Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (20 page)

Somewhere in his head the denial had dissolved and confrontation had come in its cruelest incarnation. This wasn't an experience she'd wish on anyone, let alone a survivor. She turned to search for the next exit. She owed him better than to pretend evil shit never took place in the world, cared too much to pretend everything was or could be fine.

There was blood everywhere, smeared and splattered on the walls and the furniture, pooling in contrast to the neutral color of the floor fibers. A meaty all American Ken doll was throwing a savage beating onto what was left of Sio's youth while an aging bleach blonde beauty queen stood at the fireplace, gripping the mantle with perfectly manicured hands. The twisted fascination in her expression distorted her features, made them ugly. No matter how many faces wore that look the sickness in it was always the same.

The long buried rage lurking in Tian's soul clawed its way to the surface. It screamed in the back of her brain for blood, and pain, and vengeance, and it didn't abate. She was bowled over by the intensity of the reaction, which included some long forgotten protective instincts, that were shockingly her own. The goddess was silent within, not absent, but eerily still. Waiting.

The All American was painted red. His anguished ranting was unintelligible, as if his psycho to speech translator had fried. There was no doubt that in his head the words following the flecks of spit out of his mouth were spewed in a language that vaguely resembled English. His face was contorted with a rage that fell out of the scope of human capacity. There was no spark of awareness, only a perverse pleasure in perpetuating an act so heinous there would be no return for anyone involved.

Sio slid to the ground next to her. He dropped his head between his knees while his hands clenched and unclenched in front of him. A weak keening, and the harsh clatter of leather and metal, dragged Tian's attention back to the center of the room. The swollen mass of flesh that used to be Sio's face was ground into the carpet. Visions of her first death ran in a disturbing parallel to what she was witnessing. She closed her eyes, and wondered if she would be able to endure what she was about to do.

It took her three tries to get the words out. When she did they were high and reedy. "Do the Fae so fear their own crimes that my life would remain unexamined?"

A muffled viscous cry broke in the center of the room.

Soul crushing fear slammed through every cell as she raised terrified eyes to the two halves of the Lulo. She bit through her lip to keep from bawling or screaming unceasingly like a maniac.

"You would choose to take his place?"

Tian couldn't look at Sio. She couldn't actually focus on anything.

"Yes."

A gunshot echoed through the still air.

"Then take his place you shall." Uthboada's brass bell voice rang high and sweet.

Fuck, if that wasn't the most ominous thing ever.

Tian turned to find that the handle had grown back out of the door. She cracked it open, hating herself because she was desperate not to go through. She dropped to her knees, relieved that for the moment she didn't have to will them to hold her up. Tian gathered Sio's clenched fists into her hands. The physical jolt of contact was still there, but it made her want to cry.

Sio's beautiful dead grass eyes were broken, so vulnerable that she couldn't bear it. Her throat constricted.

I can't survive this again.

"My turn."

He turned his head to see what was happening in the room. She caught his jaw and turned him to face her as she stood. She kept hold of him until she found her footing and stepped back through the door. Loren's unconscious form slipped on her shoulder, causing her to stumble. She'd forgotten that she was carrying him. Now that she'd remembered it was as if he gained an additional ten pounds to spite her. A latch clicked into place behind them.

Sio's voice was soft and empty, "Tian, I don't recognize this place."

They were in a corridor made of limestone and water; gold filigrees decorated the walls with impeccable taste and delicacy.

"It's okay," she said. The response was followed by a blood curdling scream from her former torment that pissed on the peaceful facade.

Sio kept moving. If he didn't the hastily erected compartments in his brain were going to buckle under the weight of what he'd witnessed. He trudged along. The sand skittered away from his feet as the granules pressed themselves in the opposite direction of his bulk. It spilled in hissing curtains from one side of the narrow path in front of him. Briny tides soaked his shoes from the other side, climbing his pant legs like attention starved children before plummeting to meet the mica flecked sheets of sand in the twilight abyss below.

The air was blanketed in coastal fog. Blue green flecks of phosphorescent algae sparked in the mist, spinning in dizzy arcs away from his skin. As beautiful as it was he couldn't muster a response. He was almost numb. Almost. If it weren't for Tian and his reaction to what she'd done for him, he would have said his touchy-feely fuse had been blown for good.

Don't think, just walk.

He plodded in the only direction available. He held Tian's hand, pulling her along because it was the only thing she would allow.
I walk out of here under my own power
, she'd said. It was more than he'd been able to do. A fissure dug deeper into his chest. Sio cracked his neck and readjusted Loren's weight, hoping to get the feeling back into his fingers. He'd never be able to repay what Tian had just done for him, but he held her hand because that was what he could do. He thumbed tiny circles into her palm, murmuring useless words of comfort and trying to overcome the burning impulse to bleed any and everyone that had hurt her. He prayed for the existence of karma. He'd make sure of its actuality if he could, but now wasn't the time and he had to find a way to make that stick. The sentiment was a mantra in the back of his brain, willing the unadulterated psychotic rage to follow and wait.

God, she'd endured it all. So much evil, and cruelty, and madness. There had been so much pain. The uneasy taint of what he'd seen worked its way through his bloodstream, polluting it. Tian had survived things so heinous he hadn't been able to watch all of it. Then she'd done it twice to save him the same fate. When he'd realized what had happened he had asked the Two to take it back, to press the play button on his shitty memories. They'd laughed. Now his guts were permanently warped. He kept walking anyway.

The mist swirled, parting like a curtain to reveal a freestanding twig and branch doorway. A skinless hand glowed against the frame before disappearing from view. The door, which looked more like it should be an iron gate, was illuminated with the Lulo's sickly light. It popped open like the lid to a malevolent jack-in-the-box and the alleyway on the other side wasn't what he'd expected.

The view was grim, and dark, and ugly; an almost laughable contrast to the shimmering azure otherworld of the Between. It may as well have been the first stanza of melody after a hundred years of silence. Sio dragged them through the twigs in a grateful rush as the door swung shut with a harsh clatter. He held his breath and waited for catastrophe. Nothing happened. The late night city sounds of the mundane world prickled at the edges of his awareness, bleeding back in as the droning beeps from the early morning garbage trucks, the exhaust sputtering from careening taxi cabs, the shuffle of footsteps from random passersby, and the low hum of electricity that fed into the dormant structures around them. It was heaven, more than he had let himself hope for.

"Tian..." Whatever he'd been about to say died in his throat.

Her eyes were glazed with unshed tears. Sio set Loren down, propping the guy against the brick wall next to the gate they'd come out of. He could still feel the cool electricity of Tian's touch lingering against his palm. He turned back and, before he had the chance to talk himself out of it, pulled her against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, wrapped his body, hell, his whole existence around her as if he could play human shield to ward off the crushing aftermath of recall.

The fire lit warmth between them flared, filling him with a vibrant metallic rush of contact high beginning with the hand he used to stroke her hair. Tian made a small pained noise against him. He froze, but didn't pull away or let her go. Her whole body was ridged in his embrace, thrumming with tension. Sio's throat was so tight he had trouble speaking around the knot in his esophagus.

"Let it go," he said. "I got you."

"I can't."

There was a sluggish pause where he had himself convinced she'd pull away. She didn't; she collapsed against his body, melting into him as her arms slid around his torso and she held on for dear life.

"I can't," she repeated.

Sio blinked and realized his face was wet. Tears slid out in hot tracks from his exposed eyes. It was the first time he'd cried since he was a kid, the first time he didn't bother to hide it or wipe it away. He leaned his face into the top of her head and dragged in several long slow lungfuls. Her smell was soothing, even tainted with the coppery tang of blood that still clung to them both. If it was a choice between watering her skull and letting her go to mop up he'd openly bawl like a bitch.

Tian didn't make another sound, but the way she fought to calm the tremors in her system caused the anger at what had been done to her to reassert itself. Every protective instinct from the core of his being screamed through his cells. He felt like he'd failed her.

"I swear on my life..." Sio licked the salt off of his lips and tried again. "I swear on my life, I'll never let anything like that happen to you again. I swear it on the darkness and on my blood in your veins. I swear it Tian. Never again."

"Pain is inevitable," she said.

It hurt to hear the emptiness in her response. The intensity of his emotions peaked and the knot in his chest expanded. The pressure of it sparked under his skin, filling him with the raging power of a tropical storm.

Wash us clean
, he prayed.
Make us new.

"I'll find a way."

For you I'll be invincible.

He stroked her hair again as she tilted her head back and met his eyes. The electricity arced between them like a Tesla Coil. It rolled over every square inch of his skin in a silken wave, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He fought against the inexplicable pull toward her. She'd gone still in his arms, aside from the hand that slid around his rib cage and up his chest. Her touch sent shivers in its wake as it drifted around his neck and balled into a fist at the back of his skull. The breath was vacuum sealed in his lungs. A phone went off in her coat, vibrating where it was pressed up against his obliques. He flinched and Tian jerked herself out of his grip, stumbling away from him. She careened toward the mouth of the alleyway like a drunk then proceeded to dry heave in the street. Her phone continued to violate the loose items in her pocket.

"Should I answer that?" he asked.

She nodded and spat a hostile comet of residual bile onto the ground as she extracted it. She tossed it to him with a surprising amount of precision, considering she wasn't facing him. Sio caught the thing on instinct and hit accept.

"Do you have any idea how bored I've been for the last month? I was losing my sodding mind. If I had to sit through one more of Avery's musicals I was going to hurt people. A lot of people. What are your cross streets?"

"Hallam and Folsom, we're somewhere near the Cat Club," he said.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

"Anyone ever tell you that you sound like a phone sex operator, mate?"

"No."

"You do. It's an improvement to GPS, but not as good as my girl. Where's Tian, tosser?"

"She's right here and don't insult me again." His tone was level, but too much over stimulation was searing holes in the back of his dome.

"Excuse-"

Tian cut her off, "I'm fine, Cey. Just get here."

The woman on the other end of the line must have heard because there was a grunt of acknowledgement before she barked into the receiver and disconnected. "I'm there in ten."

Sio assumed that the ten she was referring to was measured in minutes, so it was a mild surprise when six seconds later an enormous black Lincoln Navigator spilled from the front of a run-down apartment building on the corner. The thing bounced down the street and screeched to a stop in front of them. The driver side window was tinted so dark it was opaque and nothing else about the tricked out beast read as street legal.

The window dropped. Sio took one look at the driver and could guarantee that neither she nor Tian had ever been ticketed. Behind the wheel a beautiful black woman with exotic features and jade green eyes perused him with distaste. She exhaled a stream of smoke from the corner of a well formed mouth absent a dangling hand-rolled cigarette.

"The hearse has arrived."

"Hey soccer mom," Tian said, propping herself up in the mouth of the alleyway. She looked exhausted.

The driver moved on to survey Loren's slumped form a few feet away. Her shrewd gaze returned to Tian. "We picking up strays now, T?"

"They stay."

"Both of 'em?"

"I gave my word."

The other woman's eyes narrowed and she turned back at Sio. "Brilliant. Whot are you waitin' for then, mate? Get in."

Sio chaffed at being called a stray, but he busied himself hefting Loren off the ground. He walked around Tian and laid their Good Samaritan out in the back seat. He went to close the door, but thought better of it and buckled the guy in.

When he turned around again Tian and the other woman were deeply embroiled in a subvocal female conversation he usually went leaps and bounds out of his way to avoid. Irritation still wrinkling his nerves, and contrary to common sense, he put himself in the line of fire. Tian's expression was unreadable, but the hard edges were back. They made her look cruel and otherworldly, slicing through the air in front of her as if she could put down a small army if necessity dictated. It was the kind of metal that commanded respect.