12. Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes
Larissa
L arissa coughed, choking on a lungful of soot-filled air. The night sky lightened, but it was too early for morning. Besides, sunbeams did not throw themselves about. They did not crack and pop.
Bursting through the trees, Larissa stopped in her tracks and stared in horror at the flames engulfing the farmhouse.
She heard the shattering of windows, the sharp popping of the flames, and the thumping of the porch giving way.
Coughs racked her lungs as she stumbled toward the house, searching for any signs of her family.
Yet Helga sat idle and empty of life in the driveway only a few hundred feet away from the burning fire.
“Pappa! Mamma!” Larissa circled to the back of the house, her skin singed by the heat of the flames. She didn’t care if someone heard her now. “Halla! Onkel!”
Had Calder returned and caught her parents as they prepared to flee? Was it something else entirely? Larissa’s dream of the pupilless eyed monsters came back to her again. Pappa’s stories of monsters and demons had once seemed laughable, but now they overwhelmed Larissa with fear.
To the right of the house, the small family garden had escaped the fire.
But it was trampled as though animals had passed through there.
Destroyed vegetables littered the ground, but something else caught Larissa’s eye and caused her breath to flee her lungs.
A large heap of rags lay on the ground. Only, they weren't rags at all.
Her legs gave out. Then Larissa was crawling toward the mound, hating herself for every inch she covered, knowing she had no choice.
She didn’t want to know, she couldn’t bear to know, but she couldn’t stop crawling.
In the middle of their destroyed garden, Pappa and Mamma lay side-by-side, crumpled as though discarded without care.
Their eyes were open, staring at the sky.
Larissa could not comprehend it. She’d just spoken with them only moments ago. They couldn’t be dead. This was the mara ’s doing. Larissa must be having another nightmare; she would wake up, and Halla would be asleep in their bed.
But one more glance at their faces was all the confirmation Larissa needed.
None of her nightmares were so hideous in their details.
Incoherent thoughts whipped through her mind as she registered the tears running down her cheeks.
She should reach out and close their eyes, give them the proper rites, she should…
She could only stare and fight the nausea in her throat.
Nothing she did now could change the fact that her parents were dead, evident through the harsh angles of their limbs and the pallor of their skin.
The flames continued to roar and hiss, swallowing up the whole of the house.
It would not be long before those flames jumped from the house to the barn to the fields. They would consume everything.
The heat burned the back of Larissa’s neck, matching the raw burn in her throat, but she could not move.
Words fell from her lips, words of pain and sorrow, of broken promises and threats made to the AEsir that had allowed her parents’ deaths.
Between the sobs and the smoke, her breath came in short, shallow bouts.
She dug her hands into the cool soil and screamed.
Convulsions ran through her body, cutting short her screams. The coughing became hyperventilating, and she collapsed into the dirt.
In the corner of her eyes, she could see Mamma’s small, bare foot; her shoe had come off.
The heat of the fire was growing. Survival instincts told her to get up, to move away from the flames.
Why? she thought. The cool soil felt nice pressed against her cheek.
Think of Halla .
Larissa jerked up at the voice, tearing her face from the ground.
But there was no one else around. The command had come from inside her head, Larissa was sure of it. The voice was familiar and strange. It came from within her, and yet she knew it was not her own.
An hour ago this would have frightened her, convinced her that she’d lost her grip on reality. Perhaps the voice was simply her innate inclination to live, or maybe even one of those heartless gods who had allowed this to happen, but she did not care. All she wanted was to be left alone.
Get up , the voice said.
Get out of my head , she told the voice.
Get up, Larissa. Don’t disgrace your parents like this.
Larissa dug her hands into the soil, wondering at its dampness. Was it blood?
Are you really going to give up on Halla?
Larissa flinched at the rebuke. Who are you?
No answer.
Careful not to look at her parents’ bodies, knowing she would never be able to leave them if she did, Larissa stood, scanning the fields nearby.
Halla, focus on Halla . This time her thoughts were truly her own. It’s what Pappa and Mamma would want .
Her knees ached from where she had fallen, protesting against every step, but the heat lessened as Larissa walked further from the burning house.
The weight in her chest, however, remained.
She tried calling out Halla’s name but fell into another coughing fit.
Fighting the fear of what she would find, Larissa forced herself forward.
In the distant fields, she spotted the shadow of a figure. Small, but clearly alive. She faced away from Larissa, the light from the flames dancing off her blonde hair.
“Halla,” Larissa croaked.
The voice returned. Run.
The pounding in Larissa’s ears grew to a roar. Relief at seeing Halla alive soothed the ache in Larissa’s knees and muffled the warnings in her mind.
Her pace quickened, but when she drew closer, her stomach fell out of her throat. Halla was not alone. She was sitting, weeping into her hands. Lying on the ground before her was a body, bloodied and torn just like those of their parents. With eyes wide open and unseeing lay Onkel Tucker.
Larissa swallowed back the nausea rising in her throat. She could hear Tucker’s laughter at dinner only the night before. She would never hear his deep-throated chuckle again.
The smell of death was so much worse than she ever imagined. She knelt behind her sister and wrapped Halla in her arms, wishing she could erase the images she knew Halla would never forget. Larissa clung to Halla, who shook violently in Larissa’s arms, hiding her face in bloodied hands.
Bloodied hands . Larissa frantically searched her sister for the source of the wound.
Then, to her horror, she realized it was Tucker’s blood coating Halla’s fingers.
Had Halla tried to stop the bleeding? She wept loudly, and Larissa felt her own tears stream down her face and fall, smoke-colored, into Halla’s hair.
There was nothing she could say. Had Halla seen their parents?
Larissa pleaded silently with the AEsir that Halla had not.
“Halla, we have to leave.” Larissa didn’t know what killed Tucker, but she didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. “We have to go. We’re not safe.”
Halla’s whole frame shuddered, but she did not respond. As gently as she could, Larissa grabbed Halla’s shoulders to turn her face away from Tucker’s body. She brushed back Halla’s hair, alarmed at the tufts that fell out in her hands.
Something about Halla’s face wasn’t right.
Larissa grabbed Halla’s chin, lifting her sister’s face up to meet her own.
Then she gasped. The familiar green in Halla’s eyes was gone, replaced by pure colorless white, the pupils and irises erased like those of the monsters from Larissa’s dream.
Despite her earlier weeping, there were no tears on her face.
Instead, Larissa found an upward tilt to the corners of Halla’s lips. Lips speckled with blood.
“No.” The guttural sound came from Halla’s mouth, but it was not her voice. “You are not safe at all.”
Larissa never saw the blow that smacked her face with enough force to send her sprawling several yards.
She gasped into the dirt, which puffed up to sting her eyes, and moaned at the pain that lanced across her neck from her face.
Pulling herself to hands and knees, she looked back to where Halla stood, but it was not Halla.
It had never been Halla.
The child’s face listed to one side, smiling at Larissa, a bloodied black claw swinging at her side. Each of her fingers bore talons six inches long. Several of the tips were dripping with fresh blood. Larissa raised a hand to her neck and whimpered, feeling the warm trickle of her own blood.
Not-Halla jerked, its bones and joints seeming to pop out of place.
Larissa watched in paralyzed horror as bloodied hair fell from the figure’s skull.
The creature bent in on itself, its skin darkening and hardening until obsidian-colored scales covered its body, reflecting the fire’s light.
Over the popping of the flames came the crack of bones.
The creature unbent, growing up toward the sky, its clothes fluttering to the ground.
Its naked body was that of an animal, covered in scales, with elongated arms that hung down to its knees.
A roar of agony burst from the creature, followed by a ripping noise as horns tore through its skull and circled next to its head.
From its back, bat wings burst through its skin, wrenching another screech of pain from the creature.
A barbed tail lashed out, snapping in the air like the crack of a whip.
Over every other smell—the soil, the fruits, the flames, and even the smoke—came the scent of death and decay.
Larissa gagged against the nausea rising inside her. The transformation had taken only seconds. The creature’s stark-white eyes darted open. It advanced toward Larissa, snapping a bone in Tucker’s body under its large clawed foot.
She couldn't help it.
Larissa screamed.