Page 7 of Born of Blood and Ash

The skin along the nape of my neck tingled. I sensedsomething… “Ancient.”

I lurched from the bed and reached for Ash. My fingersgrazed his skin as a charge of energy rolled through the chamber. “Ash!”

Darkness descended.

CHAPTER TWO

I woke on a hard, damp surface to a hummingsound and a scent much like leather being tanned over a flame, but this smellwas far too sweet and putrid. Way worse than the scent of stale lilacs. Wherewas…?

The white mist.

The darkness.

Ash.

I jerked upright, and my eyes flew open to a void ofcomplete darkness.

“Ash!” I shouted, wincing as my voice echoed, mingling withwhat no longer sounded like humming but moans resembling a haunting chorus ofhungry spirits.

A shiver tiptoed down my spine, causing tiny bumps to floodmy skin, and that was all I felt. I pressed my palm to my chest, feeling thesoftness of Ash’s linen shirt.

“Oh, damn,” I whispered. There was no buzz of eather. No underlying thread of power just under my flesh.

I had to be dreaming.

Except…

Except the damp, cold stone beneath me felt too real, andthat stench was so thick and rich I could practically taste it.

Suddenly, I remembered what I’d sensed before the darknesscame. Something ancient.

My stomach churned, and I shifted onto my knees. Where wasAsh? Panic knotted in my chest as I tried to make sense of what was happening.My throat constricted, making it even more difficult to breathe. I sawabsolutely nothing around me as I started pushing to my feet. Justpitch-blackness.

Two pinpricks of silver light appeared. I halted in acrouch, my heart racing. The twin spheres seemed to double in size. Another setflickered into existence, and then a third, each growing as the one before themhad. My lips parted, and I stared at the lights. I…I didn’t think they wereorbs.

They looked like eyes glowing with eather.

I slowly straightened, my already pounding heart speedingup. My fingers tingled with how fast the blood pumped through me. I may not beable to feel the essence inside me or that uncanny intuition, but all my othersenses were firing. Sudden, icy dread seized me, turning my voice hoarse. Icroaked, “Hello?”

The lights vanished.

A heartbeat passed. Other than the moaning, there was onlysilence. I took a step forward. A rush of charged air stopped me. Golden emberssparked in multiple places, igniting all around me. Flames erupted, casting ashining light onto the iron sconces. My gaze instinctively tracked the glow asit spread across dull, gray stone walls in some sort of cavern, bearingmarkings I’d seen in the Shadow Temples and on the Pillars of Asphodel—circleswith vertical lines through them. The skin behind my left ear tickled. MyPrimal intuition kicked in then, and I continued following the light. Thosemarks were the symbol of Death. Of true Death—

I wasn’t alone.

Every muscle tensed as my body flashed hot and then cold.Three figures sat before me on horseback, their heads bowed and cloaked, bodieshidden in robes of white that rippled. Three horses that were nothing but bonesand tendons were also covered by pale shrouds.

I’d seen them before. At the Pillars. I remembered theirnames. I could even hear Nektas speaking them now.

Polemus. Peinea. Loimus.

War. Pestilence. Hunger.

They were the riders of the end of everything, onlysummonable by the true Primal of Life.

Every instinct I possessed, both the old and the new,screamed at me to run because these beings had never been mortal or god. Theywere primordial. Not Ancients, but created by them. That was why they felt likethem.

But an innate knowledge warned me that if I ran, I wouldfail. I had no idea at what, so I held myself rigid.

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