A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1)

by Rebecca Chastain

  I grinned at his discomfort. “So when I push lux lucis into an imp, I’m giving it more food than it can, ah, exhale?”

  “Exactly. Imps can’t convert the amount of lux lucis you feed them, and it overloads their bodies and they explode. Creatures with form, though, like the hound, are more complicated. As you saw, the lux lucis eventually takes over where the atrum was.”

  I sat back with a grin. I finally felt like I was getting a handle on my new, bizarre world. Niko was giving me information and answers, I’d successfully cleansed a hound, and I’d gotten rid of a few imps, too, before Niko had sent me outside. I was a woman in charge of her own destiny, and soon, hopefully, her own region—in more than name only. Plus, sitting in an intimate setting with Niko and receiving his full attention was doing wonders for my libido—I mean, for my self-confidence.

  “So how do we get rid of the atrum?” I asked.

  “Have you created anything with lux lucis before?”

  “Just a ward. Doris showed me how.”

  Niko made me demonstrate by warding the table.

  “That’s about as basic as you can get,” Niko said, eyeing the glow around the rim of the table. “All you’re doing is pushing lux lucis out of you. Lux lucis will stick to any surface for a while, but it will fade, and it fades faster from objects that were never alive than from wood, leather, and fabrics like hemp and cotton.”

  “So even if it’s dead now, if it was once alive, it’ll hold lux lucis longer?”

  Niko nodded. “But a ward won’t get rid of existing atrum. To do that, you have to manipulate the lux lucis first.”

  “Make it hungry?”

  “What?”

  “You know, somehow make it so it wants to eat the atrum, like you did before.”

  Niko smiled. “I never thought of it like that. Watch closely.”

  I blinked to Primordium and watched as Niko gathered lux lucis in his right hand. Like I’d seen many times before, his hand grew brighter, but settled at a white barely twice as bright as the rest of his body. I waited a moment before looking at his face expectantly.

  “Are you watching?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” I peered closely at his fingers. It took me a moment to see it. When I did, I gasped and poked at his fingers. Lux lucis was moving beneath his skin. It looped over the top of his fingers, reached the tips, then slid back toward his palm on the bottom side, only to reach his palm and curl back over the top of his fingers. Touching him, I could feel the cycling lux lucis tickle against my skin.

  “How are you doing that?” I reluctantly pulled away from his warm fingers.

  “You can do it, too. Give it a try.”

  I held my hand up and gathered lux lucis. I pushed it to my fingertips, and at the last minute, pulled it back. My hand flared brighter, then dimmed, but the lux lucis didn’t start looping through my fingers.

  “Refine it down to one finger first,” Niko instructed. “The more control you have, the better you’ll do with larger amounts of lux lucis.”

  I obediently focused on my pointer finger.

  The server came by for our drink orders, and Niko ordered us both a Coke. I didn’t bother to glance at the waitress, and I’d be just as surprised if she noticed me, what with Niko to admire.

  “Feel the force of the lux lucis first on top of your finger, then on the bottom. Top, then bottom,” Niko instructed after the server walked away.

  I squeaked a little when I felt the lux lucis flare at the top of my finger, then sink to the bottom.

  “Good. Now move it forward and backward. It’s all just energy, and you can shape it and move it however you like in your body.”

  Niko’s deep voice was hypnotic. I sank into my body, lost my awareness of everyone around us, and focused on my lux lucis and Niko’s instructions. He guided me step by step through the process until I had a minute swirl of lux lucis circling the length of my finger.

  “Good job,” Niko said, and his light tone broke my trance. I glanced up. The bar had filled and the band was starting to warm up. I blinked at Niko and switched to normal sight, feeling a little lightheaded. I shifted in my seat. From how numb my butt was, I’d been concentrating for a lot longer than it had felt like.

  “Now what?”

  “Now, while it’s moving, you transfer the lux lucis into the atrum. By starting the lux lucis rolling within you, you can make sure that it continues to roll when you release it. That way it’ll roll over the atrum and, like you said, eat it.”

  We stood with our drinks in hand, and I followed Niko to an empty couch coated with atrum. I blinked back to Primordium and watched him again. This time, I was aware how much he must be deliberately slowing himself down so that I could see what he did. The first time he’d cleansed a couch, I hadn’t even seen his hand flare.

  Niko got his lux lucis spinning through his fingers at a much faster rate than he’d shown me at the table, then he pressed his fingers to the couch and the lux lucis rolled off the tip of his fingers and spread like wildfire through half the atrum.

  “Your turn,” Niko said, indicating the remaining atrum.

  I got my lux lucis spinning again, though it took me a good two minutes, then I placed my hand on the atrum. Nothing happened.

  “Give it a push,” Niko said.

  I pushed. Lux lucis flared and eradicated the atrum under my palm, then died back down. Niko didn’t say anything. I tried again, this time attempting to work with the lux lucis rolling in my fingers. When the cycle of light energy reached my fingertips, I flipped it from my fingers, picturing it doing a barrel roll down the couch.

  A tiny patch of lux lucis the width of my fingers rolled two inches through the smear of atrum and stopped.

  I giggled. “That was sad.”

  “Try it with a little more umph.”

  Determined to not look completely pathetic in front of Niko, I shoved lux lucis into a rolling wave through my fingers. My entire hand blazed with light, and I heaved the lux lucis from my fingertips. It hit the couch cushion like a camera flash, bright and fast, and rushed through the remaining three-foot square of atrum faster than Niko’s had. When the lux lucis ran out of atrum to devour on the couch, it rolled down a stubby wooden leg and iced across the dark floor, leaving an uneven patch of clean, evil-free linoleum. My cushion shimmered under a coat of lux lucis, where Niko’s was a plain charcoal gray.

  “Too much umph?” I asked, sheepish.

  “You’ll learn better control with practice.”

  “Is that okay?” I indicated the stain of lux lucis.

  “Completely. Whoever sits there will feel especially refreshed when they get up.”

  After that, we made quick work of The Golden Goose. Niko told the server we’d lost our car keys, and we made a big production out of looking for them, using the opportunity to remove the evil taint from all the furniture, walls, and floors in the process. The server helped us look, for which I felt a little bad, but I figured she was happy to help Niko, especially after she learned Niko and I were simply coworkers, not dating.

  Even with all the practice, my control was erratic, but we both could tell I was getting better by the time the bar was clean and Niko “found” the keys hidden in a couch cushion.

  Max’s mangy form was huddled under the bumper of a massive lifted truck, head slumped on filthy paws, when we exited the bar. The moment he saw me, he leapt to his feet, and his wagging tail nearly knocked us both down as I untied him. He was starved for affection as much as food, and I paused to rub the matted hair under his collar. My apartment had a tiny balcony, which got blazing hot in the middle of the day. Maybe if I installed a pet door—

  “We’ll take him to a shelter,” Niko said. “There’s a local one that takes most of the hounds we turn.”

  My heart lurched, the fantasy shattered by Niko’s matter-of-fact pragmatism. I didn’t have the space for a dog, let alone the time. It wouldn’t be fair to Max. I looked
away from the dog’s soulful, trusting eyes, and led him across the parking lot on wooden feet. A shelter would be good for Max. He’d have the chance of being adopted into a family with a yard and kids to play with.

  “Most?” I asked, forcing my mind away from visions of taking Max to the dog park on the weekends.

  “Not all hounds-turned-dogs are able to be rehabilitated. Dogs that have been hounds for too long can take to it. You’ve heard of dogs getting a taste for blood, right? It’s like that. They get a taste for evil and start acting out in ways that taint their souls all over again.”

  “But I thought that animals were naturally good.”

  “They are, but they can be corrupted just like humans. It’s simply harder with animals.”

  Niko spread the blanket from his trunk over the BMW’s backseat, and we loaded Max into the car, then piled in ourselves. Niko cracked the back windows to draw Max’s special funk out of the car and make it breathable again. The BMW hummed to life, and I was content to sit cocooned in its silence for a while. It was depressing to picture animals turned evil. I was glad I’d saved Max.

  We merged onto the freeway and headed south toward Citrus Heights. I was surprised to see the traffic moving at almost normal speeds. Usually Friday-evening traffic was bumper-to-bumper, thirty-miles-per-hour-and-under speeds. I eyed the dark sky, then the clock, and was amazed that we’d been in The Golden Goose for nearly two hours. It hadn’t felt that long.

  Niko took the Madison Avenue exit and made a left over the freeway into the urban sprawl that stretched from Roseville to Sacramento. The cities in between had long since blurred together. We could have been in Carmichael or Citrus Heights or Fair Oaks; the dividing lines between each had been reduced to small welcome signs on major crossroads. Strip malls, apartment complexes, gas stations, and car lots clustered on both sides of the six-lane road. Every once in a while I got a peek down a side street into packed subdivisions.

  I wondered what enforcer worked this region. It was so dense with humanity that there was hardly room for parks and parking lots. At least in my region I had patches of open spaces left wild, with huge sections of sprawling properties, an abundance of parks, and winding greenbelts around the marshes and bike trails.

  Were the regions here smaller? Was the ratio of evil to good greater? Where did enforcers recharge? What sort of creatures were out there, waiting to be cleaned up? Hounds? Vervet? Evil things I hadn’t yet learned of? Were the enforcers here stronger? Better?

  Of course they’re better, I thought with a tinge of bitterness. The enforcers here were fully trained, had probably been working with Primordium since they were toddlers, and knew the answers to all my questions.

  I peered into the backseat at Max. His blanket had slid to the floor during one of the many stops and starts of traffic, and he had gone with it. His emaciated body fit behind my seat, and he had his head resting on the middle hump of the floorboard.

  “What corrupts a dog to make it a hound?” I asked, continuing our dropped conversation.

  “They turn evil the same way everyone does: through evil deeds or by absorbing evil. Where humans more spontaneously commit evil acts, animals have to be taught. Pets have it worse, though. When owners of pets are evil—especially owners of very loyal pets—the animals will feed their lux lucis to the owner and take on the owner’s atrum. It lets the person stay ‘good’ longer.”

  “The animals do that consciously?”

  “Who knows.”

  I wondered if there was anyone I could ask who would know, anyone who could talk with animals. It didn’t seem particularly farfetched, given I was now wielding lux lucis and Rose could feel other people’s emotions just by being near them.

  “I think Max is the same dog—hound—I saw the other night,” I confessed.

  “The one that Doris said you encountered?” Niko asked, confirming my suspicion that Doris had ratted me out to him, too.

  “Yes. But I was way over off Sierra College at the time. Do you think he could have traveled that far?”

  Niko thought about it before answering. “He looks neglected and hungry. It’s a possibility. And he could have felt drawn to the demon, and we just happened across him along his way.”

  “Do some hounds look well loved?” I asked, finding it hard to believe that a person could simultaneously love a dog and turn it into an evil hound.

  “Definitely. Max is the weakest hound I’ve seen in a long while. Which is why you were able to overpower him.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you you’re stronger than you are.” Niko took his eyes off the road to pin me with a hard look. “I’d be setting you up for a nasty surprise if I did. You got lucky with Max. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “I don’t think I’ll get the chance,” I muttered.

  It took over an hour to get Max checked in at the shelter—only after I’d verified it was a no-kill shelter. Niko wrote out a sizable check to cover Max’s expenses for the next three months, during which time the dog would hopefully be adopted by a loving family. I watched Max be led away by the shelter handler, his tail clamped between his legs, his head swiveled so he could watch me with big, pleading eyes that begged me not to leave him. My vision blurred as he rounded the corner out of sight, and I was very careful not to blink as we walked out to the car. Niko slid into his seat first, and I used the moment to dab at my eyes to make sure my tears hadn’t spilled over before I got into the passenger side.

  “He’ll be well cared for here,” Niko assured me, clearly not fooled by my attempt to appear stoic. “They’re familiar with the types of dogs we bring in.”

  “Do they know they were hounds?”

  “No, but they can tell an abused dog when they see one. They think I’m part of a private organization like the Department of Animal Care and Control, and I told them you were a new employee.”

  “How do I prevent this? How do I stop evil from growing in my region, from corrupting innocent animals like Max?” It came out harsher than I intended. At least people brought it on themselves. They made choices they knew were good or bad, and their souls reflected this. Animals either didn’t have a say—if they were loyal pets, like most dogs—or they had to be taught to be evil, and the thought sickened me.

  “You can’t, not completely,” Niko said. He pulled out into traffic, taking Hazel Boulevard toward Roseville rather than going back out to the freeway. “The best you can do is eradicate the evil you do find.”

  “Like the demon at the convention. Only Mr. Pitt won’t let me touch it.”

  “Not all evil is so large and blatant. Take the construction site.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “Brad filled me in this morning when he was telling me about the demon.”

  “About how I’m incompetent bait,” I said, feeling sorry for myself.

  “About how you keep trying to take on more than you’re ready for . . . and how you got caught by the cops.”

  I sighed. “I may have gotten caught, but now I know what the problem is.” I paused for effect. “Kids.”

  “All of them, or just a few in particular?”

  “There’s been some vandalism on the property. The cop through it was a few teens. Would that be enough for Mr. Pitt to somehow sense the evil?”

  “He said it wasn’t too large, so that fits the description. You’ll learn to judge that soon, too.”

  “I’ll be able to sense evil from miles away?”

  “Not quite. Brad can feel the movement of lux lucis and atrum throughout his region. But you should be able to feel atrum when you’re near it.”

  That sounded cool. And useful.

  “I need to be able to do that now. How else am I going to track down those kids or prevent another Max from being created?”

  “Give it time,” Niko said. He followed his useless comment with a smile, so I re
strained my snarl. “You’re new. Cut yourself a little slack.”

  I didn’t want to complain to Niko, so I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the ride.

  I stopped by the grocery store after Niko dropped me off at my car and picked up a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked ice cream, drove home, recharged, showered, then collapsed into my single recliner chair—after feeding Mr. Bond—and devoured the whole carton. I reached the bottom before I decided whether or not today counted as a successful day as an illuminant enforcer. I had taken out more evil today than the last two days combined, but I’d left a gigantic ticking evil bomb at the hotel.

  I had a hard time falling to sleep, reliving Max’s scared and pleading expression as he was led away at the shelter, and my dreams were haunted by imps feeding in a writhing, maggot-like mass on my stomach.

  14

  Stop, Drop, and Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell

  The next morning I dressed in the day’s business attire—spandex top and bottom, gun holsters, and self-braided hair. I couldn’t work the same makeup magic Joy had applied, but I did my best. Then I covered most of my body with a long coat and scurried to my car before my neighbors could see me.

  I was fully prepared to kick some evil butt, especially after my training with Niko, but Mr. Pitt had other ideas. Again. With Niko on speed dial, I worked the floor for most of the day, looking for signs of new demon activity while Niko did something I was sure was far more effective. I knew busy work when I saw it. It didn’t help that Rose was no longer on babysitter duty. I’d chaffed under her watchful eye, but I quickly discovered I’d underestimated the benefit of having one sane person to talk to.

  It was a long, irritating day. I snapped and snarled at any male who approached me—and considering it was Saturday and the convention’s biggest day, there were quite a few men who escaped with singed egos. I spent a lot of my time contemplating evolution in the twenty-first century, which developed into a fantasy in which I was given free rein to thin the herd of the weakest members. I knew exactly where I’d start.