The Kindred Chronicles: Between Two Worlds (Book 1)

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The priest's words lingered in Chris's mind like ash stains on wet wood. Glancing from underneath the umbrellas, all his dark brown eyes could see were black coats, jackets, and collars. To see their faces, he had to raise his head, which would be awkward given the fact that everyone had their heads bowed. Honor the honorable, Chris thought. Edward Grimes was a good man and an excellent journalist; he was as thorough with facts as the carpenter was with the wooden vines that clasped his coffin like wrinkled hands.

His unwavering conviction for truth earned him the respect of many, and the hatred of even more. Mardus's deep voice rang in Chris's head. He glanced at the coffin once more. It was six feet under, with earth already being shoveled into the hole. Perhaps now was a good time to look around. He was, after all, not there to mourn. By sight alone, four men stood out. Please, don't be human. Chris dug into his jacket pocket, retrieving a small notebook.

1 man – 7 or 8 rings, suspicious, asian?

3 men – tall sleek wearing gloves – neck deformity

The raindrops stained the page of his notebook and smudged the ink, making his erratic handwriting even less legible. Chris tucked his notebook under his jacket, took a deep breath, and looked around once more. Grimes. Chris shook his head. Took no sides, gave no favors, and received no protection from anyone. No wonder you're dead.

"If only he'd been more open-minded," a short man said to his colleague, "he'd probably still be alive."

Chris took note of the gruff voice and turned to watch Victor Reins trudge toward his limo. The man was so short and so fat that if he slipped and rolled on the mud, Chris would have thought him a hog, a very powerful hog that owned the majority of the shares of Cane & Price Corp. Chris flipped to the rain-moistened page.

Victor Reins, C&P Corp – remark about Grimes not open-minded = dead.

Chris thought about it for a moment. Reins had sold all his assets and reinvested them in the stocks of Cane & Price right before the Unveiling, and Grimes wrote about Cane & Price almost daily. His articles were obvious thorns in the side of the marketing and image the company built its fortune on. Everyone knew that Grimes was getting himself into trouble when he decided to grind his axe against the giant corporation. All expected him to, as they phrased it, "get taken out of the equation," but nobody expected his death to be so strange.

The pictures that the morgue had sent Chris jumped into the forefront of his consciousness: Grimes's body was found in a hallway inside an apartment—and it took an entire week before they could identify him. Doctors said they had never seen anything like it. His body looked like a wad of crumpled paper, limbs and bones shattered from the inside; but that wasn't even the worst part. They said that he had rapidly decayed to the point of being unrecognizable even before his body hardened. It had to be hatred and vengeance, not just mere silencing.

Voidants. The very worst of assassins. Mardus's words drifted into the forefront of Chris's thoughts: They infuse death and torment into their victims. Handlers, weavers who commit sacrilege by using their abilities to enslave other creatures, are the only ones who can control such dreadful creatures; they are fools drunk with pride. Chris was about to lose himself in his own thoughts when a strong, female voice stole his attention.

"Print it!" a familiar woman fumed. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing. It's what Ed would've wanted."

Chris took two steps toward the tall woman, all the while watching her wave her umbrella around as she screamed into her phone. He knew her from his research and made it a point to remember: wavy dark-brown hair fashioned in the back, athletic build, and a small mole on the left side of her lower lip. Another note in the notebook: