Fire Sacrifice

by David J Normoyle

  I wasn’t sure what to make of the memories though. One part of me thought I should be doing cartwheels or maybe running down the street high-fiving people—after all, I had slept with someone for the first time. Shouldn’t there be trumpets and angels singing?

  I thought back.

  It had been nice.

  My mouth twisted. Nice wasn’t how it should be described. That meant I had probably done it wrong. Another thing I had messed up. Field animals, rabbits, even cockroaches knew what to do, but it was too much for Rune useless-bastard Russell.

  Persia stirred beside me, running a hand down one side of her face and emitting a soft yawn. She turned around and smiled.

  “I… I’m…” Panic gripped hold of my mind. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out finally.

  Persia lifted herself onto one elbow which raised her breasts into prominence. “What are you sorry about?”

  My face heated. “Well, you know…what happened… last night.” I was trying not to stare at her breasts, but at the same time, I was pretty sure I was doing nothing but staring at her breasts.

  “You’ve absolutely nothing to be sorry about.” Persia smiled again. “Those noises I was making last night. They were a good thing.”

  She slid out from under the sheets, swung her legs out of the bed, and began to hunt for her clothes. She dressed without modesty.

  I watched, admiring the curves of her body, my face heating further. I wasn’t sure if I should be looking—we had spent the night naked together, of course, but this felt different. Still, I couldn’t look away. “What happens now?” I asked to distract myself.

  “Nothing different,” Persia said. “We come up with a plan and take down Beacon.”

  Nothing different. That didn’t make any sense. We had just slept together; that meant something. There were consequences.

  Consequences! That got me thinking about the physical consequences. “About, you know… protection.”

  “Typical man, huh.” Persia paused in buttoning up her blouse to aim a head-shake my way. “Only now thinking about protection.”

  “So you took care of it?”

  “I thought about it. And I decided that I didn’t want to use any.”

  “You want to get pregnant?”

  “I like the idea that it’s possible.”

  “With my baby?” My throat felt dry.

  “Now you want to worry about what your manly essence might get up to?”

  In too many ways, I was still a child. There was no way I was ready to be a father. “Now is hardly the time to bring new life into the world.”

  “I think the opposite,” Persia said. “Look, chances are I’m not pregnant. But I like the idea that it’s possible. It gives hope for a new start, a new day. It may give me strength for when things get bleak.”

  “What about the practicalities?” The world and I were both a mess; neither of us were ready to support new life. “What about having to create a home for a child?”

  “That’s for the future, if there is a future.” Persia shook her head. “Listen to that. If there is a future. That’s the mindset to get rid of.” She put on her coat. “It’s time to make some plans though. We don’t want to leave Jo and Alex with Beacon any longer than we have to. The longer they—and everyone else—is under Beacon’s influence, the harder he’ll be to defeat. I’ll head out, see what else I can learn, get in contact with our inside man. I asked him to look into whether there’s a control room, somewhere from where we can shut off the LNN broadcasts.”

  “And you still won’t tell me who this mysterious person is?”

  Persia shook her head. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  Once again, something about Persia’s evasions were off. Realization dawned. “Your inside contact—it’s Jeroah, isn’t it?”

  “What? No!”

  I wasn’t sure how, but suddenly, I knew. “Don’t bother denying it. Jeroah is the one promising to help us.”

  Persia sighed. “He said not to tell you. He’s convinced you wouldn’t trust him.”

  “He’s right, I don’t trust him. Do you?”

  “I’m not sure we have much choice,” Persia said.

  “I imagine he’s loving this. Deflecting from us to join the enemy, then turning around and telling us that he’s on our side. What does that make him? A double agent? A triple agent?”

  “All I know is that we’re going to need his help.” Persia opened the bedroom door.

  “Wait. What about us?” I asked. “What did last night mean?”

  “I already explained what it meant for me. What do you want it to mean?”

  “I don’t know. More, I guess.” More what, I didn’t know. “Just more.”

  “Maybe we should go on a date then when this is all over,” Persia said.

  “A date? Isn’t that supposed to be a first step?”

  “Not always,” Persia said. “A yet-to-be-arranged date is another spark of promise toward a happy future, right? I like that.” She was smiling as she left.

  Chapter 28

  Thursday 08:40

  If Persia thought that spending the night together would imbued me with new energy, she was wrong. After she left, it was another hour before I got out of bed, finally lured downstairs by the smell of bacon and a sharp hunger.

  In the kitchen, Danny was cooking rashers and eggs. He nodded at a plate which was already full of food as he splashed another pair of rashers on top. “I like my coffee piping-hot, so add plenty of milk if you don’t.” He poured me coffee. “I noticed Persia leaving this morning.” Danny’s bushy white eyebrows arced upward. “I didn’t have to set up a bed for her.”

  My only reply was to spear a rasher with a fork and put it in my mouth. Danny didn’t push me further while I ate. What had seemed like a mountain of food was reduced to crumbs in short order.

  “A lot of calories must have been burnt over the last twenty-four hours,” Danny suggested. “Only, you were sitting down watching Star Wars for most of the day. Strange that. Can’t think of an explanation.”

  I wasn’t going to bite on any of Danny’s innuendos. I went for my coffee instead; unfortunately, I ended up spilling it everywhere. “Shit, sorry,” I said.

  “Your hand.” Danny grabbed a tea towel, took my hand and wiped the coffee from it. “Have you been burnt?”

  “It’s fine, thanks. There are advantages to having no feeling left.” It was my right hand, of course. Like an idiot, I had thoughtlessly tried to pick up the coffee with my injured hand.

  Danny cleaned up the rest of the coffee from the table, then he poured me some more. This time, I was careful to use my left to drink.

  “I probably shouldn’t have watched Star Wars,” I said. “It’s stuck in my head now. I used to relate everything that happened to me to some narrative I’d watched: Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lord of the Rings—as if I could find the key to defeating real life villains in fictional stories. I thought I’d outgrown that.” Instead, after symbolically becoming a man, I’d woken to dreams of the cartoonish villainy of Darth Vader. “Turns out I haven’t outgrown anything.”

  “As someone much older, I’d recommend that you don’t be so quick to grow up. There’s a reason it’s said that youth is wasted on the young,” Danny said.

  “I haven’t had much choice except to grow up fast.”

  “Maybe. But you want to be careful what you keep and what you discard. When you were younger, you had a joy and lightness about you.”

  “And that’s gone?” It wasn’t really a question that needed to be asked.

  “The frowns outnumber the smiles.” Danny shrugged.

  “With good reason.” Persia wanted to draw sparks of hope out of the darkness, but the darkness was all consuming. “Did you see what happened to Harriet Ashley?”

  Danny shook his head. “As I said, I’d been avoiding the news.”

  “She launched at attack on Beacon with a well-t
rained and equipped commando group—all non-English speakers to reduce the chance that Beacon could influence them—and still she failed miserably.”

  “Is Beacon that well-protected?”

  “He doesn’t need to be. The commando group began to fall to pieces almost immediately, their loyalties destroyed by Beacon’s powers. Within a short time, many of our attackers were protecting Beacon themselves. Still, somehow, Harriet Ashley got to him. She managed to shoot him dead.”

  “Shoot him dead?”

  “He received fatal gunshots and was perfect fine not long after. It’s not like I haven’t seen similar before—I’ve recovered from mortal wounds many times myself—but that was before.” I lifted my right hand, then let it fall. Gunshots weren’t something to be feared back when I’d been a sentinel. How many times had I received crippling injuries and had them healed with barely a thought? Before, I’d never had to face the consequences. I hadn’t been brave; it was easy to charge into action when the danger was minimal. “Magic has left the world for everyone except Beacon. He is invulnerable, and the rest of us are powerless against him.” He didn’t even have to kill Harriet. Instead, he assimilated her and all her soldiers. Most fights, even if one side wins and the other loses, both sides are weakened. Not so with Beacon. With every attack, he used his enemy’s strength to fortify himself further.

  “Magic isn’t everything.”

  “Have you seen his poll results? Beacon’s popularity keeps going up and up as more and more of the city falls under his spell. First Lusteer, then the country, then the rest of the world. His power of persuasion fits perfectly with the world of mass media. And now that we know that he’s invulnerable to injury, I don’t see how he can be stopped?”

  “How come you weren’t affected? How come you weren’t converted to his cause?” Danny asked. “You were part of the attack with Harriet, right?”

  “Beacon’s messaging was in Portuguese, which I don’t understand,” I said. “Also my awareness of who Beacon really is probably gives me some protection. Beacon’s power of control is different from Duffy’s. Duffy’s power was like a sledgehammer. Beacon’s is more like a vice that keeps squeezing ever tighter.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Despair!”

  “That’s not going to solve anything.”

  “Have you not been listening? Nothing is going to solve anything.”

  “If you need hope, maybe you should look to your Buffys and Harry Potters.”

  “That’s not going to help. I needed a crutch to accept what was happening back when I was just a kid.”

  “You’re still a kid, kid,” Danny said. “And don’t be so quick to dismiss stories. People experience the world through stories. Since time immemorial, they have been used to bond communities with common values. Achilles and Hercules become Hamlet, and Romeo becomes Captain America and Harry Potter. The stories we tell each other contain the lessons we want handed down from generation to generation.”

  “When did Danny the truck driver become Danny the philosophy major?”

  “I’ve been around a long while now, which means I’ve picked up a thing or two over the years.”

  “All very interesting, but I don’t think cultural lessons are going to be much help in a fight.” I thought back over my dream. “Though I do wish Beacon looked more like Darth Vader. It’d be easier to persuade people that he’s the baddie. But Beacon was clever enough to never look evil—quite the opposite. When Harriet shot Beacon, instead of looking for vengeance, he embraced her. Beacon controls the narrative and always presents himself the way he wants to be seen.”

  Beacon controls the narrative. If he looked like Darth Vader, it’d be easier to persuade people he was the baddie. Those two thoughts gelled together and took on new meaning for me.

  “You have an idea.” Danny was watching me closely.

  I did. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but it was something. Persia had talked about finding a control center to shut down the message Beacon was broadcasting. What if an alternative message was created? When I’d been fighting with Beacon Sulle, Konstance, his old bodyguard, had created propaganda videos. Was he still doing that? If he wasn’t, would he do videos for us?

  “Thanks for breakfast. And for the talk.” I stood up. “I have something I need to try. I’ll ring later.”

  “Where are you going?” Danny asked. “Is it dangerous?”

  Was it dangerous? Konstance had, after all, stabbed me the first time we’d met. It could be that his loyalties remained fully with Beacon. “Very probably.”

  “Are you sure you need to do it then?”

  “I guess the good thing about being in a hopeless situation is there’s nothing left to lose.”

  Chapter 29

  Thursday 10:30

  The house looked rather like the one I’d just come from except where Danny’s yard was neat and well-ordered, Konstance’s garden was running wild. It looked abandoned, and no one answered when I knocked and rang the bell. Blinds were down on the ground floor front windows. I nosed around the side of the house; the side-gate was locked. “Anyone there?” I shouted, giving the timber a rattle. Once upon a time, I could have leaped over the gate or broken through it.

  I returned to the front and knocked on the door several more times before turning away. I had only been in Konstance’s house once before, and briefly, and had no idea how permanent his stay had been. I was halfway back down the drive when I heard the door open and hurried back. Konstance stood in the doorway, holding an arm to block the sunlight, squinting.

  “You!” He was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, smelling of whiskey and stale sweat.

  “I’ve co—”

  “This way!” Before I had a chance to explain myself, Konstance pushed his door wide open and staggered down the dim hallway.

  Hesitantly, I followed.

  Konstance opened a door under the stairs and indicated I should pass through.

  A wooden set of stairs descended into a darkened basement. I raised my eyebrows. “Down there?”

  Konstance switched on a light. “Yes. Down there.”

  A single bulb stuttered into life, and dust swirled in the streaky light it formed. Despite serious misgivings, I entered. The wood of the steps creaked from my weight and that of Konstance as he followed.

  When I reached level ground, I saw that the one half of the basement floor was piled up with medieval weapons. “These were Richard Sulle’s.” I picked up a curved sword—a scimitar—put it down—then I examined a two headed spear with swirling gold filigree decorations on the base of each blade. These were the weapons that Richard Sulle had lovingly displayed at the top of his corporate offices.

  “When he left Verge Tower, he told me to store them,” Konstance said. “He still hasn’t asked for them back, and now, I guess, he never will.”

  “It’s a shame.” I dropped the spear back into the pile of weapons. “They should be in a museum, not jumbled up in a basement, gathering dust.”

  “No, not a museum,” Konstance said. “These weapons still have practical uses.”

  I froze because Konstance was holding a samurai sword pointed directly at my gut. “Remember this?” he asked.

  I swallowed. “I remember. It’s the blade you ran me through with.”

  “Indeed.” Hungover or not, he held the sword with a steady hand.

  “I had little understanding of my powers back then. I thought I was going to die.”

  “And now you have lost your powers,” Konstance said. “You would die.”

  Sweat gathered on my forehead. Was this to be how it all ended—meaningless death in a lonely basement? “You’re just going to murder me?” I lifted my scarred right hand. “Kill a defenseless cripple?”

  Konstance laughed humorlessly. “When you were a sentinel, you murdered people who had no defense against your powers. How is that different to cutting down an unarmed cripple?”

  “It’s…it’s…it’s…” I stut
tered to a stop, unable to think of a response. My legs felt like jelly, and I staggered back a few steps.

  Konstance advanced, keeping the tip of the sword pressed firmly against my shirt. “All it takes from me is a little twitch, and it’s over for you. No coming back. A final end.”

  “No, not a final end,” I declared. If Persia was actually pregnant, then a son or daughter would live on after me. And regardless of whether she was or not, others would take up the fight against Beacon. I grinned at Konstance. “Strike me down and I’ll become more powerful than you know.”

  “No. You won’t.”

  I wouldn’t, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the wave of fear I’d felt earlier had disappeared. Losing the power of the sentinel had made me vulnerable to death, but that didn’t mean I had to fear it. “Either stab me, or don’t, but stop wasting my time.” Konstance didn’t do either, so I swiped the blade aside with my right arm, and I advanced past him into the center of the basement. “I came here to get your help.”

  “Why would I help you?” Konstance didn’t drop his sword, but he allowed the tip to dip low to the floor. “You’re my enemy.”

  “No, I’m not. You used to work for Richard Sulle, but he is no more; you owe no loyalty to the creature who now possesses his body.” The last time we’d talked, Konstance had expressed doubts about working for Beacon Sulle. Of course, I couldn’t be sure that Konstance had been influenced by Beacon’s power of persuasion, but I figured if that was the case, he’d be a LNN headquarters providing security rather than drinking alone in his home.

  “I heard what happened to Harriet Ashley. You’re going to try and take down Beacon with only one hand.”

  “There is no try. Do or do not do.”

  “Stupid Star Wars quotes aren’t going to change anything.”