Page 14

ASH

I knew what Dolion sacrificed in order to defeat Sebastian’s maker the first time, and the cost to them all.

Three hundred years encased in stone was not my idea of a good time, nor from the way he spoke—rarely—about those days, was it his.

I might only have known the gargoyle for a few short days but in my existence, time meant little compared to the connection we had carved out with each other.

Media made out that an immortal weighed years in the blink of an eye, discarding time as though passing eons meant little to the heart to the individual, when in truth, the reverse held over every one of us.

Each second cost us painful breaths, ruminating on each failure, every moment relived over and over until we were like to drive ourselves mad.

That was the true weight of an immortal life—not the freedom mere humans projected upon themselves, viewing the epochs passing as some sort of glorious frolic through the ages.

What humanity failed to take into account was the culmination of a lifetime—multiple lifetimes—of eros bounding one upon the other, building and building until the frustration and anxiety of every single flaw and frailty and imperfection culminated in a chaotic sense of madness.

Perhaps that was where my flame originated. I didn't recall a time when my panic didn’t bring on my heat, obliterating everything around me. Every one.

Until now.

Dolion alone withstood my fury, my fear.

And for that, he deserved everything I could give to both him and his friend.

No matter that I didn’t particularly like the vampire on sight, for no other reason than he annoyed me at a base level.

I didn’t know, perhaps he reminded me of someone I’d met before, long ago.

Dolion slept over my bed, muscular thighs crouched low.

Pink toes peeped over my heavy wooden bedhead, able to withstand the weight of his statuesque form.

His twisted, horrific features no longer unnerved me, but offered a different sort of comfort, knowing who lay inside that stone monster as I rested.

But as before, when he awoke, I wouldn't be there, because I had work to do. And he would just have to forgive me for my sin.

I placed a gentle kiss to the corner of his lips, nuzzling my cheek to his. “We burn together, forever,” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me. “Wherever we are.”

Because I wasn’t certain, after what he’d told me about the story of Minette and Sebastian and Gisella and the masquerade party at their original home, that I would be able to deal with the demoness in the way I hoped.

But I would give it my best, and hoped that washing around her in the most magnificent way possible, would be enough.

Just enough. That’s all I needed it to be. To keep Dolion safe.

Because he was right. Existence and mortality meant little, if those we cared for were threatened. He had come to that conclusion well before me, I knew. He fell first. But I was his fallen star, still burning brightly. My fall was still in progress, and I knew exactly where I wanted my end to be.

I walked out of my home, leaving my gargoyle above my bed with the knowledge that I may never come back.

But everyone in my life, after this, should be safe.

Or so I prayed, though to whom, I wasn't sure. The other gods never spoke to me, after all.

I perched on the top of my crispfied crypt, swinging my legs and drinking a Hurricane from a plastic glass with a matching, lurid green straw that was almost as long as the cup itself.

I’d flashed about the city enough where Anitta had been putting on her little stage shows pretending to be me, keeping my distance but in view just enough to gain her attention. Here, then gone. There then away.

Like the flea on the dog’s back that couldn’t be scratched. Then I settled in on my burnt out crypt, and I waited.

Spoilers: I didn’t have to wait long.

The demoness had the attention span of a gnat.

“Aren’t you just the flashy one?” Anitta waltzed around my crypt as I sipped my drink.

One, hurricanes, two hurricanes, three hurricanes, too much rum in my veins…

“Says she who ruined my last three pairs of yoga pants.”

I tipped the last of my plastic glass—best oxymoron ever—back and managed not to choke.

Tifa had made the drink for me under duress but cut back on the alcohol, thankfully.

I’d gone off rum back sometime in the seventeen hundreds during my pirate phase and still couldn’t talk about it.

But Tifa assured me this was New Orlean’s super power and I’d better get used to it, if I intended to stay.

I rattled the lime colored plastic at my lover’s enemy and slung the plastic strap around my neck for safe keeping.

It would all be ash in a moment, anyway.

Anitta wrinkled her nose. “I guess there's no accounting for dress sense, really. I can’t abide by pants. Or your choice of hair color. Don’t your things stink of death? Though that’s a cause I could get behind. How does your ass fit in that small space?” She peered at me and wiggled her hips.

My face fell away to be replaced by the creature beneath.

All peeling skin, and yellowed eyes stared out at me, more hideous than the creature Dolion had described Sebastian to be when he first turned from human to vampire under this woman—no, this demoness, I corrected myself mental—under her watch.

And now, I got to see who she really was. .

Disgust roiled within me at the bones that protruded through the fine layers that couldn't really be called epidermis. Hair hung in clumps. I could bet that she didn’t tug on too hard in case it fell away and couldn't be reattached. And the smell—oh, the smell.

“I think I prefer the crypt, actually,” I said softly, trying not to inhale too hard.

“Is this what happens when an immortal dies and can’t leave this world?

I pity you. And also, your hair.” I waved to the misshapen clumps lumped atop her hair that looked like they had once been stunning locks, possibly silky, but not for many hundreds of years.

“You really can’t go anywhere else, can you?

Is it by choice,” I continued out of pure curiosity, “or is it because you can’t stand the thought of not existing anymore? ”

I stopped short of asking how old she was.

After all, who really cared? At the end of the long day, when the universe no longer turned on, we were all old.

Ancient and should have been frittered away by the least breath left in the cold night air.

But for whatever reason we continued while others died.

A freak miracle at best, and a tragedy, at worst.

Anitta’s rotting lips pulled back to reveal teeth the same yellowish hue as her stained eyeballs.

“Do not pity me, you pathetic small firebird. You think you are bright and fantastic but his love will fade as all things do.” Her snarl broke off in a hiss that sounded like a broken tube letting out air from a puncture.

I rolled my lips inward. “Do you have that much magic left?” I asked quietly. “Or have you used it up on your tricks and shows? I know you used to be very powerful.”

She will run in spite of herself. Do not be fooled by appearances or any line she feeds you.

Tifa’s words drifted across my mind. I kept my distance, remembering the stories, what this demoness had done to Sebastian’s wife. But that was before and now…

“I am more than you will ever be, small creature,” Anitta declared. “I have slain my firstborn. He, who was ended by my hand, gives me strength. I will rise stronger than ever at the birth of the new day,” she proclaimed, her hideous cackle less of a war cry and more an off key screech.

I still didn’t move from my perch on my crypt, though I did throw a thumb over my shoulder. “Your first born? You mean that one?” I gestured to Sebastian where I knew he and Tifa entered the graveyard. Most likely with Dolion, but I’d deal with the pink toed gargoyle later.

After.

If .

“You aren’t supposed to be alive.” Anitta stared over my shoulder, and squinted.

I waited for one of her eyes to pop from her skeletal face and plop onto the grave below her feet in a jelly puddle and was so disappointed when it didn't happen.

“Neither are you, maman,” Sebastian said softly from somewhere at my back. He didn’t seem to want to bring Tifa closer, and nor did I blame him. The horror that stood before me was bad enough.

“And I thought we were doing everything together. Forever, Steorra,” Dolion’s growl grew louder.

I tested where I perched, waving a hand out, but it was too late. He swept forward and the knife that had pierced Sebastian’s side pricked my throat. The tang of blood—not mine, not yet—stung my nostrils.

A derisive laugh burst from me. “Didn’t you even clean the blade, you hag?”

“You, dare ,” she shrieked, digging the point into my throat. This time fresh blood flowed, warm and thick from my throat.

Dolion’s mouth opened in horror, but I smiled.

“ Forever. Remember?” I mouthed the words that wouldn’t have been heard anyway beneath the mad woman's cackle that filled the graveyard. I wondered if she didn’t try to resurrect every soul in it. Then we would have a different battle on our hands.

“I remember.” His voice barely made it to me over the white noise floating around me as heat built deep within my core. “I remember everything about you, Steorra.”

A storm brewed deep within me as I stood still, letting the flame burning constantly within my soul wash over me for the first time in my life without panic. Without fear. My eyes shuttered as I breathed in my last, savoring the freedom of my lungs expanding on the warm night air.

Feet shuffled as Dolion herded Sebastian and Tifa back out of range. I hoped he would move them far enough. Tears that weren’t for me tracked my cheeks, turning to steam on contact.

Anitta’s hands curled around me, pulling me back into her body. I let her touch me, let her draw me close to her heart, her fragile, rotting skin. Let her saliva dribble onto my bare shoulder where my cheesecloth shift, the simplest piece I owned, soaked through immediately.

From dust we came, and to ash we shall return.

I opened my eyes, seeking only Dolion out. He stood much closer than I wanted him to be, his muscular legs spread in a defiant stance. Tifa and Sebastian huddled at the far end of the graveyard, almost out of sight, where they needed to be. Good. That was good. They were safe.

Dolion, however…

“We will have words,” I told him, my tone hitching as the blade pressed into my skin.

“You have nothing,” Anitta told me.

“You will die, I murmured back, all show and pomp gone from me, my energy depleted except for one last act. I had no time left for anyone, except for my stone man who stood opposite my crypt, who refused to move no matter the consequences.

“Forever, Steorra. You promised me.” Amber eyes glinted with the fire that would soon reign.

I nodded, and let out my breath. Released my flame. Let it build. Heat wavered the air around me even as Anitta cackled again. Madder and stranger than ever.

“You can’t kill me,” she gloated, her blade cutting into the soft skin at my throat.

Fetid breath of the not so recently dead wafted over me in a sickening sweet-and-evil mixture that would have sent any lesser being to their grave instantly, but I was no stranger to death.

“I have been around since the dawn of time.”

Dolion smiled at me, the faintest reflection, a mirror image of that same smile he gave me the first time he waited outside my crypt in the graveyard.

Not so long ago but an age all the same.

He didn’t shift or move or run or cower, not with all his muscle, or his inner strength that gave the same to me.

Peace passed over my body as I breathed in, remembering the way he held me in the convent, how he sat with me on the rooftop the first time he took me there.

The way he showered me in cold water, and the first time I showed him my true home.

All the parts of me that he understood, and that I learned about him.

Because while I was so busy showing him everything about me, what I’d learned about him was that he had nothing. No home, no place. No one.

Just the people in this graveyard.

The mad impostor who sired his best friend and murdered his lover three hundred years ago. The best friend who woke him because he couldn't stand to be alone with the grief he hid and longer. The witch who tried to love an immortal she wasn’t sure could love her back, and…

Me.

I matched Dolion’s soft smile and turned in Anitta’s coiled embrace.

The wiry thinness of her resurrected arms strained as I twisted all too easily in her grip.

She gaped at me as I let her blade slice my neck, the burn from my insides already roiling through me, the pain from her deep cut familiar as an old friend.

A sharp inhale told me Dolion took his last breath as I expelled the life force inside of me.

“You made a mistake, demoness. I am no firebird.” I stared into her eyes, speaking while I still had the ability, my voice fading with every word.

“I am the Dawn,” I whispered, as the tip of her knife nicked something important, and blood flowed forth in a river that would end my life.

“And my friend is Time. You cannot outlive what birthed you, creature.”

Anitta stared in bewilderment at me. Her face, after all she had suffered as she strove for greater power, was almost comical, but I had no life left. No blood. No breath.

Just fire.

Light and heat burst from me and obliterated everything within my radius.

What remained of her pitiful, rotted flesh curled as it peeled away from sharp bone already protruding through frail flesh.

Her eyeballs boiled in their sockets as the demoness danced macabrely in her own juices.

Bones creaked in their joints, cracked and shattered until in the end all that was left were twin piles of ash that a warm wind brushed away watched over by a silent stone sentinel.

And I died again.