Read Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) Online

Authors: Sara C. Roethle

Tags: #urban fantasy series, #myths and legends, #Fae and fairies, #Vikings, #gods and goddesses

Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) (6 page)

BOOK: Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1)
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“Yes,” I answered. “But keep your gaze forward please.” If modesty was silly, then baby, call me the queen of slap-stick.

“You know it would be much more efficient if I could just hop in there with you,” he joked. “At this rate I'll never get to bed.”

“I'll be out soon enough,” I grumbled.

The water had filled enough for me to start scrubbing myself with the vanilla soap. As I washed, I found I still had a few little patches of crusty dried blood on my skin, and a decent amount in my hair. I scootched forward enough to lean back and dunk my hair into the water. When I came back up, the water was pink. I quickly turned off the faucet and unplugged the drain.

“I was only kidding,” he said.

“I need to refill the water,” I explained, turning to look at him. “Hey, avert your eyes!”

He looked away with a laugh. “Why do you need to refill the water?” he asked, obviously trying to distract me.

“There was blood in it,” I answered.

He laughed again. “It will be interesting to see how you adapt among the Vaettir.”

“Why?” I asked. “Do you enjoy bathing in the blood of thine enemies?”

“Something like that,” he answered soberly.

“You can't keep me here forever,” I added.

He turned to look at me, but he seemed so serious that I just hunched down to cover my breasts rather than telling him to look away.

“It would have happened again,” he said cryptically. “The taking of life is your gift.”

“The taking of life is not a gift,” I snapped, once again thinking of Matthew.

“Not always,” he replied, finally averting his eyes. “Nor is it always a curse.”

I plugged the drain and renewed the water flow, then slipped down into the tub, fully prepared to sulk. It would have happened again, he'd said. I couldn't bear what had happened with Matthew happening with someone else. Of course, as far as I could tell, these people wanted me to use my
gift
, which I was definitely not okay with. I washed my hair and scrubbed my skin nearly raw in silence.

“You have lovely skin,” he commented, pulling me out of my thoughts. “You should probably try not to scrub it all off.”

“Stop looking!” I exclaimed as I huddled up to cover myself again.

“I can't protect you from severed hands if I can't
see
you,” he argued with laughter in his voice.

I smiled in spite of myself. He was being a lech, but he was also trying to cheer me up again. I had to appreciate the latter, at least a little.

“If you died,” I began, then cringed when I realized how inappropriate the statement sounded.

Alaric turned wide eyes to me, though he was smiling. “Do you have plans that I'm not aware of?”

I glared and removed one of my hands from my chest to gesture for him to look away. “If you died,” I began again, “would you reanimate just like that hand?”

Alaric kept his eyes firmly forward, for once. “As would you.”

I gasped. I hadn't thought about
that.
I believed that Alaric would reanimate. I could no longer argue with all of the evidence laid before me, especially when one of the pieces of evidence had just tried to kill me. Yes, I believed that Alaric, and the others weren't exactly human, but me? I still couldn't wrap my mind around it.

“What if I had died sooner? Would my corpse have walked right out of the morgue?”

Alaric laughed. “We had more than one reason for keeping an eye on you. If you had died, your body would have been brought here.”

I somehow didn't find that comforting. “What if I had died in a plane crash, and my body ended up at the bottom of the ocean. What then?”

Alaric glanced at me in surprise, then looked away quickly. “Then I suppose we'd hear of sightings of zombie mermaids in the news.”

He'd meant it as a joke, but the idea of my corpse walking around after I was dead gave me goosebumps. I shook my head, then dunked my hair in the water again, trying to get warm. I stayed that way for a while, but couldn't seem to wash away the cold, because it wasn't
that
kind of cold.

When I was finished, Alaric handed me two towels, one for my hair and one for my body. It was oddly considerate. Then again, with the length of his hair he probably had to use two towels too.

He turned his back so I could step out of the tub and dry off. It only dawned on me as I finished drying myself that I didn't have any clean clothes to change into. At a loss, I wrapped the towel I'd used on my body tightly around me, then tapped Alaric on the shoulder.

Now, when someone turns around to see you, you usually expect them to take a step back to make room. Alaric turned around without the step back, and was suddenly very close to me. His pants brushed against the bottom edge of my towel, moving the fabric ever so slightly. Luckily the smaller amount of blood he'd gotten on him was already dry and didn't transfer to the clean towel.

I slowly moved my eyes upward, feeling nervous and perhaps a little bit of something else. Alaric looked down at me with a knowing smile, eliciting goosebumps up and down my arms once again. I eyed him warily, feeling small and vulnerable, but he didn't move out of my way.

“If my gift is death, like you say,” I began carefully, “then shouldn't you be afraid of me?”

“You would bring a swift death to a human,” he replied. “But I would only fear you if I were severely weakened.” He smoothed a hand down my bare arm.

“You're really going to kidnap me, then hit on me?” I asked, pulling away from his touch.

He smiled, not in the least bit offended. “I am simply letting you know your options. The choice remains yours.”

“So I have the choice of whether or not I sleep with you, but not the choice of leaving this place?” I asked, now with a hint of anger in my tone.

Alaric raised his hands in an
I give up
gesture. “That second choice is not mine to give. I would not offer you a lie.”

A subtle throbbing was beginning to grow between my eyes. I pinched the bridge of my nose to ease the pain.

“I'm very tired,” I said, hoping to end the conversation.

This time when I was left in my room, I really would sleep. I felt unsteady on my feet just standing there. Alaric nodded and led me out of the bathroom and back down the hallway toward the room I'd been given.

He stayed in the doorway of my bedroom, forcing me to squeeze by him in order to go inside. I half-expected him to follow me in, but he remained in the threshold. After a moment he stepped back to close the door for me, though he left it open long enough for him to peek his head back inside and leave a standing offer for him to be my “snuggle buddy”.

I refused his offer. I needed a snuggle buddy like I needed hepatitis.

Chapter Four

I
fell asleep almost instantly, and if I dreamed, I didn't remember. I woke up confused as to where I was, until the memories of the previous day came flooding back to me.

Had all of that occurred in just one day? I thought about my little house, and the fact that no one would have yet noticed that I was missing from it. No one knew that I hadn't spent the last two nights safely tucked into my bed.

I was still sitting in bed dazed and confused when Sophie came inside without a knock. She glared down at me still snuggled in bed, annoyance clear on her face.

“Get dressed,” she ordered. “Breakfast first, then you have a job to do.”

The
job
they had brought me back for was the position of executioner. Did they want me to kill someone?

“I-I don't feel well,” I stammered. “I should probably just stay in bed today.”

Sophie ignored me as she went through my drawers in search of something for me to wear. Finally she threw a pair of blue jeans and an olive colored tank top at me. Next came a clean bra, underwear, and a pair of socks that nearly hit me in the head. Once she was finished flinging fabric, she stood at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed.

“Well?” she prompted.

I rolled out of bed and got dressed quickly, not wanting her to throw something more substantial than socks at me.

When I was finished she looked me up and down then said, “You know where the bathroom is. You'll find a toothbrush and whatever else you might need. I'll be waiting in the kitchen.”

With that, she was gone, leaving me to fret over just what the “job” might be by myself. I peeked out into the hall to verify that the coast was clear, then hurried into the bathroom where I promptly locked the door behind me. I took as long as I possibly could to brush my teeth and put on deodorant, with supplies found in the little basket that had held the soap, but eventually I had to admit to myself that I couldn't just stay in the bathroom forever.

I was grudgingly beginning to not just think about escape, but how best to survive as long as I was trapped. The Vaettir had verified what I had always somehow known about Matthew. That experience had kept me chaste and alone, for fear of it ever happening with someone else.  

Yet, maybe there was some way to control when it happened. If I could control it, I would be free to live an actual life. That was, of course, if I could not only learn control, but then escape my captors in one piece. The latter was seeming less and less likely.

Finally, I took a deep breath and went out into the hall, heading straight for the kitchen. I could have searched for a way out again, but my last two attempts at escaping hadn't gone over terribly well. Perhaps soon I'd find out where the exit was, then I'd stand a better chance of actually reaching it.

Sophie was waiting in the kitchen as promised, but so were Alaric and James. Sophie and Alaric were both dressed in all black again. It would have almost been cliché if it didn't look so good on them. They were also both sipping on coffee, while James had tea. I couldn't tell what kind it was, but the little green leaflet hanging from the string hinted at herbal. I liked him less and less.

Sophie handed a cup of already poured coffee to me as I entered the room and went to stand by her. The division between the coffee drinkers and the non was highly apparent.

I eyed James nervously and he eyed me right back, sipping his tea with a secretive smile. The smile made me more uncomfortable than a thousand angry glares ever could. His golden hair was still damp enough from his shower to leave small dark stains around the collar of his charcoal gray shirt. The dark color of the shirt made the icy color of his eyes even more pronounced.

I suddenly felt nervous enough to throw up, and had to take a sip of coffee to keep it down. James smiled a little wider.

A woman I hadn't met yet came walking into the kitchen. She was shorter than me, around 5'4”, and had dark hair cropped closely to her head. She turned large, honey colored eyes to me and gave me a look of dismissal, then turned her eyes to James.

“Estus wants her now,” she announced, as if I was no longer even there.

“Looks like breakfast will have to wait,” James said to me warmly.

I forced a smile in response. I wouldn't have been able to keep any food down regardless. I looked to Sophie to lead the way, but she only looked apologetically at me and nodded toward James.

When I still didn't move, James took hold of my arm and pulled me forward. Alaric watched us quietly as I was pulled away. The nameless, short-haired woman went ahead of James and I, then disappeared down the hallway. I looked over my shoulder for one final glance at Alaric and Sophie, but they had turned to speak quietly to each other, and didn't see me. 

I looked forward as we made our way out into the hall. Judging by the path we took, I began to suspect that we were going to the room where I'd been attacked by the hand. Call it intuition, but I had a feeling that was a room James frequented. My feeling of dread increased as we approached the door, but we ended up going past it and into the room immediately after it.

This new room was cleaner than the one I'd visited, but just barely. This room also had a full man, and not just a hand. The man hung limply from a set of manacles hammered into the wall. His chest was bare except for a decoration of deep cuts and bruises across his tanned skin. Blood had soaked into his blue jeans, staining the fabric.

The man looked up from under sweat-matted hair as we entered the room. At first the look was distant, but as he noticed me his eyes widened and he began to struggle against the manacles. He thrashed about, revealing that in addition to his other injuries, he was missing an ear. All that was left in its place was a bloody hole.

“No,” he pleaded as he looked over to the side of the room. “Please. I told you I had no choice.”

It was only then that I noticed Estus standing in the corner, looking dispassionately at the man. He was still in the loose, blue that I'd first met him in. The clothing made him look like some sort of monk, but the tortured man begging him for his life kind of ruined the picture.

I tried to jerk away from James, but he held my arm tight enough to bruise. The short-haired woman stood to my other side. She didn't speak, but it was obvious by her expression that she wasn't enjoying the show any more than I was.

“Please,” the man pleaded, looking at me now. “Please don't do this.”

I looked away from the fear in the man's eyes. The fact that I was the source of that fear, and not the people who had tortured him, hurt my heart. I could feel what had been done to the man just as I could often feel the wounds of others, and I could taste his fear like cloying perfume on the back of my tongue.

As James dragged me forward, the fear and pain increased. By the time I stood directly in front of the man, his emotions were almost unbearable. In addition to his fear, I felt sadness and loss. He loved someone, and now knew that he would never see her again. I closed my eyes and shook my head over and over, trying to diffuse the emotions before they overcame me.

“What is she doing?” the short-haired woman asked. “Why isn't she finishing this?”

“It will come with time,” Estus explained. “Her nature will take over. This is what she was born for.”

I heard someone saying, “No, no, no,” over and over again, and realized that it was me.

BOOK: Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1)
3.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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