Collide and Seek: Act 4-5 (Bitter Ashes Book 2) (8 page)

At my horrified expression, he rolled off me so he could sit by my side and pull me close.

“I don't mean that how you think I do,” he explained. “In nature there is polarity. A forest fire may kill many trees and creatures, but it also brings new life and fertility to the land. Death is neither good or bad, just as you are neither good or bad. You simply
are
.”

“But I'm a person with emotions and a moral compass,” I argued. “I'm not simply
death
.”

“Ah,” he said with a coy smile, “but you were not asking me about your moral compass. You were asking if you are innately evil, because of your gifts.”

I took a moment to think about what he'd said. “I guess I understand, but what about you? How could war ever be viewed as a good thing?”

He pulled me in a little closer so that I was nestled in the curve of his arm. “You are thinking of war in terms of bloody battles and rotting corpses. While that is part of what I am, that is not what war is in its purest form.”

“Okay,” I commented, “you've lost me again.”

“It goes back to polarity,” he explained. “Without one side, the other does not exist. Without conflict and chaos, there can be no victory and no peace.”

“So we're fairly similar?” I asked, liking the idea.

“Quite,” he said with a smile. “Now we should probably get some rest. Come morning we will likely have work to do.”

I turned to give him a serious expression. “Well then it's probably time for you to move to the couch.”

His eyes widened in surprise, and he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

I laughed harder than I had in quite some time. Realizing my joke, he lifted me off him and pinned me to the bed with a wicked look in his eyes.

“I thought we were going to bed!” I exclaimed, still laughing.

He smiled wide enough to flash fang. “Not quite yet.”

My laughter died down as I gazed into his now serious eyes. He leaned down and kissed me, and as he pulled away I smiled. I'd already made one bad decision that night, so I might as well make another.

As he kissed down my chest I glanced over at the heavy curtains that covered the window, and thought I could see a hint of sunlight peeking through. Early rising Diana was going to be
pissed
if we weren't up and ready when she was.

Pissing people off seemed to be fast becoming a hobby of mine, but it was better than a lot of the alternatives.

––––––––

I
woke what seemed like only a few hours later to a loud banging. Alaric was already up out of bed, struggling into his dirty clothes next to the bathroom door. I held the sheets up to cover myself and rose to search frantically around the room for my dress, until it dawned on me that I had left it in the bathroom. The banging grew louder until the door slammed inward, hitting the wall with a startling
thwack.

I froze halfway to the bathroom while Alaric stood facing whoever stood in the doorway. He had managed to get his pants on, but no shirt. Before I could react, a woman barreled into Alaric, sending them both to the ground at my feet. I caught a quick glance of her bright blonde hair and black clothing, then turned to face four more people rushing into the room.

They all wore black, like the woman, and I didn't recognize any of them. Shouts and the sound of fighting echoed through the walls from the next room over, letting me know that we weren't the only ones being attacked.

Two of the intruders, both men, went to help the blonde-haired woman with Alaric, while the other two, a man and a woman, slowly approached me.

“She's the executioner,” the man commented with a glance to the woman.

I looked back and forth between them, weighing my options. Sparring with Alaric was the only fighting experience I'd had, and I doubted I was any match for the pair in front of me.

One of the men attacking Alaric went flying across the room. He hit the wall hard enough to dent the drywall, then slid to the ground and was still. Five-hundred years of fighting experience had obviously done Alaric good. I couldn't feel the man's pain, which meant he was either dead, or unconscious.

I desperately wanted to help Alaric with his other attacker, even if he didn't need me, but the pair in front of me finally started to close in. My eyes darted from side to side while I hiked the sheet up around my body like a dress.   My body felt strange, like I was feeling emotions and injuries from too many people, and it all just condensed into a huge wave of pain and anxiety. It made it difficult to move or even think. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to shut everyone else out. A measure of calm reached me, then my own emotions came flooding in. I opened my eyes just as the pair reached out in unison to grab me. 

“Stop this at once!” a booming voice called from the doorway. The three of us turned to see Diana, looking a little mussed but unharmed, holding out both arms in a dramatic stance.

The two intruders that had approached me let their outstretched hands drop, then turned to face the new threat. Seeing an opportunity, and still blocking out a measure of the emotions around me, I ran to the man Alaric had thrown into the wall.

He was unconscious, but I couldn't tell how injured he was. I reached a hand hesitantly toward him, hoping that if he was near death, his spirit would reach out to me. The energy from one death wouldn't be much, but Alaric had claimed that other executioners used that energy as a weapon. Maybe I could too.

I turned as one of the male intruders started shrieking to see Diana standing over him, one hand held out like she was
Darth Vader
. I searched for Alaric, but it sounded like much of the fighting was now happening in the hall. I wasn't sure what Diana was doing to the man, but he dropped to his knees and began clawing at his skin until it began to bleed. I clutched at my own face as I clenched my jaw against the sudden pain.

The horrifying sight was taken from my view as the blonde-haired woman that originally attacked Alaric darted around her tortured colleague and came to stand in front of me.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” she said quickly, “but I need you to come with me.”

I reached out to the unconscious man again, guiltily hoping that he was near death. I could feel his life force, but it felt solid inside of him. I reached out mentally, trying to connect with the energy, but it wouldn't budge from his body, meaning he wasn't badly hurt.

With a glance back at her now prostrate colleague, the woman grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet, and it was all I could do to use my free arm to keep the sheet around me. I tried again to pull at the unconscious man's life force, but another answered. The energy came rushing out of the man Diana had tortured, ready to be released. It flowed through me as the woman began hauling me to the door.

Rather than assisting me, Diana tilted her head as a strange smile crossed her face. I looked at her in panic as the blonde woman jerked me forward. I tugged back, and she turned to look at me, just as panicked. She raised her free arm like she was going to hit me, and I reacted by shoving the energy at her, much like I had done to Estus when I escaped the Salr with James. The woman went flying back, losing her grip on me as she shot out into the hall.

I stared at her crumpled form, dumbfounded, until James stepped into view. He was covered in soot and ash, letting me know that he had probably burned a few people to death.

He looked at the woman, then over to me and chuckled. “Little mouse has some teeth after all.” He walked into the room, smirked at the sheet covering my body, then walked up to Diana. “Thanks for the
help
,” he said sarcastically.

“Madeline is what's important,” Diana replied coolly.

Not taking the time to ponder the harsh statement from Diana, I ran out into the hall in search of Alaric. I found him being helped to his feet by Sophie, surrounded by several dead people.

Seeing me, Alaric pulled away from Sophie and closed the distance between us, engulfing me in a tight hug as soon as he reached me.

Diana came into the hall, followed by James. “Release them quickly, Madeline. We must go before the human police come.”

“But they're not all dead,” I argued as I reluctantly pulled away from Alaric.

“They will be,” she said apathetically as James crouched down and slit the unconscious, blonde woman's throat with a knife.

I had no idea where the knife had come from, but I knew James often had blades on his person. What I didn't know was how he'd taken it on the plane, and if he hadn't, when he'd had the chance to get one after landing in Norway.

I felt sick as I watched the woman's blood flow onto the fancy carpet. The rest of the hallway was utterly still, but I knew the chaos had to have been heard by others. I wasn't surprised as the first of the police sirens sounded in the distance.

Snapping into action, I gathered my sheet tightly around me and ran past Diana back into the room, then dashed straight into the bathroom. My wrinkled, tattered black dress was on the floor where I'd left it, looking unappealing and a little damp. Knowing I had no other options, I slipped the undergarments and dress back on, cursing the fact that we were yet to get me anything but a coat.

I went back into the main room to find that James had finished off the unconscious man. In total we had five victims, the blonde, the two Alaric had killed in the hall, the man Diana had taken down, and the latest one, although I still had no idea what happened in the other rooms.

The sirens grew nearer.

“There's no time,” Diana barked. “Leave them.”

“I can't leave them like this!” I shouted, panicking as Diana put her iron cold grip around my arm and began to drag me out of the room.

Sophie had followed us in, and grabbed my coat off the couch as Diana pushed me in-front of her so she could shove me into James' grasp. I began to struggle, horrified at the thought of leaving life in dead bodies, but Sophie cut in and quickly helped me into my coat.

“They're right,” she snapped. “Now
move
.”

When I didn't react, James threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the hall. Alaric had been busy checking the other rooms, but as we neared him James tossed me onto his shoulder like a rag doll. 

“I have to free them,” I pleaded from my awkward perch, knowing Alaric would at least listen to me, but he continued walking forward as the others entered the stairwell.

“There's no time,” he explained as the door to the stairwell slammed shut behind us. “Besides, you'd be doing nothing for them once the police had you at gunpoint.”

I knew he was right, but I could feel the souls of the dead reaching out to me, pleading to be released. “We have to go back!” I shrieked, unable to listen to reason as the spirits cried out in my head.

Alaric jogged a little faster down the stairwell. We were five stories up, but no one had even glanced at the elevators. The sane part of me knew that we were taking the stairs so we wouldn't be entirely trapped should the police show up too soon, but the rest of me could only think about the corpses we'd left behind.

I cried in vain as Alaric took the stairs in great bounds, knowing that what we were doing was wrong, but also knowing that we had no other choice. If I fought to go back, I would likely get us all killed, or at least jailed, though something told me James and Diana would not go down without a fight.

We reached the bottom stairwell and kept going into the lower parking garage. From my backward vantage point on Alaric's shoulder, I couldn't tell who was leading us, I only knew that we were last in line. The sirens grew louder as another door slammed shut behind us, and Alaric lowered me to my feet, but my legs buckled. He caught me with an arm under my shoulders before I could fall. We all stood in a semi-circle, trying to figure out where to go.

“They're already outside,” James stated calmly, referring to the police.

“We'll split up,” Diana instructed. She turned her vibrant green eyes to Alaric. “Get Madeline out of here. Without her, our efforts are useless.”

I had one confused moment before Alaric lifted me back up over his shoulder and started running. Everyone else ran in opposite directions. There were several exits to the parking complex that I could see, but Alaric chose one that led to the back of the hotel.

I couldn't decide whether I was happy or sad as Sophie and the others disappeared from sight. Neither I suppose. Mostly I was just worried about escaping the police, and about trusting my fate to the man running effortlessly underneath me.

I
heard commotion and gunshots somewhere in the opposite direction, followed by shouting then more gunshots. Someone must have already found the bodies upstairs, else I doubted the police would be shooting at anyone.

Alaric pushed open a door and ran with me outside, and I was instantly hit by the cold. I pushed away from Alaric's back to get a better view of our surroundings. There were no police in sight, which meant that likely only one or two patrol cars had been dispatched to investigate the disturbance.

It was only then that I came out of my shocked state enough to realize that neither I nor Alaric were wearing shoes. He started running again, his bare feet hitting the snowy ground that bordered the parking lot.

I could hear more commotion in the distance as we ran, but all I could think about was the cold and the trapped souls.

Alaric was quietly cursing under his breath as he carried me into a forested area. The resort had been placed where it was for scenic reasons, so luckily there weren't many businesses or residences around. Thoughts flashed through my mind of cops with well-trained dogs hunting us down in the woods. We'd all been seen by the bellhop, so the police would quickly learn how many of us there were, and what we looked like. Of course, none of it would matter if we froze to death first.

I let out a yip of surprise when someone came jogging up to our side, then sagged in relief when I realized it was Sophie. I would have really liked to run on my own as well, but the no shoes and freezing cold aspect kept me quiet.