Chapter Twenty-One
Fallyn
Violence exploded in a flurry of leathery skin, long talons on massive paws, and gnashing fangs the size of my hand. Blazing red eyes halted my feet where I stood, sending my thoughts and bravado scattering.
Ash’s sword was there in the fray, parrying each swipe of talons, every threatening lunge led by those vicious, serrated teeth. I begged my feet to move, or my hand to flourish my sword.
It was all I could do to watch. Ash darted around the beast in what could almost be described as choreography, his steps light and easy as any dance.
Every attempt the demon made toward me or him was brutally punished with a slice of the sword, many of which resulting in a sickening plop of dripping flesh and a deafening screech.
Black blood sprayed and oozed, drenching the room in gore and the putrid scent of desiccating meat.
The demon roared, something akin to a battle cry. As if sensing the battle was lost, yet determined to take Ash with it, the demon struck. Fang and claw, all at once, and even Ash could only fend off so many strikes before his own blood would spill.
Ash had successfully blocked the teeth that currently chewed on his sword, not quite enough room to stab upwards through its maw.
He was holding the demon off, along with its entire weight.
Its massive, blood-dried claws went for him, almost in slow motion.
I lunged forward, instinct taking over, forcing the grip fear had on me to loosen.
My blade led my charge, my instincts guided my feet.
Still, I could hear nothing over the pounding in my ears and someone screaming.
My blade split the creature’s paw open, just as it would have raked down the side of Ash’s shoulder.
The effect was immediate. With a rear on its hind legs and a roar that combined agony and wrath, its devious gaze landed on me.
One second saw the red-tinged drool spitting from its snarl, the next saw Ash’s sword speared between its ears.
Ash struck faster than I’d even thought possible, the movement blurring to my eye. His blade sank beneath skin and bone and sinew, and with a final jerk, the demon dropped to the ground, collapsing like a puppet with cut wires.
It took several long seconds before my heart calmed enough to hear what Ash was saying to me. Sense returned gradually to see Ash inspecting me, his expression grim. Shallow cuts bled in the small spots between his pauldrons, leading me to search him in turn for signs of injury or pain.
“Most of the blood isn’t mine.” His matter-of-fact voice helped ground me, bringing calm to the carnage around me.
“What in the Underworld was that thing?”
His expression hardened. Had I… offended him? There was definitely an edge of insult in his narrowed gaze. “This is not of the Underworld. This has the Morningstar all over it.”
This really was a creature of Hell. The place of eternal damnation. “How do you know?”
Ash didn’t answer, crouching near the window, scanning for the next threat. “There’s no chance that nothing comes investigating after all that racket. We must go. Now.”
“I am not leaving without my friends!” I admonished him with a resounding glare, letting him see that in this, I would not be moved. I choked on a sob. I wouldn’t get to say goodbye to what remained of my father.
If anything did remain.
The thought was horrible and unwelcome and I shoved it away in revulsion, but its barb stung nonetheless.
There was every possibility that nothing remained of him, as was the fate of several people we’d seen since entering the confines of the gates.
Diem’s shredded corpse bombarded my mind without my permission and it took all my focus to force it away.
Even as I succeeded, I trembled with every step I took.
“Odessa isn’t here, so she’s either at Rowena’s or…
” I refused to finish that sentence, launching instead into the next one.
“Her home in close to Thaddeus’s, and my own home is close by.
Weapons, armor, first aid, food, all of it is at our disposal. You can keep what you take.”
Ash didn’t respond at first, continuing to survey the area. At last, he turned to me, eyes bright, “Fine, but if we die, it’s on you.”
We broke the threshold of Odessa’s home on light steps and anxious glances, but thankfully nothing had come. Yet.
We crept, blending in with the shadows where we could up the gore-stricken street.
“Child…” a weak voice coughed from my left, making me jump out of my skin.
I cringed at the gurgle of blood in her throat.
A mangled body I had thought already dead turned her head to me, eyes showcasing her agony.
My soul stirs as I recognize her. The botanist who always hated the male who sold elixirs across from her.
She was dying. And I didn’t even know her name.
I’d never bothered to ask before. Now I knelt next to her, holding her hand as Ash stood over us both protectively.
“What happened here?” I asked her. I tried to prod her into squeezing my hand.
I didn’t need to be a healer to see she was weak, that her failing grip was a terrible sign.
The worse sign was the torrent of blood beneath her.
Her shoulder, like my father’s, had been torn open, and her lower leg was missing.
How long had she been like this? The attack was nearly twelve hours ago, give or take a few hours.
A grim feeling settled over me and chased any residual warmth away.
Had she been here bleeding this whole time?
Her chest rattled as she breathed. I’d heard Thaddeus refer to this before. The death rattle. Her end was coming.
“Hell.” Her weak whisper cut through everything. Her eyes widened with warning, with urgency, “The new God’s Hell.”
So, it looked like Ash was right. Did she mean the chasm? Before I could ask her another question, her eyes burned with a plea. “Please, child. End this.”
A sob wrenched from my throat. I had never harmed a person before, at least not one that wasn’t harming someone. And to kill someone…
The blade wrenched into her chest, ending her suffering immediately. A semblance of a smile on her lips parted on the final wheeze of her breath, like a sigh of relief. Ash placed two coins on her eyes.
“Thank you,” I whispered, still shaking. “I don’t think I could’ve done it. Even in mercy.”
“Mercy takes a strength few understand,” Ash replied, his quiet admission astonishing me. “It is an acquired strength only obtained through repeated exposure.”
I pondered that, knowing in my bones that was not something to which I wanted to become accustomed. But denial had a way of staring at you, in this case, through fire and bloodstained cobblestone.
No more survivors were found on the street, or in Rowena’s home.
Her house was blessedly empty. I called a prayer to the god of the dead below and even the god of death himself, Thanatos, who Ash dubbed a prick, to have spared the lives of the three remaining people I cared for.
Please let Thaddeus, Rowena, and Dess be okay.
We reached my home first, before Thaddeus’s.
Stepping inside, it was messy, but no gore littered the space.
It was like something, or someone, had prowled through, searching the home, and like us, found nothing of consequence.
But I strode forward, resisting the unconscious desire to curl up in a ball in my room, and headed for the armory.
I wandered into my father’s office, pausing a moment to inhale his scent that still lingered in the pages of his commissions, his old tomes that lined the back wall, and even the spilled pot of ink.
It still felt like him in here. As though for just a moment, for a few blessed breaths, all of this was a nightmare and I had just woken up. That my father was around the corner.
“I thought we were looking for weapons?” Ash asked as he mulled about the office with interest. I journeyed to the bookcase behind the massive leather desk chair.
I smirked at him as I pulled the one book that would reveal the secret.
The bookcase trembled and clicked, allowing me to glide it out of the way.
“My father kept the entrance hidden, just in case,” I said, floating into the room beyond. Sconces that were spelled lit the space immediately, just as my father designed. Ash eyed it with keen interest as it swept over the room, missing no small detail.
“I’m impressed. Your father was a smart male.
” Ash stepped into the room where my father worked.
The forge and commission storage. The forge was open to all who visited my father.
The latter, not so much. Waving a hand over the door, it opened as if greeting an old friend.
The door was old, wooden, and rusted at the hinges.
It should have squealed upon opening, but it stayed stoically silent as it revealed its contents.
True to the nature of our black and wrought iron city, my father’s design of the room was sympathetic to the aesthetic.
Black painted iron hooks held up swords, knives, even a trident on the far wall.
On the other hung shields, throwing stars sharpened so delicately you’d swear just looking at them too hard would slice you.
Leather holsters of every size and shape accented another wall, lightly scenting the room.
I began strapping daggers to my legs, my arms, and belting a sword to my waist. It was my father’s most recent commission, the sword he’d named Shadow Watch.
A blade dark enough to absorb all light was a rare kind of metal.
Father said it would glow, that the shadows themselves around it would writhe in the presence of demons.
“Take what you like,” I said as Ash watched me. “My father won’t have need for these items any longer.”
How perfect that his last creation was so necessary.
I swallowed hard the lump in my throat threatening to overwhelm me.
I pushed back another wall of grief. It would have to wait.
Seeing the death and destruction outside, I was quickly losing hope that my friends were alive, but if they were, I couldn’t fail them.
Ash helped himself to only two things: a new sword and an extra dagger he sheathed on his other side while I donned gauntlets and pauldrons on either shoulder for at least some protection.
“Fallyn,” he mused, eying me top to bottom. “It would seem there’s more to you than meets the eye.”
“I’m happy to keep you on your toes,” I said, sheathing my final dagger. “Are you ready?”
“Lead the way.”
Somehow, with him prowling beside me, I did feel safer.
I’d never felt safe, not entirely, always looking for the male in my nightmares.
For the first time, I felt like perhaps the nightmare could be us, rather than the other way around.
Before leaving, I ravaged our kitchen stores, taking my father’s pack and stuffing it with food, a bedroll, and some first aid supplies.
At Ash’s arched brow, I bristled, slinging my overstuffed bag over my shoulders. “We might need it!”
Nothing had changed when we stepped back out onto the street.
I didn’t realize how horribly quiet it was.
Not even birds chirped merrily overhead.
The wind was as dead as the bodies littering the street.
I turned right, heading further uphill to Thaddeus’s with my heart in my throat.
If they weren’t here, then I had no idea where they would be.
I hated the thought of them being left in the sun to rot.
None of the people here deserved any of this.
“What will you do when you find them?” Ash asked suddenly, breaking the tension-strung silence. I heard his real question; did I still plan on accompanying him?
“I gave you my word. I will go with you as promised. But I need to see that they’re alive.”
“And what happens if they’re not?” It wasn’t a mean-spirited question. There was no malice there. Only a grim possibility I needed to acknowledge. I clamped down on the idea, wrenching it from my mind and purging it before it could even take root.
“They will be.” My teeth ground as I spat the words. Desperation clawed at my ribs, renewing my sense of urgency. “You don’t know them like I do.”
“Hope is a double-edged sword, little shadow. Careful you don’t get cut by it.”
“You don’t think there’s a chance?”
“I think you need to be prepared for any eventual outcome. Look around you.”
I did. More death followed us. I could see the green door of Thaddeus’s house.
Green. The color of healing. Of hope. Of aid.
I couldn’t stop myself from breaking into a sprint, running full out to the door, Ash’s footsteps lightly trailing behind me.
He moved eerily quietly, like that of an assassin.
Even movements that should have been loud were hauntingly silent, and if I weren’t so scared for my friends, it might have given me pause.
I wasted no time. I rammed my shoulder into the door, pain exploding up into my neck. I didn’t even budge the door, but I bounced off of it hard. I began looking for the nearest window.
“Thaddeus? Row? Dess?” I asked as loudly as I dared, peeking into the windows for signs of life.
A massive boom usurped my attention, and I whirled towards it. Somehow Ash had opened it. He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“After you.”
I wasted no time stepping into the home of my best friend, one dagger in each hand, ready for more exploding chaos.