The Hour of Dust and Ashes Read Free Page A

respect.
    I glanced down at the receipt and cringed. Three hundred bucks.
Great.
I shoved my card back into my wallet and then made for the steps.
    “Oh, and Charlie?” Alessandra called. I turned on the steps and waited to be wowed by her next vital and coherent piece of information. “Do me a favor and don’t summon your power tonight, ’kay?”
    I paused on the steps.
    “Number one hundred and twenty.” A booming voice called the next patron over the loudspeaker as I started back up the steps to ask her what the hell she meant.
    Tuni blocked my path. “Move along.”
    I leaned to the side. Alessandra wasn’t even lookingmy way anymore and I knew from past experience she wouldn’t elaborate once she was “done.” With a sigh, I left, making for the giant archway that led into the club.
    The music grew louder as I approached. The blood vessels in my head pounded in time to the deep bass. Strobe lights flashed through the tunnel, making the smoky air light up in bursts that did nothing for my developing headache.
    “Let me come with you. Don’t worry I’ll be good as gold,” Rex had said earlier.
    Yeah. Good as gold, my ass.
    As I approached the two guards at the archway, one reached for the snap to the velvet rope as the other one went to step in front of me. I swore if he asked for a cover charge after I’d just spent three hundred bucks, I was going to blow. He pulled out a stamp, pressed it to the back of my hand, and allowed me to pass. Smart man.
    Inside the tunnel, the music was louder, the smoke suffocating, the strobes brighter. The faintest hint of nausea spread from my gut to my throat. With every step farther down the tunnel, my desire to kill Rex mounted. Now I just had to hurry up and find the—
    A record scratched. The music stopped. And a voice rang out loud and clear.
    “Come and get it, muthafuckahhhs!!!”
    Rex.

2

     
    Club patrons raced past me, down the corridor, and toward the temple. I eased back the side of my jacket. As soon as my fingers curled around the cool polymer grip of my 9mm sidearm, a sense of calm and familiarity came over me. I didn’t pull the gun from the holster, but I was ready if the need arose.
    Rex stood at the end of the tunnel where it opened into the club, his back to me, wielding two legs of a metal chair; the rest of the mutilated chair lay nearby. He swung the legs around and around while exchanging insults with a group in front of him. And he was enjoying every minute of it.
    Spread out over the recently vacated dance floor were eight black mages, otherwise known as Pig-Pens for the thin, dirty aura surrounding them. The aura was a result of an Elysian giving up their inbornpower for the dark power of Charbydon, which lent itself better to black crafting. A lot of Elysians looked upon Pig-Pens as though they were abominations of nature. But I knew better than most the lure that black crafting held. Enough to destroy lives …
    Pig-Pens could be any Elysian race, but the ones facing off with Rex were a collection of sirens and nymphs. Males and females. All dressed in dark clothing. All black-eyed, pale, and wearing grave expressions.
    I’d never seen more than four together at one time, and even that number was noteworthy because Pig-Pens usually worked in pairs.
    “Mind explaining this?” I said to Rex, stopping at the head of the archway, out of his swinging range.
    “They were asking around, looking for you, about to head into the temple. Call it saving your ass. You can thank me later.”
    “So, what, you decided to play Super Ninja all by yourself?”
    Rex might have remembered his jinn past and his training as an elite warrior, but he was still in a human body, my ex-husband’s body to be exact. Rex would survive a mortal blow—his Revenant spirit would simply be set free. Will Garrity, on the other hand, would die. And I wasn’t about to let that happen.
    One of the Pig-Pens stepped closer, his dark eyes zeroing in on me. “Where is