Fire: Demons, Dragons & Djinns

by Rhonda Parrish

  “Yes, I was there.” I did not know where this was going, but I was starting to feel wary. I did not know what I had to be ashamed of or conceal—but I did not know what I was concealing, either.

  “You have a large black dog,” he said. “Large for keeping in this time of rationing, and his coat is not long enough to be useful for the dog’s-hair yarn you ladies use for refugee clothing.”

  Brand ate very little, in fact, but that was also a difficult thing to explain. “I have not overstepped my rations,” I said, “and he’s not been any trouble to anyone.”

  “I did not say that he had.”

  “What’s this about, sir?”

  “We should like to speak with you about doing special work for His Majesty’s government. We understand you are an American, but arrangements can be made.”

  I blinked. “What sort of work?”

  The man with sunglasses spoke for the first time. “Very specialized, and appropriate to your particular skills.”

  “Sir, I’m just a girl with the WVS, I haven’t any particular training—”

  He stepped forward and tipped his sunglasses down to look over them at me, revealing eyes with a peculiar orange tint to their hazel and curiously narrow pupils. “The training will be made available to you.”

  Those eyes. My heart quivered in my chest. “Do you—you know—do you know what—” I could not formulate the complete question.

  “We are assembling a team,” the first man said, “toward a specific end. That team will visit specific industrial centres in Germany. Hamburg, for example.”

  They knew. And they knew more than I did. And they wished to teach me to fight.

  You are a dragon. You have power to make war. They are warg, outsiders, outlaws. Their spread must be stopped.

  I thought of the thrill when the bomb had fallen from the dome, of the rush I had felt passing through the flames in the roof timbers.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  Bait

  Krista D. Ball

  Three Days After the Destruction of Borro Abbey by an Honest-to-Almighty Demon and the Bastard Cartossians.

  (An excerpt from A Memoir by Lieutenant Dodd of the Holy Father’s Own Consorts, On the Destructive Nature of Demons, as Witnessed During the Borro Incident Aftermath.)

  (Unpublished and currently located in a trunk under Dodd’s dirty stockings.)

  IT HAD BEEN three days since the destruction of Borro Abbey. As I had been previously charged with the protection of Allegra, Contessa of Marsina and the Arbiter of Justice, I believed myself duty-bound to continue protecting her during the aftermath. I’d assumed she would want to escape to the Cathedral in Orsini, but she insisted on fighting the small demons that had escaped the abyss pit that had opened up inside the abbey. I was not particularly keen on the idea, but she was my charge and I felt in my heart that following her instruction was my most important task.

  Walter Cram was with us, too.

  Upon my advice, Her Excellency didn’t use her innate elemental control over fire for the first two days. As an elemental mage, she was in violation of all manner of laws, both of governments and the faith itself, and I had no interest in her becoming a target of ill-informed farmers who didn’t know the difference between a noblewoman and a cow shed. Cram was also an Elemental, but any man who introduced himself as Walter Cram, outlaw elementalist mage and demon whore, did not need my protection. However, Her Excellency insisted he be allowed to tag along, so I kept my objections completely to myself, as has always been my way.

  We had successfully dispatched two demons—one I’d skewered on my sword with a well-timed thrust as it flew at my head, and the other died when Cram got a lucky shot with his magic and crushed the small creature with a tree—when Her Excellency finally decided it was time to make our way toward Orsini.

  I was impatient to proceed as the Cathedral at Orsini was where I hoped Captain Stanton Rainier—my boss and Her Excellency’s rumoured paramour—would have escaped to. I was also anxious for news about my fellow Consorts, especially my best friend since childhood, Lex.

  However, Cram was brooding because he wanted to go spy on the Cartossian army because he had a thing against the Cartossian’s general. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that General Bonacieux was the biggest asshole I’d ever met. And, unlike Cram, I’d never been trapped inside a burning house that Bonacieux had torched in hopes of finding me. And, I admit, I’d not seen him murder his own Queen because he discovered she was an elemental. But still . . .

  Plus, there was some personal history between the Contessa and Cram that I wasn’t supposed to know about—but I absolutely did because I asked around back at the Abbey—so I didn’t get in the middle of it when she said it wouldn’t do any harm to detour from the faster route to Orsini.

  “Take the lower road,” Cram said.

  “It’ll be fine,” Cram said.

  Let this record show Cram didn’t know what in the abyss he was talking about.

  We did find lots of interesting things along the lower road—cows, squirrels, a pissed-off goat—but nothing I felt would constitute useful strategic information that would justify this additional time on our journey. We eventually found ourselves outside a small farmstead chapel and that’s when Her Excellency and Cram let loose, arguing back and forth about heading back to the main road.

  That’s when we saw it: the little bastard itself.

  No, not Cram. I mean the demon.

  It was a small critter, about the size of a bat. Like all of the demons I’d seen up to that point, it was a misshapen mixture of semi-recognizable features from Earthly creatures. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most dedicated member of the faithful. I certainly don’t believe all of the rot they teach about mages being the spawn of humans mating with demons, and I certainly don’t believe elemental mages are evil—excluding Walter Cram, of course, because all rules have an exception—but, every time I saw a demon, I always felt like I should be on my knees repenting all of my carnal sins. And I have committed many, many, many carnal sins. Forgive me, Lord God Almighty, for I have sinned extensively. And enthusiastically.

  “Allegra, I think you should practice on this one,” Cram said. “Dodd, don’t kill it!”

  I was being divebombed by a bat-sized demon, so of course I was trying to kill the little bastard. The demon. Not Cram.

  “I’m not sure,” Her Excellency said, looking about her. “There might be someone inside the chapel.”

  “Dodd, go look,” Cram commanded me, like I was his servant.

  “I’m kinda busy here, Cram,” I snapped back. I was at that very moment trying desperately to untangle the damned demon from the feather in my second-best hat. I couldn’t use my sword on the thing or I could end up (in no particular order) a) damaging my hat or b) damaging my head.

  “Can you look for me? Please, Dodd?” Her Excellency asked.

  My fist made contact with the demon’s face, dazing it, and it collapsed to the ground in a little heap. I poised my sword to run it through, but Cram grabbed my elbow to stop me.

  “Keep it alive,” he said. “For Allegra to practice.”

  Now, I’m not sympathetic to the rights of demons. They’re demons. They are evil. However, I wasn’t convinced torturing any creature, even one from the abyss, was necessarily a right and just action. But, they asked, so I did it. Let this be a lesson to you, reader; never blindly follow orders.

  I went inside the chapel, making sure to bless myself at the statue of Our Lady Tasmin upon the altar, and called out several times. There was no basement, just this main floor, and it was empty.

  I turned to face Our Lady Tasmin, blessed myself once more, and headed for the door. That’s when I heard Her Excellency shout and Cram swear.

  An important note for all future experiences with a man like Walter Cram: if you hear a highly-trained elemental mage swear in surprise, run in the opposite direction. Do not look back. Do not investigate. Run.

>   I hadn’t learned that particular lesson yet, and so I opened the chapel door, expecting (perhaps even hoping) to find the demon’s clawed feet attached to Cram’s ears. Instead, the demon flew right into my face and knocked me down.

  A ball of pure fire flew through the air after the demon, hitting it square in the back. It dipped and ducked, but then regained control over its wings.

  “Focus your thoughts! Aim, and blast. Again!” Cram shouted.

  I had to roll out of the way to miss her blast of fire this time.

  “Sorry!” she shouted.

  The blast of fire seared the hair on the back of my neck, and a screech of pain escaped from the little demon. Now, I might be foolish to admit this part, but I confess there was a portion of me that felt bad for the little black malformed critter as it hit the ground in a puff of smoke and smoulder. It wasn’t the little guy’s fault that he got sucked into this reality by mistake.

  The little demon wasn’t done yet, though.

  Now, I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s absolutely true.

  Without embellishment.

  It sucked in a huge breath of the fire that had hit it in the face with a much deeper roar than usual. The creature expanded to the size of my head and its belly glowed red with flame through its flabby, black skin. When it opened its mouth, fire blasted out, returning all of the flames Her Excellency had sent after it.

  And all aimed at me.

  I pushed myself to my feet and ran toward the statue of Our Lady of Tasmin, blessing myself like a good boy. “Can it even do that?” I yelled.

  “Is that normal?” Her Excellency asked at the same time. “You never said they could do that.”

  “I didn’t know they could,” Cram insisted, in a very studious voice. “But, this leads me to believe that perhaps this is the cause of the teachings. If the demons can utilize elemental . . .”

  “A little help, if you please,” I said, very calmly, while being chased around a chapel’s interior by a fire-breathing, now owl-sized demon.

  “It shouldn’t be able to do that!” Her Excellency insisted.

  The demon demonstrated that, actually, it could do precisely that by breathing a line of fire down the length of the chapel, narrowly missing myself.

  “Try hitting it again,” Cram said.

  I was screaming no, but they couldn’t hear me over the sound of crackling flames, and Her Excellency hit the creature again. Again, it gulped the fire blast down. Its belly swelled and groaned, and the owl-sized demon became a pot belly pig-sized fire-breathing demon, with wings.

  “Run, Dodd!” Cram shouted at me.

  You might notice, dear reader, that at no point had Cram offered anything remotely helpful. Advice. A spell. Nothing.

  Her Excellency’s original fire display had caused this scenario, yes, but I could still easily take on an owl that spit fire. I could not, however, take on something half my size that could fly and breathe fire.

  I completely and totally blame Walter Cram for the condition we found ourselves.

  “Hurry, Dodd!” Cram shouted over the sounds of a burning ceiling beam collapsing.

  As if I needed to be told to run when a fire-breathing demon was chasing me.

  I cleared the chapel, and the demon chased me outside, happily breathing fire all over the place. I panted, desperate to catch my breath and get clean air into my lungs.

  “He’s getting away!” Cram shouted.

  “Good,” I said.

  “No, we can’t let it escape,” Her Excellency said. “It could hurt innocent people.”

  “Perhaps we could find a way to harness it and . . .”

  “No.” That was it. I was putting my foot down. I would get the creature’s attention so that the experts could kill it, but I was not risking my hide for Cram to put a harness on the thing like it was a horse.

  No. I have limits and that was one of them.

  “Fine. Fine. Don’t be such a baby,” Cram said. “Try to get its attention.”

  That part was easy. I threw a rock at the creature. It sailed wide, but the demon veered around and headed straight for me.

  “Um, Cram?” I asked.

  “Get inside the chapel!” Cram ordered.

  “The chapel that is currently burning to the ground?” I asked, by way of polite clarification.

  “Just run, Dodd! Do as you’re told!”

  I ran inside the burning, collapsing chapel, chased by a fire-breathing demon of our own creation. I blessed myself when I approached the altar, because honestly I needed all the divine luck possible as that damned demon happily caught the decorative curtains on fire along the back wall.

  “Cram! Do something!” I shouted, dodging falling beams from the ceiling.

  The demon and Cram both seemed uninterested by my situation and did nothing to assist. The demon’s newfound power of fire was simply too exciting for its little brain to handle. Wooden pews went up in smoke. Wooden chairs did the same. Wooden chests for the worship items? Whoosh! It had found a new purpose in life, and while I was happy for its new discovery, I was against martyrdom as a general rule, and myself becoming one as a specific rule.

  “Dodd!” Her Excellency shouted. “Run!”

  “Run where?” I asked, since I was already running in circles as per Cram’s original instructions. But politely, because I am a Consort and not some rebel elemental mage from the sticks.

  “Run!” Cram shouted.

  What in the abyss did they think I was doing in there? Serving the little guy tea cakes?

  Then, I heard Cram shouting the litany he’d used when he tried to bring down the abbey. The bastard—Cram, this time—was going to pull the damn building down, open up the ground, suck the demon in, and then seal it up. With me still inside.

  Run, indeed, I thought.

  I ran for the entrance, dodging burning pews and beams alike. I was done with being bait. No more. Cram was literally an elemental mage on the run. It was in his title, so why in the abyss wasn’t he in here chasing this stupid demon?

  The floor shook violently but the demon didn’t even notice—he was busy torching the place. Well, at least someone was happy.

  “Hurry!” Her Excellency pleaded.

  I was running as fast as possible, which was a difficult task when one was in a burning building with a newly-created fire demon. I only narrowly made it out by the grace of the Lord God Almighty, and by my own skills forged by training and wits.

  I cleared the building just as a hole opened up in the ground and everything collapsed inside, demon, altar, Tasmin’s statue. We will not discuss the loss of my second-best hat that I’d won fair and square without any cheating in a game of Three Card Poker against a bishop and two dukes back at Borro Abbey.

  As I lay on the ground, panting and coughing, Cram said, “Good work, everyone.”

  “Good work? You two created a fire-breathing demon!” I exclaimed.

  Cram shrugged. “I think this is important to know. The next time, we’ll be ready for it.”

  I did not murder Walter Cram, demon whore, at that time, though I was sorely tempted. I will, however, take full credit in my persuasive and diplomatic ability, for twenty minutes later, we were headed toward the main road, toward Orsini, and toward safety.

  (This is a true, accurate, and unembellished account of my dealings with a fire-breathing demon, Her Excellency Allegra, Countess of Marsina, and the self-described demon whore Walter Cram.)

  Double or Nothing

  Mara Malins

  “ARE YOU SURE you want that to be your strategy?” Poole said, his sour breath wafting down my neck. I turned my head away, irritated, and focused on the hand. I shuffled through the cards once more, hesitating over two, before sliding one from the fan I was holding. I gave the figures listed at the bottom of the card a cursory glance (unnecessary since I had them all memorised) before tossing it onto the table.

  Poole groaned in my ear. “You should have saved that one.”

/>   “Piss off, Poole, and let me be,” I murmured, shoving him away with my shoulder. Poole immediately took a step backwards. His breath, soured by his constant chewing of salamander berries, was really distracting. I never chewed myself—precisely because of the bad breath—so having him breathe over my shoulder was starting to make my stomach turn.

  Sitting opposite, the stone-like mass of Flick leaned forward to take a closer look at my card. He was so huge that watching him move was like watching an earthquake ripple through the Earth. Surprise rippled over his flat face but it was quickly shut down. “You sure you want to play that, old hoss?” His voice was as deep as a cavern.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes and nodded. “I am.”

  “You want to play the water hydra?”

  “I do,” I said, determined not to show the doubt starting to bloom in my stomach. As soon as I said the words confirming my move, the field over the table locked down. I heard it more than saw it. It made a high pitched seeeeeuuuuutttt noise, almost too high for me to hear. As soon as the table locked down, Flick grinned. My stomach started to clench.

  “Oh man . . .” Poole whined. “He’s got something planned.”

  “So do I,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. Poole—an incredibly ugly man with acne erupting from the greasy skin of his cheekbones and temples—smiled. It was an honest smile, one he only ever used when he felt immense relief.

  “You better,” he answered, still smiling, “because I can’t go back to the husband and tell him I’ve lost both of our ships betting on your sorry hide.”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I shoved my shoulder into him again, forcing him to move away. His breath was truly repellent and it was starting to piss me off. I stared over at Flick, who was staring back, a smile curling across his lips. The way he was looking at me reminded me of the way a hungry dog looked at a steak.

  On the table, my card burst into flames, birthing a creature about ten inches high. I’d used this card only once before—and then only because the hand was certain—so I couldn’t help but pull my eyes from Flick’s stony face and admire the water hydra. It had nine wolfish heads, each snapping and snarling. Its legs were thick with muscle, its chest broad and strong. Water ran down its milky body in rivulets, pooling at its feet.