Page 11 of Ashen Souls

My voice didn’t echo. It thinned out and disappeared, swallowed whole before it could travel more than a few feet.

“You’re not leaving me yet,” a voice said from somewhere behind me. It was close enough that I felt the vibration of it before my brain processed the words.

I turned, but the thick mist shifted with me, refusing to clear.

“Show yourself.”

The fog unfurled, parting just enough to outline a towering silhouette.

Fingers dragged down my bare arm. My skin recognized the weight of that hand.

A warm exhale broke the mist near my ear.

Aveline.

He didn’t speak aloud. But feeling the word form directly in my mind made my own name sound like his property.

“Who are you?” I whispered, though some primal part of me feared the answer.

“Not yet,” he said. “But soon.”

Light slashed across the sky.

The world split wide open.

Pain detonated through my body and I screamed.

I came back to the world to the sound of rain pouring through shattered glass.

Sirens wailed somewhere close. My body throbbed in places I couldn’t map, the pain flickering in and out of focus like faulty wiring.

I was back in the car. Or what was left of it.

My vision narrowed to a tight, dark tunnel. Red and blue emergency strobes flashed through the broken windshield, turning the crushed interior into a chaotic mess of light and metal.

I forced my right arm to move across my lap. It felt numb and uncoordinated, but I managed to wrap my fingers around my left wrist.

The skin there was stinging. I stared at it through the lights, expecting to see something. But there was nothing. Only a rain-slick wrist, trembling beneath my own grip.

I tried to keep my eyes open, but my body was done. The blaring sirens warped into a distant ringing, and my brain simply shut down.

4

♫ DA TI—DREAM

The smell hit me before I opened my eyes. Bleach and plastic. The pungent scent of a place designed to either mend people or watch them break.

A monotone electronic beep marked time, a metronome for a life I wasn’t sure I was still living. Beneath it, a low hum vibrated behind my eyes, a lingering ghost of the crash.

For a heartbeat, I thought I was still in the fog. Trapped in that thick, waiting nothingness with Him. Then the fluorescent brightness of the room forced its way through my eyelids.

My eyes stung.

Hospital.

My mind struggled to reconnect with a body that felt leaden, pinned beneath a white ceiling that hovered too close. My tongue was swollen, my lips cracked and glued together. A dull ache flared in my ribcage, radiating outward in a hard, breathless wave.

“Aveline?”