Page 32 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

Focus.

“I’ll get the first aid kit.” She caught her hand on the doorframe and peered back. “Do you need anything to drink?”

“What liquor do you have?”

She shrugged. “Vodka. Wine.”

“Vodka. Bring the bottle.”

“That I can do.”

In the kitchen, she filled the kettle then put it on the stove to boil. From the pantry, she dragged out a large glass bowl, the first aid kit, and the box of salt. From the drawers, she pulled out some clean cloths and the fresh bottle of vodka from the freezer. All while refusing to let herself think too hard, not even when she poured several heavy handfuls of salt into the bowl.

With a dry, rhythmic hiss, the salt fell as the familiar briny scent of minerals rose. The salt crystals seemed to mock the shadows, scattering shards of light reflecting from the kitchen lamp.

She’d read once that Roman soldiers were partly paid in salt, an ancient preservative that had kept civilizations fed, roads clear, wounds clean, and evil—apparently—very, very dead.

Salt had no additive number, and it had no warning label from some panicked social media groups demanding it be removed from school canteens. Just sodium chloride, the original preservative, sitting quietly in a cardboard cylinder next to the stove.

Not that she’d gone looking for that information. But living with Claudine had turned food deliveries into heavily vetted events. Soaps and detergents required every label be read like legal briefs before they went into the shopping cart. Salt was one of the few things that made the approved list of her childhood. And Angela had just thrown it at a demon-thing wearing a black cloak like some oversized gremlin that belonged in some D-grade horror movie.

And here she was, about to use salt to tend the wound of a man too stubborn to go to a hospital because, obviously, the full tactical armor of some cosplay outfit would raise questions that no triage nurse was equipped to handle.

She drizzled boiling water over the salt, which dissolved into a cloudy solution that steamed faintly against the edges of the glass bowl. Warm water and salt, a simple solution that had been used to cleanse wounds for thousands of years.

But there was nothing simple about this.

How could ordinary kitchen salt burn a Black Cloak so badly that it wailed in pain?

It just wasn’t possible.

When she returned to the bedroom, that putrid smell was polluting her home. It was like oil clinging to the air around Zarek’s wound, seeping rot that embedded into the sheets. A wretched aroma of burned metal and old blood left too long in the heat; it turned her stomach and made her almost retreat from her room.

She’d felt this before.

Never as bad as this, but enough to cross the street when a stranger passed too close. Those times she’d felt uneasy in rooms with certain people she couldn’t explain knowing how, or when someone was innocent in court.

She’d never had a word for it.

Until now…

Evil.

The Black Cloaks were saturated with that stench that had followed her home. It was in her clothes and on her skin.

Worse, the poison was burning through Zarek’s veins.

Evil. Was. Real!

Her heart pounded so hard that she struggled to breathe. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t had a panic attack since she was a kid. Well, not until that first night of nearly getting killed by that monster that triggered the nightmares that wouldn’t stop. Even her hands trembled making the bowl of hot, salty water slosh around inside.

“Angela?” Zarek’s low voice cut through her thoughts. “I’m here. Stay with me. There is no need for panic.”

She exhaled shakily and moved to his side, setting the bowl down.

“I’m…” Anything but okay, but she needed to help him. “Just, please, don’t let it…” Take you. His wound had an unnatural darkness threaded through it, like black webs of poison created for one purpose: to make him suffer. “It’s burning you, isn’t it?”

The smell made her sick, while his presence was the only reason she remained calm and didn’t go screeching down the street in the rain.