Page 69 of A Shadow in the Reaping
Ashen keeps his fiery gaze on mine for a long moment before he gives a single nod. His hand stays wrapped across my skin. The smoke dissolves but the heat still burns in his eyes.
"Try not to kill any witches until we have answers," Ashen says, bending his head to keep his unwavering stare locked to mine. It burns an indelible mark right onto my soul. "Once we're done, take them all."
"Why? They weren't there."
"They knew Sarno, and that's close enough."
Hellfire erupts across the sword Ashen grasps in his free hand, and when he's ready he lets go of my wrist, his fingertips following my palm, down the lines of my fingers, down the pads of flesh at their tips. The heat of his touch leaves mine but his eyes linger for a moment longer. His rage stays locked behind within like a beast that roams behind bars, waiting for its chance to be released.
Ashen turns away and I follow him to the heavy iron door that faces an empty loading dock. He tries the handle, but no surprise, it's locked with more than just metal. There are spells at work here, I can feel the hum of their current in the air. The scent of star anise and rosemary and mica infuse the unsettled air.
"How did you get in the last time?" Ashen asks as he unscrews a tiny spring on the end of the handle of his sword.
"The front door," I say, giving a shrug as Ashen looks up with a questioning brow. "Ediye helped with a disguise. Besides, it's not like he was expecting me. He thought I'd been dead for three centuries."
Ashen gives a faint smile and focuses his attention on twisting an ampule free of its compartment in the handle of his sword. He opens it and I smell sulfur and ground bone. There's some other shit in there too that I don't want to think too much about. Hair steeped in the scent of milk. The skin of something long extinct, sweet like powdered sugar and burned in cedar.
Ashen pulls a metal stopper free of the ampule and taps some of the dust within across the door handle before returning the vial to the hidden compartment of his sword. Static crackles and light arcs across the metal. Froth bubbles and drips onto the asphalt below. When it subsides, Ashen gives a swift strike with his sword to sever the neck of the handle. The bulbous metal head rolls to our feet.
We step into the darkness of a narrow, windowless, utilitarian corridor lit by a single fluorescent bulb. There's a door on either side and one at the end. I hold my breath in the silence. I lay my hand to Ashen's chest and he does the same. I close my eyes and concentrate on the sounds I can hear. Two heartbeats. The ripple of sulfurous flame. There's nothing else close. I shake my head and we breathe again, walking to the end of the hall.
The door is unlocked. Ashen pushes it open just enough that I can listen. Again, I hear nothing. We drift into the corridor like a poisonous gas.
I know every hallway and room here. I memorized them with Ediye months before I ever walked inside. Ashen looks down at me and seems to know I wouldn't have left Bobby Sarno up to chance, and he'd be right about that. If I was going to wait three hundred years, I wasn't about to fuck it up with poor planning. I was going to get away with it.
I jerk my head to the left. The offices are in that direction.
We follow the corridor of black painted brick lined with signed posters of artists and bands that have played in The Maqlu over the last several years. Most of the messages start with 'Dear Bobby,' or even worse, 'To Mr Sarno,' and it if my stomach wasn't so fucking empty I'd want to vomit all over them. Fucking prick.
When we're about halfway down the hall I spot a framed photo of Bobby with his arm around Cardi B. She looks a little grossed out to be fair.
My fist snaps out like a viper and I smash the glass.
"What the fuck, Lu?" Ashen hisses as he watches me pull the photo down and tear Bobby's smug, bloated face away from Cardi's.
"My bad," I whisper, patting her image back into the frame and dropping the half with Bobby's face next to my boot. I hold onto Ashen's fierce glare as I twist Sarno's ugly head into the shards of glass. "Sorry... so terribly sorry."
Ashen rolls his eyes and turns away, leading us to a corner with a right turn. He leans forward and listens, then motions for me to follow. Doors line either side. At the end is a turn to the left that leads to the public-facing section of the club, which won't be open until dusk descends. We drift past the first set of doors. Ashen is nearly at the second when I reach out and grasp his hand. He lurches to a halt.
I point one finger in the air. I tap my palm to my chest in the rhythm of a heartbeat. I hook my thumb to the left. The flame surges across Ashen's blade.
Ashen grips the handle. It keeps silent beneath his slow and careful hand. He pushes the door open and we step inside the office.
A man sits slumped forward in a chair, his hands bound to its arms, his ankles to its legs. A gag stained with bloody saliva is tied through his mouth. His chest is heavy with sleep. Even with the cloth across his tongue I can smell dehydration on his breath.
Jessie Fucking Bates.
He startles awake as though I called his name. He looks at Ashen, then at me, then back again. I see hope and relief in his eyes. Ashen glances at me and his emotions are buried beneath deep sediment like a creature hiding under the sand, waiting to attack. He stalks toward Jessie and rips the gag free of his mouth.
"Oh my God,I know you,I know you from that fucked-up Sanford place. Are you here to rescue me? Thank God. These guys, these fucking Russian guys just came into my house and took me. They fuckingtook me,man. They shoved me in a van and brought me to this factory and took a bunch of blood from me and then brought me here. I have no fucking idea who they are. They never said who they were or what they were doing or why they wanted me. I don't know what the fuck is going on, man. They just took me.What the fuck, man. They just took me from my home."
Jessie descends into pleas and swears as he squirms against his bonds. Ashen turns to me. Everything he's just tried to bury is right there at the surface. I can see it in the flame that seems both bright and black in his eyes. "I think we have everything we need to know from him," he says.
An arc of fire twists through the air. A crack splits the silence of the room. A scream fills the office as a severed hand falls free of its bonds and smacks the floor.
Ashen leans toward Jessie as he thrashes in anguish and cries to the stump he holds to his chest, his blood pulsing like a clogged fountain that spills into his lap. "That is for touching what does not belong to you."
A flash of steel, a burst of flame. Another scream. Another surge of blood pumping from a raging heart. The smell fills my nose and the back of my throat. I swallow the venom that floods my mouth as Jessie's other hand drops to his feet.
