Dance of Ashes and Smoke (Age of Monsters Book 1) (19 page)

I
woke to a warm, familiar voice again and turned towards it with a sleepy smile. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.”

I sat up with a gasp, my mind taking a second to clear. Apparently, I still hadn’t gotten enough sleep. “What are you doing here?”

Jackson drew back, face stiffening. “I came to get Adele for breakfast. The young kids have their meal before everyone else and then play while the rest of us have a meeting.”

I’d slept the rest of the day and night? “There are other kids here?”

“Yes. We aren’t an army of teenagers even though we’re led by one.”

“Summer is a teenager?”

“She’s nineteen, so yes.”

Not liking how easy it was to fall back into old patterns with him, I got off the bed. “I’m going to check on Liv. Should I come get Adele later?”

He shook his head, he clenched his jaw. “I’ll bring her back. Do you want to go to the meeting?”

“No. I’m not leaving her.”

His hair toss was almost as good as mine. “Very well.”

While he helped Adele get her shoes on, I fled downstairs. Malek smiled at me. “She’s pretty much the same, but she has a little more color in her cheeks.”

“Good. Thanks for taking care of her.” My words tasted like ashes, but I wasn’t about to piss off or offend the guy keeping my best friend alive.

“Of course. Jax told me she plays the cello. That’s my favorite instrument.”

“She’s amazing. She was accepted into Julliard.” The usual wince whenever those words leave my mouth didn’t happen.

His smile widened. “That’s impressive.”

“So is she.”

“She’s going to be fine. You’ll get her back.”

“I know.” I refused to accept any other option.

“Are you all right with me going to the meeting? You can come get me if something goes wrong, but I have no fear anything will.”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I wished the monsters would just hurry up and leave so I could have one moment alone to think.

“I’ll see you later. There’s coffee on the counter if you want some.”

He left with Jackson who had Adele riding on him piggyback style. I knew he would never hurt her, but I didn’t like seeing the kid so in love with a monster. Monsters killed her parents. I didn’t have the heart to keep her away from him though. She didn’t have many loved ones left.

I sat with Olivia for a while, but seeing her so still and ill in the bed tortured me, so I went out onto the deck and sat in one of the chairs, wrapping my hands around the hot mug to warm myself.

White fog rolled over the valley below, the tips of the smaller mountains peeking through. The sky was a blue so pale it was almost white. Everywhere was white and bright and blinding.

I preferred the shadows where I could hide. Where I could strike.

I wanted to scream, to send my voice out into the air, to shatter the silence suffocating me, to expel the darkness inside me. Flakes of snow swirled and danced through the air, speckling my hair and clothes. A huff of humorless laughter fell from my mouth. I was stuck. How could we leave on a motorcycle in this mess? We wouldn’t be able to get down the mountain.

Adele seemed to love it here and Olivia probably would too once she woke up. And it was like a cult. A bunch of idiots listening to the words of a girl who thought we could somehow have peace with things out of nightmares and horror novels at our side.

These weren’t creatures from a paranormal romance novel. They were dangerous and were making great strides in killing us off. They’d never agree to peace.

And what about the rest of the world?

It was impossible.

They were all mad here.

And I refused to get sucked up into it.

I stared down at the snow floating and melting on the surface of my coffee, unable to even enjoy it with my stomach in knots.

“Hello? Where am I? Monet?”

The coffee mug broke into fragments and coffee soaked my boots. Olivia was awake.

A
fter sobbing all over her and trying to explain everything, Olivia and I sat in silence, our hands clenched together.

“So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. Jax is a Pegasus shifter, a Buffy wannabe is building an army to bring peace between the races, and Georgia has snow and mountains?”

I laughed and cried a little more. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”

She smiled. “Me too. I missed so much.”

“Do you want to stay?” I tried to hide my dread.

She didn’t meet my eyes. “I’m with you. You know that.”

“I still want to know your preference.”

“Since when?” she scoffed.

“Since you almost died.”

She looked up at me. “We both did. And if it wasn’t for these people, we would have. I want Tashia dead as much as you, but we’ve tried over and over and she keeps winning. And people keep dying or almost dying because of it. We need help. And as crazy as their mission statement is, I get it. No one wants to spend generation after generation at war.”

My chest tightened. “I know.”

“But like I said, if you want to leave, we’ll leave. Though if we do, I think we should leave Adele here. She’s with other kids and is relatively safe. We can always come back for her.”

Groaning, I rubbed my temples. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

“We’re stuck here for now. Unless you want to steal one of their vehicles. And we don’t know where she who must not be named is anyway.”

“No.”

“Let me get the lay of the land up in here and let’s rest up and heal.” She scratched at the bandage on her neck, pulling it off. “Whoops.”

I snatched it from her and shoved it at her face. “Look.”

Her brow furrowed. “No blood?”

“Your neck is completely clear. Not even a scar.” My heart tried its best to pound its way from my chest.

“What? How is that possible?”

I ripped the bandage off my neck. No blood on mine either. “Is there anything on my neck?”

She shook her head, eyes wide. “Nope.”

I took the one on my face off too. No blood.

“You still have the scars, but they’re healed. The stitches are gone. They look months old.”

I reached a hand up to touch my face. It didn’t hurt. I hadn’t noticed the pain in my face and neck was nonexistent with everything else happening. “Still want to stay?”

“If they can heal our wounds like this? Heck yeah.”

I wasn’t so impressed. Why did they hide it? They had to realize we’d find out sooner or later. If they’d healed us with some kind of monster magic, what ramifications were there—what long-term effects would we have to live with? I was sick and tired of being lied to and having things hidden from me.

And what sort of powers could do this? Was it Jackson? I’d always suspected the healing he’d done hadn’t been quite natural. Had he left us suffering to protect his cover?

It was time to get over myself and demand real answers from him. Maybe then, I could consider staying since Olivia and Adele would be happier and safer here.

I
didn’t get the chance to talk to Jackson until after dinner when he brought Adele back along with Summer so she could give Liv the same speech she’d given me. I found him on the deck of the Wolf Cabin watching the sunset with a drink swirling in his glass, the half empty bottle on the floor between him and Malek. I overheard sorceress and a whispered town name before they noticed my presence. I filed away the information to look into later if I couldn’t get anything out of Jackson.

Malek got to his feet and slipped past me with a nod and a smile. I could have sworn he whispered good luck as the door clicked shut behind him.

Jackson looked over at me and raised his glass, some of it sloshing over the side from the clumsy movement. “Cheers. Wanna drink?”

It made me uneasy. I’d never seen him like that, no sign of the smug, goofy guy who used to make me laugh despite myself. I didn’t know what to expect if I interrogated him, but he owed me answers. Real ones. “Uh, no thanks.”

“I take it you’ve decided now’s the time? To have the conversation. To accuse me of being a monster who can’t be trusted?”

My nose wrinkled at the booze wafting through the air. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“You can save it. I already know everything you’re going to say and nothing I can say will change your mind about me, so what’s the point?”

“Did you heal our vamp bites?” I leaned back against the railing.

“No. I’m not that skilled. I’m good with herbs, but I can’t heal on that scale. Do you really think I wouldn’t have risked exposure to heal your face? That with all the wounds you’ve accumulated, I’d have just let you suffer to keep my secret?”

“I don’t know. I clearly don’t know you at all.”

He tossed back his drink. “I’m the same guy I was before you found out I can turn into a Pegasus. That’s the only part of myself I kept from you.”

“A pretty important part.”

His brows raised. “Is it really? It isn’t who I am, it’s just a power I have. Is this because I held a small part of myself back from you or is it because of your hatred for monsters? My kind ruined your world, your future, killed your loved ones. And you wonder why I didn’t disobey orders? You’d never have let me close if I’d told you from the beginning. You’d have hated me for something I have no control of. But now you get the excuse of getting up on your high horse and claiming it’s because of the deception.”

“What have you gotten us into, Jackson? What is this place?”

He winced. “It’s just what Summer explained. No more, no less. We just didn’t tell you about the healing right away because we didn’t want you to freak out. Malek is a phoenix shifter. His tears heal. But the wounds on your face were too far healed for him to be able to fix completely.”

I turned away to return inside, unsatisfied, but unable to deal with him drunk and bitter.

“And she runs.” His words chased after me and echoed inside my head for hours after.

They were especially loud as I wrote my letters of goodbye and explanation to Liv and Adele. As I packed food and weapons.

As I stole an ATV.