Ashes of Hope Read online

  * * *

  For a while, I swim in and out of consciousness. I dimly sense my master lift me, and I hear a car door open and close. Then vibrations and a slow swaying lull me into oblivion.

  When I wake, the vibrations have stopped. My whole body aches and my shoulder is on fire. I can’t move without pain shooting through every nerve on that side of my body. It’s hard to breathe, and I feel too weak to sit up, so I lie still and listen.

  Someone moves nearby and a hand slips under my neck to gently lift my head. I taste the tang of metal as a cup is pressed to my lips, and I try to drink. The cool water is a sweet relief, but some of it goes down wrong and I cough reflexively, opening my eyes to see a startled look on my master’s now smooth and unmarked face. He hurries to prop me up, but the coughing hurts so much I almost black out. When the fit finally subsides, I taste blood in my mouth.

  He tries to feed me some deliciously hot soup, but I struggle to swallow and more often than not start coughing again. Finally, I give up and go limp, hoping I’ll pass out again so the pain will stop.

  I do lose consciousness, eventually. Time blurs, and life becomes a cycle of vague waking and fitful sleeping. My master tries to make me eat and drink, but I can never keep much down. The pain which greets me upon waking is so bad that I start to wish I won’t wake up again. At times, I’m lucid enough to be grateful that my suffering is nothing compared to the horrors I so narrowly escaped. But that knowledge does nothing to strengthen my body or bolster my will to survive. I am just weary. So weary.

  Time passes. I’m moved sometimes, but I rarely bother opening my eyes. My body has started to burn with fever, and I shiver constantly despite the mountain of blankets my master keeps wrapped around me. My constant coughing takes every ounce of strength I have, and it leaves my throat raw and swollen.

  At one point I feel cool skin pressed to my lips instead of cold metal, and I taste salty blood. In a daze, I wonder why he’s trying to feed me blood. Have we run out of canned food? But I’m too tired, in too much pain, and too delirious with fever to care. I cough most of it up like I do everything else I try to drink.

  Between fevered nightmares, my incoherent mind tries to puzzle out why my master risked so much to rescue me, and why he continues to nurse me. It would be so much easier to move on and find someone else to serve as his next “donor.” The question comes to me easily, but the answer is out of my reach.

  A while later—I don’t know how long—I wake to the sound of tinny music. I manage a half turn of my head, and crack my eyes open enough to see a blurry image of my master sitting cross-legged beside me. He holds the music box in his hands and is staring down at it, his face so grave and still it looks carven from stone. At my movement he looks up. His face has pale streaks carved through the dark smudges of ash covering his cheeks. I try to remember what makes lines like that on a dirty face, but my mind won’t focus, so I just relax and listen to the music. It soothes the burning in my body as I lie there, my breathing shallow and labored. Things I wish I could tell him well up in my chest, words aching to be spoken—words of relief, of gratitude, of encouragement. But my thoughts are scattered and my body is weak. I barely have the will to keep breathing, much less talk.

  Is this what dying feels like?

  Despite the pain, I find I’m at peace. My master has given me a better end than many have suffered, and now, at least, I can rest. But what will happen to him once I’m gone? Who will keep him fed? I’m too tired to question the strange protectiveness that has awoken in my heart. It is the only worry that taints my otherwise calm resignation.

  * * *

  I wake again, this time to the feel of cool, soft skin on my lips. At first I think my master is trying to give me blood again, but its coppery taste is absent. The sensation leaves, and I hear something I’ve rarely ever heard before: my master’s voice. It startles me so much I open my eyes. Throughout all our time together he has uttered barely a handful of words.

  “Please, live,” he says, voice broken and hoarse from disuse.

  Longing breaks through my fevered daze, and I want to survive then—I want to fight on—because he’s asking me to. It’s the first time I’ve had anything to live for beyond mere survival since this living hell began. My master’s expression is so sad, yet so full of tenderness as he stares down at me, and I finally realize he just kissed me. His lips are incredibly soft, and his eyes speak all the words in the world.

  But, I fear it’s too late.

  I struggle to keep my own eyes open, to keep looking at him while my breathing grows more and more shallow. I have nothing left. My strength, my will, my hope—everything in me that separates me from a lifeless corpse—has been drained out slowly over the months. It’s no wonder the blood and nutrients still left in my body are failing to heal my infection-ravaged wound.

  Yet there is one final thing I need to do. Why, I’m not sure, but it seems important. I just need him to know. I try to speak, even as black unconsciousness nibbles at the edge of my vision. My voice comes out a dry whisper, the words leaving me along with my last bit of strength.

  “My … name … is … Hope.”

  A sad smile touches his lips as he sits there, leaning over me, and I feel something wet splash onto my cheek. The last thing I hear before darkness swallows me is his voice whispering in my ear.

  “I know.”

  * * *

  The End

  If you want to check out more of Lydia’s stories, keep going to read a preview of her cozy fantasy adventure, the Lily Singer Adventures, Book 1

  LOVE, LIES, AND HOCUS POCUS: BEGINNINGS

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  Preview of Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus: Beginnings

  Lily Singer wished she could simply say her date was going badly and leave it at that. But such a gross understatement was against her nature. To be accurate, she would have to admit it was in the top five worst, if not in the top three. This wasn’t totally unexpected. Most—actually, all—of her dates were men she’d met online who, inevitably, weren’t as cute as their profile pictures suggested. Awkward and bookish, she found it much easier to start virtual, as opposed to real, conversations. Speed dating and blind dates were out of the question due to her abysmal social skills. Well, that, and the fact that she was a wizard.

  No, not a witch. A wizard.

  “Soo…when you said you had diet restrictions, what you meant was you could only eat burgers?” Lily asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Though she suspected the only way her date would notice sarcasm was if it was dressed up like a cheeseburger.

  “Huh?” Jerry Slate, a good hundred pounds larger and ten years older than his picture online, looked up from his second burger to stare, confused, at her face.

  “When we were setting up the date, you asked if you could pick the restaurant because you said you had diet restrictions,” Lily reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah. I have a sensitive stomach. I can only eat 100% pure beef burgers, and they have to be grass-fed. Free-range, you know? None of that GMO stuff. This place uses the best ingredients out there.”

  Lily resisted the urge to roll her eyes, consoling herself with the thought that it was better to be taken to a gourmet, environmentally friendly burger restaurant than, heaven forbid, a normal burger restaurant.

  Looking to the side, she gazed longingly through the restaurant’s front windows to the sunlit street, busy with lunchtime traffic. If only she knew how to teleport, she could escape this awkward situation with minimal embarrassment.

  “So…” she tried again. “How is your gaming campaign going?”

  “Oh, it’s fantastic,” Jerry enthused past a mouthful of half-chewed but—let’s not forget—grass-fed burger. Not slowing his consumption of burger, fries, and a handmade root beer float, he launched into a detailed description of his gaming group’s latest campaign against…someone. Lily couldn’t remember who.

  It was a topic she could safely re
ly on to keep him talking for a good while, though it bored her almost to tears. Boredom was preferable, however, to the awkward silence interspersed with chewing sounds she’d suffered through for the first half of their date.

  Funny, she’d thought that, in person, Jerry would be more inquisitive. That was before she’d been aware of his burger obsession. As she absentmindedly separated the carrot coins from the rest of her salad and stacked them into a tiny, walled fortress between her and her droning date, she realized he hadn’t asked her a single question beyond the perfunctory “How are you?” since they’d met outside some twenty minutes before. From the time they’d entered the restaurant, his entire attention had been devoted to ordering and eating, though he had, at least, disengaged a few brain cells long enough to inform her of the best items on the menu.

  Come to think of it, he hadn’t been very inquisitive online, either. But Lily was good at asking questions through virtual chat. It was like doing research with a search engine. Type in a question, then browse through the resultant dump of information to find your answer.

  When asked a question, especially if said question had anything to do with himself, Jerry was obligingly verbose. He went into great detail, as long as that detail involved the hundred different titles in his grunge rock music collection, or his daring feats in the latest sneak attack against his group’s unsuspecting, now-no-longer allies.

  It wasn’t as if she’d had soaring expectations. She’d just hoped for some intelligent conversation about, oh, say, books. Or history. Or philosophy. Or anything that mattered, really.

  Some people improved upon face-to-face acquaintance. Jerry was not one of them. Neither was she, come to think of it. But she, at least, didn’t bore anyone with loving descriptions of each book in her expansive personal library unless she knew, for a fact, that the person was a bibliophile.

  Hands nervously smoothing down the dark fabric of her pencil skirt, she cast about desperately for an excuse to end the date. She intended to block Jerry Slate from her dating profile as soon as she got home.

  Through the babble of obscure gaming jargon coming from the other side of the table, an idea came to her. She concentrated on the fork she held in her hand and whispered the words for a simple heat transference spell, her other hand wrapped around the power-anchor amulet she wore tied to her wrist like a bracelet. Her body heat began to seep into the piece of metal, making it grow warm as she grew cooler. When she judged it was sufficiently hot, she made a startled gesture, dropping it dramatically onto the table as she jerked back in her chair.

  “Ouch!” she yelped.

  “Huh?” Jerry said, stopping mid-sentence. It seemed to be his favorite word, along with oh.

  “I wasn’t paying attention and tried to pick up my fork. It’s very hot. I think it burned my hand. They must have just washed it in an industrial washer.”

  Jerry reached forward to touch the fork experimentally, hand stopping short as he felt the heat emanating from the offending utensil.

  “Gosh, that is hot. Are you okay? You don’t look so good.” Jerry’s brow furrowed in confusion. Not even he was absentminded enough to miss the fact that their silverware had been sitting, quite cool and harmless, for a good fifteen minutes since they’d sat down.

  Lily made a show of feeling her forehead, hoping to redirect his attention. “I feel all clammy. I should probably go home. I could be getting sick. Thanks so much for the food!”

  With a touch of guilt, she fled the restaurant, not looking back. If she had, she would have felt better. Jerry’s momentarily stunned face quickly smoothed over as he noticed the untouched burger at her place and, obviously not wanting to waste food, began to demolish it as well.

  * * *

  The warm summer air felt good on her face as Lily drove her Honda Civic down Ponce De Leon Avenue, heading back to Agnes Scott College campus. Her soft, chestnut brown hair frizzed in the humidity, despite being pulled back into a severe bun. At least it wasn’t whipping around her face and getting stuck in her glasses, as it would’ve been had she worn it down.

  Verdant foliage and colorful flowers crowded around the sidewalks, businesses, and houses lining the street. The abundant plant life was one of the things Lily loved most about Atlanta. It made the place feel less like a big city and more like a well-tended neighborhood. Plus, it reminded her of home in the Alabama backwaters.

  Pulling into the college’s employee parking lot, Lily gathered her things and headed across campus toward McCain Library. Though originally founded as an elementary school in 1889, Agnes Scott had become a college by the early 1900s. McCain Library, built in 1936, consisted of four main floors, a grand, vault-ceilinged reading hall, and three attached floors dedicated to the stacks. It was a beautiful example of how Gothic architecture could meet utilitarian building needs and, along with the other Gothic and Victorian red brick-and-stone buildings around campus, made for a scenic and relaxing atmosphere.

  Though it was Saturday, Lily preferred to take refuge in the library and bury herself in paperwork rather than go home and risk the urge to mope about. The tall ceilings, majestic architecture, and quiet atmosphere would calm her in a way no amount of tea or chocolate could. And, of course, there was the comforting smell of books.

  She passed a few groups of girls relaxing or studying on the green—it was a women’s college, and non-employee males were discouraged from hanging around campus. On this sunny day in early summer, the blue sky and warm grass had lured most students outside to study, so she saw only a few scattered girls working quietly in the library’s grand reading hall as she made her way to the librarian offices.

  Her office was a spacious room on the first floor, with a high ceiling and expansive windows. Tall bookshelves covered most of the other three walls, and a large, mahogany desk dominated the center of the room.

  With a sigh, she dropped her purse onto one of the two visitor’s chairs—both currently pushed up against her bookshelves as stepladders—and sat down at her desk. The desk’s dark wood surface was polished to a shine, and each item on it was arranged neatly. Her computer, pencil holder, and file organizer were placed just so, cleaned spotless, and free of dust. Her shiny, brass nameplate was centered and aligned perfectly parallel to the edge of her desk. It read:

  Lillian Singer: Administrative Coordinator/Archives Manager

  It was a prestigious position for Lily’s relatively young twenty-five years of age. But the fact that the previous archives manager, Madam Barrington, had taken Lily under her wing and personally groomed her for the job had made Lily the obvious choice when Madam Barrington retired a year ago. Beyond the Madam’s training and endorsement, however, Lily had been well prepared for the job. With four years of undergraduate work-study in the stacks, not to mention two years as head librarian after graduation, her BA in history and minor in classics were just icing on the cake.

  Of course, Lily’s love of books, organized nature, and library experience weren’t the only reasons behind Madam Barrington’s choice. The real reason was she’d needed someone to take over as curator of the “Basement”—a secret archive beneath McCain Library containing a private collection of occult books on magic, wizardry, and arcane science. Being a wizard herself, Madam Barrington had recognized Lily’s innate ability soon after she’d begun her freshman year. The older woman had considered it her duty to keep the then-young and inexperienced girl’s insatiable curiosity from getting her killed. Madam Barrington had always been frustratingly vague about exactly who owned the books. Her job, and now Lily’s, was to care for them, study them, and act as gatekeeper to their knowledge. Only once had Lily seen Madam Barrington allow access, and that was to a very old gentleman who’d arrived late one night and whispered something in the Madam’s ear. When Lily had asked how she would know to let someone in, Madam Barrington had simply smiled her mysterious smile and said, “You’ll know.”

  Lily’s worries had faded over time, as not a single person had ever appeared request
ing access in the year since she’d taken over. Though the Madam was tight-lipped on the subject, Lily got the impression there weren’t many wizards left in the world. Of those who did still exist, only a select few knew of the Basement’s whereabouts. That was fine with Lily, as the Basement was her own personal heaven. Knowledge was the next best thing to life itself, and knowledge of the unknown and mysterious was something she’d craved ever since she could remember, long before she had found out she was a wizard and started learning the craft under Madam Barrington’s tutelage.

  That thirst got her into trouble on some occasions. But just as often, it resulted in exciting discoveries which added to her already encyclopedic mind. Having all of Agnes Scott’s stacks, archives, and considerable online research capability at her fingertips was a dream come true, not even counting the Basement.

  Now, having settled into her leather desk chair in the sunlit office, Lily relished a moment of glowing satisfaction as she surveyed her domain. Taking a deep breath, she let the disappointment and frustration of an abysmal date fade away, refocusing instead on all the good things in life. Books. Tea. Chocolate. Cats. More books. Who cared about men and dating when you had all that at your fingertips?

  Speaking of men…

  There was a flourishing knock on her office door and, without waiting for an answer, a tall, lanky man with mussed brown hair came swaggering through. His untucked shirt and worn pants gave him a disheveled look, though he walked as if he wore the finest Italian suit in all the world. On a leather cord around his neck hung a triangular stone with a hole in the middle. She’d always wondered what it was but wasn’t one to ask personal questions.