Ash & Flame: Season One (3 page)

And then she stopped. Her hood fell away from her face, revealing her eyes. She stared at him with a cold, humorless smile, her eyes dark pools that threatened to suck him in. A black, viscous liquid pooled around her eyes and slowly streamed down her cheeks. Blood dripped from her nose, plopping against the white snow.

Ren called her name, his voice little more than a rasp, and reached out for her. He shouted it, yelled it until his ears rang, each time a dagger of panic stabbing into his heart.

Shadows appeared around her prone form, long, delicate arms and legs. A shadow turned to face Ren, and he saw the burning eyes and wicked smile. A shrouded, swirling hand reached down for Emma, dark claws extended towards her body. The snow around her had turned a dark shade of red, only he could see now that it wasn't a pile of snow at all.

He cried out, his voice so hoarse it was barely a whisper, his fingers so achingly close to Emma's small fingers. Something inside him snapped. Before he could open his mouth to scream a tide of darkness swept him away.

▪▪▪

Ren's eyelids strained to open, the world overhead a dizzying blur.

His whole body seemed to hurt. Each breath was an effort, pushing against the tight soreness in his chest. He thought he could feel his ribs creak as his chest expanded, then a flash of pain sprouted from his side as he slowly let his breath out.

He'd never felt so sore in his life.

His shoulder burned, every twinge like jabbing a dull blade into his armpit, sending daggers that flared up and down his arm. His legs didn't seem to have fared much better, a dull ache echoing down to his bare feet.

Emma
.

"What was that?"

Ren paused and frowned at the voice. He hadn't realized he'd said her name out loud. A form loomed over him, coalesced into a face. He thought it was a man, but he couldn't quite be sure, his vision still murky. The sharp details eluded him.

Maybe more than just his vision, the way his head was pounding.

He blinked, licked his lips. "Emma." His voice sounded soft and far away.

"That your girl's name?"

Definitely a man now. The voice was low and rough, and Ren spotted stubble running down the man's jawline, leading up to a dark goatee lined with gray.

Ren nodded and squeezed his eyes shut at the wincing throb that ran up his neck. He brought his hand up to his temple, rubbing at the incessant ache. He thought about trying to sit up, and the mere idea sent a wave of nausea up his gut.

"Don't worry, she's okay," the man said. "She was pretty scared, but that's the worst of it. For her, anyway."

He patted Ren on the shoulder, sending another flare of agony down his arm. "Get some rest. Still a couple of hours before we get there."

That sounded good, rest. His Emma was alive and okay. He could rest now.

Ren lay still and drifted off, thankful that the pain eased as he slipped back into sleep. Slumber took him, and the question of where
there
was slipped away with his consciousness.

▪▪▪

Ren opened his eyes, blinking the sleep away. Staring up at a bland, cracked ceiling for several seconds, he realized he had no idea where he was. Only that he was lying in a comfortable bed and he had a roof over his head. There were no holes in the roof, no scorched walls, no piles of refuse.

Wait
. The impact of the thought hit him. Where was he?

He moved to sit up, and bared his teeth as he realized his left arm had been tied up in a sling wrapped around his shoulder. He slumped back down and closed his eyes.

"Lucky you didn't break anything."

Ren turned back to his right to face the voice and winced at the soreness in his neck.

A black man leaned back against the far wall, a closed door beside him. Even leaning back, he was so tall that he nearly dwarfed the door frame. A tight green shirt barely concealed the man's massive chest, shirt sleeves stretched around his thick shoulders. A silver chain wrapped around his neck glinted, a pendant drooping below the neck of his shirt. He wore military fatigue pants fashioned for the desert, the lower legs tucked inside tan combat boots.

He stared at Ren with penetrating eyes, his dark hair tightly cropped, his angular face clean-shaven. "Real lucky."

The way he said it, the uneasy, questioning tone behind his voice, Ren figured there must have been some obscure meaning behind the man's words, but right now his own question wasn't quite so obscure. He was too tired, too sore, too unnerved for obscure.

"Right. Where's my daughter?"

The man's tongue played between his teeth, and he sniffed, like he was pondering how he was going to answer.

Ren shifted in the narrow bed, and grunted as he swung his legs off the edge. He noticed the cloth wrapped around his calf. He leaned forward on his good arm, hoping his face didn't betray the surge of pain as he moved. "Listen, I don't want to play this game, whatever it is. Where's—"

"She's fine, man. She's outside with some of the others," the man said, motioning towards the door with his head. "Wouldn't leave you alone, so I promised her I'd keep an eye on you."

Another bed sat across from Ren, a white sheet pulled up over the scrawny pillow. A wooden crate sat against the far wall, an old, dented Coleman lantern sitting on top. Harsh daylight shone through a small window above the bed.

The man pushed off the wall and strode over to the empty bed. The springs squealed as he sat down on the edge of the mattress. The pendant slipped out from under the man's shirt, a gold-plated cross. "Figured it'd be a good time for us to have a little chat."

Ren's brow rose. "Oh, yeah? About what?"

He didn't like the way this conversation was going. Sure, this man, and whoever else was with him, had likely saved his life, and the life of his daughter.

Not likely
, he thought.
Me and Em would be rotting in the earth right now, or worse, if not for these people
.

The simple fact was, Ren had been completely helpless at the end. He couldn't protect his daughter, and these people could. Didn't matter how much he loved her, or how he'd die for her at the mere word. His job was to keep her safe, and he'd failed.

She lived now because these people made it so.

Of course, that didn't mean that he was okay with being interrogated. And that's how this felt, right from the start.

"About you. About you and the kid," the man said.

Ren shifted under his stare, growing uncomfortable under his unflinching attention, and waited for him to continue.

"You had a pack of demons on you, and one of 'em an actual Grigori. I don't—"

"Wait, what?" Ren interrupted. "A Gri-what? You have names for the damn things?"

"Grigori. One of the Fallen." It was the black man's turn to shoot Ren a quizzical look. "One of the 200 angels cast out of Heaven. You don't know this?"

"All I know is that demons roam the earth, angels hunt them, and whoever's left in Heaven doesn't seem to give a shit what happens to the rest of us." He watched the big man's face go cold, his eyes dark, and wondered how far he'd gone over the line.

"Oh, yeah? That all you know?"

"And I know that you're keeping me in here, and I'm still waiting to see my daughter." Ren resisted the urge to shake his head at himself.
Push, Ren. Keep pushing, see what it gets you
.

Katie had always told him that for a skinny white guy, he sure had a big mouth. She'd rolled her eyes when he told her it was only because he was fast enough to get away with it.

He didn't feel that fast anymore.

The man's hand went to the pendant at his neck, his palm swallowing the cross. "This is what I don't understand. We save your bacon," he rose to his feet and took a step towards Ren. "We save your bacon, against a pack of demons, a damned Grigori leading the charge."

Ren shrugged, and immediately regretted the instinctive motion as searing fire ran up his shoulder and neck. "Makes two of us, then, because I don't understand either. What's your point?"

The man took another step, and Ren's nerves began tingling. He stopped in front of Ren and knelt on one knee, his face dangerously close to Ren's personal space. It was impossible for Ren to miss that the man still towered over him. "That we saved you at all. I've seen them, seen what they do. I've seen what they leave behind."

He rolled the pendant between his fingers. "What I want to know is, what makes you so special?"

Ren opened his mouth, and the man moved. He moved so fast that Ren almost missed his thick fingers squeeze around the pendant. He was on his knee one second, and the next he had his forearm pressed against Ren's chest, slamming him back into the mattress.

Something flashed in Ren's vision, and he blinked, his eyes watering. His breath caught in his throat and he froze.

The man held a long sword, the point aimed at Ren's head, the blade gleaming in the sunlight from the window. Ren heard a faint hiss, and a line of blue flame sprung up along the edge of the sword, swirling and flashing.

Ren swallowed, and raised his good hand slowly over his head. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. His voice was little more than a wheeze when he spoke. "I don't know what just happened, but I swear that I'm no more special than anyone else. Promise."

"This blade is called
Lahat
," the man said through gritted teeth. "Its fire will burn any who oppose it. If there is any lie to you, any corruption, I will know it, and I will destroy you."

The flame danced, seething along the blade. Ren flinched away, but felt no heat, only the unbearable pressure of the man's weight on top of his chest. He felt lightheaded, the ceiling receding in his vision. It didn't make any sense, but Ren had the sudden uneasy thought that the flames were aware of him. Watching, sensing, probing.

"Something's wrong with you, I can smell it on you. What did the Grigori want with you?"

"N-Nothing." Ren shook his head and forced a breath out. "Look, I'm not here to cause you any trouble. I just want to make sure my little girl is okay."

The man frowned, then nodded. The pressure eased off as he got to his feet, and Ren let out a loud, relieved sigh.

"We'll make sure you and your kid are okay, let you heal up," he said. "But this is our home. Don't go thinking it's yours. Because it's not."

The towering man lowered the sword. Blue flame played along the blade, rivulets of fire that hissed and sparked. His free hand rose to the pendant hanging from his neck and he closed his eyes. Ren's ears popped, and the blade flashed in the man's hand, disappearing like Ren had simply imagined it.

For a moment Ren couldn't think. He'd seen a flaming weapon, and then it was gone, the big man's hand suddenly empty. Even with demons and angels walking the earth, the world now seemed much larger than he'd ever realized. "How did you do that? Where am I?"

A thin smile cracked the giant's lips. He flexed his fingers, and looked down at the empty palm of his hand. "Welcome to Haven. Name's Kevin. Be seeing you." He turned back and headed for the door.

"Don't you want to know my name?"

"No." Kevin looked over his massive shoulder and shook his head. "I don't care what your name is."

He opened the door and stepped through the doorway without another word, closing the door softly behind him. Like he hadn't been about to impale Ren on the tip of that blade if his answer had been any different.

Ren closed his eyes and tried to relax. His heart thudded against his chest, and now his ribs ached worse than when he'd woken up. He was afraid to move his head again, to move anything really, streaks of fire flaring through his shoulder and neck.

And he was exhausted. He started to fade, his body stiff and tired from its ordeal, and Ren still had no idea how long he'd been here. He heard the click of the door opening, but he had to struggle to keep his eyes open.

"Dad?"

Ren's eyes flicked open and he couldn't hide the relieved smile on his face as he sat up. "Hey, baby doll."

Emma stood inside the doorway, and time spun backwards, back to when his daughter lived in a world that still belonged to mankind. Before clouds of ash fell like snow, and the smell of sulphur was so strong that it saturated the ground, sickly sweet and deadly. Before great fires spread over most of the Midwest, and nightmarish towers made of fire and rock heaved out of the earth.

Before that, she'd just been his Em. Her dark brown hair, washed and gleaming, ran in straight lines down to her shoulders, no trace of fine white ash. Her face clean, free of the dirt and grime that settled in the lines of her eyes and hid the smile that saved him every time she flashed it. The subtle confidence and intelligence lurking within her bright green eyes, the fierce courage and the stubborn streak that could only have come from her mother.

He saw that same girl right now, standing in the open doorway. Older maybe, but this was his Emma.

Don't go crying on her, Ren
.

She paused there like she thought he might break if she took another step. Ren could read the concern in her eyes, and he could almost feel the knot in his chest at the sight of her. His baby girl was okay.