Bitter Ashes (Bitter Ashes Book 1) (7 page)

“Just do it!” the man broke down and shouted, flinging spittle in my face.

His pain was palpable. I thought that if I could reach out and touch it, I could ease that pain. I
wanted
to reach out and touch it. It pulsed in front of me. I had taken several steps toward him without even realizing it. I began to reach out a hand. No. If I touched him, he would die.

James pushed me forward so that the man's face was only inches from mine. The man could have tried to kick me or head-butt me, but he didn't. I felt his defeat and bitterness. He had given up. 

“Please,” the man whispered right against my face. “Please just let it be over before my body gives out. I know I'm not getting out of here alive, and I don't want to be stuck in a corpse.”

“Stuck in a corpse?” I questioned distantly.

I squeezed my eyes shut in attempt to block everything out. I could hear and feel the man as he began to cry.

“If we kill him and you do not release him,” Estus said from across the room. “A part of his spirit will remain in his body, forever.”

It was just like Sophie had said, but the gravity of it only hit me just then. Part of his soul would be trapped for eternity. What would happen to the rest of his soul if it was missing a part? I felt sick. I wasn't even sure if I believed in souls.

I opened my eyes to see the man's face again. His eyes were a light brown with flecks of green in them. He obviously believed what Estus said. His eyes pleaded with me to act.

I slowly reached my hand up and cradled his face, knowing what to do even though it had never been taught to me. Images flashed through my mind of a woman, and I almost pulled away. I felt his love for the woman, and his sorrow in knowing he would never see her again. I did my best to take that sorrow away. I held the man's gaze as the light faded from his eyes. His energy soaked into me in a warm rush as it left him.

“Thank you,” he whispered with his last breath.

I turned back to the room, feeling awestricken. I noticed a figure in the doorway. Alaric stood framed in the light of the brighter hallway, watching me calmly.

He offered me a solemn smile and said, “Not always a gift, but not always a curse either.”

I wanted to run out of the room, but seemed incapable of moving my feet. I had just killed a man, and didn't even know what his crime had been. I had felt his emotions to the very end.

“What did he do?” I asked to no one in particular.

“He fought for the wrong side,” Estus answered apathetically.

I glared at him as anger bubbled up inside of me. I felt giddy with the man's residual energy, and I could still taste his bitterness on the back of my tongue. It spurred my rage on. His memories clung to me, chastising me for what I'd done, even though he'd asked me to do it.

“You took him away from someone who loved him!” I shouted as I walked toward the old man. The dead man's loss felt like my own. I thought of the woman who'd survived him, and how I’d felt when Matthew died. “What did
she
do to deserve this?”

Estus held his ground, and stared back at me, daring me to act.

“How could you possibly know that?” James asked from behind me. 

I spun on him. “I felt it!” I cried. “I
saw
her. She was the last thing he thought of. His greatest concern was the idea of never seeing her again.”

“Interesting,” Estus commented. “An empath and an executioner. I do not envy you, my child.”

I turned back to the old man. I said very slowly, emphasizing each word, “I
will not
be doing
that
again.”

“This is war, Madeline,” he replied. “We all do what we must.”

“What war?” I spat gesturing back to the corpse on the wall. “I don't see any battles happening! All I see is torture.”

Tears were running steadily down my face, and I couldn't seem to stop them. The man's last emotion was just too much for me to digest. The images of the one he loved were already fading from my mind, but the emotion was as fresh as ever.

“Not all war is battle and bloodshed,” Estus replied, finally letting a hint of his own emotion show through. “And I will not let my people get slaughtered because of one squeamish executioner.”

“What do I even have to do with it!” I shouted. “Killing that man did not stop this alleged
war
!” I knew I was bordering on hysteria, but I just couldn't stop myself.

Estus walked forward. “Without an executioner,” he said very carefully. “We do not truly die. Would you leave us all to that fate?”

“This can't be my responsibility alone,” I sobbed. “There must be another way.”

Estus sneered, making me wonder if the kindly old man act had ever even existed. “We could have chopped that man up and put him in ten different boxes, and still some part of him would have lived. He would no longer have thought or spoken, but the life force would have remained.”

A horrifying realization dawned on me. “Is that what you did to the last executioner?” I asked. “Is the rest of him still alive in a box somewhere.”

“It is a fate befitting his crimes,” James said from beside me. I hadn't noticed how close he was standing to me until just then.

I took a step away from him. “Take me to him,” I demanded.

Estus smiled. “So, you would kill another?”

“You owe me for
this
,” I gestured wildly to the dead man. “Now take me to him.”

Estus simply nodded and walked toward the door. I followed him, but everyone else stayed put. Alaric stepped out of the doorway as we walked by to give us space. I followed Estus out into the hall, then into the room where I'd found the hand.

“I see you have already met with part of him,” Estus commented as he kicked the dead hand aside.

He walked to the wall with the cages and felt across the stones. A brush of his fingertips revealed a handle I hadn't seen before. Estus gripped the handle and pulled, causing the stone to come out of the wall like a drawer.

I didn't want to look into the drawer. I knew it would be something horrific and bloody, but I also knew that the life, or soul, or whatever you wanted to call it, was still trapped inside this man's dismembered corpse. It wasn't right.

Estus stepped away from the drawer to make room for me. Before I could think better of it, I walked forward, avoiding blood puddles as I went, and looked down into the box. Inside was a human heart. It didn't beat, yet blood seeped steadily out of the severed ventricles. The box wasn't sealed at the edges, and the blood dripped through the cracks onto the floor. I felt rage and betrayal radiating from the heart, and somehow knew that it could sense my presence.

“The heart is the key,” Estus informed me. “Release the heart and the soul is free.”

I reached down and stroked a finger across the heart. I should have been horrified, but I was more intrigued by the heart than anything else. The muscle that composed the thing felt thick and alive. I willed the life out of the heart, but nothing happened.  

“It's not working,” I whispered to myself.

“Do what you did in the other room,” Estus advised as if I'd been talking to him. “Do not will the life away. Take its pain.”

I reached out again and felt the soul's hatred and pain. Yet the emotion that outweighed everything was betrayal. If this man was a traitor, it was not by choice. He was killed by the ones he considered kin. I took a shaky breath. This time, instead of willing the life away, I focused on taking the heart's pain, and taking away the feeling of betrayal.

The heart gave a final shudder, then collapsed in on itself. More blood leaked out as the heart deflated and then was still.

Estus shut the drawer and dismissed me with a wave of his hand like he was tired. After a mostly sleepless night and no food, I should have been exhausted, yet I was filled with energy. Electric currents ran through me to collect in my fingertips, which felt heavy like they were filled with too much blood.

I left the macabre room to find Alaric waiting for me in the hall. He looked at my expression carefully, attempting to judge my mood.

I did my best not to cry, but something must have shown in my face, because he wrapped me tightly in his arms. I didn't know him well enough to receive that sort of comfort from him, but I didn't know where else I was going to get it, so I returned the hug. A sob racked my entire body, releasing some of the emotions I'd absorbed from the dead man and the executioner's heart. I clenched my eyes shut, and did my best to slow my breathing. We stayed that way until I had gathered myself, then Alaric gave me a final squeeze and pulled away.

“Let's get you some breakfast,” he said softly.

I shook my head. “I don't think I could eat. I feel strange.”

Alaric placed his hand gently at the base of my spine and guided me forward. “Let us at least distance ourselves from these rooms.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was just as appalled by the torture rooms as I was. I felt oddly relieved at the sentiment.

We had only traveled a few steps when a screeching roar sounded in the hallway, grabbing both mine and Alaric's attention. I turned wide eyes up to him for an explanation.

“Get back to your room and lock the door,” he ordered.

“Wha-” I began to ask, but he had already left me to run down the hall.

Estus, James, and the short-haired woman all ran by before I could even move. They all disappeared around the next bend and suddenly I was alone. I could escape, but did I really want to? I was horrified by what had happened to the man in the torture room, but I was even more horrified by my part of in it. Could I really return to the normal world without learning more about my terrifying
gift
?

I stood frozen in the hallway until I heard the sounds of distant fighting as the others reached whatever the original sound had been. I started to run in the opposite direction that they had gone, but stopped beside the room where I'd taken the life of the first man.

His body was still hanging against the wall, limp and lifeless. How could I return to my safe little house, when I could accidentally take someone's life with a touch, just like I'd done to the poor man hanging on the wall? The people down here were monsters, but maybe, just maybe, I was a monster too.

I
stood outside of the torture room, unable to make a final decision. Of course, I could just go back to my room now, and make a decision later. Later sounded good.

I had just turned to do as Alaric had originally bade me, when goosebumps raised across my arms as I heard a woman scream. I somehow knew that it was Sophie. Sophie who had helped me through my childhood, and who I was pretty sure was still trying to help me. Well shit.

I ran in the direction of my room, but when I reached it, I kept going toward the sound of fighting, cursing my choice even as I made it. I had no idea how I might be able to help, but I couldn't just sit in my room and ignore what was happening. I went around several bends in the hallway and came to the room that I thought of as the throne room.

Everything was in utter chaos. The dog/lizard creature fought gleefully alongside the people in the room, and suddenly the shrieking roar made sense. The creature must have been the one to find the intruders. I assumed the intruders were other Vaettir, though everyone in the room appeared human.

I stayed out in the hall as I watched the fighting. The intruders, at least I guessed they were the intruders as I watched James slash ones throat with a long knife, were dressed in ornate leather armor. The pieces of armor reminded me of insect carapaces, and didn't fit at all with the modern day attire everyone else wore. 

The more I saw of the fighting, the more I couldn't believe I'd thought anything about the fight looked
human
. Only half of the violence was done with weapons. The other half was done with what I could only refer to as magic. A woman swiped her hand in front of a man's face, and his skin erupted with blood like he'd just been sliced by invisible claws. One of the male intruders pushed someone on our side to the ground and climbed on top of him. The man struggled to free himself, but slowly his body iced over until he could no longer fight. I looked away from the frozen man as his icy pain shot through me. 

There were others not in the armor that obviously fought for
our
side, though I hadn't seen any of them before. Many had already fallen after painting those who still fought with their blood.

I numbly watched the brutal scene in horror, keeping my distance so I wouldn't feel the pain of the fallen directly, then suddenly remembered why I was there. My eyes fell upon someone lying in a heap in the far corner.
Sophie
. It was her scream that I’d heard. I tried to make my way around the fighting toward her, but one of the intruders finally noticed me and started in my direction. His movements reminded me of a snake as he wove through the chaos with his eyes focused solely on me. As he got closer, a long, serpent-like tongue flicked out of his thin lips. I froze in place as the man drew near. I glanced around for help as I backed up against the wall, but everyone else was engaged in the fighting.

My mind screamed at me to run, yet fear held my limbs rigid. I could hardly even breathe. The intruder came to stand in front of me, but only remained there for a moment as a black shape barreled into him and sent him flying back into the thick of the fighting.

With the immediate danger eliminated, my feet unfroze and I hurried to hide in one of the nearby rooms. I should have closed the door, but I couldn't make myself do it. I had to make sure whoever had saved me was okay, and I still needed to reach Sophie.

I peeked back out into the fighting, which had suddenly all but halted as the last of the intruders were put down. The furry lizard tore into the stomach of one of the dead, splitting the armor like the delicate petals of a flower. The creature found the intruder's spinal cord and tore a chunk of it free. Its dog-like mouth munched happily as blood dripped down its face. My eyes fell next on the one who had saved me.