The Beautiful Ashes (Broken Destiny 1)

“Thank God,” I breathed, so glad to be able to see that I didn’t care if I was looking at a demon town.

“Don’t say that. It’s a real giveaway that we don’t belong.”

Adrian’s face was hidden by darkness, yet his tone made me imagine that he said it with one of his wry smiles.

“Good point, but aren’t we avoiding the town?” I asked, whispering in case someone was out in the blackness with us.

“Can’t. What’s known of the weapon’s location is that it was hidden in a wall, and the only walls are in town.”

“Is that all we know, or do the demons know exactly where it is?”

He snorted. “No. If they did, they would’ve used it for themselves a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t the demon that hid it do that?”

Adrian paused, seeming to choose his words, which meant I’d just be getting part of the truth again. “As it turns out, only a few people can activate the weapon’s true power. Minions can’t, and neither can the average demon. Zach said that the demon who hid it was on his way to tell a more powerful demon about it when Zach killed him.”

“Wait. You said demons could only be killed with the weapon Zach didn’t have,” I emphasized.

A shrug I felt but couldn’t see. “Archons don’t need it to kill demons, and other demons don’t need it to kill their own. The rest of us do, which includes you and me.”

Figures. “Couldn’t Zach have gotten its location before he silenced its hider forever?”

Another pause, longer this time. My temper flared. “Could you for once just answer me with the whole truth?”

“Fine.” His tone thickened. “For all I know, Zach did find out where the weapon was. Even if he didn’t, his boss knows, yet here we are. Know why? Because neither of them really cares if we live or die trying to find it.”

His brutal analysis stunned me. “But that’s...they’re...they’re on the good side,” I sputtered.

His laughter was like glass grinding together. “They win or lose this war, Ivy. Not us. We can only depend on each other, because to Archons and demons, we’re just pawns that they move around for their own purposes.”

“But Zach’s your friend,” I argued softly.

“You don’t understand Archons. They’re not fluffy beings sprinkling supernatural happy dust everywhere they go. They’re soldiers who’ve been relegated to the sidelines until the pesky issue of humanity has been settled. Frankly, I think Zach’s reached the point where he doesn’t care what happens to our race, as long as he finally gets to fight.”

What Adrian described couldn’t be true. Good couldn’t give a complicit shrug to evil, and the faith of billions of people from every race, background and creed couldn’t be worthless to whoever the Archons’ “boss” was.

“You’re wrong,” I said, still softly but with an undercurrent of iron. “We do matter to them. It just might not look that way sometimes, from our side of the fence.”

The harshness was gone from Adrian’s laughter, replaced by a despairing sort of anger.

“That’s why I still hide things from you, Ivy. If you can’t accept the way the board’s set up, you’re not nearly ready to learn the endgame yet.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s not ready,” I replied, my sense of resolve increasing. “I get why. You’ve had it bad for so long, all you see is darkness even when the lights are on.”

“Bad?” His voice changed, becoming a whisper that seared me even in the frigid temperature. “You don’t know the meaning of the word, but you’re about to find out.”

Chapter thirteen

I had braced myself, but no amount of mental preparation would’ve been enough. At least, when I finally did throw up, it matched the reaction any human would have at seeing how demons lived inside their own world.

At first, the town reminded me of a medieval fiefdom, with the overlord’s manor overlooking the serfs’ much cruder lodgings. In this case, wigwam structures were laid out in tight clusters along the lowest part of the hill. Smoke billowed from their open tops, reminiscent of pictures I’d seen of sixteenth-century Native American life. Very few people seemed to be in the wigwam village, and the ones we passed looked away when they saw Adrian. They were also skinny to the point of appearing wasted, and their clothes consisted of shapeless leather tunics that couldn’t have been nearly warm enough in these frigid temperatures.

“This area is for laborers, the lowest level of human slaves,” Adrian said tersely. “Next are overseers’ and merchants’ quarters.”

Those must have been the plain but sturdy huts that dotted the hill about a hundred yards higher than the wigwam village. Torches were interspersed among the narrow paths between them, and their interiors glowed from what I guessed were fire hearths. They looked like ancient Southwestern pueblo houses, with the addition of leather flaps covering the doorways and windows to keep the heat in. Once more, no one attempted to stop us as we walked through. In fact, anyone we passed seemed to avoid eye contact with Adrian, and he strode by as though he owned the place. I practically had to run to keep up, and since the hill was steep, it was quite a workout.

After we ascended about three hundred yards, we reached gray stone gates that surrounded what was clearly the town’s epicenter. Torches lined the exterior of the gates, but I smelled fuel and heard the unmistakable hum of generators, which explained how this area appeared to have electricity. The added lighting made it easier to see, and once I did, I stared.

This wasn’t a mini city located at the top of a hill. The city was the hill. The closest thing I could compare it to was a gargantuan pyramid. The base had to be a mile long, with courtyards I couldn’t fully see from my lower vantage point. Massive balconies with elaborately carved stone columns showed people milling around inside the pyramid, and one entire side of it seemed to house a huge stadium.

Further up, the corners had huge faces carved into them. One was a lion and one was an eagle, with the predators’ mouths open as though about to devour their prey. The very top of the pyramid blazed with so much light that it looked like a star had landed there. I couldn’t make out much detail, though. It had to be as high up as the sphere on the Empire State building.

I was so awed that I didn’t realize someone had come up to us until I heard Adrian speaking in that poetically guttural language. My gaze snapped to his left, where a dark-haired, muscled man now stood. It wasn’t the metal breastplate over his brown camouflage clothes that caught my attention, although that fashion mistake should never be repeated. It was the man’s face. Light rolled over his eyes like the passing of clouds, and inky black wings rose and fell beneath his cheekbones, as if he had a tattoo that could magically appear and disappear.