Bones and Ashes

Bones and Ashes

by Gemma Holden

Copyright © Gemma Holden 2011

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the prior written permission of the author.

Chapter One

Raiden twisted the heavy ring on her finger as she silently willed the carriage to go faster. A pack of hellhounds, their red eyes gleaming in the dark, ran alongside her carriage. Their small, muscular bodies easily kept pace with her horses. She counted at least a dozen pairs of glowing red eyes. They jumped at the horses, their teeth snapping at their hooves, getting closer and closer each time.

The horses were at full gallop. Her driver was half-standing, his black greatcoat billowing out behind him as he whipped the reins and urged the horses on. The lead hound jumped onto a rock, its jaw open wide, ready to tear out the horse’s throat. It leapt. It sailed through the air. The hellhound passed straight through the horse, as though the horse was nothing more than mist, before tumbling to the ground.

The creature hadn’t realised they were ghosts. They were all ghosts - the horses, her coachman, even her servant. They were all dead except for her.

The carriage jolted as the wheels crushed the hellhound’s body. She looked back. The creature lay unmoving, its body broken and twisted in the mud. The other hellhounds broke off their pursuit and raced back to their fallen friend. She looked away as they tore into their pack leader’s flesh. They had found their dinner for the night.

Raiden let the curtain fall back into place. “It won’t be long now,” she said, turning to face Peters, her servant, who sat on the seat opposite her. “We should be in London soon.”

She pressed her gloved hands to her stomach and tried to breathe past the feeling of dread that had settled in her belly. She had delayed returning to school until the last possible moment. She didn’t want to go back, but she had little choice. She was sixteen years old; she had little choice in anything she did. Peters reached across and gently squeezed her hand. She tried to smile back to reassure him.

Peters had been with her since she was a child. He had that faded look that all ghosts had, as if he had been drained of colour. His clothes were a hundred years out of fashion. Snowy white hose reached up to his knees. On his head he wore a white wig with fat sausage curls, while his waistcoat and jacket were the dark green and gold of her family’s livery.

She reached down to check the small leather pouch containing his ashes was still tied at her waist. There were two other pouches. One contained a small piece of bone belonging to her maid Marielle; the other held her driver, Tobin’s ashes. Bones and ashes - they were the tools of her family’s trade. Her family, the Feralis’s, were evokers. They could summon back the ghosts of the dead using their bones or ashes. At least they were supposed to; she still hadn’t come into her power. The ghosts that served her were commanded by her grandmother, the Duchess of Northumberland.

The carriage jolted as a wheel hit a pot hole. The carriage slowed to a stop. Tobin, her driver, clambered down from the driver’s seat. She guessed he was going to check her other travelling companion was still tied securely to the back of the carriage. She had been too late to help him. He was already dead when her carriage had come across him. Travelling was dangerous if you had no magic or no money. She wasn’t in the habit of picking up dead bodies from the side of the road, but it was unlikely another carriage was going to come along this close to nightfall. He wouldn’t be found until morning and by then there would be nothing left of him. The fact he was dead hadn’t worried her. After all, she had grown up surrounded by the dead. She knew it was not the dead you had to fear, but the living.

Tobin climbed back into his seat and the carriage began to move again. Peters shook his head to himself and pressed his lips together. He had disapproved of her bringing the body with them. He had said nothing when she had ordered Tobin to secure the body to the back of the carriage, but then he couldn’t. The ghosts that served her family were forbidden to speak. Her grandmother believed the dead should not interfere in the affairs of the living.

She didn’t know how she was going to explain the corpse when she got back to school. Zombies were not allowed, but there was no mention of dead bodies in the school rules.

She had finally relaxed back against the seat when a knock came from the roof. She pulled the curtain aside to see what the problem was. Up ahead a thick, heavy chain stretched across the road. Jagged metal spikes stuck out from the twisted metal. At the speed they were going Tobin wouldn’t be able to stop the horses in time.

The intention was not to stop the carriage, but to destroy it. It was something goblins would do. Other creatures wanted to eat you, but goblins liked to hurt people.

Tobin didn’t try to slow the horses down, instead he encouraged them on. Raiden moved to the edge of the seat. She pressed her cheek against the cold glass of the window and watched the chain as it came closer and closer. Just as they were upon it, she threw herself to the floor. The chain tore through the carriage, ripping through Peters’ neck. She watched as above her, the walls seemed to shift and stir like mist where the chain had passed through, before they slowly seeped back together. 

She turned her head to the side and came face to face with Peters’ head which had fallen off. He blinked and smiled at her. His hands groped around the floor, trying to find his head, but it kept rolling out of reach. She picked it up and placed it in his hands. He lifted it onto his neck, twisting it round until it faced the right way.

Raiden scrambled to her seat and pressed her hand against the ceiling. Solid wood met her gloved fingers. There was no evidence the chain had passed through. The two halves had merged back together seamlessly. Outside, the horses continued on as though nothing had happened.

Deptford, the village that nestled on the outskirts of London, appeared up ahead. They would soon be in the city and then she would be back at school. She pulled her cloak tighter around her; she suddenly felt cold despite the layers of petticoats and the heavy, black woollen skirts of her travelling dress. She looked down at her reticule on the seat next to her. She wanted to undo the ribbons of the small purse and check the cutting she had taken from the newspaper the day before was still inside, but Peters would see it and he might tell her grandmother. She sighed. She had resigned herself to going back to school. There was only one more year left to endure, and besides, she had nowhere else to go.

****

The carriage slowed as they neared the city and joined the traffic heading into London. The road was jammed with carriages and carts, while humans on foot crammed the pavement. After spending the summer alone in Northumberland with only ghosts for company, the noise and chaos overwhelmed her. Drivers shouted for people to get out of the way, mothers called for their children. The humans, the ones still living, were hurrying home, eager to be safely inside before nightfall. The demons and the dead strolled along; they were less concerned about the coming darkness.

Tobin forced a way through the crowd. A giant black spider pulled the carriage in front of hers. A leather harness was crisscrossed around the creature’s black hairy body and looped around its legs. The driver whipped the spider and it crawled forward, pulling the carriage behind it.

A small man on stilts lit the street lamps, his feet strapped to a set of bone legs to give him the extra height needed to reach the lamps. The bone legs moved of their own accord, the toes wriggling. They had likely been taken from a zombie whose flesh had been removed.

A tiny carriage pulled by four Shetland ponies sped down the street, forcing people to jump out of the way. The goblin driver laughed as he cruelly whipped the frightened ponies. He swerved to avoid a demon and crashed into a cart. It was early for goblins to be out. They didn’t usually like the light. The driver probably couldn’t see where he was going or perhaps he wanted to cause chaos.

Above them, the sky was as crowded as the street. Four dark green wyverns were tethered to a carriage, one at each corner. The carriage narrowly missed a gentleman on a flying horse. The horse swooped under the carriage and the gentleman ducked down to avoid losing his hat. Wyverns were often mistaken for a species of dragons due to their reptilian heads, but they had no scales. Instead, a thick membrane stretched between their forelimbs to form wings and their hide was soft and easy to pierce; unlike dragon hide which was said to be impenetrable.

Griffins circled, keeping watch over the city. In the fading light she couldn’t see if they were the royal griffins that nested in St Paul’s cathedral. They were said to be waiting for the king to return, although it had been more than two hundred years since England had a king.

A ghost stood in the shadows, dressed for the opera in top hat and tails. He took his hat off and bowed low as her carriage passed. The other ghosts out in the streets stopped as well, as her carriage went by. A lady in a wine-red medieval dress, with wide sleeves which fell almost to the floor, inclined her head. A young girl, no older than Raiden, with dark hair and eyes and a scold’s bridle clamped cruelly over her head, lowered her gaze and curtsied. Her family coat of arms on the side of the carriage, or the long dead horses that pulled it, had told them she was a Feralis; one of the oldest and most powerful families of evokers. They needn’t have worried. She had no power over them. She might be a Feralis by birth, but she wasn’t truly a Feralis. How could she be with no magic?

The sky was completely dark by the time her carriage finally pulled through the black iron gates and stopped in front of Grimwood Manor. Raiden rested her forehead against the window and looked up at the gloomy grey building, where the richest and most powerful families sent their daughters to be educated. The manor had once been part of a great estate, but now only the manor house was left. Houses had been built right up to the black iron railings that surrounded the school and what remained of the driveway had barely enough room for a carriage to turn around.

Up on the roof, she could just make out the dark shapes of the gargoyles that watched over the school. Standing only three foot tall, they were tiny compared to the huge gargoyles that guarded the Houses of Parliament. Small horns jutted out from above their ears and their clawed feet gripped tightly to the stone edge. Their faces were grotesque and misshapen, as if someone had pushed their fingers into their flesh and randomly pulled and tugged the skin. The gargoyles were crouched down, their wings tightly folded against their backs as they watched her carriage intently with their small black eyes.

The date 1532 was carved into the stone lintel above the heavy oak door of the manor and underneath in small letters was an inscription in Latin. The manor had once been home to the Grimwoods, a powerful family of necromancers. They had the ability to bring the dead back to life as zombies. After the English Civil War, necromancy had been outlawed and the Grimwoods had been executed. It was rumoured the Grimwoods had experimented with zombies, stitching bits of them together, and that their monstrous creations were still somewhere in the school. With necromancy illegal, there had been no one to lay them to rest and so they had been sealed in a room and walled up alive. The manor had stood empty until fifty years ago, when it had been turned into a school for girls.

A tangle of dead vines covered the grey stone, obscuring most of the inscription. The vine had been dead for centuries, and yet, as Raiden watched, a tendril slowly snaked up the wall and began to coil itself around the foot of a gargoyle. The gargoyle leapt into the air, tearing free of the vine. The vine slithered back down the wall and wrapped itself around a pillar. The vine had been raised from the dead by the Grimwoods. It would continue to move even after a piece was cut off.

Raiden twined the ribbons of her reticule anxiously around her fingers. “I should go in,” she said. Peters nodded in agreement. He had been waiting for her to get out of the carriage, but she couldn’t make herself move. She wrapped the ribbons around her wrist and heard the faint rustle of the newspaper cutting that was inside. She had to resist the urge to take it out and read it yet again. She had already read it so many times she could recite it word for word.

She was about to get out when a carriage pulled by four demon horses thundered through the gates and pulled to a stop in front of the school, forcing Tobin to back her carriage up almost onto the street. The black horses strained against their harnesses, their red eyes wild as they tossed their heads. Fire sparked where their hooves hit the cobblestones. A twisted black horn jutted out from their foreheads. In the wild they used them to impale their prey and hold them still while they drank their blood. Silver chains bound them to the carriage. Strips of their flesh had been seared away where the chains had burned them, leaving open wounds on their belly and shoulders.

The driver climbed down from the carriage and opened the door. A gentleman in a black overcoat and top hat stepped out. His dark red hair marked him as a fire witch. Raiden recognised him. His name was Lord Inferre, the Duke of Exeter. Her hand tightened on her reticule where she had the newspaper cutting hidden. An imp jumped down from the carriage. Dark brown in colour, it hopped from foot to foot. A fine chain was attached to the silver collar around its neck. The Duke held the lead in his left hand, with his right hand he helped a young woman down. Blaize Inferre, the Duke’s daughter, had a deeper shade of red hair than her father. It reminded Raiden of blood. Blaize looked over; her eyes narrowed when she saw Raiden’s carriage. Raiden drew back and pressed herself into the corner so she wouldn’t be seen