Ash & Flame: Season One (29 page)

While they stood there, Ren tying off the knot at the base of his neck, a piercing shriek sounded. He couldn't tell how far off it was, the echo of the scream carrying over the highway, but it was close enough, he figured.

Ren snapped the loop tight, and nodded towards Emma, the edge of his shirt tugging at his cheeks.

"Let's move." He took her hand and they started jogging north again, the haze dropping over them like a dense fog. Ashen flakes fell, dancing in the breeze, turning the highway graveyard into a perverted winter wonderland.

Breathing got harder, keeping up their pace more difficult. He kept checking behind him, making sure Emma was okay, trying to stifle the coughing fits as dust snuck past his filter and into his mouth.

As always, it seemed, she was made of sterner stuff than him. She frowned when he wouldn't stop checking up on her, the fierce determination in her eyes enough to keep the questions stuck on Ren's tongue. So he turned back around and focused on the road, squinting as the dust flew into his face.

Something jumped out of the haze as the wind picked up, creaking as it flew by Ren's face. He cursed and threw his hands up on instinct, shielding his face, and nearly fell on his ass. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and let out a relieved laugh. "Em, you okay back there?"

She wasn't there.

Shitshitshit
. "Emma?" His call barely carried through the dust, the wind whipped the ash all over now like a red blizzard. His head swung back and forth, his eyes trying to pick her out. He jumped at shadows, grasping at anything with any concrete form. He shouted again, his voice ragged. “Emma!”

"Dad!"

He heard her, muted, like she stood on the other side of a wall. He called for her again, trying to pinpoint her location by her answering cry, but the dust storm made it next to impossible.

Don't lose her, Ren
. He choked back the tears threatening to spill over his lids.
Don't you fucking lose her
.

He paused, trying to regain any sort of composure.

Why did you let her jump?
The question hung unexpectedly in Ren's mind, draped in cold accusation.

He heard it again, and then he wondered if maybe he wasn't thinking it.
Why, Ren? Why didn't you take care of her?

Was someone speaking to him, out here on the road? Was someone else out here with them?

"Dad?"

"Emma? Emma?" Ren searched for Emma's voice, lost in the swirling dust. He called for her, his hands reaching out, frantically searching for his little girl. His fingers scraped against the rusted carcass of a vehicle, metal flaking off painfully under his fingernails. He spun around, his heart racing. This couldn't be happening, not now. After everything, to lose her now…

"Hello?"

Ren turned towards the voice. A woman's voice. He listened, afraid to open his mouth for fear of betraying the quake in his own voice. His trembling fingers enclosed the pendant hanging under his shirt.

"Hello? Anyone out here?"

That voice, it sounded so familiar. He tried to remember it. He'd heard it before, he knew it...someone from Haven, maybe? On impulse he whispered the Word under his breath, and the whip-like scourge manifested in his grip, the sharpened edges grinding against the pavement.

"Please?"

A woman approached through the haze, walking down the pitched highway, weaving between the wreckage of trashed cars. The murky haze clouded most of her features, but Ren managed to pick out a few details. Straight, dark hair, the thin form, worried eyes.

"Anne, is that you?"

Wait, no, not Anne. Her hair, it wasn't straight at all. It was curly, it almost reminded him of Emma's, or even—

She winked at Ren as the dust cleared, and he froze.

This wasn't possible. Of all the rules, old and new, this couldn't happen. He had watched her...he had seen it, replayed the nightmare in his head a thousand thousand times. Ren tried to say her name but found he couldn't speak, the breath caught in his throat. His heart raced, blood thumping in his ears.

He let go of the pendant, his fingers numb. Dully, he untied the makeshift filter around his face, the shirt falling over his exposed stomach. He felt the grime of dust and dirt on his tongue and didn't care.

This wasn't possible.

Was it?

"I-I don't understand."
Katie
. The name rung in his head, rolled around in his mind. He had watched her jump. Watched her disappear over that ledge...

He had seen something else, too, but now the images faded and blurred, his memory like an illusion.

Wasn't there something else?

"I know, Ren." Katie ran a finger gently down Ren's cheek, wiping clear the smudged tear. "It's a long story, but you'll understand it all very soon."

Emma
. Ren shook his head clear of Katie's hand. Too much going on at once, muddling everything. He blinked and looked past her. "Wait, Emma! I lost her in this fog--"

"No, no, don't worry, I found her." Katie's eyes gleamed. "She's safe now."

"No, this isn't possible," Ren stammered. Nothing made sense anymore. How could Katie find Emma when she'd jumped so long ago? "Isn't...possible."

Katie smiled, a smile full of sympathy.

"I watched you jump!"

"Yes, Ren, you did. And you did nothing." She turned, smiled, and drove the knife home. Ren's knife.

The blade slid easily into his stomach, like it was meant to go there. Like it had never belonged anywhere else.

He peered down with a morbid fascination, the hilt of the blade rubbing against his shirt. Numbly he realized the sharp jolt of pain that followed, but he couldn't scream, he could only stumble back on legs suddenly gone weak and rubbery. The knife slipped out, and Ren staggered back.

Ren tried to get up, but stumbled back again, landing with a thud on his back, kicking up red dust. His hands shot to his stomach, pressing down hard, trying to stop the blood that soaked through his shirt.

"P—Please..." he stammered, the breath lurching in his throat. He coughed, a new wave of agony rolling up his stomach and into his chest. His eyes watered, everything shifting out of focus.

"I'm sorry, Ren," Katie whispered, her sad face hovering above his, her voice so soft and soothing, like his wife's. So like hers, but not at all alike, now that he heard it again. Cold and merciless. "Not to worry, though. I'll take such good care of her. She is my daughter, after all."

Her face changed then, her skin turning a pallid white. Her eyes shone a brilliant red, a wicked smile on her face. Ren remembered it then, the face that had leered at him in the vision, the thing that Ithuriel had pulled clear of Katie. It was her.
Grigori
.

"N-No...let her..."

He tried to look up but darkness had slipped into the rough, grainy edges of his vision. He felt, rather than saw, something loom over him, and the chittering noise sent a chill down his spine.

The dust settled, the howling wind dying down to a playful breeze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Katie—no, not Katie—pick up Emma, her head hanging limply over the Grigori's arm. She started to walk north along the road, pausing to turn back towards Ren.

He wanted to say her name one last time, wanted to tell her that everything would be okay. He opened his mouth and nothing came out. His fingers were sticky wet as he tried to reach out to his daughter, crimson dripping down his hand.

He had been so afraid of dying, so terrified of stepping beyond that border, but now he knew that was nothing compared to this. He had failed her. He had failed his Emma. He was going to die and leave her to this fate, leaving her on her own with demons and hardened angels.

"Goodbye, Ren," the Grigori's voice said, a soft purr that hammered the point home. "Thank you for bringing her to me."

Ren closed his eyes and waited. There were worse things than dying.

A SEASON TWO PREVIEW

Kevin ran as fast as he could, his ribs throbbing with every step. He cradled his left arm over his side, but every time he pushed dangling tree limbs away, or ran through the thick brush it felt like his insides might pop at any second. But if he lost sight of Ren and Emma, for even an instant, he worried that he might not spot them again.

The haze that seemed to filter everything in reddish hues this far north had only gotten worse. It was like a massive storm front, a giant cloud that swept over trees, roads and buildings. If it swarmed over Ren and Emma, he might not be able to find them.

He didn’t want to think about what
would
find them in that.

Steering clear of the buildings and aiming for the highway, Kevin saw where the chopper had landed. The fuselage had dug a trough in the dirt by an abandoned warehouse. Flames still danced over the wreckage of the Blackhawk, sooty black smoke furrowing up into the darkening sky.

He hoped whatever had taken the woman had been stuck inside, and then clamped down on a surge of guilt as he forced his gaze away from the ruined chopper. No, whatever might have happened, she hadn’t deserved that.

A whole lot of people not deserving what this world brought down on them, though. She wouldn’t be the last.

Kevin and his daughter hadn’t been the last.

He ground his jaw together and moved ahead, trying to ignore the fierce pain in his side as he climbed over the highway railing.

Ren was still a ways off, barely visible now as the red cloud of dust loomed over them. The only sign of Emma was the tangle of their feet from Kevin’s angle as she walked behind Ren.

He wasn’t going to make it. He could see that now, the dust storm a swirling hurricane centered over the highway, like it was made just for Ren and his daughter. Moving faster now, the fringes of the storm swallowing up the countryside, devouring the scattered buildings. Soon enough it would seethe over everything he could see.

All Kevin could go was keep moving. He reached for the ruined shells of the cars and trucks on the highway, moving foot by foot. He shouted for Ren as the storm swallowed them up, but it was like calling for someone when you’d lost your voice, the winds taking Kevin’s cry and ripping it into little pieces.

Someone had to help them, even from themselves. Ithuriel wasn’t with them, the Malakhi disappearing along this trail somewhere, but Kevin knew this is what the angel would want. He hadn’t killed the girl, even when he had plenty of opportunity, so there was something else in her to stop Ithuriel.

He couldn’t help the wry smile that touched the corner of his lips. Sure he’d help Emma. But him, helping Ren? Who’d have thought that?

What else am I going to do out here but die?

The smile died on his lips, his laugh cut short as the storm hit. What had been a smooth breeze came at him in a whipping frenzy, red dust and debris hammering at his clothes, at his exposed skin. He could barely see a foot in front of his face, and everything had turned into rust-colored static, a formless, chopping ocean of red.

He squinted, his eyes watering. He leaned forward, his head down so that he could take small breaths, and took one step after another. His hand trailed from vehicle to vehicle, the crunch of the cracked highway under his boots. He had no bearings, no idea where he was, but he just kept following the broken line of wreckage along the highway, hoping it was enough to keep him more or less to the north.

After what seemed like an hour, the storm settled into an uncomfortable, steady rush. Kevin wanted to stop. His fingers trembled as they brushed against scarred aluminum and steel, his hand bleeding from several small cuts. His ribs were on fire, a constant pounding in his chest. He wanted to stop but he didn’t. If he stopped he wouldn’t be able to start again. He would sit here, next to the corpses of a thousand vehicles, and the storm would bite and bite until he was nothing but a rusted shell himself.

Funny, the things that come to a man when he has nothing left.

For the first time in a long time, Kevin let himself think about his own daughter. Haven. All those weekends, when he’d thought he’d always have her. Weekend on, weekend off, his one constant in a life that seemed to revolve around those weekends. He didn’t ever want his girl to grow old. She ever grew old enough, those weekends with her would stop. She’d go off to college, maybe meet a boy Kevin never knew quite well enough. And then she’d get married, maybe move across the country for a job. Sure, she’d call once in a while, they’d send Christmas presents and birthday cards, but all Kevin would ever want was those weekends back.

In the end, he didn’t even get that. She wasn’t much older than Emma when the floodgates opened. She wasn’t much older when…when…

Kevin’s brow furrowed. Funny, the things that come to a man at times like this. Funny that an angel saw it before a little girl’s father did. Emma wasn’t his little girl, but he saw it now, just like she might have been.

He picked up his pace, using the pain in his ribs, the throbbing ache pushing him further. He snarled into the wind, spitting out the flecks of dust that flew into his mouth. He bumped into crumpled fenders, knocked his knees against steel frames, determined to reach Ren and Emma.