Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) Read online

  I had only taken a few more steps when I ran straight into someone who'd been walking down the hall in my direction. We'd both hit the corner at the same time, and had no time to react. I bounced off his chest and fell to the ground with a thud. The man wasn't even shaken by the impact. He looked down at me and let out a good-natured chuckle. He was dressed down in a hunter green tee-shirt and jeans that seemed out of place in our castle-like surroundings.

  The man leaned down to offer me a hand, causing his chin-length, golden brown hair to fall forward. I stared at the hand for a moment, then finally decided to take it. The man shoved his hair back from his face in annoyance with his free hand as he lifted me to my feet. The hair wasn't quite long enough to stay behind his ears, so it just fell forward again.

  “Are you lost?” he asked as we stood facing each other. He had a slight southern accent, but it was faint enough that I couldn't really tell which state it came from. He looked me up and down, lingering on the fact that my bottom half was only covered by underwear.

  “Just looking for the front door?” I said hopefully.

  The man smiled. He seemed much more friendly than Alaric or Sophie, but he was still in the same house as them . . . if it could be called a house. Either way, I doubted he would help me.

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I debated what to do. The hallway wasn't terribly wide, so I'd be better off running back the way I'd come rather than trying to run past him.

  “I'm James,” he offered, as if we were meeting each other under normal circumstances.

  “I'm-” I began, but my words caught in my throat as I finally looked directly into his icy blue eyes.

  Now, my eyes are light blue, but James' were so pale that they were nearly white. The rest of his face was handsome enough: a strong nose, a jaw just wide enough to be masculine . . . the lips might have been a little too thin for my taste, but they didn't harm his good looks any.

  Yet those eyes. I'd seen eyes like that before, and they hadn't belonged to the living. A flash of memory shot through me like lightning, raising the tiny hairs on my entire body. I shook away the horrifying image of a young man's eyes just as his life had left him. It had been a long time ago, and there were more pressing matters to worry about.

  James' smile slowly faded as I looked into his haunting eyes, feeling like I'd seen a ghost. I was a rabbit caught in a corner by a snake, debating whether to run or to stay perfectly still. James didn't try to grab me, he didn't try to do anything for that matter. He just stood there, waiting for me to make the next move.

  Something in my stance must have given me away, because as soon as I turned to run, he was already in motion. I narrowly avoided his arms as I dropped to the ground instead of moving forward. Once I was down, I did the first thing I could think of and kicked him in the kneecap. The move would have worked better if I wasn't barefoot. As it was, all I got for my effort was a grunt of annoyance as James finally managed to grab me. He lifted me effortlessly and threw me over his shoulder.

  I pounded on his back frantically, but he didn't seem to mind. “You're lucky that I like it rough,” he laughed.

  I pulled up the back of his shirt and raked my nails across his back, hoping to surprise him into dropping me. He did drop me, but only long enough to put my back to him so he could pin my arms and force me to stumble forward. I dragged my feet in vain, bruising them on the hard stone floor, as we went back the way I'd come.

  Sophie came into view as we rounded the next corner. She stood near the bathroom looking regal in her red dress, tapping her foot impatiently. She approached, then grabbed my arm and took me from James without a word, shoving me back into the bathroom. This time when she shut the door, she stayed inside with me.

  She braced herself against the door and let out a shaky breath that betrayed her show of confidence. “That was very stupid of you.”

  I felt dizzy, and had to lean back against the wall in order to stay on my feet. “You can't really blame me for trying to escape,” I wheezed back at her.

  Sophie locked the door and walked over to the bathtub to start the water. I glanced at the locked door, then at Sophie's turned back, surprised that she was leaving me the opportunity to run again.

  As if reading my thoughts, she glanced back at me. “Trust me when I tell you that you are much safer in here with me, than out there with James.”

  “Safe?” I questioned. I was feeling a lot of things, but safe wasn't one of them.

  Sophie shrugged. “Relatively so. I will not hurt you unless you make me. James would very much like to hurt you.” She shivered and I wondered if James had very much liked hurting her too.

  I stood up straight and pushed my back firmly against the wall as she left the tub to walk toward me.

  “Please tell me why I'm here,” I pleaded one last time.

  Sophie looked tired. “Please take a bath,” she countered. “It is not my place to answer your questions. You will simply have to wait on that.” She breezed past me, returning to her post by the door without another word.

  I looked over at the slowly filling bath. It had an old-fashioned, slender faucet that didn't let out a great deal of water at once, and the basin was filling painfully slow. I awkwardly undressed, wishing I'd just listened to Sophie the first time. At least that way I wouldn't have had her watching me while I bathed. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been naked in front of anyone, and I really didn't like being that vulnerable in front of someone I was afraid of.

  Wrapping my arms around my chest, but having nothing to cover the rest of me with, I dipped a toe into the bath. I quickly withdrew the toe, then added more cold to the water flow so that I wouldn't end up scalding my skin off. Once the temperature was bearable, I took a step in and lowered myself into the bath.

  I watched the black soil swirl off my skin into the steamy water for a moment, then glanced at Sophie. “What did James do to you?”

  She didn't answer immediately, and I was left with several moments of silence to ponder my situation. I was pretty sure I was, in fact, in shock, because all I could think about was how strange it felt to be around Sophie again, in a dirty tub of water no less. I'd spent so much time talking to her in my youth that it almost felt natural, even though we were now meeting under far different circumstances.

  Eventually she snorted elegantly as she came out of her own private thoughts. I'd previously thought that snorting elegantly wasn't a thing, but that was exactly what Sophie did. She moved away from the door to perch on the closed toilet seat before answering, folding her long legs underneath her in a position that didn't look at all comfortable.

  “James would never dare offer me violence,” she explained, “but I've seen what he likes to do to people.” She turned the full power of her dark stare onto me. “The things I've seen would make a nice girl like you want to cut out her own eyes, though it wouldn't stop the nightmares.”

  I leaned forward to shut off the faucet, then huddled in the warm water. I had to admit the warmth felt good, even if taking a bath was the last thing I wanted to be doing. “I've seen plenty of things to give me nightmares.”

  She startled as if she'd fallen deep into thought. “I know,” she answered finally. “I know much more than you'd think. The human world was not kind to you.”

  I swallowed past a renewed sense of panic. She knew what had happened with my last foster family, but she couldn't know about Matthew. I'd met Matthew years later, and that event was for my nightmares alone. I flashed on his dead eyes again, eyes that had looked so much like James'. I'd done it to him. I wasn't sure how, but Matthew's death was my fault. Sophie had no way of knowing anything about that.

  She smiled at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. I looked away quickly, suddenly more frightened than I'd been before, if that was even possible.

  I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she reached toward a little woven basket beside the sink. I was for some reason afraid of what she might be retrieving, b
ut it ended up being a new bar of yellow soap, still in the wrapper. She took off the plastic and handed the soap to me. It looked handmade, and smelled like vanilla.

  I began to wash myself, wishing I could wash away more that just dirt. The world would be a lovely place if we could wash away fear and bad memories, but it wasn't a lovely place. I'd seen the ugliness of the world long before I'd learned to live in fear of making it worse.

  Chapter Two

  At one point during my bath, someone delivered some clothes for me. Sophie had only opened the door a crack, so I hadn't seen who it was. I was now standing in the middle of the bathroom, dressed in a slim-fitting black dress that encased my legs down to the tops of my knees. Black boots covered my calves and left just a sliver of flesh to be seen below my kneecaps.

  The boots had much higher heels than I was used to. Okay, they were only three inches, but I never wore heels. I got my height early, and therefore have the tall-girl syndrome of not wanting to tower over everyone. In the boots I was 6'.

  I stole a glance at myself in the bathroom mirror as Sophie waited by the door. In addition to the uncomfortable added height, the black made my normally light olive coloring a little too pale. Back in the real world, I never wore black without a little bit of makeup, or else I looked washed out with my dark hair. At that moment though, my coloring was on the bottom of my list of concerns. The woman standing by the door was somewhere near the top.

  “Are you done primping yet?” she asked impatiently. Her earlier show of camaraderie must have been a fluke, as she had already reverted back to the steely bitch persona.

  I looked in the mirror again. My hair was only partially dry, and looked heavy and awful. Due to its thickness, it would be hours before it dried completely, and Sophie hadn't offered me a blow dryer.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, even though I knew my efforts were futile.

  “I cannot tell you,” she groaned tiredly.

  I looked back to the mirror. The dress was tight enough that it was a little hard to breathe. “Then tell me why I'm dressed like this. I feel like a lamb being led to slaughter.”

  Sophie crossed her arms and cocked her hip to the side. “The sooner you stop asking questions, the sooner you'll know the answers.”

  On that cryptic note, she opened the door and walked out, expecting me to follow her. Not wanting to risk another run-in with James, or with Alaric for that matter, I did as I was told. Sophie was the lesser evil, at least for now.

  She glided down the hallway ahead of me, moving gracefully like her brother. Though I was slightly taller than her with the heels, I felt like I had to take twice the number of steps to keep up. Our heels clicked on the stone floor as we headed in the opposite direction from where I'd run.

  We didn't have to go very far before the hallway ended. Well, it turned into a larger hallway that opened into what I could only think of as a throne room. There was no actual throne, but there was a dais against the far wall that was just begging for a gilded throne. We walked across the barren, open space and went through a doorway into a room where a tiny old man was waiting.

  His long white hair draped across the deep blue, loose clothing he wore, and continued on to pool on the floor in a silvery mass. With his apparent age and hair color, it seemed like he should have a beard as well, like some sort of diminutive wizard, but his face was clean shaven.

  Upon closer observation, I placed him as slightly younger than I had originally thought, maybe late sixties instead of seventies. His face was covered in only slight wrinkles that increased a bit around his pale gray eyes. His eyes seemed to radiate a knowing as he looked me up and down. I'd learned to read people pretty well in my younger years, and I instantly knew that this was a man that I would never try to fool.

  The old man sat at the head of a simple table made of heavy wood. There were enough seats for ten, but no one else kept him company. He turned his weighted gaze to Sophie, who still stood beside me.

  “Leave us,” he said simply.

  With a curt nod, Sophie did just as he asked. I turned to watch her go, nervous to be left alone with the man.

  “Face me, Madeline,” he said softly.

  I turned slowly around, somehow more nervous now than I had been since first waking up. Maybe the shock was finally wearing off, or maybe I was just losing my mind. Most likely it was the latter.

  “Forgive us for capturing you so abruptly,” he began as I met his gaze. “I would have liked to leave you be, but I am afraid our need is simply too great.”

  “W-what need?” I stammered, backing away until my back hit the closed door.

  What could this man possibly need from me? A million thoughts raced through my head, none of them rational.

  “What do you know of the Vaettir?” he asked.

  “I don't know that term.” I answered cautiously as I tried to keep my breathing even. He'd pronounced it vay-tur, and it sounded slightly Swedish. “Should I?”

  The old man smiled patiently, making me feel like a child back in school. “Two more common terms for what we are would be Wiht or Wight.”

  “What do you mean we?” I asked. “Why am I here?”

  “I'm attempting to explain,” he replied sourly. “If you'll please answer my original question.”

  “I don't know anything about Wights,” I answered, but that wasn't entirely true. “Aren't they similar to zombies?” I asked, still not sure what mythological creatures had to do with anything.

  “In more common renditions, I suppose,” he answered. “But I assure you, the Vaettir are not undead. Quite the opposite, actually. We are beings of nature, more alive than any others who walk this earth. In ancient Norse culture, we were revered as patrons of the land, though in later years, a less favorable picture was painted. Hence, our solitude.”

  I laughed, a nervous bark of sound in the quiet room. The sound seemed to startle me much more than it did the old man. In fact, the old man's face didn't change at all. He simply waited for me to speak.

  “Wait,” I said finally, “you're trying to tell me that you are this Vaettir thingy?”

  I was beginning to sweat profusely, and had the feeling if this conversation didn't end soon, I was going to start screaming.

  The old man nodded, quite serious. “As are you,” he replied simply.

  The rigid smile wilted from my face. “You're kidding, right?” I asked, but his face still didn't change. I didn't know much about Norse mythology, but I knew I wasn't a part of it. “Why am I here? I don't know anything about zombies or anything else.” I laughed nervously. “Next thing you'll be telling me is that I'm some sort of long-lost fairy princess.”

  Finally the old man smiled wickedly, turning my stomach to ice. “No my dear, you are definitely not our long-lost princess. You're our executioner.”

  I started laughing again, and it sounded psychotic, even to me. I couldn't help it. The old man was obviously serious, but he was talking nonsense. Feeling weak in the knees, I sat in a chair several seats down from him.

  He tilted his head slightly to the side and smiled. “What do you know of your parents?”

  “That doesn't mean a thing,” I replied instantly, knowing that Sophie had probably filled him in on my history. I wouldn't let them prey on the fact that I had been a foster kid. Enough people had done that already. “Not every abandoned baby ends up being a wizard, or a fairy, or . . . something out of ancient myth,” I finished coldly.

  “No,” he chuckled. “But in your case . . . ”

  I stood, deciding that I'd rather take my chances with James or Alaric than sit there listening to crazy stories. The old man slammed his hand on the table, and my legs collapsed underneath me. I barely managed to grab onto the chair to keep myself off the ground as I fell. I tried to stand again and didn't even make it halfway out of my seat.

  “I apologize,” he said serenely. “This was not how I hoped this meeting would go. This is a homecoming, not a kidnapping.”

  I look
ed around the room frantically for some sort of explanation. My legs wouldn't work. This had to be some sort of trick. Maybe they'd drugged me.

  “What's happening?” I demanded as my breath caught in my throat.

  “If you would stop trying to stand,” the old man said with a condescending smile. “I would not have to force you to sit.”

  My eyes widened. He was claiming that he could make me sit . . . with what, his mind? Of course, I was sitting against my will with no other explanation to go on.

  “Who are you?” I asked, panting with exertion while I clutched at the edges of my chair.

  “My name is Estus,” he replied. “I am Doyen of this clan.”

  I gritted my teeth as tears began to flow down my face once again. “I don't know what that means.”

  A hint of impatience flickered in Estus' eyes, cracking the kind old man act, not that I'd believed it to begin with. “We should never have left you to the humans for so long,” he sighed.

  “So why did you?” I asked, unable to think of anything else to say. If you can't beat 'em, then you may as well play along.

  “A clan only needs one executioner,” he explained. “Any others born with the specific qualities of an executioner are exiled. It would be chaos otherwise.”

  Each crazy thing he said made my tears flow more quickly. This had nothing to do with my years in foster care. These people were completely insane.

  “Too many executioners over the centuries have ended up killing each other,” he went on, ignoring my tears. “If we continued to let them live together, we'd end up without any executioners at all, and that would be very, very bad. Now, if we send the extras out into the world, we may call them back when we are in need of a replacement.”

  I moved my tongue around in my mouth to try and get some saliva going, but it was no use. I swallowed around the lump in my throat.