Ashes Read online

  A novel by P. M. Briede

  Copyright 2014 © P. M. Briede

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  California Times Publishing

  Los Angeles

  ISBN-13: 978-1500786229

  Also by P.M. Briede

  THE CHARLOTTE GRACE SERIES

  Smoldering Embers

  Wild Fire

  Ashes

  COMING SOON: THE EMPATHY DELACROIX SERIES

  Death of a Chorus Girl

  Discover more at www.facebook.com/pm.briede

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  What was he doing in Olivier’s room? I tore my eyes from Wesley to level them at Olivier and was startled when he didn’t seem surprised that his rival was standing before us. Olivier leaned in to brush my lips with his before he closed the door, leaving me alone with Wesley. Wesley Breaux, my best friend and fiancé, that is, until he cheated on me with the boss’s daughter. The room was dim, the only light coming from a lamp by the bed. Since standing and saying my name Wesley hadn’t moved or uttered another word. Neither had I.

  I’m not sure how long we stood there staring at the other but I recalled Olivier saying Wesley’s memories had been altered. That Wesley now knew everything. Exactly what was everything? “What did he mean?” My soft voice sounded loud in the quiet, still room.

  “I’m sorry?” Wesley cocked his head to the side while wearing a baffled look. “Love, ah Charlotte, if you don’t know what Cheval said, I’m not sure why you would expect me to.”

  My brows furrowed in frustration. Did Wesley not understand English now? Wait! Olivier had spoken to me in Latin. The shock of this whole evening had me disarrayed. “Sorry, um, yes. I guess I should translate for you. Olivier said he told you everything.”

  Wesley’s feet shifted, moving him infinitesimally closer to me. He pulled one of his hands from his pockets to run through his hair. “He did.” His words were tense.

  As I stared at Wesley in utter amazement, I noticed all the things that had endeared him to me from the very beginning. His awkward mien when he was unsure or embarrassed. How he’d run his hand through his hair as if trying to brush his fear away. The way his eyes ate every line of my body in a way that meant my image would be burned in his memory for eternity. If he truly did know everything then I didn’t understand the hopeful glint in his deep, brown eyes. “Since the two of you seem to have come to some kind of understanding, how about you clue me in,” I prompted him. “What do you know?”

  Wesley motioned to the bed for us to sit but I made no move to follow. “I know your boyfriend is an exiled angel.” He spat out the word boyfriend. Not because he was angry with me but because it pained him to say. Wesley had always harbored resentment and jealousy when it came to Olivier Cheval, an exiled angel and my current lover. “I know you think I abandoned you for all these months; that I stopped caring. I know my mind became a playground for another of his kind while my body was one for Abigail,” Wesley stated with disdain.

  My stomach lurched at his pain and I instinctually took a step towards him. At my move he straightened, every muscle in his body tense. He was awaiting my reaction to the truth he’d been intimate with Abigail. I wasn’t really sure how to react because it wasn’t something I’d ever doubted. But the way he said it sounded as if she’d raped him. “Wesley, I don’t understand. If you didn’t want to be with her then why were you?” Just the thought of it made my skin crawl and when I shivered Wesley took another step towards me.

  “It’s hard to explain but Cheval said you would understand,” Wesley began. “He said you’re the one who helped him figure out what had happened to me.” Wesley’s hand reached out for mine. “Please hear me out.”

  I approached as I would a favorite pet that’d gone rabid. I so wanted to believe the man I’d known my whole life was still in there but after everything, how could Wesley possibly be the same?

  Once we were seated on the bed, angled towards the other, he told me his tale. “Cheval lifted the veil in my mind. I’m under strict orders to tell you that he gave me some of his memories, per my request. I needed to be fully aware of what you’ve been through. I can’t even begin to know how to make it up to you. I see why you’ve chosen to be with him. I told you he was the better man, though I guess he’s not actually a man at all.”

  Not knowing what to say, I didn’t say anything. My heart was tied to both Wesley and Olivier and right now the bindings were being equally pulled in two different directions. Minutes ago I’d wanted to ease Olivier’s pain and tell him I hadn’t left. Now I wanted to ease Wesley’s and tell him there may still be hope. What kind of woman had I become? “What are you able to remember now?” I quietly asked.

  “It started in Alabama. Banks somehow convinced my mind to replace your image with Abigail’s in my dreams.” Wesley sighed after his depressing confession and hung his head. Well that explained my dreams of Wesley sharing a bed with Abigail. “I remember being enraged in the beginning, confused with why my subconscious was playing games with me. When I permanently returned to the campaign I thought I was going crazy. Then ‘you’ began showing up at the campaign events.”

  “But Wesley,” I cut in, “I didn’t attend any of the campaign events.” I was terrified by whatever he was about to tell me.

  “You weren’t, Charlotte,” Wesley growled as his guilty eyes cut to mine. “It was Abigail!”

  “How?!” came out of my mouth full of indignation.

  “Banks!” Wesley ominously whispered. I didn’t need any more explanation. Celinda Banks, press secretary for Alexander Wyatt’s Presidential campaign which Wesley manages, is also an exiled angel and capable of toying with minds. “Had I known someone was screwing with me, maybe I would have been better prepared.”

  Guilt rained down on me. I should have held my ground after the Mardi Gras ball. I’d initially insisted on Olivier telling Wesley what was going on. But I let Olivier talk me out of it. I should have thrown my full weight behind Paige when she insisted Wesley could handle the truth, but I’d put my faith in Olivier. How different would these past months have been if I’d stuck by my instincts? Would they have been better, or worse?

  “Then Abigail showed up in Vegas,” Wesley fed me the explanation I didn’t need. “I saw you, and I have from that day since when I’ve looked at her. Her voice was yours. Her smell was yours. Everything about her for me was you.”

  “That’s why you always thought I was with you,” I surmised. “Why you never understood Paige’s and Tristan’s disgust?” He nodded his head. “But you always said Abigail’s name. Paige would have noticed if you were calling her Charlotte. Everyone would have.”

  Wesley’s body sagged as he sighed. He was carrying a weight he was never meant to shoulder. “Another trick, I guess. I’d say Abigail but hear Charlotte. Truthfully in most circumstances I called her love…”

  “Because you were talking to me.” My voice faded as I
finished his sentence. The pet name I loved had been said to another. He was no longer looking at me. His elbows were on his knees as his clasped hands supported his head. “Why? Did Olivier have any idea why?”

  “Because I listen to you, Charlotte!” Wesley expelled in frustration. “I value what you say. You’d have never agreed with the direction this campaign has taken and you would have told me so. Abigail, as you, well she always made a case for doing what needed to be done to get the presidency. If we lose we couldn’t effect any change so what’s the harm in flip flopping from time to time?”

  The harm was they hadn’t flipped flopped from time to time. I’d watched the news. They were constantly changing their stance depending on their audience. Their credibility was low but their likability was high. It’s why they’d won the nomination. “But how could you think I’d say those things, Wesley? You know me better than anyone.”

  Lifting his eyes to the ceiling, his body shook violently. “I should have. I should have!” Wesley admitted through clenched teeth. “But somehow the way Abigail would talk to me made me believe it was you. ‘Keep my eye on what’s important,’ she’d say. ‘It’s the end result that will allow us to impact change. The game wouldn’t adjust to us; we had to adjust to the game.’ We didn’t fight. She was sympathetic with my feelings that I was selling my soul to win, but that it’d all be worth it in the end.”

  “What happened last week?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I’m assuming you’re asking about Alexander’s birthday and at the bar?” Wesley clarified. I confirmed I was. “When it was announced Alexander had asked you to perform at the concert Banks went ballistic. All the other performances were from the professional institutes except yours. She kept saying it was in bad taste and that Alexander was playing favorites with my fiancée.”

  The word grabbed my attention. “But you’re engaged to Abigail!”

  Another tremor quaked through Wesley and he seethed with disgust. “God, don’t remind me!” He fell back on the bed and covered his face with his hands.

  Suddenly he reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone. He turned it on and pulled something up before thrusting it out to me. Taking it, I looked at the screen. There was the engagement announcement from a month earlier but the picture was not of Wesley and Abigail. It was a picture of Wesley and me. Now I knew why the picture of them had seemed familiar at the time. It had been taken in my home, they’d just photo-shopped Abigail over me! How’d they even get it? Wesley had thought he was announcing our engagement. God, how bad was this going to get? “But everyone knows you’re engaged to her, not me,” I said.

  “Syntax error on my part, there are so many memories in my head now, they’re getting all mixed up. Banks said ex-fiancée but I heard fiancée. That’s not what matters. She knew if I ever saw the two of you together…”

  “It would trigger your mind,” I gasped. I’d witnessed it happen at Fritzel’s. Olivier had explained this was why exiles couldn’t change memories, only give or take them. “That’s why Abigail was absent from the concert and why you sought me out in my dressing room.”

  “I was seeking Cheval,” Wesley admitted. “I’m not blind and when it comes to him, I never have been. The way you two moved on that stage, I knew,” he swallowed hard before trying again. “I knew … I knew he’d somehow gotten you to allow him to…” Wesley just couldn’t say the words, so I did. At my admission of my sexual relationship with Olivier, Wesley convulsed like I’d punched him in the gut. But there was no reason to hide the truth. Pretending it hadn’t happened didn’t make it so. “I needed to talk to you. I needed to get you away from him. Abigail found me instead, took me to Banks, and they wiped my mind of the realization.”

  “So it was quite a shock when you slapped me at the Ritz. Although everyone in the campaign is impressed you did so, by the way. I went from being a well-respected political savant with the perfect fiancée to a sellout who turned out to be a player. Yet the act triggered the memory from the concert and this time I was kidnapped because I refused to go with Banks willingly to have my mind wiped of you again.” Wesley sat up, his angry eyes burning a hole in the wall across from us. “At least this time it took Banks a while to do.”

  Olivier had witnessed them taking Wesley but he’d been too busy searching for me to do anything about it. I’d run away after Wesley had approached me at the party, not realizing I thought he’d been cheating on me for months. Olivier had been threatened with the ignes iudicii. A fiery weapon to not only kill anyone who was so dangerous it was deemed necessary, but if you fell victim to those flames your existence would be wiped from the history books and you’d cease to exist on any plane. I’d hidden from everyone in a stairwell. While in there I had witnessed through the door window the exiles releasing Wesley after they’d wiped his mind.

  “By this time everything was starting to unravel on its own,” Wesley continued. “So when Abigail suggested a night out, I immediately agreed. She was still you for me. I felt like I was going crazy and attributed it to the rigors of maneuvering through the pre-convention political circus. But when I saw you dancing at Fritzel’s in Cheval’s arms and saw you in mine, I no longer thought I was losing my mind. I knew I was. I left and went to the only place that made sense.” He’d gone to our home, that’s why he’d been there the next morning. “However, it didn’t. It was all changed. I knew it had been broken into. Abigail had said she no longer felt safe there.” Except it had not only been broken into, two men had intended to rape and murder me. If it hadn’t been for Olivier and his supernatural hearing they would have succeeded. “It’s why we always stayed at my apartment when were in town. That night though, there was nowhere else I wanted to be. Once there I realized I hadn’t felt close to you in months and being in the home we’d shared, surrounded by my actual memories, I felt close to you again and you weren’t even there. Then you materialized behind me the next morning like an apparition, and…” His voice died.

  Reaching out, I put my hand over his. Wesley immediately moved to seize it. “I’m so sorry,” my words dripping with remorse. “I never imagined what you must have been going through…”

  “DON’T!” he exploded. “Do not feel sorry for me, Charlotte.” His eyes captured mine and there were tears brimming in them. “I did this to myself. What I’ve gone through is nothing compared to you. You thought I left you. When I first realized that, I was angry. How could you think I would do such a thing? But given the evidence of my infidelity that kept pouring in, how could you not?” Everything about him was raw and tense. My heart broke. “And I was unfaithful.” The confession was barely audible.

  Tears I didn’t even realize were in my eyes flowed down my cheeks. “Oh, Wesley! But by your own admission you weren’t. They pulled off a horrible, wretched, vile hoax. In both your head and heart you weren’t unfaithful.” My stomach was churning and I fought the urge to vomit. I forced the bile down by concentrating intently on my breathing.

  Wesley offered me a tissue for my face. When he spoke his words were sharp and they struck us both with their ferocity. “Does that fact hurt you any less, my love? Does it make you want me again?” I couldn’t answer those questions because the truth would crush him. I didn’t know. Turned out, I didn’t have to. “I thought not! I almost wish I had been unfaithful with my head and heart. Because then I wouldn’t have shared with another woman what I only ever meant to give to you. Charlotte, I didn’t just sleep with her. I made love to her like she was you. I worshipped her. I cherished her. And I should have known that she wasn’t you!”

  When he’d started I’d been rooted in place, unable to hide from the truth. I didn’t want to hear that! He was right, it would have been better if he’d slept with her the way he loved her instead of the way he loved me. By the end, I could no longer contain the sickness. Racing to the bathroom, I made it just in time. Wesley was right behind me but he never crossed the threshold. Watching while I dry heaved and choked on my heart, he wept. �
�I’m sorry to cause you more pain. But I wouldn’t have been able to ever look in your eyes again. What I did was so very wrong, but I can’t hide it from you. You deserve to know the truth.”

  I hadn’t thought there was anything Wesley would be able to say that would rekindle the love we’d shared. But hearing he’d never lost it did. That it had, in fact, been used against him enraged me. I’d almost been raped but in a way he had been. He’d never given his consent to sleep with Abigail! He’d only ever wanted to be with me, to love me, to make love to me! I wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt. I wasn’t the only one in pain. It was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and take back control. Gritting my teeth, I refused to give the exiles any more of my sorrow. I refused to reward them with any more pain.

  As I stood I grabbed a rag and wiped my face. Then I turned on the faucet and rinsed my mouth. When I saw Olivier’s toothbrush I searched for the paste and used them both. Once done I caught Wesley’s eyes in the mirror. “We are going to get through this, Wesley,” I resolutely announced. “They have to pay for what they did, to both of us. I will make them pay for what they did to you!” I don’t think I’ve ever been more dementedly violent. All I could focus on was finding Abigail to tear her limb from limb. I wanted to get my hands on Celinda and flay the flesh from her bones. I was actually terrified of myself.

  Wesley must have been too because when I straightened and made for the door he didn’t move. His hands gripped my upper arms, giving me a shake. “Charlotte, I am not something for you to take revenge over.”

  The furor overcame me. I hadn’t meant to take it out on him but since he was keeping me from my targets he was dealt the full brunt. “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GOD DAMN MIND?! OF COURSE, YOU ARE SOMETHING FOR ME TO SEEK REVENGE OVER! THEY VIOLATED YOU, WESLEY! AND IN DOING SO THEY VIOLATED ME TOO! THAT ALONE WOULD BE ENOUGH! BUT THEY’VE DONE SO MUCH MORE! THEY MURDERED GILES! THEY’VE THREATENED OLIVIER! THEY SET ME ON FIRE!”