Crown of Ashes Read online

  “Yes, the dance.” Logan bounces his knee to mine a moment. “Lexy just put it all in perspective. Who gives a crap about a mysterious girl wearing someone else’s face or the fact you and Skyla had a moment alone—when we’ve got an ’80s dance on the horizon?”

  “Yup. How I wish that was my greatest worry.”

  “Can I ask what happened between you and Skyla?”

  “She wanted to know about Melody Winters.”

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t know.” I wipe my face down with my hands. “Something about Chloe gifting Skyla a ring that Melody says she stole. I told her everything I knew about that chick. Anyway, nothing too earth-shattering happened between Skyla and me. I’m still in the doghouse, barking at the moon like a fucking loon. Dude, it’s days like this that have me believing I’ve screwed things up for good.”

  “My dad—your grandpa had a saying”—Logan claps his hand over my shoulder—“all’s well that ends well, and if it isn’t ending well, it isn’t the end.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “It sounds good to me, and I’m dead.”

  A dull laugh rumbles from me. “I’m a dead man, too. It’s just a matter of time, dude. This is nothing but a long farewell for me.”

  “But those boys—” His voice trails off. “They can sure use you around for the next six decades or so. I know what it’s like to lose a parent—both parents. It sucks. No offense to Barron and Emma. God knows I appreciate them, but there’s something about having your own mother and father around that’s a special blessing.”

  “And that’s why I’m fighting.” I stare out at the unmapped darkness that bleeds into the ocean. “What exactly I’m fighting against, I am not sure.”

  Logan slaps me over the knee. “Then it’s time to find out. You up for a drive?”

  “Depends on where we’re headed.”

  “We’re going on a hunt.” He jumps up, and I’m slow to follow. “Lex”—he shouts through the screen—“I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Okay, hon! Take your time. I’ll be right here waiting.”

  Logan jogs down to his truck, and a quiet laugh strums from him. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says for my ears only.

  I hop in next to him as he revs the engine. “So, what are we hunting for?” I slip on my seat belt as the truck jackknifes out of the driveway with a jolt.

  “Answers.”

  Paragon is known for many things, but answers are not on the list.

  The highway stretches out before us, hardly visible beneath the white plumes of fog cropping up like ghosts. We drive deeper into the night as the terrain gives way to large stretches of shadowed land without the hint of a streetlight to guide our way. I’ve walked along this stretch of road before, so unknowably black in the night with a darkness so enveloping it convinces you to surrender. It tempts you to lie down between the evergreens and fall into a deep slumber with eternity curling its fingers for you to follow along for the ride.

  I know where we’re headed, and the closer we get, the less I want to be here.

  Logan pulls in high up on the driveway as Demetri’s house sprouts up like an overgrown haunted jack-o-lantern.

  “He’s not going to tell us anything new. Why bother?”

  “Dude.” Logan winces as we hop out of the car and into the damp Paragon night. “You need to loosen up. You’re already in deep shit. What the hell do you have to lose?”

  We head on up, and I give a brisk knock to the door before letting myself inside. “The damn thing is never locked.”

  “Of course, it’s not”—Logan smirks—“the most dangerous person on the island is in the house. He probably craves the challenge.”

  We step through the foyer and into the cavernous living room with its wall-to-wall marble flooring, the enormous fireplace blazing with flames, and not too far from that, Demetri laughs it up with some dude dressed in a trench coat.

  “Dudley?” Logan and I say in unison.

  “Gentlemen!” Demetri holds out his arms, welcoming us, an amber-colored drink cradled in one hand and a cigar in the other. Dudley is sporting the same toxic duet.

  I pause a moment, taking in the strange sight. First, I don’t know Demetri and Dudley to be scotch toting, cigar smoking friends. Second—“What the hell is up with the celebration?” My blood boils at the thought of the two of them saluting my efforts to take a walk on the wicked side.

  “Young Olivers.” Dudley frowns at the sight of us before taking a puff of that stogie in his hand.

  “Son!” Demetri takes a few steps forward as Logan and I head over. “Please—you and your uncle must partake.” He points to the bar behind him. “Whiskey aged seven hundred years in an oak barrel.”

  Dudley grunts. “How many times do I have to inform you it’s scotch? It’s from Scotland. It must be referred to as scotch.”

  I called it.

  “I suppose the whiskey is in the details.” Demetri winks my way.

  “It’s the devil,” Logan says, heading over and pouring himself a finger length and one for myself. Neither Logan nor I are big drinkers, but something this rare should probably wet our tongues if for nothing else but the novelty of it.

  “Cuban cigars.” Demetri tips his head to the humidor resting next to the whiskey—scotch whatever.

  “Interesting.” I take up two and hand one to Logan.

  Logan looks to Dudley. “When in Rome.”

  Buried in that phrase is a barb about his honeymoon with Skyla. I’m not sure how Dudley fits into the equation, but I know for a fact he does. Dudley always seems to factor into the equation.

  Demetri lights us up, and before you know it, the four of us are smoking cigars and swilling scotch like old friends. I wish I could say there was tension in the room. I wish I could say that Logan and I were about to go postal and toss both of their celestial asses into the fire, but the truth is, we’re too busy amusing ourselves with the flavor of smoke on our tongues. I take a sip of the scotch, and a fire burns straight down through my esophagus. Tastes bitter and sweet at the same time—like life and death all rolled into one. It tastes like my own tears the night I gifted my destiny to the devil standing before me.

  “What brings you this way?” Dudley blows a plume of smoke in our direction. “Let me guess. Skyla has you lathered in a tizzy, and now you’ve come to claw your way out of the havoc you’ve ensnared yourself in.” He and Demetri share a laugh, and it stuns me.

  “Is this what you do in your spare time?” I’m talking to Dudley more than I am Demetri. “Laugh at the state of Skyla’s world? I am a part of her world whether or not you’ve bothered to notice.”

  Dudley’s affect falls hard and flat. “I am Skyla’s world. The two of you are simply stepping stones that destiny has laid out to ease her path to me.”

  Logan scoffs at the arrogant Sector. “The boys are her world, Dudley. Check your ego. I’m no stepping-stone, and neither is Gage. We are boulders, partitions to a love that you will never feel. You’ll never have her heart. Not the way we have it.”

  A silent laugh bounces through me, but I can’t help it. Logan is right. Skyla loves us both. I’m not up for sharing, though. Honest to God, half the time I think I’m the boulder, the partition to his love with Skyla. But I’m greedy as hell when it comes to that girl. She’s mine, and I’m not sharing with anyone.

  “Interesting.” Dudley pegs me with a look that assures me he’s heard every word. I don’t know all of the details concerning his powers, and I’m not interested. Instead, I take another puff of the cigar and blow my own billow of smoke his way. I take another swig of the scotch and enjoy the burn all the way down.

  “What men you’ve turned into.” Dudley scoffs, that dead look in his eyes is targeted right at me. “It must make you feel quite grown up with a drink in your hand, a Cuban at the ready.”

  “Now, now, Dudley.” Demetri gives a sarcastic smile to the Sector. It’s clear he’s playing of
f the name Logan and I choose to use with him. “This is a rite of passage. And a privilege, considering the aged libation, the aged Cuban in our hands as well.”

  “What are you boys celebrating, anyway?” Logan puffs away on his cigar as if all of the angst and tension he just ushered into the room a few moments ago were simply for show.

  “Ezrina.” Dudley tips his head toward him. “She’s with child. She and Heathcliff will be parents come fall.”

  “Whoa.” Logan and I exchange a quick glance.

  “That’s great news.” I take a step back, trying to ingest it. “We were just with her, and she didn’t say a word. We’ll have to congratulate her the next time we see her.” We were just with her, and she didn’t say a word because she was livid with Skyla for waking the dead.

  I glance to Dudley. If he heard me earlier, he heard me now.

  His demeanor hardens over mine. Knew it. The bastard has been reading my thoughts all along. “Great news, indeed.” He knocks back the rest of his drink. “I’m hoping for a boy. Marshall is a splendid name.”

  Demetri is quick to elbow him. “I’m vying for my own name. Nothing says male virility like Demetri.”

  “I see that’s why you named your son Gage.” Dudley lifts his drink, and I’m about a second from knocking it out of his hand.

  “All right—enough shooting the shit.” I set my drink down hard onto the coffee table. It’s probably fashioned out of some poor soul’s casket once Demetri ate the body for breakfast. He’s a monster. I can’t lose sight of that.

  “I’m no monster. I’m your father, Gage.” Demetri lifts his glass.

  So he heard. The house must work in the same way Ahava does, linking thoughts or some shit.

  “DNA donor.” I offer a tight smile. “What’s the real powwow about?” I glare at Dudley a moment. “I don’t buy for a minute that you’ve stopped your wicked day to toast Ezrina’s maternal milestone.”

  “Ah, yes, the truth. Perhaps it was the scotch itself.” Demetri tips his head toward me. “I had forgotten all about that barrel my grandfather had stored in the basement until I stumbled upon it this afternoon. Do feel free to help yourself whenever you please.” He glances to Logan. “I extend the invitation to you as well. Bring your brothers if you’d like. I might even break it out for the twins’ first birthday party. Nothing but the best for my grandchildren.”

  Logan scoffs at the thought. “That won’t be necessary, and I highly doubt you’ll make the invite list. Skyla is their mother, and I respect her wishes.”

  Logan shoots me a curt look. I know what he wants—for me to let Demetri know he doesn’t meet my standards for the invite list either. But I can’t do it. I don’t want to or plan on rejecting him in any way. The truth is, I need Demetri as much as I need Skyla at this point. He holds the curse, or at least the reins to it.

  “The curse.” Demetri nods, and I hold back a satisfied smile at how easy that was for me. “I’ll tell you this, son—one day, fairly soon, you will refer to it as a blessing.”

  “Doubtful.” I take a deep breath and glare at Dudley a moment. “But according to Wesley, very much possible. So, what’s next? I’m here. You’re here. Fill me in on what’s to come. Maybe you don’t know this about your long-lost son, but I hate suspense.”

  Dudley’s chest bounces with a silent laugh. “You are the personification of suspense, Gage. As much as the universe is holding its breath to see what becomes of your wife, it’s equally invested in your next move. Don’t discount who you are or what you’re destined for. This road before you doesn’t lie in your father’s bounds. This is your journey. You will dictate where the road leads. So, if you’re asking him what comes next, you are asking the wrong person. Find a mirror and repeat the question.”

  The room clogs up with a stunned silence.

  According to Dudley, I’m in charge. I fashion my next step. I choose the road. I choose who I love, who I hate, who I kill, and who I let live. Then it’s easy. I choose Skyla. I choose home. I choose my boys. I choose life and not death. I choose Celestra and not the Counts or whatever the heck they’re calling themselves these days. I choose the Sectors over the Fems because God knows they will not plunge the world into darkness. And I most certainly choose to liberate the Viden youth out of their current state of Spectator bondage. There. Done. Simple. I hope to hell everyone in the room heard it.

  I glower at Demetri and Dudley in turn, but their peaceable smiles, those content looks on their faces don’t offer me a clue as to what they’re thinking.

  “Well intended.” Dudley gives an approving nod my way, but there’s something about that veiled sadness on his face that lets me know it was most likely for not. Dudley doesn’t shit around.

  Demetri puts out his cigar on the marble stand next to the fire. “You’ll do well by yourself if you follow your heart.” He glances to me with that strange penetrative look that spells out my defeat before I ever get there. “You will, indeed, follow your heart. That is the beauty of your destiny, Gage. Not even you will be able to deny it.”

  “He can, and he will.” Logan slaps a hand over my shoulder. “He’s got his heart in the right place. A heart of gold. There’s not an ounce of wickedness in him. I know him better than I know myself.”

  “That may be so.” Dudley breezes by the two of us, dropping his cigar into his scotch before abandoning his drink. “But this isn’t about wickedness. It’s about control. I assure you those are two very different things. The Sectors are immovable, Jock Strap. You remember that.”

  “Sector Marshall,” Demetri calls after him, and Dudley turns one last time. “You’ve been removed before. It will happen again.”

  Dudley frowns over to me before reverting his gaze back to Demetri. “If you’re counting on him to get you where you need to be, then you have a tougher road ahead of you than one can imagine.”

  “And you’re counting on the girl?” Demetri hollers after him, that perennial smile still tight on his face.

  The girl being Skyla. Logan and I exchange glances because neither of us appreciates him framing her as a simple girl.

  Dudley takes a few steps back into the room. “That girl is my spirit wife. Don’t underestimate her. Each time I’ve done so myself, I’ve lived to regret it.” He takes off, and I spring after him.

  “Dudley, wait.” I chase him down the stairs into the damp fog.

  “What is it, Jock Strap?” His body turns vaporous, see-through like smoke right before my eyes, and it’s like talking to a ghost. Something in me enrages when he calls me by that locker room riddled moniker. I’ve hated it for years. I’m sick of it, and I’m sick of all of the bullshit surrounding my life at the moment.

  “My name is Gage—a perfectly fine name for a man. It’d be good for you to learn it—to use it—if you want to see me on your side.”

  Those fiery red eyes of his illuminate the night as he presses all of his own rage into me. I can feel it, scalding me from the inside like a boiling kettle. “And so it begins.”

  He evaporates into the night, and a calm fills the surrounding area.

  And so it begins. My heart thumps hard in my chest as Logan and Demetri make their way out onto the porch. Is Dudley right? Am I already teaming up with Demetri simply because of my disdain toward that particular Sector? Shit. I can’t let that happen. I’ll need to find a way to make peace with him somehow. There’s no way I should be caving in so easily. Dudley is one of the good guys whether I want to admit it or not. This isn’t the time for me to be an asshole and hold past grievances against him.

  “Everything okay?” Logan pulls out his keys, and his truck burps to life.

  “Yeah, it’s fine. Why don’t you head back to Whitehorse and take care of whatever it is you have to do with Lex? I’m gonna hang out for a sec. I’ll teleport home. Better yet, I might just walk. I think I need to clear my head a bit.”

  “No worries.” He slaps me five and takes off into the night.

  “Come.” De
metri tries to lure me back into the house, but I make my way up to the porch, and that’s about as far as I’m willing to move.

  “What’s going on?” I call out into the night as if he were on the other side of the island. “I need you to be truthful with me at all times if this thing between us is going to work.” There. Those are words I could never have said around Logan. For as much as Logan wants me to burn this area of my life to the ground, a part of me understands that I had better own it before it owns me.

  Demetri lands his right hand over my shoulder, his dark eyes bearing into mine. “I solemnly swear on all that is holy that I will always be truthful with you, my prized son. You are my child, born of my own flesh and blood. You are my heir, the light of my eyes, the life-force that makes my heart beat.”

  “I see two problems with this, Pops. Your eyes shine like coal, and I’m pretty certain you don’t have a heart. I’m a pawn. I get it. You need me. You are confident in my lack of understanding of the situation, and you believe with all of the heart you don’t really have that I will inadvertently, all on my own, fuck things up for my wife and her people.”

  He winces with the expletive. “In truth, yes and no. I do believe that your lack of understanding is your own, but like anyone in life, you’ll ask the questions and seek out the answers. The answers stem from you as much as the questions. And as for foiling the efforts of your precious beloved, I cannot foresee that the things you will do to hamper her efforts—perhaps they will be accidental on your part. Dudley may have underestimated your wife on occasion, but I never have. You see, I understand the principle that once someone is filled with a holy desire to do right by their people, there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can stop them. Skyla is her father’s daughter. Far more dangerous than that, she is her mother’s daughter. Both of those aforementioned deceased in-laws of yours were never ones to follow the rules to get what they wanted. They both paid with their lives, Gage. Let that be a lesson to you.” His eyes flare like heated coals, an irony within an irony. “You will pay with your life if you decided to forge a path that bristles destiny’s desire.”