The Hour of Dust and Ashes (29 page)

“NO!” I surged forward, but the sirens blocked my path.

I shoved one of them. Hands grabbed me as Hank tackled the one in front of him. I fought like a maniac. It wasn’t pretty or effective. I bit, pulled hair, fought as dirty as my drunken state allowed, but the only
thing I managed to do was tire myself more and gain a few more bruises.

We were too weak to do anything. We couldn’t outrun them, outthink them, or outfight them. Hot tears ran down my cheeks. I screamed at them, struggling, telling them they couldn’t take him. One of them shoved me to the ground. My elbows hit the pavement hard. My eyes met Hank’s. The siren had him stomach-down on the pavement, pinning the back of his neck with a knee.

“Go, Charlie,” he ground out. “Find Bryn. Before she—”

I sat up and swiped a hand across my wet face. “I … I’ll fix this, I—”

His eyes hardened, filling up with resignation and a warning. “Don’t …” The siren jerked Hank up.

Don’t make a promise you can’t keep,
he might as well have said. Don’t be that girl who had promised to wait.

One of the sirens laughed as I pushed to my feet. “Consorting with humans?” The other siren chuckled. “That is beneath even a traitor.”

Hank spun out of the hold, elbowed the siren’s nose, cracking the bone, and then used the last of his strength to slug the siren in front of me with a hard right to the jaw.
Payback is a bitch.
It was a brilliant hit. The guy flew back and landed hard on his back.

Hank swayed on his feet. “Go, Charlie. Hurry!”

I froze.

“DAMN IT, GO!”

I jumped.

By the corner of the station, I saw three more sirens appear. Shit, shit, shit. They ran for us. I glanced from them to Hank. “Goddammit, Charlie,” he muttered and threw himself in their path, fists flying.

“Hank.” I meant it as a shout, but it came out as a whisper. My stomach rolled. The parking lot went fuzzy.

Move, Charlie. Keep going.

Tears streamed down my face. I ran. In the opposite direction, feeling as though my heart was tearing in two. Running away went against everything I was. But I was running toward something else—my sister. Hank was giving me a chance to save her. I grabbed Rex’s elbow on my way and we hurried after Bryn.

As I ran, my strength returned with each step, each beat of my pounding heart, pushing the effects of the portal out of my system.

“Where the hell is she going?!” Rex yelled as Bryn ran ahead of us, dodging drunkenly into traffic, across streets, through pedestrians.

Christ. I had no idea who was in charge of her body, but with the cuffs on her wrists, and the travel sickness obviously hindering her, we had to catch her before she got herself killed. Accidentally or on purpose.

Block after block, street after street …

I was gaining on her. I’d always been the faster runner.

And then it hit me as we darted through a line of limos, down a familiar street, past the League’s school. Holy hell. She was going to the Mordecai House.

The League of Mages mansion shone like a beacon, lit up with festive white lights for the New Year’s Eve Party. Cars were lined up along the street and around the corner. Guests in tuxedoes and sequined gowns walked down the sidewalk and mingled within the grounds. Music poured from the house.

Bryn darted between cars, sliding over the hood of one, tumbling and popping right back up and racing for the mansion, hair dirty, blood caking her front, torn skirt flying out behind her.

She bounded up the wide front stairs, shoving people aside, broke through the line, and disappeared into the house.

I was right behind her, mimicking every step, screaming for people to move out the way. I called out my law enforcement status, leaping over potted plants, adrenaline driving me closer and closer.

I made it through the open double doors right after her and leapt.

Gotcha!

We went down in the packed foyer. People screamed. Glasses broke. The floor cleared as we tumbled down the hall, sliding into the ballroom, taking out two waiters and two trays full of champagne.

“Charlie, stop! Aaron! Help me!” Bryn screamed and cried so loud, I almost loosened my hold on her. “Get these cuffs off me, please! Aaron!”

Before we even came to a stop, her foot connected with my gut and she got free. I grabbed her ankle, tripping her up. She yelled. I yelled back. And to anyone watching, it probably seemed like the catfight of the century with two wild women caked with blood, dust, sand, and sweat.

I crawled over her, finally getting a hand on the side of her face and shoving her down and holding her there, breathing heavily.

“Mom?!”

I glanced up, dazed. “Emma?” I blew a strand of matted hair from my eyes and used my bicep to wipe the sweat from my forehead. She wore a cute knee-length sequined dress and her hand rested on Brim’s back. A sudden sob of relief burst from my mouth. My shoulders slumped. The portal had dumped him where he wanted to be. With Em.

Bryn used the distraction, rolling out from under me, twisting her body as she sat up, slid behind me, and draped her linked arms over my head, putting me in a headlock and choking with her forearm.

Emma screamed.

The pressure widened my eyes. My windpipe closed. I threw out my hand to stop Emma from helping. If she hurt Bryn or Bryn hurt her, neither one would forgive herself.

“BRYN MADIGAN!!!!” The booming voice radiated through the ballroom. The massive chandelier shook, the crystals tinkling together like rain in the ensuing silence.

Bryn eased up, but only slightly. I could feel her head turn in the direction of the familiar, powerful voice.

Aaron strode across the ballroom floor, his emerald eyes burning with intensity. His dark Celtic looks bordered on barbaric, his face frightening and stark. Gone was the scholar and in his place was a pissed-off warlock who had had
enough
.

I pulled at Bryn’s arm, flailing with my feet, trying to catch my heels on the floor to push back against her, needing desperately to breathe, but my heels kept slipping.

“I’m the one you really want to fight,” he said, taunting her in a deep, challenging tone. “I’m the one who hasn’t forgiven you for killing me. I’m the one who holds back, who might … not …
love
you anymore.”

“STOP IT!” she shrieked so loudly, her voice broke, the words forced from a place so raw and broken.

I knew what he was doing: pulling her out, making her angry, making her strong enough to fight against Solomon’s hold. But even I wanted him to stop. She was hurt enough.

Her hold lessened. Her entire body trembled. “I came back here for you!” she cried and I could hear the rejection and the heartbreak Aaron’s words had caused her.

“Fight, Bryn,” I rasped, tears falling for her. “Please fight …”

“Oh crap,” a feminine voice I didn’t recognize
rang out over the ballroom. “Did the party start without me?”

A slim female sauntered into my line of sight, stopping at my feet and staring down at me with a pout. Her face was tiny like her sisters’. She was dressed in a black mini, black leather thigh-high boots, and a tight tank that bared her midriff. A small, dangling belly button ring of a bejeweled flame flashed in the light. Her hair was long and wavy and the most intense red I’d ever seen. Her slanted eyes were framed by long lashes beneath yellow irises flecked with copper. A light splattering of freckles crossed her nose.

The last sylph. And her timing couldn’t have been worse.

“You ready to receive my gift, Charlie Madigan?” Aaron and Rex stepped forward, but the fire sylph turned on them, eyeing them both boldly. “I suggest you take a step back, fellas. It’s about to get very hot in here.”

She turned to me, cocked her hip, and tilted her head.

“Let them take her,” I forced out, nodding toward Aaron and Rex. My hands were wrapped around Bryn’s arm as she choked me. Her strength had waned and I could feel her surrender as she shook uncontrollably, still in a battle of wills with Solomon. The sylph snapped her fingers.

Aaron stepped forward and placed an amulet over Bryn’s head. She stiffened, her eyes went wide, and she screamed at him in a piercing string of curses. I ducked down, out of her hold, gasping.

Once Aaron and Rex drug Bryn away, I started sweating.

“Name’s Melki. Do you accept my gift?”

“Yes.” I flicked a glance to Emma. “It’s okay.”

Melki followed my gaze. “That your kid?” she asked without taking her eyes off Emma. “Nice dress.”

“Thank you,” Emma responded politely. “And if you hurt my mom”—her tone went flat, completely devoid of emotion—“I will kill you.” Her big brown eyes stayed on the sylph, harder than I’d ever seen. My chest grew tight with emotion.

Melki chuckled. “Kid’s got a little fire in her.”

She turned her attention back to me and lost the smile.

I tensed as energy built around her. The temperature increased. Her hand lifted, palm up. A flame burst from the skin. Her irises glowed fire. Her hand went higher, making a swirling motion with her wrist, which her body followed, turning her into a spinning flame—one that shot toward me before I could even blink.

It hit me square in the chest, tunneling into my body and burning a path straight to my heart. My back hit the floor. A gasp froze on my lips as the familiar pain/shock of a sudden burn seared a path through every limb, every vein, blood vessel, cell … My eyes stayed open but my vision was lost to a glaze of orange fuzz.

Accept my gift.

I’d become my beating heart. I could see it as
though I stared outside of myself. Pumping. Contracting. Expanding. A muscle that frantically worked, that burned, fueled by fear and pain, causing it to speed up at a wild, dizzying rate.

The muscle burst.

There was nothing but silence. No heartbeat. No pain. Nothing.

Water. Air. Earth. Fire. They exist in their purest forms inside of you.

I saw into the dead husk of my body where four tiny lights began to shine.

They are the very essence of Earth, the gifts of this world, and together they create power, that which cannot be seen, but exists all around you. The true power of this world. Nwyvre. The Hidden Element.

As Melki spoke in my subconscious, I watched as the lights came together from different parts of my body and met in my brain, bursting into a rainbow of color, intensifying until a ball of white glowed in my head directly behind the center of my forehead.

Now you see. Open your mind, Charlie Madigan, and see the truth.

I sat up, pulled like a puppet on a string, and opened my eyes. No. That wasn’t quite accurate. My eyes didn’t physically open, yet I saw the ballroom through the white glow in my mind. My vision was filtered through this hidden eye and everything was ringed in white, ringed with the truth.

I searched the wall, finding Bryn as she stood wrapped in Aaron’s hold. Poor Bryn. Inside of her
was a haze, the gray shadow of a man—a seething, angry soul lashing out against the barrier of Aaron’s amulet.

Solomon’s shadow stilled and I knew he saw me. He bared his teeth. He cursed. Then, beneath him, tired and worn, a shriveled light that was my sister’s spirit stirred. Still there. Still hanging on.
Oh, Bryn …

The people before me, the ballroom, everything seemed stuck in slow motion, the white of my vision moving dreamlike from one person to the next as I
saw
not only into them but also what they were made of, their characters or the true nature of their spirits.

Emma: Purity. Hope. Strength.

Brimstone: Devotion. Loyalty. Sacrifice.

Aaron: Determination. Honor. Conflict.

The white flared as I came to Rex. Rex with the indomitable jinn spirit. A big personality. I saw him as he used to be thousands of years ago: large, powerful, confident, but now shaped by time and circumstance. Changed so that creativity and vitality glowed around him. How he loved life.

My breath caught.
Oh God.
Will!

Beyond the spirit of Rex was my ex-husband, his dormant soul stirring, as though waking up from a long slumber. His form so thin, like a wisp of smoke. But it was him. It swirled and turned and saw me like Solomon had. He had become a shadow of his old self.

Charlie.
His voice. In my head.
I’m sorry.

I was crying, though I felt no tears sliding down
my face in the strange state I was in, but I knew my body was shedding tears. It hurt too much not to.

Set me free, Charlie.

No, Will.

I’ve seen beyond. I’m not meant to be here. Please. Please give me peace. Rest. Freedom.

But … Emma.

Emma will understand. I’m not meant for this world. Not anymore.

I don’t know how.

He lifted a hand, and smiled gently.
Yes, you do, wife.

A sob stuck in my throat. Eleven years I’d been his wife. And I’d loved him, had been happy for so many years and envisioned growing old together. I still loved him, just not in the same way as before.