Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) (2 page)

My thoughts came to a screeching halt as my memories of childhood led to where they always led, a memory I'd done my best to block out entirely. My knees felt suddenly weak.

“Wait,” I said as I felt the color drain from my face, “am I here because of what happened? You said it would all be okay!”

Sophie's face finally showed a small amount of sympathy. She knew exactly what I was talking about. I tried to shut my mind off to the memory, but I wasn't successful.

“This has nothing to do with what happened,” Sophie explained.

“Um,” I began weakly as my heart thudded in my throat, “then would you mind telling me why I'm actually here, and why
you're
here?”

“That is none of your concern,” she snapped, leaving me to wonder if I'd only imagined the sympathy in her eyes.

“It
is
my concern,” I argued as tears began to stream down my face. “In fact I find it very concerning that I was ripped from my bed at night, and pulled into the ground by vines! Not to mention that I'm now faced with my old social worker who hasn't aged a day in ten years.” 

“Come with me,” she said, then turned around, expecting me to follow her.

“I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady as I backed away from her.

My legs felt numb and shaky as my bare feet hit the ground step after step. I was sure that I was in a mild state of shock, which was probably a good thing, because it kept me from collapsing into a screaming heap on the floor.

She turned back to me with a frustrated sigh. “We mean you no harm. Everything will be explained in time. Now come.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes, and took a deep breath. For people that meant me no harm, they sure had a funny way of showing it. “Where are we going?”

Sophie looked me up and down with a wry smile. “You're covered in filth. We're going down the hall to the bathroom.”

I stared at her a moment, looking for any sign that she might be lying. Not that it mattered. They already had me where they wanted me, so I could either go with her willingly, or be forced to go. I chose willingly. Anything to not have her or her brother touch me.

I nodded and we left the room. Sophie led me a short distance down a hallway made of the same stone as the bedroom, and into a large bathroom. Against the far wall of the over-sized space was an ornate, claw-foot tub made of white porcelain, standing on tarnished brass feet.

“Bathe,” Sophie ordered.

“I don't-” I began, but she cut me off with a stern look that said
I know you're unhappy, but you have to listen to me regardless
. It was the same look she used to give me when I called her a liar.

“I will keep my brother at bay,” she said, finally offering me a hint of a smile.

“I never knew you had a brother,” I replied absently as I crossed my arms and glanced at the tub.

It wasn't actually strange for me to not know. Most case workers kept their lives private from the children they worked with. It just seemed weird to me that I'd never seen him, or heard any mention of him at all.

“Well I do,” she replied. “Now please bathe, and I'll be back to fetch you soon.”

With that, she turned and left the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind her with a soft click. As soon as I recovered from the surprise of being left alone, I ran to the door and quickly twisted the lock. I did a frantic scan of the bathroom, but didn't find anything that could aid my escape.

There was no shower, just the bathtub, a toilet, and a small pedestal sink. Another fire burned in a fireplace that was set in the wall behind the bathtub. The room, ceiling, and floor were all made of stone, with no modern ventilation that I could see. There was also no visible lighting, yet the room was well-lit. I scanned the walls and ceiling, but couldn't tell where the light was coming from. Eventually I fell to my knees and closed my eyes, willing the whole situation to be a dream. It
had
to be a dream. Vines didn't move on their own, people aged and didn't have fangs, and rooms couldn't be lit without light bulbs or candles.

I sat like that for several minutes, but when I finally opened my eyes, I was still in the strange stone bathroom. I rose shakily to my feet and looked at the bathtub again. I briefly considered just doing what Sophie told me, but couldn't bring myself to do it. Not seeing any other options, I slowly unlocked the heavy wooden door so I could peek out into the hallway.

I wasn't about to trust Sophie just because she'd been my social worker. In fact, it made me trust her even less. There was no one in sight down the hall, so I crept out, too frightened to breathe. Once I was fully in the hallway I started to run, taking the first turn I could find that would lead me away from the bedroom rather than toward it.

My bare feet pounded harshly against the hard stone, making little jolts of pain shoot up through my shins and into my knees. The narrow, high-ceilinged hallway seemed to stretch on forever, with no discernible landmarks to tell me where I was or how far I'd gone. I ran past several closed doors and turned another corner.

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, but 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.

A
t 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.