Shattered Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 3) Read online

  I layered my new, favorite piece of clothing—a thin cardigan, a surprise gift from my favorite grumpy wizard—over a loose, draping shirt that hung past my hips and the pants underneath. All black, of course. I had to live up to stereotype after all. The outfit somehow managed to hide how too-thin I’d become since death, while the new bra underneath made my breasts mildly noticeable. My pitch-black hair now hung to my shoulders in choppy layers—thanks again to Tamara—but it was still thin and a little stringy.

  I looked my dead body over in the mirror and managed a smile.

  Not so shabby, self.

  It wasn’t typical of the old me to try so hard with my appearance, but I had a lot of being dead to make up for these days. It wouldn’t do to remind my girlfriend that she was actually dating a corpse; no one needed that drama. Besides, I was going out somewhere nice tonight. I didn’t look great, but it was good enough, and I was happy with that.

  Funny how much confidence I’d gained after dying and becoming a night-dwelling, person-eating monster. Go figure.

  I popped open the bathroom door and raised my voice. “Okay, Lor, I’m headed out! See you later tonight!” I opened the bathroom window.

  “Okay!” she called in reply, probably from the kitchen. “Be safe! Have fun!” I waited long enough to hear the hesitation and question in her voice. “Um, do you want a ride?”

  “Nope!” I called back. “Don’t need one.” I couldn’t help messing with her, just a little.

  “...Are you at least going to use the front door?”

  I grinned, grabbed my Vampire Travel Bag, and disappeared.

  I dropped discreetly out the window, disappearing in a burst of shadow and hitting the ground a city block away. From there, I took to the rooftops and alleyways, throwing myself from roof to roof and leaping sideways from shadow to distant shadow. This mode of movement only grew easier and more exhilarating with time and practice, especially since I didn’t fear a fall from pretty much any height.

  The travel time also gave me a chance to clear my head and enjoy the relatively fresh night air. Not that I was breathing it in, of course, instead just feeling it on my skin and enjoying the quiet dark of the Birmingham night—what there was to savor aside from all of the late night car noise and light pollution, that is.

  The problem wasn’t that it was difficult to fall back in with my love. Rather, it was the opposite. It was all too simple for me to go back to how things were, how I wanted them to be.

  But what was simple for me was a battle with nightmares for Lori.

  I knew what had scarred her and how it had scarred her, but that didn’t mean I understood. I did the best I could to relate, but it was difficult when every misstep could cut deep. Due to Tamara’s influence, a Moroi psychologist had worked with each of the Rawhead’s victims, Lori included, but to my surprise even that assistance had been a band aid, not a cure.

  From what little I’d gotten Tamara to relate to me, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Rawhead hadn’t actually been Lori’s first brush with the supernatural. And whatever had come before, whatever she’d encountered before I’d met her, it had left her shaken.

  Then the Rawhead had taken her. Then her girlfriend had died and come back as something other than human. Whatever fears she might have harbored before were magnified afterward.

  Since we’d gotten back together in the Rawhead’s wake, I’d tried once more to pry into Lori’s distant past.

  It hadn’t gone well.

  It wasn’t the first time Lori had been evasive about her past, though. She never talked about her family. She never spoke much about her early years or the time long before we got together. If my theory was correct and she had run into the supernatural when she was younger, perhaps that would explain a lot. It might help explain her silence about her history and the depths of terror the Rawhead’s abduction had awoken in her. It might help explain those nights early on when I’d held her through her panic attacks, or when an otherwise pleasant night had turned to sudden, unexplained anxiety.

  Or maybe she’d just had a shitty family.

  Either way, my Lori always been so strong, despite her issues. So able to keep going, pushing toward a better life no matter what, it had honestly inspired me. But what if there had always been more to it than that?

  The thought that she might have always known about the things that went bump in the night and never told me did make me a little sad, but nothing I couldn’t brush off. Would I have believed her, even if she’d been able to bring herself to talk about it?

  I’d have liked to say yes, but I didn’t know if it was true.

  There might be a lot of truth I didn’t know, but it ultimately didn’t matter. I knew my Lori, and I knew we were both too stubborn to give up easily.

  I smiled into the depths of the night. We were gonna make this work, and I pitied anything that got in our way.

  Chapter Two

  Accidental Clubbing

  This was our group’s first prospective meeting at the new locale, and honestly, I was looking forward to it. We’d been meeting at other places for the last few months, but everywhere else had failed as a regular gathering spot. Charles simply wasn’t comfortable with constant traffic in his sanctum, my “house” was actually a condemned building, Tamara’s family made the Queen’s Regency hotel a no-go, and Rain still hadn’t come clean to his father about his supernatural nature.

  We’d met at Bookbinder’s for a handful of weeks; I’d been more or less welcome there after my so-called heroics with Salvatore and the Blood Man. At least, until the owners had told me that I was making other patrons “nervous,” which I assumed was code for my presence hurting their bottom line.

  It probably didn’t help that their supernaturally racist cashier guy had finally hit me with one snide insult too many and I’d asked him if he thought he’d fit inside his damn register. Probably.

  Well, hopefully things would go better this time around, anyway.

  I dropped myself off in a dark, dank back alley and walked the rest of the way. I could hardly teleport into the middle of Five Points, which was probably the busiest part of Birmingham after the sun set and all of the business people and college kids decide to get their drink on and lose their self respect. Normally, I’d have crossed my fingers in the hope of being accosted in one of those back alleys—it helped make my perpetual feeding dilemma a non-issue—but not tonight. Walking in with some asshole’s lifeblood all over the front of my shirt likely wasn’t the impression I wanted to make on Tamara’s clientele.

  I froze at the end of the alley, feeling the eyes on my back. The cold, malicious gaze of something watching me, studying me. Again. This time I whirled around, my dead eyes piercing every shadow, the pitch dark revealed in clear, sharp monochrome shades. But scan the night as I liked, I saw absolutely nothing.

  Again.

  Whatever had been stalking me the last couple of weeks could’ve been a lot of things. Like a ghost, though I didn’t feel any lingering, deathly aura, saw no ripples indicative of a spirit lurking just Next Door. It could have been merely mortal, but it kept up with me too easily and tracked my movements too closely. Those assumptions left only a few worrying options.

  Either way, the watcher needed to go. There was more than simply my own well-being at stake these days. But the night told me nothing and I was already late, so I gave the alley a big, toothy grin, flipped the invisible stalker off, and left.

  Right across from Five Points Circle where the statue of The Storyteller held court, the name Abyss blazed down at me in midnight shades of blue and purple that might as well have been high-powered blacklights. Urban stylings of glass and polished steel made the club’s front facade glimmer under the flickering violet lightning of the sign, shaming the mundane buildings all around. I counted yet another omnipresent Pancake Hut, a record store, a late-night Vietnamese diner that I had visited with Lori last week, two bars, no less than three barbecue places, and at least one popular coffe
e house, but no one was sparing any of those a second glance. Everyone’s eyes were drawn to Abyss, and the long waiting line of well-dressed club-goers spoke for itself.

  I had to admit, when Tamara did something, even reluctantly, she did it with style.

  I left any lingering nervousness behind and strode straight up to the bouncer, a brick wall in a nice suit with biceps larger than my vocabulary. He looked vaguely European, and he had a high-tech black earpiece in one ear and probably a pistol in the subtle bulge of his jacket. I wondered if Tamara had recruited him right out of the CIA, or if he’d gotten bored of covertly toppling third world regimes and come to her.

  He glanced at me as I approached, then glanced at the line, then back at me, and sighed. Looking me over, he commented in dry, mildly accented English, “You don’t seriously think you’re getting in looking like that, do you?”

  I narrowed my eyes. How dare he insult the best set of clothes I’d ever owned. Though on second thought, maybe he meant my face, not the clothes. That would make a lot more sense.

  I shrugged. “Look,” I rasped, raising my ravaged voice to carry over the pulsing beat of music escaping the club’s interior, “I’m going in there. I have an invitation, Tamara and my friends are waiting, and I’m late enough as it is.” With an edge of careful control, I let just a little Strigoi anger into my eyes, not enough to be dangerous to either of us but just enough to get his heart racing and force him to take me seriously.

  I watched him repress a shiver as he pulled out his phone, scrolling through it quickly with one eye, and keeping the other firmly on me. “You must be Ashley,” he said after a moment, sounding relieved. “Miss Tamara said to let you in right away.”

  With a nod and a smile—a non-toothy one—I dropped the emotion from my eyes. “Thanks, yo.” He stepped aside and raised the black velvet rope barring the path, and I ignored the protests from those at the head of the line and ventured into Abyss.

  It wasn’t the worst abyss I’d ever been inside. More blacklights burned brightly, contrasting with pulses of colorful light, triggering rapid monochrome flickers of my darkvision and leaving me hoping Strigoi were immune to seizures. I could make out the neon-traced, circular bar in the center, dancing patrons packed all around, leaving barely enough room at the edges to make your way to the stairs leading up toward the tables on the second and third levels.

  Half the patrons were dressed expensively and semi-formally, while the other half were dressed what I would consider fantastically, with either impressive swaths of exposed skin, or cloth and body paint that glowed bright under the club’s primarily UV lighting. Or both. This was unfamiliar territory; I’d been to a club exactly twice before, but those had been low-overhead gay clubs and I honestly hadn’t left impressed with the experiences. I didn’t even know if it was normal to be able to hear in a place like this, or if death’s dampening of my senses rendered me unable to recognize anything but the dominating pounding of bass.

  And holy shit at the heartbeats. They blended together into a rumble like thunder, a stampede of pulses that trampled all over one another, threatening to shake the walls. My own dead heart pulsed once as if in response, and I was abruptly, acutely aware of the hunger pangs deep in my core. I tugged at the loose collar of my shirt; the air was abruptly warm on my skin with the heat of gathered bodies pressed close together. Suddenly, I wasn’t so certain of this whole venture; maybe I should just—

  I jumped as something jabbed hard into my ribs. I whirled around, the tips of my claws itching at the insides of my fingers, only to see none other than Tamara herself. A dark, ruffled shirt dripped down her front, leaving her sides and back exposed, flawless alabaster skin criss-crossed by the few thin strings that held the outfit together. Ebony, insanely tight pants rode dangerously low on her hips, open and corseted on each side from hip to heel. Loose silver bracelets shimmered from her wrists, a reflection of the tiny silver star dangling from her septum piercing and the chains linking the half-dozen piercings in each ear. Something that might have been a diamond glinted from the large, claw-shaped piercings in each lobe, and from the tip of her spike labret.

  But the shine of metal and gemstone paled in comparison to the liquid sapphire blue in her eyes, a supernaturally deep color that the blacklights and strobes couldn’t touch.

  She smiled through purple lipstick, as best as I could tell a mirror shade to the fresh, UV-reactive dye in the hair piled on top of her head. I caught the flash of another gemstone on the barbell in her tongue as she spoke, then tilted her head curiously when I didn’t respond.

  “I can’t hear you,” I replied as loudly as I could without resorting to supernatural help.

  Tamara grinned with mirth, sticking her tongue out at me as she grabbed my arm. Her soft hands found my cool flesh beneath the edges of my cardigan as she hauled me close. We were typically right about the same height, which meant we were both a little above average, but her platform heels gave her an extra couple of inches any day of the week. So I let her pull me over, leaning in until her lips were dangerously close to my ear.

  “I’ll take care of you,” she said, her breath warm on my ear and throat. Her fingers on my arm and her closeness bled the lion’s share of the tension from me like gently squeezing an undead sponge, and my hunger reluctantly subsided. Well, part of it did. I was suddenly very aware of my friend’s Moroi nature—essentially a psychic, emotional vampire—as the other hungers awakened earlier on the couch with Lori surged back to the surface, and I struggled to stuff them away before she noticed.

  It took me a moment to realize she was pointing at the third tier of the club, her slender, alabaster arm indicating one of the private booths, and that she was talking about my inability to hear and my difficulty with human proximity.

  “Oh,” I replied, the words lost in the noise of the crowd, and I avoided her knowing smirk as I let her lead me around the press of the crowd and up the stairs. I shook my head as the crowd parted unconsciously, giving me space and letting us pass because that’s what the Moroi Princess on my arm wanted them to do. If she’d wanted the unsuspecting mortals to pack in around us or throw a riot or even have an orgy, most of them would certainly have done that instead.

  On the other hand, I could bench press a live giraffe. I supposed we all had our little talents.

  As we climbed the stairs, the pressure of the music faded away as did the foreign lighting. By the time I reached the VIP table reserved for our motley little group, the sound was merely loud instead of deafening and the white T-shirt underneath Charles’ heavy, enchanted trench coat only glowed a little.

  “I hate blacklights,” the Magisterium magician was saying, nodding to me as I approached. The wizard hadn’t bothered to dress up, but then, he never did. His trench coat and white tee were paired with a simple set of army surplus fatigues, though they unfortunately weren’t some weird, eye-wrenching urban camo like the last pair. His only concessions to the unwritten dress code of the establishment were his lack of a weathered bush hat and no visible bulletproof vest. It also looked like he’d actually bothered to comb out his short brown hair, but his persistent two-day stubble was probably out of style...except maybe with preppers, urban militia, and homeless people.

  “There anythin’ you don’t hate, Mister Wizard?” Mama Flora Ramona grinned, her pearly white teeth gleaming and glowing in the diffused ultraviolet light just like the white skull painted on her face, both a stark contrast to the weathered ebony of her skin and the brightly-colored scarf wound neatly around her head to cover her thin gray hair. She glanced up at me as well, a lively twinkle of humor in her gray eyes that belied her advancing age. The Mambo adjusted her crimson, sleeveless dress and the fabric rose riding at her waist, then lifted a lace-gloved hand to wave at me with a smile.

  “I’ll think about it and get back to you,” Charles grunted. His dark cinnamon eyes glittered with intelligence and a shadow of the humor that didn’t show on his face. “I’ve been around a while, I
’m sure it’s happened once or twice.” I often forgot that, while the wizard looked in his thirties, he’d almost certainly been around much longer—though how much longer, I had no idea. He raised a tall glass, burying his face in something that was probably highly alcoholic.

  I grabbed the sturdiest-looking chair—a thick-legged specimen of curved steel and dark, crystalline glass, just like the tables—and thumped down into it, giving Rain and Jason a wave across the table. Our youngest member, Rain, was dressed appropriately, if seemingly uncomfortably, with dark black slacks and a dress shirt that fit a little too well, accidentally illustrating how thin he was and showing just how much growing the teen had left to do.

  Jason, on the other hand, was more closely following Charles’ fashion example, one of the rare times the two high-schoolers didn’t nearly match. Worn jeans, worn sneakers, and a charcoal gray shirt that read “this is my final form” were the entirety of his outfit. I couldn’t suppress a snicker at the words on the older boy’s tee, since the occasional amber gleam in both boys’ eyes hinted at their true nature as changeling shapeshifters.

  Almost in unison, both teens returned the wave. Like their current outfits, the two inseparable friends were a study in contrasts. Rain was your typical whitebread American boy, trapped a bit on the awkward, small side of puberty, but well-dressed and groomed with short brown-black hair and a curious, intelligent gleam in his light brown eyes. Jason was mixed race Latino, tall, lean, scruffy, and unashamedly poor. His jaw-length, ash-brown hair was a disaster, and his eyes twinkled with sarcasm, vitality, and a hard core concealed beneath the blue-gray irises. Rain was only sixteen, close to seventeen, but I suddenly realized I didn’t know how old the other shifter was. I’d always just assumed he was a little older than Rain.