Page 5 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

“Mortal? What?” Angela’s fingers curled against the brick wall, trying to rationalize all of this.

Zarek didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his gloved palm towards her.

Angela braced, waiting for him to touch her the way a paramedic checks for wounds.

But nothing happened.

Again, he tilted his head, as if listening to some hidden sound.

“Who are you?” She wanted to ask What are you, but the answer would have been too much for her mind and body to cope with right now.

Zarek turned away from her. “Go home.”

“No.” Yes is what she should have said. “I—he, you—”

Zarek’s gaze snapped back in her direction. A dry warmth brushed against her skin, as the air shimmered near his shoulders like heat on an open desert highway.

Angela was searching for her escape, and her handbag, when that indescribable wrongness returned. Stronger this time, making the air taste of old metal and blood threaded with the cloying sweetness of rotting fruit. The stench hit her all at once, making her stomach turn.

It wasn’t just bad.

It was evil.

But not from one presence. Two.

Angela’s eyes widened. “Behind you.”

Zarek turned as two more Black Cloaks slid out of the shadows like smoke learning to walk. Their hoods hid their faces in a darkness that looked too thick to be empty.

The air dropped to near-freezing temperatures, making the alley seem smaller as Zarek’s posture shifted. Blades already in hand, they flashed once. Twice.

Abruptly, both Black Cloaks stopped mid-step, hardening into gray statues. Their stony shells cracked and collapsed to become more ash that scattered across the alley’s floor.

Zarek spun around to face her, frowning. “How did you see them before I did?”

Angela’s mouth opened, then closed. She didn’t know the answer, when she was still struggling to comprehend what she’d seen, ready to run except her legs still felt like borrowed things.

Zarek stepped in close enough that the heat came off him in waves. With his eyes fixed on hers, he paused, as if something were wrong.

And that was the only normal thing about this entire confrontation.

“One green eye,” he murmured. “One blue.”

People always noticed. And they always stared, sometimes asking what had happened, like she owed them an explanation for being born wrong.

But Zarek didn’t ask. He just looked at her as if she were a problem he couldn’t solve. “What are you?”

Angela’s spine stiffened. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

He hadn’t hurt her. And she couldn’t ignore the traitorous flicker of gratitude that rose inside for being able to breathe. But she couldn’t trust any of this either.

“What about him?” She nodded to the injured man. “You can’t just leave him here.”

In one move, Zarek lifted the man with impossible ease, hoisting him over his shoulder like dead weight.

“Right. Okay. Sure. This is all perfectly normal.”

Zarek’s eyes flicked back to her. “Go home.”