The Hour of Dust and Ashes

my blood pressure and added to the adrenaline already pumping through my system.

Hank turned to me suddenly and grabbed my arm. A deep frown marred his shadowed features. “Christ, Charlie, what the hell am I supposed to do, watch it kill you?” He glanced down the tunnel. “Don’t ask me to do that. Don’t ask me to step aside and just stand here.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I knew what was coming for me, but the idea that Hank would have to stand by and watch … He just wasn’t made like that and it showed in his aura and the chaotic anger emanating from him. He was tense, jaw tight, holding the flashlight so tightly, his knuckles were white.

He released me, his frown deepening in exasperation. “Why are you smiling?”

Before I could think better of it I grabbed his face. His stubble scratched my palms as I rose on my tiptoes and kissed him full on the mouthhen stepped back.

He stared at me, dumbfounded.

“Thank you,” I said, removing my jacket and weapons and then handing them to him. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

I jogged down the tunnel toward the sylph.

She was petite, pretty, stockier than the other two. A tough little thing by the expression she wore. Her brown hair was braided in several small cornrows and pulled back into a high ponytail. It made her large eyes look more slanted and her cheekbones more prominent. A brown tattoo fanned out from the corner of her eye in a swirling design, like some intricate leaf, and her irises burned a mean green flecked with brown.

She wore a gold torque and two gold armbands, and a bare minimum of clothing like her sisters, though hers looked like some kind of suede material.

“Earth, I presume,” I said, coming to a stop before her.

“Emain,” she introduced herself. “And you’re Charlie.”

“I am.”

No sooner than the words were out of my mouth, the ground trembled at my feet and opened up. Hank’s shout behind me filled the tunnel and mingled with my gasp.

One minute I was standing and the next I was waist-deep in the earth, completely trapped. The faint beginnings of panic flirted with my mind. Dirt hugged me from my chest down. But my arms were free, thank God.

My flashlight was kicked out of my hand. It hit the wall and landed on the ground. It remained on, however, and while it wasn’t pointed directly at me and the sylph, it was enough to illuminate the space and allow me to see the legs in front of me.

The bare knees bent and Emain’s face appeared in front of me, one side illuminated and the other shadowed. The skin closest to the ground shifted color, blending into the shades of the dirt like a chameleon’s. “Neat trick,” I said, trying to control my breathing.

Her face moved closer, eyes narrowing. “Tell your siren to back off or he’s going under.”

Hank’s shadow fell over us. I angled the best I could to see him standing there, chest heaving from the run, one hand holding the flashlight, the other holding his Hefty. His gaze was pinpointed on the sylph.

“Hank.”

He wouldn’t look at me, determined to keep the sylph at bay. Finally he flicked a glance my way and his eyes were hard as granite.

“No, Charlie, I—”

“Damn it, Hank.” From the first moment I accepted Nivian’s gift, I was on a path I had to complete. He knew it. I had to do this. And worse, he had to let me. “Just be here when it’s over.”

He swore. Turned, took two long strides to the wall, and punched a hole in the brick with an Elysian curse. I might’ve heard the crack of bone, but I tried not to think about it as Emain flicked the ends of my hair and smirked. “Do you accept my gift, Darkness Bringer?”

“Yes. get on with it.” Before Hank goes ape-shit.

A slow, menacing grin grew on her face. The earth shuddered around me. I swallowed, commanding my heart to slow. Don’t panic. This is her price, whatever it is. She won’t kill you. This is for Bryn. For Bryn. For Bryn …

And then I was sinking, the ground eating up my sides, forcing my arms up above my head. My eyes went wide, fixing on the sylph in horror as she slowly sank into the earth in front of me, feetfirst as though in quicksand. A sigh of pleasure went out of her.

The dirt was to my chin now.

Hank slid down, digging the dirt around my chin before it claimed my mouth. It was too late for him to stop things, but despite that, he dug frantically. His tormented eyes met mine. Despair thickened his voice. “Damn it, Charlie …”

Cold ground touched my bottom lip. “It’s okay,” I hurried. Oh God. I started gasping, knowing I’d need air and trying like hell not to panic. Emain stopped her descent into the ground and winked at me at eye level. “See you below, Charlie Madigan.”

Adrenaline shoved my heart into overdrive. I took one large draught of air and held my breath as my mouth and nose slid into the ground. Dirt filled in my ears, but not before I heard Hank curse with a catch in his voice and then threaten the sylph with every possible torture imaginable if I didn’t come back up.

I said a quick prayer and closed my eyes.

The last thing I felt was Hank’s hand. He grabbed mine and squeezed with encouragement before the earth swallowed me whole.

And then there was silence.

I was cocooned in pressure and weight. The sound of my own heartbeat drummed loudly and rapidly in my ears.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Going down. Down deep into the ground. My lungs burned. I couldn’t move, couldn’t struggle. Claustrophobia took hold. It was worse than drowning because at least in the water I could move, I could struggle.

The pain, the pressure in my chest, burned a hot path through my blood vessels, stinging them, vibrating them. My mind went cloudy. For Bryn. My fingers curled, packing dirt beneath the short nails. It was the only movement I could make. My arms were trapped straight above me. The dirt pressed in on my body, my neck, face, eyelids, and mouth. God, my mouth …

I bit my tongue.

White erupted behind my eyelids.

I gasped.

For a split second I felt relief but that was immediately taken away by the dirt sucked into my mouth. No air. Just dirt. And then I was gagging, gagging without air to facilitate the action. Desperate, painful, familiar gulping for something that wasn’t there.

Finally my mouth stopped moving as it filled with dirt. My chest kept lurching. In and out. Slower and slower. Still mimicking the need to breathe.

The hum is what first stirred my detached senses. It was a welcome sound, a sound that carried life. Energy. Connection. I felt wrapped in the Earth’omb. And she was alive. Pulsing. Powerful. And I was part of her, part of the cycle now. All of me, splitting apart, degrading, nurturing and feeding the soil.

Time disappeared. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Reclaimed. Dispersed. Just particles. Matter.

Eventually there came, at some point, a sense of body.

Floating, contained, wrapped in dirt, eyelids once again feeling the pressure, the weight. And it felt nice. This quiet. This cocoon.

So quiet, the city began to leak into this place. A thousand voices. A thousand random thoughts not my own. They came at me, at first just a slow trickle that became stronger and stronger until the pressure built inside of me, bloating me.

“Fighting, always fighting,” came a soft voice.

Emain.

My mind withdrew from the edge of panic. She was all around me, forcing the hum into my skin, pressing the earth closer around me, filling me, opening me up, and breaking me apart at the same time.

“I see you, Charlie Madigan. I see you now. You are as they say. Never doubt the