaf, twig, or weed to be found on the sprawling expanse of turf butting up against a forest so dense the waning sunlight refuses to filter through the leaves.

  No.

  The source of the pit in my stomach is the level of security and personnel surrounding the sprawling expanse of land on the shore of Heritage Lake. Men lounging on said chaises look to be enjoying the sunset, but I know for certain they are just covert security by their body language. Boats in the lake that only seem to pass to and fro in front of the property and nowhere else. But these men don’t see me yet.

  At least I don’t think they do.

  I traveled into the dense forest cradling the estate a football field away from the property line, and I am one hundred percent sure I am being watched. Either by cameras or people, I can’t tell yet, but a finger of apprehension rakes its sharp claw down my back, and I know for certain I have eyes on me.

  It is possible there is someone else out here.

  I’ve been on this earth for over six hundred years, and I haven’t lived this fucking long without learning a few things. One of the many things I learned was how to spot surveillance. I notice at least three black bullet cameras hidden strategically in the branches of a few southern red oak trees. That should be enough this far from the house, but the most worrisome – and definitely the most dangerous – are the five proximity sensors embedded into the bark of the Virginia pine and white birch trees to my left and right.

  Proximity sensors that at this very moment are blinking red.

  Fuck, fuck, motherfucking shit. Okay. Stay calm. You were invited here.

  Invited… right.

  I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans, cease my subversive study of their equipment, and start walking on my booted feet toward the house. Manners dictate that popping into someone’s living room is considered bad form, so I mosey on, strolling as if I’m supposed to be here.

  Technically, I am.

  As soon as Voyt told Walter Emerson – the patriarch of the family – I had been released from my charge as Evangeline’s Guardian, he wasted no time inviting me to his home for a meeting. I believe the word Voyt used was ‘clamored.’

  I’m not sure why old Walter thought it would be the best plan to have Voyt be the go-between, but who am I to argue with a man nearly twice my age?

  I feel the thinning of the dense, humid air in front of me heralding the traveling of a Wraith, and I have never been happier I don’t have a single weapon on me as I am at this moment. If I came here armed… I have no idea what would happen. I don’t know my place here with these people. By the looks of this house, they are going to take one look at the exposed ink of my arms, my gauges, my long hair, and they are going to make up their minds. With John, at least I knew he gave a shit.

  With these people? Who knows.

  I raise my hands in surrender, trying to appear as non-threatening as I can manage – which is difficult for someone nearly six and a half feet tall – and wait. Before I can blink, five Wraiths travel into the space in front of me, all drawing down on my head. They look nothing like the guards on the decks and on the lawn of the house. These men are dressed in head-to-toe black suits, have a ‘don’t fuck with me, or I’ll end you’ look to their faces, and have an overt demeanor that screams Guardian. Even their hair is the same. The lot of them have close-cropped, almost buzz-cuts. The only thing differentiating them is the color of their hair.

  Well, hello to you too.

  The men don’t move – hell, they don’t even blink – and we stand in this putridly tense silence waiting for each other to make a move. It might as well be me.

  “If this is how you welcome invited guests, you all need some serious hospitality training,” I droll, calm on the outside while I curse myself for not bringing at least one blade with me.

  “West Carmichael?” the one in the front asks. He might be the leader, but then again, he might not. He is barely distinguishable from the rest, and the level of uniformity makes me very uneasy.

  As if I wasn’t already coming out of my skin.

  “Yep, that’s me. I have a meeting with Walter Emerson in five minutes. May I ask you lower your weapons? Scooter there on the end is looking a little twitchy.”

  And he is. The poor, young Guardian at the back left looks barely a century old – if that – and it shows. It isn’t that he’s smaller than the rest – he’s not, he’s just as tall and broad as his brethren – it is more he seems to be the only uneasy one.

  Someone has heard of me.

  But when I look into his eyes, it isn’t the spark of recognition I expect.

  No.

  This young one has seen things. Terrible things. And I don’t know what he’s witnessed, but I remember that look. It is one I used to see in the mirror every day before I got away from the people who made me. Before I changed my name. Before John got me out of the gutter.

  I do what I can to mask my reaction, but I still feel my teeth clench, and I feel like an idiot for not bringing weapons. The leader nods and all five firearms lower at once. He about-faces turning his back to me and walks toward the house. The other four men follow suit.

  “Follow us,” he orders over his shoulder, and I have never wanted to do something in my whole life less than I want to walk into whatever that pretty house holds.

  But I will. For my Angel.

  The trek seems to take ages, even at the fast clip of the Guardians that appear to have a serious sticks up their asses. When we finally reach the sprawling porch, I’m told to wait. The house is even more perfect up close. No filth from pollen or weather mars the pristine white-planked porch. The chaises are perfectly fluffed, not a pillow or cushion out of place. The flowering pots are deadheaded – not a single wilted flower to be found.

  This place creeps me the fuck out.

  “Someone will be right with you,” the leader says, breaking me from my inspection, and four of the five travel from the porch as one. The fifth – the youngest – catches my eye and gives a slight shake of his head before traveling himself.

  Fuck, fuck, motherfucking shit.

  I want to get out of here. I want to travel from this picture perfect hell and go back to my Angel.

  But I can’t. I can’t leave without making sure she stays alive.

  Rock, meet hard place.

  Before I can change my mind and get the hell out of here, the ornate front door opens. The tall, blonde woman behind it, looks to be no more than twenty-five human years old. But with our kind, she could be anywhere from twenty-five to twelve
hundred and nine for all I know. The hardened cast to her honey-brown eyes tells me she’s either very old or has lived through hell.

  My guess is the latter.

  She’s dressed to match the house. Prim, proper, and white – white dress, white shoes, white pearls. What is with these people and the white? Her makeup is tasteful but subdued, and her hair is pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck like Evangeline does when she wants to look classy.

  I hate it when my Angel pulls her riot of curls back.

  Focus, dipshit.

  “Mr. Carmichael?” she asks as if she isn’t sure. I know I’m a big man, and I know the ink puts people off, but this lady looks like she’s ready to bolt. Based on the pit in my gut, the young Guardian’s response and this woman’s face, I’m thinking this is probably the worst fucking idea I’ve ever had.

  But my gut tells me this is the family. This is the place. These are the people behind so much unneeded death. And as much as I want to leave, as much as I want to travel from this place and never darken their door again, Evangeline comes first. I tip my chin up in the affirmative and wait for her to either open the door or tell me to go to hell.

  “Please, come in,” she says as she opens the door wider for me to enter displaying more and more of the opulence.

  But I don’t really see it. What I do see is the way her eyes flit down to the floor. The way her shoulders turn inward like a wounded little bird.

  Shit.

  She’s either seriously afraid of me or…

  She’s been abused.

  Son of a bitch.

  I’m getting real fucking tired of this shit. Who hurts women? Aurelia. Mena. Two females that didn’t deserve the hell they’ve lived with. Now this poor girl.

  What kind of sick motherfucker does this?

  As I take a step to pass her, she whispers.

  The word doesn’t register at first, but when the same five Guardians travel into the room accompanied by several more men, what she said makes sense.

  She was trying to save me. Just like that young Guardian tried to warn me.

  She was telling me to run.

  Well, fuck.

  6

  Humble Pie

  EVAN – 1928 – LOS ANGELES, CA

  The first time I met West Carmichael, I was singing at a speakeasy in Los Angeles. My parents didn’t know where I was, and for the first time in a long time, neither did Aurelia. Hiding from a Seer is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but a special cloaking amulet from a witch friend seemed to have worked wonders.

  It was pretty. A sapphire the size of my thumbnail set in a silver filigree setting hanging from a thin chain that rests just below my collarbone. It wasn’t the nicest piece of jewelry I owned, but it was my favorite.

  Maybe because it granted my freedom.

  Or maybe because it matched my royal blue silk charmeuse gown to perfection. I used to hate dressing up, but this dress made me feel like a woman. It was an off the shoulder number with a daring sweetheart neckline – far ahead of its time. It fit like a second skin until it hit my thighs and then flared out like a calla lily into a delicate but short train. It may not have been the most comfortable dress I owned, but it made me feel like a sexy siren. Something that with my diminutive height, I rarely felt.

  I was alone – finally alone even in this sea of people– after so much time with the ones I loved breathing down my neck. It was like a vacation. I needed something of my own. A secret, a life, something to break away from my family. Something that didn’t say princess or royalty.

  Something that let me just be me. Singing was it for me.

  I was ending my five-song set with a favorite of mine, an old Jane Greene song when I saw him. I’d seen him around town a few times, when I was shopping by myself or when I watched a boxing match at the Olympic Auditorium, a scandalous activity for an unchaperoned young lady.

  But we’d never met.

  He was handsome. I even daresay beautiful, if you can call a man like that beautiful. He was tall – taller than anyone in the room by nearly a whole head –and built so powerfully he made the other men look like pitiful adolescents dressed up in their daddy’s clothes. It was difficult to tell if his hair was as dark as it seemed in the low light of the secret club, but it appeared black in the dim. Dressed to the nines in a brilliant black suit, he moved with grace through the crowd until he found his seat at the only open table in the joint, folding his huge frame into the chair with the grace of a jaguar.

  Papa had taken me to Brazil when I was just a little girl, and we saw the big cats roam the rainforests. He moved just like those jungle cats, scanning the room for prey and threats, watching everything with disinterest, as if he could take or leave the sights and sounds and people. As if he were bored in this raucous party that seemed to never end.

  But when his eyes hit mine… I was struck dumb, and I nearly flubbed the last three words of the chorus. His eyes were green, the color somewhere between jade and emerald, and framed in lashes so thick it was a wonder his eyelids could carry the weight of them.

  I could tell he was like me – a Wraith – and despite his rather comely appearance, I wanted nothing to do with him. Better he think I was just some boozy siren losing her morals in the backroom of some secret gin joint than to know what I really was.

  A prim and proper princess hiding out as if I wasn’t of age, as if I was a young one. As if I wasn’t more than a child. And maybe… maybe, compared to the rest of them, I might be. Hell, I was only in my forties.

  To everyone else, I’m practically a baby.

  But I don’t feel like a baby. I don’t feel like I’m some wayward child, but after San Francisco... it will be a long time before anyone trusts me with anything ever again.

  On that troubled thought, I finished my song, made my way to the coat room, snatched my deep pile velvet, cranberry red coat from its hanger despite the ire of the rather irritated coat check clerk and made my way through a group of slightly handsy revelers out the back entrance of the club.

  This particular door led to a deserted alleyway, but I paid it no mind. I wasn’t afraid. Sure, I was a woman alone at night, but I only needed to get out of sight of potential on-lookers before traveling back home. I didn’t see them until they were within touching distance, and for this lot, was more than too close.

  They were three steps past drunk and five steps past evil. I could smell it. Both the musty scent of cheap alcohol and the putrid rank of a filthy soul. Their clothes were in disarray, shirts half untucked, shoes scuffed, hair rumpled, and taking them in, I felt fear.

  I’d heard stories. Whispers of what could happen to women out alone. But I wasn’t some weak human woman, and I wasn’t helpless. I may abhor killing humans, but if it came down to them or me, I’d pick me ten times out of ten.

  At their leers and snide little jeers, I felt my talons start to grow – my body spoiling for a fight when I wanted anything but one.

  But they never laid a finger on me.

  Like an avenging angel, a large shadow loomed over my shoulder, blocking the light of the electric street lamp just thirty feet away at the mouth of the alley.

  The men didn’t have time to run. Or scream. Or fight. They were dead before they took their next breath. And standing before me was the Wraith from before. His hair was slightly mussed, but not one other thing was out of place.

  I’d known I’d seen him before. But the way he’d intervened. The way he’d stood, breaths heaving, shoulders set, jaw clenched, eyeing me with censure and disdain, I knew. I thought since I’d been home so much, they forwent assigning me a Guardian. After twenty-two years, I thought I had slipped my leash.

  I was wrong.

  I wanted to cry, but that was a luxury I wouldn’t allow myself. Not in front of this beautiful man who seemed to despise me so much.

  “Guardian?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. I averted my eyes, refusing to watch his face shame me more. But because I was lookin
g at my sapphire silk shoes, I missed his eyes dilating. I missed his breath go from labored to non-existent.

  I missed seeing him realize I was his mate.

  “Are you going to tell my father?” I’d asked, still looking at my shoes, but I never got an answer.

  When I looked up again, the large Wraith and the three men were gone.

  And I’d never even got his name.

  EVAN – 2015 – WARRENTON, VA

  West has been on my mind more not less since I released him. Maybe I just need something to obsess about instead of thinking about my parents. Really? Who wouldn’t? But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe I just miss him.

  After the first day he intervened, West has been a fixture in my life. My own personal hulking shadow saving me from myself. I want him – more than I’m willing to admit aloud – and it just pisses me off. I snap my eyes open as my feet touch the pavement.

  This is how the bulk of our people live? Here? In Mayberry?

  I think this as I walk up the brick-paved drive of a pretty, middle-class house, in a middle-class neighborhood, in a nice, quiet, small town. This is the seventh family I’ve called on, and it shocks me every time. This house is no different than the others I’ve visited – a different style of decorating and cars, maybe – but the theme is the same.

  These are normal people. Normal folk who live regular lives in ordinary neighborhoods. Just living their lives. Two point five kids and a labradoodle, having brunch on Sundays, fucking normal. Not rich, not having more money than they can use in ten lifetimes, not evil or hungry for power. Just real people with jobs and lives, on the PTA and neighborhood watch.

  Here I thought all Wraiths – my own people – were greedy, scheming, shitty individuals, but the families I’ve met over the last week are decidedly not.

  They are friendly and hospitable and humble. I have never felt at ease with a single member of the head families. Fearing the use of the wrong fork at dinner or tripping over my own feet – which happens more than you’d think. I have never wanted to get to know them or speak casually with them or even give them the time of day. Too many chances to fuck up in front of them and have whispers about some random slip-up filter back to my parents. Not that they would mind. But these people… these are the people I would protect. And if these are the people Voyt has been helping, my respect for him has shot up by about three hundred percent.