Ash & Flame: Season One (20 page)

Ithuriel was afraid the truth was far different, the thought lurking in shadow.

Maybe Ren would stop him from killing the girl.

▪▪▪

“Come on, Emma.”

Brad looked over his shoulder as he weaved through the brush ahead, and Emma had to hurry to keep up with his long stride, mud speckling her shoes. The rain had finally died out, at least, and it had taken most of that nasty ash with it.

They worked their way through a narrow valley, the remains of a meager creek twisting between the hills on either side. Trees lined the hills, blocking out the evening sun, rays peeking through here and there.

She was scared. Scared for herself, yes, but more scared for who wasn’t here with her. Dad was back there somewhere, and he was hurt, and now he was all alone. And she was afraid of what he might do.

Even if that familiar, soothing voice in the back of her mind whispered that her dad was safe, she wasn’t sure that was entirely true. Sure, safe from
them
, maybe. But that might not be enough.

Still, Emma was positive what would happen if she tried to go back.
Positive
was more than
might
, so she stuck behind Brad.

The voices had gone silent in her head, leaving behind an almost contented hum that threatened to overwhelm her own fear. She felt it flowing down her neck, a warmth that flushed her skin.

“Stop it,” she whispered with a frown.

She followed Brad as he climbed up a short incline. She clung to the brush for handholds, hoping the thin branches and twigs would hold her as she scrambled up. Brad paused at the crest of the hill, and she stopped beside him, out of breath. She looked past a thick trunk, the bark stripped and torn.

The sight beyond the trees reminded her of Haven.

In front of them the ground shifted into a ridge of white sand and rock. A wide crevasse had been cut into the rock past that, a jagged bowl of gleaming sand that stretched over the area. Structures sat on the far side of the ridge, a tall silo and a handful of square buildings attached to it with pipes.

Brad looked down at her and fished through one of his leg pockets, his other hand rubbing his ear, a dull red where Emma had bitten it. “You hungry?”

Emma hadn’t been hungry, or hadn’t noticed, not until he asked just now. But now that he had, she realized she was starving. The stubborn part of her wanted to shake her head, tell him no. Or maybe just bite his other ear. Starving wouldn’t do her or her dad much good, though.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. Besides, there were better ways of showing Brad that she wasn’t about to do everything he said.

Brad opened a plastic baggie and pulled out a dried strip of meat. He handed it to Emma and grabbed one for himself, then closed the baggie up and shoved it back into his pocket.

Emma glanced up at Brad, her brow raised.

“Beef,” he said, and tore off a chunk of the strip.

Good enough
. Emma ripped off a piece with her teeth and sighed as she chewed the tough meat. She didn’t know how he’d managed to get his hands on dried beef, and right now she didn’t much care. It tasted delicious.

Brad yanked a small canteen from his belt and took a quick sip. He handed it over and Emma took a long pull, the cool water soothing her raw throat.

“Easy.” He grabbed the canteen from Emma and plugged the top. “Don’t drink too fast.”

He took another bite of jerky and stepped clear of the trees. He headed west along the ridge and Emma followed after him, glaring at his back and kicking a rock over the ledge. Brad glanced over his shoulder, a frown on his face.

Your father will be protected, as long as you go with him
. She looked at Brad. Going with him didn’t mean she had to like it.

She finished off the last of her dried beef as they wound around the ledge of the ridge. She peered over the jagged edge as they walked, looking down the sheer cliff face. Debris littered the sandy floor, piled high in some spots, like miniature mountains of trash.

After a couple hundred feet they came across a steep shelf that blocked their path. Brad led them around on an old dirt road that wound to the south of the shelf.

“So where are we going?” Emma asked. She kicked another rock, sand and dirt scattering under her shoe. A puff of dust rose, and Emma coughed.

Brad didn’t even turn around, just kept walking ahead. “I told you earlier, someone wants to see you.”

“Who?”

Brad stopped as they neared the far side of the shelf. He knelt on one knee, a hand on the necklace around his neck. Emma opened her mouth but the man shushed her with a hard look. He shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

She frowned and almost said something anyway, but then she heard it, too.

Voices, loud and insistent, carried over the rock shelf. She turned her head, trying to make out what they were saying, but the harsh voices were garbled, several trying to speak over each other.

Brad looked back at her and pointed towards the woods behind them. He shifted on his feet and crept quietly towards the trees, waiting for Emma to follow up behind him.

Emma nearly panicked, her head turning left and right as she instinctively looked for her father. She bit her bottom lip when she realized that of course he wasn’t here, and trailed behind Brad as he stepped into the brush.

She had nearly reached the long grass leading into the trees when she heard the sound of scraping rock. She froze where she was, afraid to turn around, her skin prickling.

“S’up, young meat?” a dry, cracking voice said. “Where you goin’?”

Brad rose to his feet, his hand on the pendant as he looked past Emma, a frown on his face.

Don’t be scared
. Emma steeled herself and turned around to face the voice.
Don’t be scared
.

A woman crouched on the lip of the rock shelf. Long, stringy hair hung from one side of her head, the other side shaved along with her eyebrows. Gold and silver rings pierced her cheek, a slim chain dangling from one to another ring in her nostril. The skin around her eyes had been painted jet black, and dark tattoos circled and dotted her thin, wiry arms.

She produced a long narrow knife from inside her boot and made a sawing motion with it.

“So young, dis one,” the woman slurred. Her eyes narrowed and she licked her lips. “Young and…soft. What’s the word?
Tender.
Tender, yeah, dat’s it.”

“She is not for you,” Brad snarled. He whispered something to himself as he stepped in front of Emma, and the curved blade appeared in his hand. “She is meant for the Hellfont. Go back to the pit you came from.”

“You go,
blessed
man,” the woman hissed, revealing a row of sharpened, yellowed teeth. She clambered down the rocky shelf and knelt on one knee, her blade pointing towards Emma. “Jus’ hungry’s all. You leave young meat here an’ go. You live.”

Emma took a step back, her heart pounding against her chest, her breathing rapid. She’d been scared before, but this was different. There was no one here she could trust, and right now she felt very much alone.

The cannibal stepped forward, her dark eyes on Emma, and Brad moved. He moved so fast that at first Emma thought it was someone else. The curved sword flashed out in a blinding arc as he leapt towards the cannibal, and the woman’s reaction was already too late.

She lunged, her knife driven towards Brad’s legs, but Brad had already jumped, his feet trailing over the cannibal’s lead arm. He swung the sickle sword down and it sliced cleanly through the woman’s forearm. Her hand flopped to the ground, the knife slipping harmlessly to the dirt.

The woman stared for an instant, her wide eyes on the blood spurting from the sheared end of her arm, and then she screamed, a bloodcurdling cry that echoed through the valley.

Brad landed and whipped his arm around in one smooth motion, and the woman’s scream cut off as the sword cleaved effortlessly through her neck. The rings hanging from her cheek glinted in the fading sun as her head rolled away to rest against a clump of scrub.

He looked at Emma as shouts rang out and motioned with his free hand for her to come to him. “Come on, Emma. We need to go.”

Emma swallowed. She didn’t want to. Right now she wanted more than anything to run back to Haven, to find her dad. She didn’t want to be out here anymore, didn’t want to listen to that voice tell her everything was going to be alright.

Nothing was alright.

Someone slid past the stone outcropping, kicking up dust. A tall man wearing loose canvas pants and a torn, ragged shirt, paused as his gaze fell on Brad. His hair ran along his skull in tight braids, and he held a nasty-looking whip made up of three long sections of barbed wire, the ends tipped with rusted hooks.

Footsteps sounded behind, and then a group crowded around the man. Emma counted at least ten.

“Heya.” The man smiled, revealing a large gap where his front teeth should be, but the grin faded as he saw the woman’s severed head in the grass. He sneered and glanced at the other cannibals behind him. “Whoever kills this fucker gets his heart.”

Emma heard rocks scatter behind her, and someone chuckled. She wanted to cry, because she wasn’t getting out of here. She was going to die alone.

She missed Dad.

“Emma!”

Brad’s shout was drowned out by an ear-pounding roar, and Emma swayed on her feet, a grinding breathing running through her head.

Motion and cries and screams sounded all around her, and she blinked as she recognized it. The demon, so familiar…

She fell on her backside, her feet kicking at the dirt. Blood dripped down her chin, spattering against her shirt. A voice roared in her head.

It was the…the
thing
in front of her now, claws tearing into the fleeing humans, gore dripping from its maw.

Grigori
.

The demon laughed and Emma clapped her hands over her ears, the barking rasp pounding inside her head. She couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t get it out.

Azazel
.

She scrambled away on all fours, dirt and sand all over her, dust in her eyes, in her throat. She turned and crawled on her stomach, but her hand reached out and found nothing but air. She stopped short of the rock ledge, the jagged cliff falling away before her.

Flies buzzed past her head, and she nearly retched as the foul smell hit her. She blinked and looked down at the piled garbage below. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell slack, the breath catching in her throat.

It wasn’t garbage.

Bodies. Dozens, hundreds, tossed away like so much junk. Flies hovered lazily over corpses missing limbs, their flesh torn open or ripped off.

And then Emma caught the movement. Bodies shifted and flailed, hands reaching up, and she realized they weren’t all dead. Moans carried up over the ledge, feeble, agonized cries for help.

A man, so emaciated that she could see the outline of ribs poking through the skin, had climbed over the mountain of corpses, his nails digging into the rock. He looked up into the sky and Emma saw that his eyes were gone, black, blood-rimmed pits staring up at nothing.

She threw up, tears brimming over her lids, and scooted back from the ledge. She choked on a half-sob and spluttered, the Grigori in her head a churning mass that hammered at her mind until she let go and let the voices consume her.

▪▪▪

Lilith cried out as she opened her eyes, her fingers digging into her own skin. She stood in an antechamber, her free hand leaning against an ornate chair that sat near the wall. A rounded dais swept out from the wall, a dimly lit hall leading away to the terraced walkway that wound around the upper spire. A lesser demon stood on each side of her chair, their skinless bodies shining a dark red, their muscle fibers twitching. They stood on hindlegs that bent back, mimicking animals. Long, gleaming claws extended from their fingers, the wiry sinews of their arms trembling. Bone horns jutted from their ram-like heads, and they glared at Lilith with yellow eyes.

Somewhere nearby a pathetic human cried out, the sound of pleading sobs carrying through the stone walls of the Hellfont.

She stood still for several moments, gritting her teeth as the pain of her bodily exit surged through her. So foolish. She wasn’t a warrior, didn’t have the battle sense that her brother, or the damned Ithuriel, had. Her
message
to the Malakhi would hardly suffice.

The angel had surprised her, and she had been embarrassed. An unfamiliar feeling that soon shifted into a red anger.

She left the antechamber, her hooves clicking on the stone floor as she walked through the hallway. She stepped out onto the terrace, a reddish, wispy haze surrounding the land that Hell had claimed for itself. She leaned against the terrace with both hands, her skin on fire, and breathed in the sickly sweet odor of brimstone, struggling to calm her anger.

“Daemon,” she said. She waited until she heard the tap of hooves approach before glancing over her shoulder. She stared into the creature’s eyes and showed the daemon the Malakhi’s name.
Ithuriel
, the name burning as she spoke it, as she forced it out. The daemon hissed and shuddered, recoiling against the angelic name, then bowed its head obediently.