Body of Ash Read online

  “I’m going to stop you,” I choke out. “You won’t get away with this.” I have to break the connection. The back of my brain is trying to tell me... tell me that I’m dying.

  Somewhere in the distance I hear my name screamed. But I’m too entrenched in the traveling, the astral plane holds me too tightly, and the arsonist’s magic is so very strong. I have never encountered such power, and that’s saying something considering how I have grown in the past months under Liam’s tutelage. When I tracked him before, he did not reveal the wealth of power he held.

  “You will see.” The male arsonist speaks with such confidence that his words worm into me. “I count on your curiosity. On your dedication to humanity. I left the trail, and I knew you would follow. You will not die now. I need you. Yet, I could not resist the urge... such a beautiful house... so many secrets.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” I cough, and it feels so real. I know I can be hurt tracking on the spirit plane. Yet, this feels like my body. I don’t remember that last time... only the pain in my soul. This is like my actual vessel is here. I can smell the hairs on my arms searing.

  The roaring fire around me hesitates, as if unsure. My instinct is to yell that I will stop them. That they can’t do this, they can’t destroy the world. There is too much good left in it. “You won’t win. Evil won’t win.”

  The Adam scoffs. “Goodness is relative. Evil is perception. The world has lost sight of objectivity. It needs the leveling force of a greater power. And I don’t mean the gods of now or yesterday. There is only one force that is neutral, that will treat with an even hand, every entity in the world—whether shadows or sunlight.”

  “He is the balance. He has no objective save the reaping. He needs his servants from the cage.” The Eve speaks once more.

  Now I can’t stay quiet. “You’re opening a Hellmouth... so the devil can take over the world?”

  “Death is the great leveler. He evens the field. He reaps with no thought for color, creed, gender, or evil deeds.” Her voice is so weak now that I can barely hear her. Seconds later, her faltering lightness fades beyond sight.

  “The devil is death?” I ask incredulously, because honestly? Adam and Eve sound like they’ve drunk the kool-aid, rather than eaten the apple.

  The fire screams around me, and the Adam yells along with it. “Heaven has the trifecta, and so too does the Underworld. The Devil is the devil, deal maker and trickster. Hades works for his own gain, and nothing else. A fallen angel reaching for loftier kingdoms. But Death. The Grimm Reaper. It is time the world knew the blind justice of him that comes for each of us in turn. He will command a legion. The Cage of the Unseen will bow to him. They who have been locked away since the dawn of man will be his jury as he judges the plight of the world.”

  My gaze widens... this can’t be real. “Well, I’ve solved the mystery of all this. I know exactly where you are and how to stop you.” I pause for effect, and know what’s about to come out of my mouth isn’t going to be met with laughter. “You’re at the nut house, and you need a gigantic dose of antidepressants, beta-blockers, or whatever the hell else it is they dope up a fucking insane person with.”

  “You believe you’re funny. We are stood at the edge of everything, and you make jokes. It makes it hard to believe that you carry what I need. Yet, Death does not lie. So you must be our key.” The fire rages higher, its resolve to burn me the hell alive renewed. I can feel my body begin to boil past the breaking point.

  “What. The. Hell. Are. You. Talking. About.” I say each word singularly and with bite. I don’t even make it a question really, because I don’t give a damn what he thinks. I wouldn’t help him in a million years. I’m not some damn key to a bunch of awful beings trapped in supernatural cage.

  And my name, once again, is being screamed. But the voice is too far. It can’t help me.

  “As I said, you will see.” He rushes towards me in a curtain of sparks. “Now, though. You may want to release your hold and return to your body. I still have need of you, and I believe you’re opposed to the idea of dying, Necromancer.”

  He disappears and I am left with the bitter knowledge that another creature on this Earth knows what I am. And the sneaking, awful suspicion that perhaps he knows another detail about my heritage that is not among my current body of proof.

  My face jerks as something unseen slams across my cheek. “Son of a—” I press a hand to my face. I knew I could get hurt. Liam had warned me. Still though, I cannot deal with the fact that a spirit can be hurt on this transitional plane. Do spirits harm spirits then? I have to get out of here. I have to break this hold!

  Something else hits me, this time brushing along my shoulder in a hard line. I can feel blood trickling. It’s not possible. My gaze goes down to the transparency of my astral form and I see nothing. The skin of my exposed arm is clean, unmarred. But the pain... that is not fake. I know it in my gut. All this time, the fire has continued to lick at me, like a dog to its master. It is brutality guised as affection.

  And I feel a new level of fear sprout in my stomach. I need to break the connection. Right now.

  Or I really am going to burn to death. That possibility I’ve always feared, to the very center of my being, every time I thought my secret might be discovered.

  “Wake up,” I start screaming. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” I wish for ruby slippers, for some way to click my heels and return home again. But this isn’t a story. I’m not the heroine that somehow manages to escape dire situations. I’m the fucking idiot that runs upstairs and expects a nicer fate to intervene. I’m going to die.

  I’m a Blood Queen, necromancer mortician, and I’m going to die on the astral plane doing something I was warned not to, because I’m a mother trucking idiot. A new unseen item hits me and it is smooth and thankfully soft. Yet the fire is not soft...hard, brutal, magma. My spirit is burning. My soul is being destroyed. What will happen to my body? Will it desiccate and die without me? Or will I become a vegetable on life support in a hospital until someone pulls the plug? Who will find my body?

  Kyle. Liam. Terrance.

  “Wake up dammit! Wake up!” I scream again, and at the same time the voice in the distance is screaming. Victoria! Victoria!

  It’s Liam, I realize as the smoke and fire begin to overwhelm me. Of course it’s Liam.

  That tether to my fairy finally brings me back. He is my anchor. I feel my soul rushing across the distance to my body on the bed in my home. I’m going to be safe soon. Everything will be fine. I will figure out where the arsonists are, and I will stop them.

  Safety is an exhalation away. The fire will die away. Everything will be fine.

  Solid. I am becoming solid again.

  I can feel the realness of my limbs.

  But then why am I still burning?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WHEN I CAN FEEL THE realness of me again, I’m startled to find that the fire has somehow traveled here. I can still feel heat. My skin still feels like the outside of an oven on high broil. My eyes flash open to find my room on fire, flames licking up the curtains and reaching for the ceiling. The fan above is still steadily thumping away, blowing sparks around like fireflies.

  “Oh my God,” I cough out, sitting up and frantically looking around the room. “No, no... this can’t be happening.”

  The fire has followed me here. My skin feels like the outside of an oven on high broil, coated in a thin layer of ash. A craggy piece of the ceiling is on the bed beside my cheek. Instinctively, I reach up and brush my fingers against my face. That’s what slapped me. I cannot find the soft thing that hit me while caught in the spirit realm, but I do see one of the ceiling fan blades broken on the floor. All of the walls look like they’re melting and peeling. The curtains are dancing infernos. Clouds of gray roil about the ceiling like a gathering of ghosts.

  My home, my beloved home, is burning.

  “Tori!” Someone’s yelling my name, and it’s not Lia
m. Was it ever Liam? Guilt wants to press into my mind, that Kyle was not the magnet pulling me home. But there’s no time for hashing out my crippled love life, there’s only time to survive. And the voice is loud, as if magnified, but too distorted to recognize. “Tori! Dammit, get that ladder up there!” The same voice shouts. “No! Stop him! He can’t go in there! Kyle, don’t be an idiot!” Terrance, the voice is Terrance.

  But Kyle... the thought of him forcing his way into this building—this structure that is nothing really but wood and paint, the vessel for memories just as my body is the vessel for my soul—spurs me onward. He is more important than this house.

  There is no clear path to the bedroom window through the fire. It has been burning long enough to spread. The bathroom curtain is even burning. Flames traveling both ways and I am caught betwixt and between. A stream of fire leaks out of my room into the hallway.

  Carefully I slink off the bed, dropping nearly to my knees onto a sliver of floor that is not ablaze. I cough again, and search for something to put over my face. There’s a sock under my bed. I grab it and stuff my fingers into it, then sink my covered hand into a half-filled cup by the bed. I often have water on my nightstand. Sometimes random partial glasses around the kitchen. Ever since I saw that movie in which the aliens could only be killed with water and the family is saved because the little kid never picks up her unfinished water bottles and cups.

  I press the damp sock over my face and begin to crawl, but my eyes widen as I pause at the threshold of my room. I turn around frantically and spy Adam’s jacket still folded on the foot of the bed. The bedspread is on fire, it’s so close to the coat. I stumble back as fast as I can and I grab it, then move as fast as I can into the hallway.

  “Tori! We’re coming! Stay where you are!” I hear the loud voice again, crackly and unfamiliar.

  The fire has reached the kitchen and is slithering its way into the living room. The large window near the fireplace is a portal to the outside world, which is dark. How long had I been caught in the astral plane? What trick of time had caused it to go from afternoon to late evening in a blink?

  I make it to the window and peer out. There are three cop cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance haphazardly parked on the Victorian’s manicured lawn. Terrance is holding a megaphone. And I find Kyle, being held back by three cops and an EMT. He’s struggling, but not to get out of the men’s grasps. I know he’s trying to control himself, to keep from beasting-out to save me. His instincts must be going wild.

  Coughing, I bang on the glass and fumble with the window locks. I can’t remember the last time I’ve opened it, and it’s stuck from years of disuse and ill maintenance. I bang again, as hard as I can, but the smoke is too much and everyone is focusing on my room. They’re lifting the ladder there. I don’t understand why. I’m right here. Can’t they see me?

  Moving away from the window, I assess the room again. The fire is growing so fast, like it has a life of its own. And it probably does, because it can’t just be a normal fire—not with my luck, not with my life.

  Keeping low, one hand still on my face though the sock is already nearly dry, I crawl to the door of the apartment and kneel to unlock the bolts, and then reach for the knob. “Shit!” I cry as the metal surface burns my fingers, hotter than a stove burner on high.

  I lower my sock-covered hand and pull Adam’s coat from under my arm where I’ve had it shoved so I could crawl. I wrap it around the knob and it provides enough guard to let me turn it and swing the door open. I’m blasted backwards by oiling heat and fire that screams inward, renewed by the oxygen I’ve just provided.

  How do I get out? I’ve got to get out... I can’t die like this. I can’t burn!

  I grab Adam’s jacket and move back to the window. I can get it open. I just have to try harder. I worry the window lock until it finally gives, leaving my fingers sore from the effort. I gasp in relief, then give the window a shove upwards. It doesn’t budge, not even a fraction.

  Nailssssssssssssssssssssssss. The ghostly utterance floats through my head like a bad dream. Because that’s what it is. A bad dream. A nightmare.

  The window is nailed shut. I can see several bent nails through the pane of glass. But when? How?

  My mind reels. I’m going to die. And something about that fact yanks me to a conversation with Dean—about the salesman who’d insisted on checking the windows. Why hadn’t I put two and two together? Why hadn’t I realized? Hindsight... is the fucking devil. A trickster who turns every choice into a roll of the dice.

  “Help!” I scream, giving into my baser instincts. The girl in the movie who’s reached her final attempt at salvation. The last victim standing who runs up the stairs instead of out of the house. “Help!” I slam my hands against the window. “Please, help!”

  It’s Kyle that finds me in the window. A fireman is up the ladder now, almost to my bedroom window. He’s carrying an ax. I need him here though, not there. And I can’t go back to my room. The hallway is a wall of blazing heat.

  I turn around, desperately looking for something to help me. I need to break the window. I pull the leather jacket onto my body and yank the now-dry sock off my hand. Army crawling, the air so thick in the apartment now that I run the risk of dying of smoke inhalation before I actually burn, I make my way to the kitchen table and grab a chair. It’s not the heaviest in the world, but not the lightest either. I pray it’ll be enough.

  Dragging it back, I fight through the heat and haze to stand. My bare feet burn against the floor and I’m coughing again. I can’t stop. My body is rebelling, trying to repel the death that wants to ride me like a horse. I lift the chair over my head and I slam it down at the window. I know two things will happen when I break the glass—they’ll know where I am, they’ll direct their efforts here to this window... and the fire will strengthen from the fresh air.

  The window cracks.

  I steel myself, lift the chair higher, I slam it down as hard as I can whilst coughing. My eyes are stinging, watering. I can barely see what my struggle produces this time.

  I can hear though. The shattering of glass, the tinkling of shards against the hardwood. And I lurch forward as the chair pushes through to the other side. I let go, my eyes opening as it falls away from me.

  So I scream. I scream and I scream and I feel the fire intensify behind me.

  And then I’m falling, the last of my energy gone.

  This is the end.

  The burning.

  The world consumed by fire.

  And he who levels the world will come, to reap my soul and take me to that choice between ether and anti-ether.

  “I won’t let you die.” A familiar presence fills me. Not Liam. This scares me. It is the power that filled me at Mordecai’s home. It is sinister. Who or what is it?

  Will I go to hell now? Is that what waits for me beyond the ether?

  Once, I did not believe in hell.

  And heaven was a glimmer hope.

  Yet now I stand on the precipice of death—

  this hollow exit to a life short-lived—

  And truly I wish they did exist.

  Even as I go down, into that dark abyss.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ONE THING ABOUT NEARLY dying...coming back to life really, really sucks.

  But your mind is also uninhibited somehow, clear of all the extra mess that mucks with your life. The overthinking, the overanalyzing, the trying to please people and keep your existence peaceful. The only thing you’re focused on is breathing.

  A line around my nose and mouth, and the push of plastic, tells me I’m wearing a mask. Every inhalation and exhalation is slightly cool, and tastes sterile and medicinal.

  One breath.

  Then a second breath.

  Feel your heart beating inside, and soak in the vitality of it.

  I’m not dead. And that is the most wonderful thing in the world.

  And the second most wonderful thing? As I rest against a barely-soft surf
ace feeling the night air brushing against me and the hum of human activity rushing around me?

  I know where the arsonists are. I know where we have to go. I have no fucking idea what to do when we get there or how to stop them, but half the battle is won already in my head because I have a location. I could figure out how to win the war on the fly.

  I... hoped.

  “Tori? Babe?” A large hand brushes my forehead and musses my hair. “Tori, wake up.”

  I suppose I should open my eyes now, I think, but I’m loathe to let go of the freedom of being away from the hustle of life, to only focus on the nature of things.

  “Tori, please.” This is another voice. Terrance. “I got your damn note. It was on the floor. I didn’t see it. You got to be okay, woman. I told you this sounded too dangerous.”

  “She almost died, Terrance. Shelve the ‘told you so’.” Kyle’s voice butts in. “Babe, wake up.”

  You can’t stay dead forever, especially not in my line of work. I open my eyes slowly, my lashes fluttering a bit like a wounded bird. My gaze is still watery, the gas mask still in place. My skin is sensitive and tingly, the way it feels the day after a moderate burn. I’m already healing, slowly but surely. I reach with my power and taste the blood and how it is working its magic on my vessel.

  “I’m okay,” I croak out lowly. Then my eyes widen. I have to tell Terrance what I know. We have to go before it’s too late. The larger question still remains though... how do we stop them? I grab Terrance’s sleeve and I yank. He leans forward. “I know where they are,” I whisper, my words as brittle as burned paper. “It was so obvious. An idiot could have guessed.”

  Mordecai, in his cryptic way, had even given me the answer. I had it, all this time, trapped in my mind.