Bloodstained Innocence

     Realty hit Ashanti hard as he slammed unceremoniously onto the cold cement floor of his basement apartment. He swore loudly as he struggled with the thick blanket that now wrapped around him like a death shroud. Finally, he freed himself and sat up, rubbing his battered skull with the palm of his hand.

     He’d had some strange dreams in his lifetime, but this was one of the odder varieties. Some weird looking Indian kid from who the hell knew where? What did that have to do with a city boy like him? Ash hoped with all the crap he had to deal with lately, the answer was nothing.

     Most the guys he hung with at the sports bar above his place would have laughed to hear how shaken up he’d gotten over some dream, but they hadn’t grown up the way he had. As man among a clan of shifters, he’d learned more than he ever wanted to know about omens and the importance of paying attention to prophetic dreams. Ash didn’t know if that’s what this one had been, but it damn sure hadn’t been normal either.

     One downside about growing up in a house of all women among the Clan was that he was the only one who couldn’t shift. He was lucky; unlike most of the males within the Clan who lost the ability at puberty, Ash could still take his primal form Somehow, being able to take the shape of a brindle-coated Akita was far less exciting than the wereforms his sisters could take.

     Glancing at the clock, he groaned as he noticed the time. Four in the morning. He’d been out hunting for leaches until two as it was, and he still needed to be up, getting ready for a breakfast date with his sister. He’d canceled on Terri three times this month and she’d skin him alive if he made it a fourth.

     Ash tried to wipe the dream from his thoughts, but the girl’s ice blue eyes played again and again in his mind. If there was anything to the dream at all, she was long dead by now. He knew the damage the vampires could do to any place undefended from their kind, but what reservation nowadays had no Clan guarding its boarders? What about those…things with the collars and leashes? Ash had never seen anything like them before, and he’d sure damn well remember something that ugly.

     He stood and let what was left of the blanket fall to the floor. Ash shivered as a draft of late autumn air blew through the poorly insulated window and brushed over his bare skin. He reached for the boxers and jeans that lay draped over the headboard and hastily put them on.

     If he went back to bed now he was sure to sleep through the alarm and piss off Terri. After the fight he and Montana had over the phone last week, the last thing Ash wanted was another sister mad at him. Some half-cocked nonsense about there being allies among the vampires up in Madison, and she’s been surprised when he had laughed? Unfortunately, she’d not found it quite so funny, and hadn’t spoken to him since.

     A skittering noise caught his attention, and Ash looked up to see a large black spider crawling across the glass of his window and up the graying white walls. It clambered over a tall bookshelf and crept into the shadows of the top shelf.

     Ash shone the penlight hanging from his belt loop into the darkness and watched as the spider attached one end of a silken thread to the inside corner of the shelf. Below was an obsidian statue, an African god who was said to teach his followers the art of sorcery and watched over the shape shifter children at night while the slept. The figure was a young man, strong of build with a stern expression. He held a little girl in his lap and looked out at the world as if daring anything to face him.

     The spider weaved her web between the wood and the statue, and Ash found himself unable to pull his gaze away. He remembered the spider woman from the dream and wondered if she were a shifter like his own three sisters. Could that child have been linked to his own people somehow, or was the lack of sleep causing him to see omens where none really existed?

     Tearing his attention away from the busy arachnid, Ash grabbed a clean tank shirt from the dresser drawer and pulled it on over his head. He’d find time for a shower before breakfast; now he needed a long ride to clear his head. The cold night air and a few cups of strong coffee might be what he needed to wipe the persistent dream from his mind.

     He flipped through the linen and cotton shirts that hung in the standing wardrobe. Ash chose a black shirt embroidered with phoenixes over each side of the angled upper chest, and a larger firebird adorning the back. He grabbed his finger-width braids and yanked them free of the stiff collar in one swift motion. Pulling them in a tight bunch, he tied the whole mass with a leather cord.

     Ash retrieved his black leather jacket from the doorknob and shoved his arms into it. He checked the pockets for his wallet and phone before zipping up the front. A quiet evening was just what he needed to get back on track again.

 

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