Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) (3 page)

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 looked 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.

“And you're in need of a replacement?” I panted as I continued straining to stand.  

“Precisely,” he answered, seeming relieved that I understood. “Our clan cannot function properly without you.”

If these crazy people wanted me to be their executioner, that meant that they were going to try keeping me with them. It also likely meant that they were going to expect me to kill people. I could never do that. Someone would have to come looking for me eventually. They had to.

I mean, people don't just disappear without the police being notified. Of course, it might take a while for them to get notified. I had no parents to report me missing, and no spouse. I had a few friends, but the scenario of them not hearing from me for a few weeks wasn't unheard of. Events in my past had led me to a life of near-solitude, keeping people at a distance for fear that history would repeat itself. My history was dark and sad, and not worth repeating.

Normal people would have at least had a boss to miss them when they didn't show up for work, but I did freelance writing for a living, so there were no coworkers or bosses to report me missing. I had a landlord . . . but seeing as it was only the 8
^th
of October, he wouldn't be expecting a rent check for a while. He probably wouldn't sound any alarm bells until his pockets were feeling empty. Being alone was hard, but I'd never thought that being antisocial would come back to bite me in such a major way.

Estus gave me several minutes to digest everything. I still didn't believe anything he'd said, though the fact that I was quite literally glued to my seat definitely gave me pause. Regardless, that moment definitely wasn't the time to argue. I was better off going along with whatever Estus said until they left me alone again.

“I can see that you are having some trouble believing what I say,” he stated finally.

“No,” I lied quickly. “I understand.”

Some of the smile slipped from Estus' face. “I will not tolerate lies, now tell me what happened with Matthew,” he said abruptly, freezing me to the core.

My breath caught in my throat. “How do you know about that?” I croaked.

Estus eyed me steadily. “Just because we left you on your own, does not mean that we let you go. Not entirely. Now tell me.”

“No,” I replied. “That's private.”

I gripped the edges of my chair until my hands ached as I tried to push away the memories. That specific story was one I never planned on sharing with anybody.

“It was not your fault,” he consoled. “It is your nature.”

I was beginning to shake as I held back more tears, but the memories weren't held back as easily. We'd been in a car accident. Several cars had been involved. Others had died, but we weren't overly hurt. Matthew's wrist was clearly broken, but that seemed to be the extent of it. Good Samaritans had helped us out of our car to wait on the side of the road for the paramedics.

We were sitting in the grass, and it was killing me to see Matthew gritting his teeth against the pain. I'd always been highly affected by the pain of others to an extent that made me avoid hospitals like the plague. If I saw an injury on someone else, my mind made me feel like I had it too. Even strong emotions affected me. At one point I'd gone to therapy for it, but nothing helped.

The old memory played out in my head like a movie. I reached out and smoothed my hand across Matthew's face, hoping to soothe him just a bit, and in effect soothe myself. He looked at me, suddenly not just in pain, but frightened. His fear made my heart hammer in my throat, but I continued holding my hand to his face, not sure of what had changed.

I felt a rush of energy as it left him, that spark of life. I watched as it left his eyes. I was so shocked as he slumped over that I didn't even scream. Later I would try telling myself that he'd damaged something internally in the accident, but I knew it was a lie. I’d stared at him as the paramedics arrived and rushed over to us, and knew for a fact that there was nothing they could do. 

I still rode next to his dead body in the ambulance as they did their best to resuscitate him. I was later told that they couldn't find the exact cause of death. They wrote it off as a small brain hemorrhage, but I knew otherwise. Some tiny voice screamed in my mind that it was me. I'd killed Matthew. 

“You are probably starving,” Estus said sympathetically as he watched the emotions play across my face. “Sophie will escort you to the kitchens. We will speak more when you are at full strength.”

As if on cue, Sophie came back into the room. I looked to Estus frantically to see if I was allowed to stand, and he shooed me away. I took a deep breath and stood without any unseen force impeding me.

I turned and numbly followed Sophie's slim form without another word to Estus. I felt shaky on my feet, but I kept walking. That's all we can ever really do.

We went back through the throne room and down another narrow hallway. Sophie looked back several times, but didn't say anything.