Ash & Flame: Season One (10 page)

The survivors of Haven had saved them both. He shouldn’t forget that.

"Listen, um...I've been out there for longer than anyone should be, not without going crazy." Ren tightened his grip on the railing, squeezing the rusted pipe like he could squeeze the nerves out of his system. "I'm not used to thanking people, but it's not like strangers make a habit of risking their lives for mine."

Ren bit his lip. How had this become so hard? "So, I just wanted to say—"

Brad put a hand up. "No, I know, man, believe me. Hard to remember what that felt like, right?"

Hard? Try impossible
. "Yeah, you might say that."

"I appreciate it, but no need, man," Brad said, fishing through one of his pockets. "But maybe you can take a look at this."

He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and handed it to Ren. "Long shot, I know, but since you were out there, I thought I'd check."

It wasn't a piece of paper at all, but a picture, the gloss nicked and faded. A woman's thin face smiled back at Ren, framed with long blonde curls. He felt a nervous pang in his chest. This must have been—

"My wife, Amy," Brad said, pointing at the picture. "We got split up when everything went all loco, and I couldn't find her. She's out there somewhere, I just know it. Amy was tough, way tougher than me, so I know she made it."

He paused, his gaze flicking back to the crumpled photo. "Anyway, I just wanted to show you, in case you might remember ever seeing her."

Ren frowned, staring at the woman in the faded photo. The bright smile, the white teeth, the peaceful green backdrop. If anyone ever saw her again, she wouldn't look quite like this.

He shook his head and handed the picture back. "Sorry, Brad, never seen her."

Brad tucked the picture back in his pocket and shrugged. "Worth a shot, right?"

"Yeah." Ren nodded, his mind jumping back to Katie. He didn't even have a picture anymore. Brad at least had that. "Sorry I couldn't help."

"Not your fault." Brad reached out with a hand. "Thanks anyway."

Ren shook his hand, and headed for the door, eager to get back to Emma. He knocked once, and quietly opened the door, ducking through and closing it behind him.

Emma lay in her bed, curled up on her side, her hair falling over her closed eyes. She held the sheet tucked over her shoulders with one hand, one of her feet dangling over the edge of the mattress.

Anne sat on the other bed, rising to her feet as Ren came in. She arched forward, her hands on her hips as she stretched. Her eyelids drooped, and she stifled a yawn, her fingers pressing against her lips.

Ren stood by the foot of Emma's bed, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest. The familiar tendrils of worry dug at him, clawed into his mind, by now almost a constant. He let out a low, shaky breath and shifted his attention to Anne, his brow raised.
Well?

"She woke up just a bit ago, took a drink, and fell back to sleep," Anne whispered. She walked gingerly to the door, her dirty sneakers scraping across the floor in a vain attempt to stay quiet. She stopped beside Ren, a grimace on her face. "Sorry," she whispered, laying a hand on Ren's arm. "Not used to creeping around."

Ren nodded. "It's okay. Was she more like...herself?"

"Well, I don't know her nearly as well as you do," Anne said, her fingers brushing over Ren's arm as she let her hand fall. "But she seemed very much like a normal, feisty young woman to me. I'm no doctor, but I think she'll be fine."

Fine?
Ren thought.
Like I'm fine? Or you?
He wanted to shake his head.
None of us are fine, doesn't matter how we spin it
. Worst of all, his little girl. She was far from fine, especially the longer they stayed here.

"Seriously, thank you for everything." He forced a smile as Anne stepped past him and headed for the door. "I'm not used to being around people these days, nice people, and, well..."

The corners of Anne's lips curled up. "I know, Ren. Just remember, we're not all out to get you, or your daughter."

She glanced down at Emma. "Believe it or not, some of us just want to help."

"Alright, thanks. I'll try," Ren said, nodding goodbye as Anne opened the door and headed down the ramp.

He believed her, or wanted to. But old habits were hard to break. Maybe before the demons, the angels, the death cults and the possessed, he would have taken Anne at her word. Now? Words were just that: words, nothing more. Just like trust, and faith. He trusted himself and his daughter, and that was as much as he could trust anybody.

Faith…that was a whole different matter.

He closed the door after Anne, sighed, and looked down at his daughter. "Alright, you can get up now. I know you're not sleeping."

Emma shifted in her bed, her eyes flicking open as she leaned up on her elbows. "Dad, there's something wrong with her."

"Why, because she's nice?"

Emma threw the sheet off and sat up, her feet resting on the floor. She stared down at her feet. "No, Dad. She acts nice, but I don't think she is, not really. She...said stuff, when I woke up. Like, creepy stuff."

Creepy like me and your mom giving birth to you, a half-demon baby girl?
He shook his head, running a hand through his hair.
Get it together, Ren
. "What do you mean, creepy?"

His daughter's eyes narrowed. "I'm not lying."

"No one's saying you are, baby doll." Ren sighed, the soreness rushing back into his muscles. He just wanted to lay down right now. No more problems, no more questions. Just some peaceful sleep, free of nightmares, and the pressure, and the anxiety that constantly plagued him.

"You need to quit calling me that," Emma whispered.

"What? I've been calling you that since you—"

"Yeah, Dad, I know, since I was a baby!" Emma shouted. She turned her head and glared at him, her hair covering one eye. "But I'm not really a baby anymore, am I?"

Emma swept back her hair and Ren noticed a spot of blood pooling under her nostril.

Shit
. Ren reached for a piece of ripped-up cloth that Anne had left behind on the ramshackle wooden crate. He hurried back and sat down beside Emma, the springs under him creaking as he pressed the damp rag against her nose.

"You okay?"

Emma nodded but remained silent, a withdrawn frown on her face. She took the rag out of Ren's hand and sat back, holding the damp cloth under her nose.

Ren patted her knee, his heart racing. "Look, we'll get through this, okay? I promise."

His chest shuddered. He took a shallow breath, and smiled down at his daughter, hoping she didn't see the tremble in his hands. He was losing it, his sanity stretched so thin that he feared the slightest tug might break him. First Katie, and now his Em, both threatening to tear him apart at the seams.

“We’ll figure it all out.” He’d tried to sound hopeful, but all he hoped right then was that she couldn’t hear the lie. Because he’d certainly heard it.

What was left to figure out? He was going crazy, and he was losing his daughter. Didn’t seem to be much else to it.

▪▪▪

Somewhere, close enough to hear the mortified pleading, a man screamed. Amid the sound of rattling chains, his pitiful wails spilled into the gray sky, a torment so delicious that Azazel paused where he stood, his nostrils flaring as he took in the sweet aroma of charred, tortured meat, and the heavy tang of salty blood.

The smells of home.

Azazel looked out over the high wall at the dry land below, wisps of smoke drifting from the dead earth. Spires, dozens of them, jutted from the broken ground, rising into the veiled, red sky like the fingers of a dead giant. Hounds, their striated muscles a glistening red, trotted past the rotted stumps of trees. They sniffed the air, and with baleful, yellow eyes, looked into the thinning forest that stood beyond the reach of the Hellfont.

He'd stood here on these ramparts of Hell on earth, from the very moment the terrible powers of Below had slipped free of the Accord and declared their war on Heaven. The Grigori yearned to see the great tower warp and twist the earth as its power stretched outward, like a giant hand whose great fingers enveloped swaths of land and squeezed the life from it.

Let the dregs of humanity cling to their dying roots, starving, forced to suckle from a barren mother.

Let the Malakhi pine for their lost father.

"Azazel, come see." The voice slithered past his ears, little more than a soft, alluring whisper, meant for him alone.

He pried his gaze from the fields and dried husk surrounding their great tower, and moved towards the source of the sultry voice. His hooves clapped against the cracked stone, and he trailed the long talons of his fingers along the wall. He took one more longing look below, and stepped through the arched doorway that led into the Hellfont, the tips of his blood-red wings scraping against the stone.

He strode through the dark hall, smiling at the echoed moans that carried up to him. He had given her a new plaything, and he greatly enjoyed the cries of agony that equated her satisfaction. He hurried his steps, eager to see what she had done this time.

Another cry sounded, sharper this time, only to be cut off in a wet squelch.

The hall wound around a corner, and Azazel entered a large chamber. Spots of dancing flame hung from the wall of the circular room, casting a reddish glow on the chamber. In the center of the large chamber, two tall slabs of dark metal jutted out from the floor at an angle, crossing at their midpoint to create a large X.

A human man hung from the slabs, pale and thin. Rusted iron nails pierced the man's wrists, holding his weight, and razor-thin wire cut across his torso and legs. Lines of blood had formed where the wire had cut into the man's flesh, dripping into a pool at the man's feet.

Lilith leaned over the human, using her nails to slice patterns into the man's skin. She stepped back and crossed her arms, her lip working as she focused on a square of skin.

"No, that will just not do." She flicked at a corner of the man's skin, and peeled it away. The human blubbered and shook on the makeshift cross. Lilith sighed and tossed the flap of skin to the floor with a splat.

"Dearest sister, has the meat turned so soon?"

"No, brother, nothing wrong with the flesh," Lilith said. She glanced down at the man, parts of his flesh stripped bare, and smiled innocently at him. "Isn't that right, my sweet child? Still plenty of life in this fragile shell, I think."

Lilith stood a head taller than the human, her thin, beautiful form only accentuating a dark inner strength that was obvious to any who looked upon her. Two small horns curved back from her forehead, black hair falling in curls over her shoulders. A wicked intelligence lurked behind her dark, seductive eyes. Strips of cloth had been wrapped around her body, accentuating her form, and her bare skin shone with glistening sweat.

Azazel's chest stirred, but he had questions first.

"Voices have whispered to me today," he said. "They tell me of a human child, and how near she is now. Do you feel her?"

Lilith's smile, and the happy mask on her face, fell away, and she frowned at Azazel. "I always feel her, dearest," she snapped. "We are linked, she and I, forever and ever."

Azazel bit down against the perpetual spark of jealousy. For such a weak, frail thing to receive the blessing of connection to Lilith? Undeserved, when compared to Azazel, born of fire and greatness.

A mere human—a cosmic joke made of mud and clay—would always be unworthy of her, mixed blood or not.

"And the girl's father?" He regretted the question immediately, drawn out by his own weak desires. He didn't care about the man, but the thought of a human with his Lilith...he didn't understand why she had chosen that man, and Azazel's sweet sister, the Seducer, had never explained herself.

Azazel eyed the crucified man in front of him and clenched his hand into a fist. He pictured the girl's father there instead, heard the wailing, pathetic cries as Azazel touched the man's flesh with his rage. Sighed at the quivering flesh as the Grigori sunk his claws in deep, the rich taste of blood on his tongue.

"Him? The father was only meant to bring her to this point," Lilith said. "His sole purpose is nearly at an end."

She paused to run her fingers over her victim's exposed muscle, eliciting a mewling whimper. "And I tire of your fixation on him, Azazel. Stop it."

Fixation. Azazel would have the man's soul. He would feed on it, every day from here to eternity. He would take his time, bite after slow bite. He would chew and slurp, and then, when he had had his fill for the day, he would shit it out and begin anew.

There would be no end, no final day. He would ensure it lasted forever.

That would be fixation.

"Besides, my poor, jealous brother," Lilith continued. "I believe that the time has come for the daughter to return to the mother."

Azazel smiled. "So, she is ready?"

Lilith nodded, her nails slicing another section of skin from the crucified human. "You questioned me when I left the child in her father's care, but the Malakhi are only just now learning of her."