Before Beasts, There Was Light--Book 9

In The Embers

This darkness had the traits of shallow sleep with moments of timeless blanks. Cold stilled his memories of warmth. Pain a constant companion. In spurts his thoughts would break through, but only in the simple form they had once been when he had been a little child—in images and impressions. Ray's and Tyson's voices sprinkled through most like pleasant wild flowers through the last of spring frost. An overwhelming smell of coffee, that came with an annoying rumbling and spurts of sharp gasoline and fumes. Ayah. Must find Ayah. Max. Must see to Max.

Tala. Had to get up to stop Tala. No one else knew.

Voices other than Tyson's and Ray's. They sounded so strange. Had it been so long? So long since he'd actually just listened to the cadence of a voice not theirs? Wait...there shouldn't be by other voices.

His brightest moment of consciousness only rewarded him with a view of wooden beams holding up a lumber ceiling.

They argued. He tried to breathe, tried to find himself to stop it, protect—he had to protect them—

Then a great burst of warmth as he had never known it swallowed him and any remains of his consciousness.

Hunger brought him around. Heavy, he tried just going back to sleep, but the hunger was piercing and nauseating. If he didn't find food, his stomach would force him to get up to vomit anyways. So he groaned, felt out his limbs, and opened his eyes.

Fire blocked it.

Forgetting momentarily that he was a fire breathing boss, he shot up, a cry in his throat. Then his brain caught up with him and he swallowed it down in time to recognized that he was being watched.

A little, red haired girl, probably about eight or nine, sat cross legged a few feet away from the Kai's fire. She had to scramble back as a plume of ash and specks of coal poured down from his shoulders.

"Sorry," he said reflexively in his mother tongue, even as she jumped forward to stamp them out. His head still felt plenty fuzzy.

She jumped up as though shocked.

"You're...You speak!" she squeaked. He instantly recognized the Russian, though a heavily country accented one.

He looked back down at the bed of coals and ash framed with thick, burning logs that he laid on. "Uh..."

Then his stomach lost it's patience and he retched. The harsh contractions brought him back down to the coals, heaving, shaking.

Through it all the girl shrieked, "Mama! He's awake! He's choking! Mama!"

He certainly felt like he was choking—then he really was as ash, fine and clumpy, sucked down into his lungs, clogging his throat.

Heavy footsteps. Something like a cane of ice hooked about his far arm and flipped him out onto more cold. Tongues of flame trailed after him just to be scared back into the stone fireplace.

Black was clouding his vision. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe—

The cane hooked about his neck and brought him up. It was the motion his stomach needed to give an almighty, wet heave and a stream of clumped ash spewed out onto his bare lap. The cane held him in place as he retched and coughed and gasped, slowly warming to the temperature of his skin.

Then, at last, it was over, and he just hung there relishing in the feel of air down his throat, cold or not, as the lower end of his wings lavished in the large, stone fireplace. The only reason he hadn't brought the fire out with him was because of the stones paving the floor, warmed beneath him by the fire.

"I told that son of bitch to clean out the ash—where is he?" The country accent was even heavier in the woman's Russian.

"Outside with Yovanne, I think."