Page 51 of Ashes to Ash’s

“Here to kill him,” I said resolutely, turning back to face the kid, “yeah, we’re here to end his evil once and for all, but I promise you’re safe. You’ll never have to be afraid or ashamed again.”

The kid chewed his lip warily.

“Tell me your name, you know mine, and Ash. The blonde guy is Blaze, and the really crazy one is Ethan.”

“Ren.”

I blinked at him for a moment, wondering if that was his name, or something else entirely.

“Like the bird?”

“What bird?” Jesus.

“Is it your name?” He nodded, and I figured that was enough for now.

“R.E.N. Ren.”

“Hi Ren. I’m Cal, and we’re here to rescue you.”

This time the kid reacted, and it wasn’t with words. He threw himself at me, his arms tight around my neck, as he intermittently sobbed, and thanked me. It was like a gut punch and validation all at once. The feeling of doing the right thing, maybe for the first time ever. I hugged him tightly as he let out all of his sorrow and horror, while I wondered where the hell he’d go after this.

Chapter Thirty-One

Ash

This was going fucking nowhere, so I grabbed Blaze as soon as he reappeared from yet another empty room, dragging him close.

“Why don’t you do what you do, and we’ll smoke the fucker out?”

He grinned widely, almost fucking lighting up as he stared back at me. Fire did that to him, and my dad Gray. They were fucking obsessed with it, I mean, look at us all with our fucking stupid names. Why I got named after the dead thing left behind after fire, I had no idea, but way to make a kid feel like fucking wastage, right? I’d moved past it, but it bothered me for a long time when I was younger. Blaze had a cool fucking name. Cole and Nix? They were blessed with good ones, but me? Dust. Yeah, I was mostly over it.

“Brother, you have the best ideas, sometimes. I’ll go grab my kit from the car.” Of course he had his firestarting kit with him, it went fucking everywhere with him. If he ever got stopped by the police while out doing the shopping, he’d have no excuse for it.

“FUCK! You guys need to see this!” Ethan yelled, cutting off the desperate urge in my brother to burn the world to the ground. We both ran down the hall to find him, and he was right, it needed to be seen. Fuck me.

The room had a podium that the fucker must have stood behind to preach at the people in the pews lined up across from it, but it wasn’t those things that freaked us out, or the stacks of bibles that’d make great fire fodder. No. It was the wall of ‘The Saved’ that made us fall silent.

‘The Saved’ were pretty obviously his victims. Kids like Cal, like me, only I wasn’t up on this wall, but my fucking boyfriend was. Young and innocent looking in his picture, with his name and the date he was ‘saved’ below it.

“This fucker catalogued all of this sick shit, and since that wasn’t twisted enough, he fucking paraded it in front of everyone like this. Did these kids have to look at their fucking faces up here while he preached his bullshit at them?” Ethan, I’m right there with you, man. What the actual fuck was wrong with this guy. This here was what real evil looked like. Call me sick or whatever, or any member of my family, even Ethan, but this? This was deliberately forcing women on gay kids, and then fucking shouting out about it like it was a public service.

“I need to find this cunt, before I fucking explode and destroy everything in sight,” I hissed, clenching my fists as I forcibly held myself back from trashing things, and then I realised, why the fuck should I, so I turned and grabbed the nearest pew, lifting it and tossing it across the others. It was heavy, but not impossible with my roaring anger fuelling me.

“Wait!” Blaze grabbed my shoulder, and I turned to deck him for stopping me, but he was pointing into the corner of the room.

“What?”

He grinned, and nudged Ethan. “Go get him, tiger.” Ethan followed the finger that pointed at what looked like a large cupboard, and hesitated, but then he heard what Blaze must have picked up on in the deathly silence that fell after I tossed the pew. Someone moved. Something knocked against something.

Ethan barked out a laugh as he strode over to the cupboard and crouched down, grinning at us as he lifted a finger to his lips. Fucking idiot. Like we’re making a sound.

He wrenched that door open, and a leg flew at him, like Cal’s uncle thought he could fight his way out of his little fucking cupboard of shame.

“Not so fast, you perverted shit!” Ethan dragged him out of the cupboard, and tossed him on the floor by the pews, slamming a kick against his ribs before we could stop him. Or did we have time to try, but didn’t even bother? Pain would be good for him to experience.

“You call them ‘The Saved’, like you think these are your fucking achievements, like you did something impressive. You fucking tortured and raped these poor boys!” I kicked him next, because I liked the idea of symmetry. Both sides of his chest should hurt, right? At least there wasn’t a heart in there anywhere, just a filthy black hole where his evil resided.

“They needed… to be… saved. I saved… them!”