Page 53 of Ashen Souls

A digital buzz shuddered through the shadows, a sound too thin and too modern to exist in the dark. It tore through the chamber, collapsing the world around me in a single instant.

The stone walls fractured.

The scent of woodsmoke evaporated, overtaken by the smell of rain against a windowpane. The stone beneath me vanished, dissolving into scratchy cotton.

My body shook with tremors, drenched in a cold sweat. Every nerve ending I possessed was screaming for the heat that had been ripped away.

On the nightstand, my phone rattled harshly against the laminate, the blinding glare of the screen illuminating a single name:

HARPER

15

My hand shook so hard I nearly knocked the phone off the nightstand. I swiped the cracked screen, my thumb avoiding the sharp edges of glass, and pressed it to my ear.

“Harp?”

“Aves…” Harper's voice splintered into breathless, erratic bursts. “Can you… fuck. I need you to come get me.”

The residual fog of the chamber faded, and ice-cold adrenaline surged through me. Harper never stuttered. Harper never asked for rescue.

I bolted upright. The sheets clung to my damp legs. “What happened? Where are you?”

“I'm fine.” The words hitched on a suppressed sob. “No, I'm not. He's a fucking asshole.” Her breath caught again. “I thought it was just a bad date, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to shove him off me. We fought. And then he just... he drove off. Left me here in the rain.”

I slid off the bed, my bare feet hitting the floorboards. “Where is here?”

“Corner of Ninth and Holloway. By that dive bar with the flickering neon shark.” She let out a brittle, wet sound that was close to crying. “God, I'm so stupid. I thought he was just cocky, not a complete psycho…”

“Stop.” I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder as I tore off my sweat-drenched shirt. “You're not stupid. He's an asshole.”

I grabbed the first pair of jeans I could find. The denim scraped my oversensitized skin. I swallowed the lingering heat down, zipping them up.

I snatched my keys from the dresser. “Stay where you are. Don’t talk to anyone. I’m already out the door.”

“Aves...”

“I mean it, Harper. Don't move.”

The line went silent, save for the constant, isolating sound of the rain hitting the pavement on her end.

“He scared me.”

“Just keep breathing until you see my headlights.” My tone dropped into a knife-edged quiet I barely recognized as my own.

I ended the call and jammed the phone into my pocket.

I grabbed my jacket, snapping the apartment door shut and taking the stairwell two steps at a time. The night air hit me the second I pushed out onto the street, a shock of glistening asphalt and exhaust fumes that eradicated the scent of Daeren’s flesh.

I threw myself behind the wheel of my Civic, stabbing the key into the ignition. The engine turned over with a harsh rattle before catching. I gripped the steering wheel, expecting my fingers to shake.

They didn't. They were absolutely still.

I wrenched the shifter into gear and hit the gas, the tires hissing as they tore through the puddles. Daeren might be the ancient, terrifying entity waiting in the shadows, but the waking world had its own breed of monsters.

And right now, I felt dangerous enough to run one down.

The neon shark buzzed above the dive bar, casting a sickly, artificial green glare across the flooded sidewalk.