From the Ashes (Force of Nature Book 1) (7 page)

Warlocks.

I stopped dead in my tracks, hoping they hadn't yet seen me. I knew that the king had said all was well—that Reinhardt would be taking care of those that had ambushed us near the club—but my survival instincts were on high alert. I was desperate for a way out.

But it was far too late for that. They had already spotted me.

“Well, well, well, what have we here, boys?” a voice called from behind the others. A voice that made my blood run cold. Ice cold. “Looks like the little lamb has happened upon us.” With a degree of fanfare that only he could create, Kingston stepped forward from the group. A long leather coat draped over his shoulders, covering his arms. With an ambivalent shrug, it fell to the ground, exposing the gruesome aftereffects of Jase's handiwork. Where there had once been hands, only raw stumps remained. Kingston seemed almost amused by my inability to not stare with mouth agape.

“Jase is not without a cruel sense of justice,” he said, lifting one of the blackened wrists up to his face, twisting it at various angles while he inspected it. “Speaking of Jase, where are he and the rest of your vampire buddies? You didn't venture out alone without them, did you? Because that would be a really stupid thing to do, you know? The world can be such a dangerous place...”

“They'll be here any minute. They're picking me up.”

Kingston looked around at the trees surrounding us.

“In the middle of Central Park? That seems a tad unlikely, doesn't it, Piper?” He took a step toward me and I retreated a pace to match his advance.

“I wouldn't think of touching me if I were you. I spoke to the king myself only hours ago. He said that he and Reinhardt had come to an understanding regarding your attack in the alley. I don't think your leader was overly happy about your antics, from what I understood.”

“No,” he replied with a smirk. “He wasn't.”

“I know you, Kingston. You're smart. Too smart to invite the wrath of your leader and the vampire king down upon you. We both know that,” I babbled, hoping to defuse the situation enough to get away intact.

“Is that the tactic you're going to employ tonight? Leverage me to let you go based on fear of retribution?” he asked, advancing toward me again. His collection of fellow warlocks followed his lead and moved toward me as well. “You see, the thing is, Piper, I don't give a fuck about any of that. I stopped caring about politics the second your little babysitter lopped my hands off.” The fury in his dark eyes somehow cut through the night and pierced my heart, stopping it entirely.

Or perhaps that was the fear that surged through me the second I saw the faint blue glow emanating from the marred stumps Jase had left him with.

Either way, I didn't bother waiting to hear what he was going to say next. Instead, I turned to make a break for it. Unfortunately for me, I didn't stand a chance at escaping. I barely made it two steps before I crashed to the ground, a searing pain shooting through my body.

As I writhed on the ground, the pungent smell of burnt flesh assailing me, Kingston came to tower over my wounded body. He and all the rest of his minions. The situation was grim. The last time I'd run across the warlocks, I'd narrowly escaped with my life. And when my eyes fell upon the growing fireball occupying the space where his hand should have been, I wasn't so certain I was going to avoid death this time around.

“You really don't deserve to live,” he laughed. The tone of it held a note of instability. Kingston was coming unhinged. “I'm really doing us all a favor here, Piper, yourself included. Being the enforcers' pet is no way to live. Consider this a mercy kill.”

“The second Jase and Dean realize I'm missing, they'll come after you!” I shouted at him through gritted teeth. The scorch mark on my back was throbbing like crazy. “You'll be dead before sunrise.”

“Come after me for what?” he asked, feigning ignorance. Then he bent down close to me, wiping the hair from my eyes so that I could see his face clearly. He wanted his visage to be burned into my memory. “They'll never find a body, Piper. And you said it yourself; the king and Reinhardt expressly prohibited any such behavior as was exhibited last night near the club.” My eyes widened with fear. “And you know that I wouldn't dare act out against such forces, don't you?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, let alone the wild conclusions his words forced me to draw. The previous night had been an ambush. There was no doubt about that. Kingston had orchestrated the entire thing just to give himself the perfect alibi for my murder. And it was undoubtedly going to work. The king had forgiven Dean and Jase for their unsupported actions against the warlocks. He would not do so again.

My murder would go both unsolved and unavenged.

“Don't worry, Piper. This will only burn for the first few minutes or so. You'll eventually pass out from the pain,” he informed me as his signature smug expression overtook his face. “And you can scream all you want. Monroe has already cast an illusion around us. Nobody will hear or see you.”

He stepped back away from me, his lackeys flanking him as his hand-less arms somehow called forth an electric blue flash of fire so bright that I squinted hard against the visual assault. Then I realized he had set me ablaze. Initially I did what any sane individual would have done; I screamed, panicked, then started to roll frantically across the ground in an effort to put out the flames. But in my heart I knew there was no hope. Magical fire doesn't fuel itself with oxygen.

Stop, drop, and roll doesn't really apply.

I heard their laughter cut through the roar of the inferno and my own screams. Then they left me to burn slowly. Painfully. I cried out, but no one heard my pleas for help, just as Kingston had promised. I had no doubt that his warning that no one could hear me was true. The scorching heat melted what little clothing I was wearing into a patchwork of pieces dangling precariously from my fiery body, but the epicenter of the fire remained right over my stomach. My core. The alleged source of all the Magicals' power—including my own.

I prayed hard to anyone and anything I could think of that maybe someone would smell the stench of my burning flesh. Kingston hadn't said anything about making his illusion smell-proof. I was desperate for someone to come put me out of my misery.

But nobody did.

I wanted to continue to cry for help, but I knew my efforts would be in vain, and my energy was fading. I felt the well of tears in my stinging eyes intensify as my resignation grew. I was going to die alone there that night.

“Make it stop,” I whimpered, my consciousness fading.

And then, as if my prayers had been answered, the clear night sky clouded over in what seemed like an instant, and those clouds ripped open, releasing a punishing downpour that extinguished the flames that had nearly engulfed me. Unfortunately for me, the rain did not extinguish my agony.

The pain was indescribable. In some places, like my abdomen, I felt little if anything at all. Though it felt like a blessing, I knew that it was anything but. My nerves had clearly been damaged. Third-degree burns for sure. The parts that were less charred felt as though they were still on fire, the heat searing through my flesh. It hurt to breathe. Moving seemed out of the question, but I had to get out of there. I had to get help.

Curled up in pain, I managed to push myself up to crawl through the park toward my initial destination. I held out little hope that I'd get there before the boys drove by, but I had to do something, so I painfully made my way there. Every inch of ground I covered was anguish, and I cried the entire way, nearly passing out from the pain on several occasions. When I arrived at a small downhill slope that led to the road, I collapsed, rolling toward the street, though still hidden by the trees. My vision blurred as I tried to push myself off the ground to no avail. I was mere yards away from humans that could rescue me, take me to the hospital. But I was too far gone to reach them.

As the darkness overtook me, I whispered into the night.

“Please let them find me...”

* * *

“Over here,” I heard a familiar voice shout. I thought I was dreaming. Actually, I thought I was dead until Jase's words roused me. “Oh my God, Piper. What happened?” There was true terror in his voice as he spoke to me. I'd never heard him quite that rattled before.

“Sweet Jesus,” Dean said from somewhere near me. “Piper?” In his haste to see if I was okay, he reached to turn me over. I cried out in pain.

“Don't touch her!” another male yelled. His voice was utterly foreign to me.

My body was in shock by this point, shaking erratically, my pulse thin and thready. I was barely coherent enough to know what was going on, but I was aware that someone was picking me up delicately. Reverently. As if I would break at any moment.

I thought I already had.

From that moment on, the trip home was a series of me losing consciousness only to be awakened by the pain. I remembered a calming voice in my ear and the soothing sound of his murmured words as we drove back to the mansion. The vampires had everything there that I could possibly need, medically speaking. I would be in good hands.

I would possibly live.

My eyes still refused to open when we arrived at the compound, my body still shaking but exhausted. The pain, when it broke through my hazy, almost unconscious state, was unbearable, but I was too weak to scream anymore. Too weak to cry.

There was a frenzy of voices and shouting when we burst through the front door, the boys rushing me through the maze of hallways and down several flights of stairs to the infirmary deep below the ground. Vampires rarely if ever needed medical care, but the enforcers offered it to supernaturals outside their own race there—for a price, of course. Supernaturals that lacked their immortality and near-invincibility.

Whoever was carrying me crashed through the double doors and placed me down gently on a bed of some sort. I heard him yelling orders at the others who had come down to help. Then I heard Doc come in and silence them all, sending everyone out to wait in the hall while she worked on me. Her voice, too, held a measure of concern that I'd never heard in it before. I hoped it was due to my fading in and out of consciousness, but I doubted it. I was in bad shape and I knew it. Perhaps things were even worse than I had bargained for.

Perhaps the warlocks really would succeed this time.

“I'm going to give you something for the pain,” Doc whispered in my ear before I felt her lift my arm and slide the needle in. She waited a moment, presumably to allow whatever medication she'd injected to work. She then attempted to remove the last remnants of my clothes from my body before they became encrusted in my burns. I heard the shrill sound of my screams echo off the tile walls.

Then I heard a roar from the hallway outside eclipse my cry.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the now-familiar voice was in my ear, lulling me into a peaceful state. Then I felt a hand on my forehead, stroking my hair back gently from my face and tucking it behind my ear.

“Sleep now, Piper,” he said, his voice so low that I barely heard him. “The pain will be gone soon.”

A moment later, I felt the comforting arms of slumber wrap around me, pulling me into her depths. There, I felt nothing. There, I would be safe.

* * *

I had no idea how long I was out, but I woke up to a sharp and sudden pain that tore through my body. I tried to shoot up in bed but was quickly accosted, large hands on my shoulders, holding me down, restraining me gently. With every movement I made, the pain worsened. My screaming returned.

“Sleep, Piper.
Sleeeeeep
.”

His words pressed against my brain until his command sunk in.

Then the world went dark again.

* * *

That cycle repeated itself several times until finally I awoke to no pain, or at least a bearable amount of it. Now able to open my eyes for the first time since the incident, I looked around to find myself alone. No Doc. No Jase. No Dean. No mysteriously-soothing-voice man either.

I glanced to my right to find a battery of equipment and machines there with myriad wires and tubes extending from them to me. Monitors beeped rhythmically: the soundtrack to my reawakening. Trying gingerly to shift in the bed, I immediately regretted the decision. A sharp tugging sensation in my abdomen radiated out in nearly every direction possible. I stifled my outcry by biting my lip, only a squeak escaping, but in a household of super-hearing vampires, I might as well have sounded an alarm. It wasn't long before one of them arrived.

The last one I would have expected to see.

I stared at Merc as he hovered just inside the infirmary doors, my expression undoubtedly incredulous. Neither of us said anything at first (but why would he?). I was too busy trying to wrap my head around his presence there to form a sentence.

“I heard you,” he finally said, and my heart raced instantly. That voice. I knew that voice.

Of course,
I thought to myself. Of course it had been Merc that night in the park. Any other vampire that could have been there that night I would have recognized. It made perfect sense that it was Merc that had whispered in my ear; but then again, it didn't. Until that night, he'd never uttered a word to me, or anyone else for that matter. Not for decades. So why to me and why at that moment?