Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

“That doesn’t sound so great.”

“You get used to it. I thought it would do her good to unplug and get out in the fresh air, spend some time with Mina …” Jack waved away the rest. “Enough of that. So what’s your story?”

“Me?” Alex gave up trying to force the WindPro’s bent struts. “I’m just figuring things out.”

“Where you headed?”

“Mirror Point.”

“On Superior? That’s pretty damn far. I wouldn’t want my daughter out here alone. No telling what might happen.”

She knew Jack meant well, but one of the perks of being terminally ill was you got to break all kinds of rules. So she pushed back. “Jack, I don’t need your permission, and I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it. You kids think you’re invulnerable, but there are wild dogs in these woods and all kinds of nuts.”

Not to mention old guys poking their noses in other people’s business. But that would be too snarky, and she had a feeling that Jack was hassling her because he couldn’t fix Ellie. So she focused on dismantling her WindPro and let the silence go. After a moment, Jack reached down to squeeze her shoulder. “Sorry. I know I’m just being an old fart.”

“Jack,” she said, exasperated both with her stove and the conversation. “I appreciate your concern, but it’s really none of your—”

All of a sudden, Jack’s hand clamped down hard enough to hurt. Surprised, she looked up and then whatever she’d been about to say evaporated on her tongue when she got a good look at his face.

“I …” Jack’s face twisted in a sudden spasm, and he pressed the heels of both hands to his temples. “I … wait, wait …”

“Jack!” Alarmed, she reached for him—and then she saw the dog. Mina was completely rigid, her muscles quivering, the hackles along her spine as stiff as a Mohawk. The dog’s black lips curled back to reveal two glistening rows of very sharp, very white teeth, and a growl began somewhere in the dog’s chest.

Alex felt a stab of fear. “Jack, Mina’s—”

Jack gagged, a deep, harshly liquid sound. An instant later, a sudden jet of bright red blood boiled from his mouth to splatter onto the icy rocks. Alex screamed just as Mina let out a sudden high yelp—

And a second later, the pain had Alex, too.

4

The pain was fire, a laser that scorched her brain. A sudden metallic chattering bubbled in her ears, and her vision sheeted first red and then glare-white, and then she was stumbling, her feet tangling, and she fell. Something wet and hot spurted from her throat and dribbled down her chin.

Jack was in just as much trouble, maybe worse. His skin was so chalky that his blood looked fake, like something for Halloween. His legs folded and he began to sag, one hand digging at his chest, and then he simply dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He hit hard, his head bouncing off the rock and his glasses jumping away, the lenses sparking in the sun.

Stunned, she could only sprawl there like a broken doll. Blood pooled in her throat and she began to cough as her vision spun like water swirling down a drain. That weird metallic screech was still very loud, splashing down from the sky. What was that? Dizzy, a drill-bit of pain coring into her brain, she dragged her head up, struggling to focus. At first, she thought she must be passing out, because the sky was getting blacker and blacker—but then she realized the blackness was moving.

Birds. There were birds. Not just a few or a flock, but hundreds and hundreds, thousands. All kinds, all shapes, all sizes. And the birds were everywhere, in the sky above and exploding up from the valley below in a spiraling, screaming funnel cloud. They weren’t organized, not following the way a flock does, but smashing into one another, either because there were so many or the pain that had her in its iron grip had them, too.

Something thudded against her legs. Shrieking, she flinched away as a dying crow tumbled to the rock. One massive wing was bent all the way back, and its black beak had snapped clean off, like lead in a pencil. All around, dead and dying birds began to shower from the sky.

There came a loud, inhuman scream. Cringing, Alex darted a look over her shoulder just in time to see a trio of deer crashing up the hill. They hit the ridge and then reared, driving their hooves into the rock with a sound like jackhammers. One—a large doe—let out a harsh, wet, coughing bray, and then blood burst from its mouth in a crimson halo. The doe reared again, its front legs pedaling, and the other two answered, slicing the air with their hooves. Then the deer surged forward, as if pulled toward the edge by an unseen hand.

No, no, no. Alex’s thoughts came in jagged splinters. No, you’re not … you’re not seeing this. They’re not going to … they can’t …

But they did.

The deer catapulted off the ridge and over the cliff into empty space.

For an instant, they hung, suspended between the bird-choked sky and the darker maw of the valley, and Alex thought of flying reindeer …

But then the real world took over again. Gravity closed its fist.

The deer fell, their screams tailing after like spent comets, and they were gone.

5

A split second later something snapped in her head, an almost physical lurch as whatever had her by the scruff of the neck let go. The vise around her skull eased. Her stomach instantly rebelled and she vomited onto the rock. Even when she was sure there was nothing left to bring up, she hung there on all fours, exhausted, a sparkling sensation of pins and needles coursing through her veins and prickling her skin as if her entire body had fallen asleep and her brain had only now figured out how to reconnect. Her heart was hammering. The inside of her head felt slushy and bruised, like someone had stuck in a spoon and given a good stir. She was shaky, as if a good walloping dose of chemo had flooded through her veins. A slow ooze wormed down the right side of her neck, and when she swiped at her skin, her fingers came away bloody.

Oh my God. She closed her eyes against a lunge of sharp-nailed panic clawing its way out of her chest and into her throat. Take it easy, take it—

“Graaaandpaaaa?”

Ellie groveled on hands and knees at the forest’s verge. A slick of blood painted her upper lip. “Grandpaaa?” Her voice hitched and rose a notch. “Grandpaaaaaa?”

“Ellie.” Alex pushed to a sit, but too fast. The world went off-kilter in a woozy tilt, and she had to fight against another wave of nausea as her stomach crammed into the back of her throat.