Afterglow (Wildefire) (7 page)

After all, her soul was at stake.

Ash held out her hands. “I’m going to need the keys to the Modo-mobile.” When Modo just gave her a funny look and didn’t hand them over, she said, “Come on, Pop. I promise to return it with a full tank.”

“I,” Modo said definitively, “am coming with you. No one—I mean no one—drives Sir Revsalot but me.”

Ash pinched the bridge of her nose. “Holding back so many comments right now. Look,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I would very much welcome your company if we were just going sightseeing through Massachusetts. But I barely saved your life yesterday when you were out in the open, and that was against only one god. If the entire gang comes out and tries to go all
West Side Story
on the two of us on our way to Monterey, I won’t be able to protect you.”

Modo gazed at her for a long moment, then finally sighed. He limped over to his jeans, which were balled up beside the bed, and fished his keys out of the pocket. “If you return him with any scratches, or volcano goddess char marks for that matter, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

Ash caught the keys and curtsied to him medieval style. “I promise not to harm a hair on the head of your prized silvery steed, my liege.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” he asked. “Room service? Rent a movie?”

Ash’s eyes lit up. “I’m so glad you asked.” She pulled up a window on the laptop—a short little slide show presentation that she’d spent the morning putting together for him. “I’ve compiled all the information you need to know about Colt, Eve, Rose, and Proteus. Commit all this to memory like you’re studying for a final exam at MIT.”

Modo quickly tabbed through the pages. “You wrote out physical descriptions, but didn’t include any pictures? Don’t you think that would be helpful if I could, you know, recognize the gods that are trying to murder me?”

“Kind of hard to find pictures of homicidal gods when they tend not to have Facebook profiles,” Ash explained. “And Proteus is a shape-shifter, so he’d probably look different in every picture anyway.”

“Gods, shape-shifters, Native American tricksters trying to meld their past-life volcano goddess ex-girlfriends back into a single soul . . .” Modo rubbed his eyes. “If it
turns out this is all some trippy hallucination from drinking bad mead at yesterday’s Renaissance fair, I’m going to make a book out of this.”

Ash paused on her way out the door, the car keys jangling in her hand. “Just pray that when this story is over, there will be someone left alive to read it.”

As Ash pulled Sir Revsalot around the circular driveway in front of the large ranch in Monterey, she couldn’t help but think:
This is where Rose grew up?

The massive home was idyllic to say the least. Hidden toward the end of a narrow dirt road, the ranch had a front lawn that seemed to roll on for an acre and beautiful antique gas lights that lined the long driveway. Ash had admittedly grown up in luxury herself, but this was a different kind of wealth, more rustic and grounded. Of course, that “tethered to the earth” feeling was in part thanks to the horse stables off to the side and the unmistakable farmy smell wafting over from them.

Ash was plagued by all sorts of questions as she climbed out of the car. Had Rose really led the normal lifestyle of a suburban six-year-old here, under the unassuming name Penny Wallace? Climbing on a big yellow bus every morning, a brown-paper-bag lunch clutched tightly in her little hands? A cubby with her name on it waiting for her at school where she would tuck her galoshes and backpack before some patient, matronly kindergarten teacher wrote the alphabet on the chalkboard for her to mimic?
And then she’d come home to a loving family who’d ask about her school day over dinner, take her out for ice cream, and host a slumber party for her birthday?

Ash couldn’t imagine that at all. The Rose she knew was a girl of few words, aloof and cerebral, who interacted with the people and the world around her like some alien beamed down to Earth.

But then there were her violent moments.

In the short time Ash had known about her little sister, she’d watched Rose tear out a man’s throat with her bare hands, sink a battleship like it was a milk-carton sailboat using only her mind, and create deadly explosions that killed the guilty and the innocent alike. So to imagine her taking piano lessons and parading around a ranch on the back of a pony . . . it just didn’t compute.

Ash paused in front of the grand double doors to the house, her finger hovering over the doorbell. What the hell was she supposed to say if the girl’s parents came to the door?
Hi there. I’m your kidnapped adopted daughter’s biological sister. Our unhinged third sister kidnapped her with a band of other mythological reincarnates, including a Hopi trickster who wants to meld us into one soul to relive the volatile romances of his previous lifetimes. Is there anything you could tell me about Rose that might help me lure her away from the crazy people, before she blows someone up again? P.S. She’s sixteen now.

Ash sighed and pressed the doorbell. “Maybe I’ll just tell them I’m selling Girl Scout cookies.”

After several minutes had passed, however, no one had answered the door. She shrugged and wandered past the gardens, around to the back of the house.

What she found there was enough to chill even the blood of a volcano goddess.

Beside the chimney, where there should have been pristine walls and picturesque windows like the front of the house, there was only a large, gaping hole. Parts of the void had been covered with clear plastic sheets to protect the inside of the house from the elements, but Ash could still see the charred portions where a large, fiery explosion had clearly chewed through the wooden frame.

Standing before the wreckage now, Ash could make an educated guess what had happened here. The kidnappers had come to take her sister away, and in the struggle, Rose must have panicked and let an explosion rip through the house. When Rose became scared, panicked, or angry, she had a nasty habit of self-detonating—unleashing a deadly blast that left her unscathed but did gruesome things to anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby.

How many of her attackers the supernatural bomb had taken with it this time, Ash couldn’t guess, but someone must have knocked the little one out or sedated her before she could finish the job.

You didn’t want to mess with Rose when she was awake.

Ash pushed aside one of the plastic flaps on the bottom floor, making sure to watch her step in the
rubble. There were some construction materials lying about the living room, and she could even see where work had been started to repair the house. Had the restoration just begun? Or had it been abandoned? The flat-screen TV smashed on the floor, the couches that had been singed by the fire, the oriental carpet littered with debris . . . Rose’s kidnapping happened months before, but the family had left the house this way since the attack?

Then Ash had an even more sickening thought:

What if Rose’s adoptive family hadn’t survived the kidnapping?

And if they hadn’t, was it because they died at the hands of the kidnappers . . .

 . . . or in the explosion created by their own daughter?

Ash tried to let that thought go as she took the stairs two at a time to the top floor. It wasn’t difficult to find Rose’s old bedroom. The door was still ajar, and the first thing Ash noticed when she walked through was the lacy bedspread on the unmade bed, from where Rose had probably been snatched in her sleep. Her dolls had cascaded everywhere in the struggle.

Like the living room, the bedroom was now missing its entire back wall, and the floorboards ended abruptly in a jagged line. A pair of hummingbirds, which must have slipped through the protective plastic sheets, flitted around the room, and Ash spotted the nest they’d built on Rose’s old dresser.

Only when Ash turned around did she discover the crimson splatter against the wall.

She’d been so fixated on the bed that she missed the bloodstain on the way in. It not only splattered the walls, but coated the decorative horse border that ran around the room as well and even speckled the ceiling fan. Granted, the bodies had clearly been carted away, but one thing was for sure: No one could lose that amount of blood and survive.

The awful odor of death suddenly found its way to Ash’s nose, so she rushed out of the room. Nothing in the bedroom, not even the dolls, had given Ash that “this must be important to Rose” feeling . . . or maybe she was just looking for an excuse to escape the nausea that had overcome her.

Back outside Ash wasn’t quite ready to give up. She eyed the stables across the way. Ash had only begun to explore the strange mental link the Wilde sisters seemed to share, but this time something told her the wooden building would have been important to Rose. The Cloak had told Ash during her visit to their Netherworld that the Wilde sisters were like a candelabra: separate flames from the same vessel. When they’d split Pele into three souls, some cerebral connection had clearly lingered, allowing Ash, Eve, and Rose to find each other, lifetime after lifetime.

The same way that Colt seemed to always find her no matter what. . . .

Inside the stables Ash immediately sensed that
something wasn’t right. And not just in the sickening way that she could imagine the events that took place during the kidnapping.

Something here had been disturbed recently.

Very recently.

She crossed the hay-strewn floor to where she could hear the shuffling of a horse’s hooves. Sure enough, there was a black stallion milling about in one of the enclosures. There was a wild, unbroken air about him—Ash didn’t really know much about horses, but something about the stallion’s demeanor made her think that this wasn’t the kind of domesticated horse that a family with small children kept on its ranch. In fact, as she cautiously crossed toward the pen, her gaze never leaving the creature’s volatile eyes, she thought:
If Rose’s family really is dead or gone, then who the hell has been taking care of this horse?

“He doesn’t belong to you, you know.”

Ash spun around. In the entryway to the horse stables a girl Ash’s age stood with her hands planted on her hips. Her hair, which fell in ringlets nearly to her waist, was so red that with the afternoon sun backlighting it, it could have easily been made of fire. She was smiling at Ash, but not in a friendly way—there was barely restrained animosity simmering just below the surface, to the point that the girl was visibly trembling when Ash looked closely.

He doesn’t belong to me . . . ?
Ash repeated in her head. She pointed to the black stallion and raised her eyebrows. “I mean, the horse and I just met a minute ago, and I’m
not sure the two of us are ready to put labels on anything this soon.”

“You know who I’m talking about,” the girl seethed. Her tattered long green skirt billowed behind her like a punctured sail as she took a few strides forward. Ash must have still looked perplexed because the girl scoffed. “Well, that shows how much Colt must mean to you.”

“Colt?” Ash couldn’t help it—she laughed, even though she was fully aware that there was a dangerous situation brewing. “Honey, I realize he’s easy on the eyes, but believe me when I say that he leaves an aftertaste like battery acid. Where did you meet him anyway—online dating?”

The girl’s hand tightened around one of the wooden beams holding up the stable roof, so tight that Ash was afraid the post would snap. “I met Colt Halliday many lifetimes ago. Long before even you knew him, before he adopted a human name . . . when he was still known across the continent as the trickster Kokopelli. He has been my lover for nearly eight lifetimes.”

Another laugh had been perched on Ash’s lips, but with that, it suddenly died. So this girl was a reincarnated goddess just like her. No wonder her danger sensors had gone through the roof when the girl walked into the stable. Worse, this fiery redhead’s face was starting to tingle in the back of Ash’s mind, where dormant memories of her previous lives slept—the memories that Colt had awakened as a means to manipulate her. No doubt he’d done
the same to this girl, probably to use her for whatever pathetic bidding he required. “Wait, wait, wait . . .,” Ash said. “Your Colt’s . . . mistress?”

The redhead stabbed a finger at Ash and snarled, “
You’re
the mistress, Pele!” She turned the finger on herself. “I am his true love, his soul mate. You’re just the temptress that pops up like a weed in the cracks every lifetime, strangling the happiness out of him. You’re poisonous to him, but he’s addicted to you like some sort of drug.”

“Listen—” Ash stopped herself. “What’s your name, by the way?”

The girl straightened up to her full height, nearly six feet tall and rail thin. Between her frame, her hair, and her freckled Irish paleness, she was the physical opposite of Ash. She guessed she couldn’t blame Colt for wanting to diversify his lovers. “I am Epona,” the girl announced proudly, “Celtic goddess of horses . . . and nightmares.”

“Uh-huh,” Ash replied without interest. “Well, Epona, I can totally respect the fact that you’re . . .” Ash paused because she was really tempted to complete the sentence with
just another psycho who needs to let go of the past and learn to be an independent woman.
Instead she opted for the more diplomatic approach. “ . . . a hopeless romantic. And I’d love nothing better than to let you and Colt ride off into the sunset together, if it meant I’d never have to hear from either of you again. Unfortunately, your boyfriend is like an annoying boomerang—no matter how hard I
throw him away, he just keeps coming back, and someone always ends up hurt.”