Ashes and Ice (22 page)

“Who?” I ask. “Someone not afraid of nightmares, of water, of desire. Someone strong. Maybe I like this change. Maybe I want it.”

“But Jade, look at you. This isn’t you.”

“And how would you know what I am like?”

“Because Jade,” he says, “we were friends.”

A laugh bursts out of me. “Were we?” I can’t imagine being friends with this weak, flustered boy with his wisps of lights floating around him. There is nothing I can feed off of him. Nothing simmering for me to drink.

I push past him to go into the house. “Jade, please Jade wait.”

Agitation boils over. “Stop calling me that!”

“But,” Connor stares up at me, “that’s your name.”

Confusion for a moment dances with my haze. My name? Jade is my name, isn’t it? But it doesn’t feel right. It feels like something sticky on my skin or like a shell I am breaking.

“Leave, Connor.”

“No,” he says, coming up the pathway. “I won’t leave until you tell me you are going to see Lynx. He came to me and I know there is a lot you need to know. He told me …” He lowers his voice, “That there is something evil inside you taking over, that if you Turn something terrible will happen and the Jade I know will be gone forever. He says lust can accelerate the process… And I know you and Dominic…”

“As if you would know anything, you pathetic, stupid boy.” I snap at him. “No one tells me what to do. Especially not you and some ridiculous old man.”

Connor tries to say something else and I imagine his lips are sewn shut with black thread. The image makes me laugh.

“Jade Smith.” I recognize that voice and a tumble of emotions seizes me. I feel caught and ashamed just as a feeling of disregard rushes in. I don’t have to feel ashamed. I look to Nanan in the doorway. Even without shame, something else tugs so my cool, collected insides are disturbed with a twisting of my nerves. Something isn’t quite right and I don’t know what it is. “How dare you speak to Connor like that. He’s your friend and doesn’t deserve it. Look at him. He’s obviously upset.”

“Nanan, don’t worry about him. He’s not my friend. I don’t need friends.”

Nanan blinks. “What are you talking about? Of course you do. And you used to spend every moment with this boy… you were practically an old married couple.”

Connor shifts and looks at the ground.

“Well, then. The divorce papers have been served. Stay away from me.”

I march inside the house. Nanan grabs my arm, keeping me in the doorway. “Apologize, Jade. You are being cruel.”

I narrow my eyes at her, smirking. I twist my wrist so her hand loses its grip and grab her wrist and lean in. “No,” I say, “I won’t.”

Her eyes change. Shock? Fear? She jerks her arm away and rubs at her wrist. A sadness pitches her features, a helplessness. I don’t like her looking that way. I reach out a hand to her and she flinches back. “I don’t know what is happening to you. You are changing.” She says and turns to walk into the kitchen.

I look back to Connor from inside the door and slam the door shut.

In the bathroom, I wash my face. The ice writhes inside of me, twisting the shadows into friends. I stare at the mirror, watching the water drip down my face in rivulets. No one controls me. No one. My fingers twitch, restless.

My lips quirk up at one side ever so slightly. “Ashes, ashes we all fall down.” I say in a sing-song voice. In the mirror, my reflection changes. Cheekbones claim harsher edges, the shape of my chin tapering off into a defined jaw, my eyes change from green to crystalline gray. I look older, stronger, seductive and powerful. Yes. This is what I want. Power.

Creeaak. Creeaak. Something creaks in the doorway, swaying back and forth. My confident gaze slowly shifts to the corner of the mirror. A large woman, swaddled in a drab gray dress swings back and forth on a noose in the doorway.

I smile, my head swaying back and forth with the creaking. “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

I look back at my reflection. The cold silence in my chest is stabilizing.

“It is time.” My reflection says to me. I cock my head to the side. “It is time, my daughter, Dejanira.” When my reflection smiles, pointy teeth peek past my lips. No, no… past my mother’s lips? I blink quickly. Wait…

My trance is broken by the creaking. As I shift my gaze back to the mirror’s corner. I see Nanan’s face staring at me while her limp body swings form the doorway. Dead, helpless eyes.

Clarity screams at me.

Nanan? Nanan! I whip around gasping, lunging for the doorway, but there is nothing there.

I spin back to the mirror. The woman with ice eyes and pointy teeth is still there watching me. “It’s time daughter. Time to come home. Time to claim your power. Time to…”

I don’t let the bitch finish. I scream and bang my fists against the glass. The splinters slice into me, but I don’t care. I keep smashing until there isn’t a sliver left in the frame.

My bloody arms already healing and my breath heaving, I stagger back and brace myself against the wall. I look at the pieces on the floor and scream again. Every sliver has an image of the woman’s face. They all stare at me, slowly shaking their heads and tsking at me. “You won’t deny me, daughter. The Blood moon is waiting. You are mine.”

I fall to my knees and scramble to put all the shards of glass into the trash bag. Giggles whisper from the shards. “Ashes, ashes we all fall down.”

I grab the bag and barrel down the stairs. Nanan yells after me. “Jade! Jade, wait!”

I stop on the steps. I turn slowly back up toward the front door. Nanan stands there in her grey dress, her eyebrows pinched with worry. She’s alive. Alive! And I will make sure she stays that way. I climb the steps, my feet leaden. I know that this will be the last time I walk up these steps, this will be the last time I see this woman’s face and it hurts. It hurts too much. I place the bag of glass on the step and then run to her, wrapping her in my arms. I want to cry on her shoulder. A person with a heart could cry. I bury my head in her neck and whisper. “Nanan, I am so sorry.” With that, I pull away from her arms, grab the bag and run.

Lynx is waiting.

I run, the breath hitching in my throat. What have I almost become? What is it that I said to Connor? Treachery lurks in my veins and I want to bleed it out. If I could cry, I would drown the world in tears.

***

Lynx’s alley is a tunnel of frigid air. My steps falter when a shadow steps straight out of the brick wall. I squint and see Lynx walking toward me. He pauses for a moment, then, as if in afterthought, opens his arms to receive me. “Jade, you came.” His voice is like velvet.

“Of course! Of course, I came. I—”

I start to walk toward him and his wide-open arms when electricity seizes the air and I see a blue bolt of lightning strike the ground between us. I look up. And there he is—the same young man from outside school—the same piercing blue eyes and porcelain skin, hovers behind Lynx—flying.

My mouth gapes open.

The young man reaches both hands behind him and draws out two gleaming swords with fine glowing script etched down the blades. Lynx’s eyes widen before he turns to the scraping sound. His voice quivers, “No—“ The words are silenced as the young man’s blades cross in front of him, narrowing the thin divide between their sharp edges and the old man’s neck.

“No!” I scream, I cover my mouth with my hand as the blades sever Lynx’s head from his body and it rolls on to a patch of grass beside him. His body crumples to the ground. The young man’s eyes flicker to me and then to the head bleeding onto the pavement. He replaces the blades, snatches up the head by its hair and steps toward me, his eyes blazing with a fierce intensity.

I turn to run, but stop as my eyes fall to the body-less, glassy-eyed head in his hand. My chest deflates, the wind knocks out of me. My muscles tense as something—something sticky and black like tar—bubbles and oozes in my veins. It uncoils, reaches deeper and deeper inside me, consuming. Then the world flashes red before it distorts into shapes and light. The man in front of me steps back and when he does, I see a pulsating blue hum throb within him, like his veins are blue flame and at the core of him, where his heart should be, is a sphere of violent cobalt energy flaring out.

Rage—terrifying, violent and unfamiliar—cripples me. I fold inward and then I feel it explode within and I see myself from very far away. I’m gone, disconnected. But my body is hungry, and vicious. I lunge forward toward the man.

“No, stop!” His voice is desperate. His hands flail forward to brace against the blow. I do not yield, do not hesitate. I ignore the plea in the man’s voice and knock him back, while seizing the sword. It sizzles in my hand. The weight of it feels right. I clutch the hilt and swirl the blade in a wide arc in the air before aiming for his neck. He shifts his weight away, I maneuver around and slant the blade for another strike. He doesn’t fight back, just moves away from the blow. Then he stands in front of me, arms raised, palms forward in surrender. I gasp as I lunge the blade forward, why am I still attacking?

Because… he must die.

“Jade! No!” The words are out too late, my breath catches, surprised at the sound of my name. The blade penetrates flesh, but just as it does, the young man disappears into a ball of blue light.

The blade burns my hand and I drop it. I watch as the headless body oozes black tar blood. I gasp, waiting for the pain in my hand to subside. It doesn’t.

Heat flares around me and I am transported to the woods far away from the city in a single breath. I stand desperate and shaking with the gnarled limbs of trees towering and leaning towards me. It’s cold. Too cold. My breath leaves puffs of whiteness in the air. No wind, no gentle coo of pigeons, or rustling of leaves. Nothing. I swallow my fear and look around. I sit in the center of a grassy clearing. I see subtle shadows between the trees in front of me. I turn slowly. More shadows—still, solemn, and human—to my right, my left, and behind me. I’m surrounded.

I stay still, hoping to wake and for this eerie place to be washed away and be replaced with stagnant humid air and floral, peeling wallpaper. It doesn’t. Instead, in frightening unison, as if one shadow was connected to the others, they all step forward and stop. Again, they shift together, coming closer. I still can’t see their faces, but just as I squint to see them more clearly, a terrible hiss seethes out of them. A now familiar lyric, a horrible reminder, and now even more treacherous because it’s a chorus beating down on me from all directions: You are wicked. You are wicked. You are wicked. You are wicked…

The cold reaches deep inside me and squeezes everything tight.

It’s them. All of them. Every girl that the Etcher has killed is here. And they are here for me. I look at each of their faces: a young, oval-faced brunette, the freckled red-head, the tall, seductive blonde, the older, black-haired bartender, the black girl in the sweet knee-length dress and then there, in the center of all of them, stands Clara.

I gulp in frigid air and feel an aching pressure behind me eyes. My eyes feel too dry, as if the air itself scratches them. I look away from all of them, ashamed that their ugliness is too hard for me to bear. Their skin’s a strange, almost bluish tinge, their eyes fading to only a hint of color amidst stark whiteness in their eye sockets. Necks twisted, broken, arms reaching. Mouths open too wide with pointy, decaying teeth revealed through cracked lips.

All at once, they stop. They stop moving, stop screeching. They are within several feet, encircling me like vultures approaching the dead. I narrow my eyes. The girls aren’t wearing their normal clothes. Instead, they wear long red cloaks that drag on the ground. For a moment, this comforts me. I’m not sure why, I’m ashamed of it. But the cloaks are like veils over the women I dreamed about, as if somehow, stripped of their corsets, overalls, stockings, boots, and funny animated shirts, they aren’t real.

The second the tension eases, the girls twist around, backs toward me. Silence. Then in one swift motion, their cloaks fall to the ground. I suck in my breath. Each of the girls’ backs bears jagged, rotting lines.

I yelp. My symbol, my doodle that I’ve drawn over and over again, my little flurry of lines and shapes that retracing gives me release, peace, stability is gouged into their backs.

“Oh no…” It was me. All along. I’m the monster—the evil thing capable of far uglier things than their bluish, twisted faces. I killed them. I killed them all. Images flare out in my mind and I’m unsure what is real and not real, what is my memory, and what is my imagination. I had thought it was all my imagination, but now I know I was wrong. It wasn’t all a nightmare. It was me. I am the nightmare. And there is no saving me now. No amount of good can wash away these sins, this blood. And there can’t be more blood. No more.

Clara steps forward. I resist the urge to flinch away because I know I deserve any pain she may cause me. She puts her palm to my forehead. The blade still burns in my hands. With her fingertips pressed to my skin, a flurry of images blind me. Symbols, runes, a… ritual. Understanding is crisp in my mind. I take a slow, unsteady breath and Clara pulls her hand away. The vision is gone as quickly as it hit me. I am on my hands and knees in the alley, breathing in humid air, trembling. The sword is splayed out on the damp pavement. I know what I need to do.

I slowly stand, every motion is pained and shaky.

I pick up the sword, holding it tight even though it scalds my hand. I’m empty and desperate and want to run away, but I can’t. I can’t outrun myself. Emotions swell and I feel a prickling behind my eyes.

I start walking… to where, I am not sure. I ignore the dark hum caressing my mind. My feet are deliberate in their course. They somehow know where to go; they somehow know where this needs to end. And with a flutter of clarity and memory, I do too.