Free Ash & Flame: Season One by Wilson Geiger

streaming down her face. She'd looked up as Ren approached, and he'd stopped in mid-step, afraid of what she'd do if he moved any closer.
    "Show me." The angel's voice, barely above a whisper, echoed in his ear.
    Ren felt a hand on his arm, fingers gripped tightly across his bicep, and then someone else stood there in his memory, watching silently. Someone he hadn't remembered ever being there.
    It replayed in his mind, like a tape he couldn't stop.
     
    She looked so lost, her legs trembling as she peered down over the ledge of the roof. Ren wanted to run to her, wrap his arms around her, and tell her everything would be alright. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was, even if he didn't know what for.
    But it didn't matter if he ran to her. Didn't matter if he had wings, he knew he'd never reach her in time. And he caught the way her jaw had set when she'd seen him. No, he would never reach her.
    He felt a brief pang of relief that Emma was downstairs. She wouldn't see any of this or know what her mother was doing. Regret hit immediately after the thought. His daughter would never see her again.
    "Katie, honey, please..." He took a step towards her. He had to try.
    His wife looked over her shoulder at him, the breeze catching her dark hair. Dark locks that reminded him so much of Emma's.
    A flash of recognition sparked in her gaze, and fresh tears fell over her puffy lids. Her cheeks twitched and she opened her mouth to say something, and that's when Ren saw it. He couldn't remember it before, or he'd forgotten it. Maybe he'd buried it, buried the sight so deep that it had only now broken the surface.
    Something leered at him from within Katie's eyes.
    The memory changed, shifted from mere recollection to something Ren couldn't define. A shadow moved past him, stepping forward with deliberate purpose. A hand reached out and grasped Katie's arm, and her scream rent the air, a wailing, terrible shriek that Ren knew could not have come from his wife.
    And the spoken word, like the stark, clear intonation of a ringing bell. Like judgment.
    Grigori.
     
    Ren sat in a stunned silence, unsure what he'd just seen. He imagined himself a piece of driftwood, floating aimlessly on a motionless sea. He blinked and shook his head, hoping he'd get the stirred, excruciating memory out of his head. Certain that he never would.
    "Your wife committed suicide."
    The angel's statement, the tone so sure that it wasn't even a question, shook Ren out of his blank reverie. "What did you just do to me?" he snapped.
    A warm tide of anger washed over him. The angel had plucked out the thread that Ren had kept hidden for years, even from himself. Ithuriel had rooted through his memories and rooted out the truth he needed. Ren's memories. Stolen, corrupted, no longer his own, but piercing through the very idea of Katie, shredding everything she was to him. The angel had taken her, the her that he remembered, from him forever.
    "I have done nothing to you," the angel replied, his voice measured and calm. "I saw what you could not and revealed her for what she was. As I said, difficult, but necessary."
    Nothing. The angel had done nothing to him. Then why was he short of breath? Why was the blood pounding in his ears?
    "My wife..." Ren took a gulping breath to steady himself. "Was no fucking demon."
    No more questions. No more unburied memories.
    He turned away from the angel and headed back towards the closed door, his head dizzy. His foot caught on the uneven floor and he nearly toppled forward. He heard movement behind him and ignored it. Ren just wanted out, just wanted the sky above, where he could breathe again. Where he could think.
    "Go to your daughter, Ren," the angel called behind him, his voice tinged with sadness, or maybe guilt. "She will need you, now more than ever. And you, her."
    Ren ignored the mounting ache in his shoulder as he pushed the tall door open. Ithuriel called for Kevin but his words barely registered for Ren. He left the