Pacific Fire

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “No.” Em had ditched the leeches’ captured bayonet before coming into the city. If they got pulled over for inspection, it would have been too hard to explain away.

  “Can’t help you there, sorry.”

  “Don’t like guns?” Em asked.

  “I’m an expert marksman, actually, but I only deal what I steal.” From a locked cabinet, she produced a vial of polished bone, no bigger than a perfume bottle. “I got this from Mother Cauldron’s kitchen. No guarantees, but it might be toxic enough to foul a firedrake.”

  She tucked the bottle in the basket with the rest of the groceries.

  “I think that should do it. Any more and you won’t be able to haul it to Catalina. I’ll give you a couple of bags.” She turned to them with finality. “That’s it. Except for a little advice. Take all this stuff and dump it in the canal. Forget the dragon. Get out of LA. Get as far away as you can. Enroll in school. Pick up a musical instrument. Try out for the drama club. Go out on some dates. Reach adulthood.”

  Em wasn’t charmed. “Does the advice help you sleep better?”

  Cassandra smiled in a way that made her look older. “Who sleeps anymore?”

  * * *

  When they returned to the dinghy, someone was sitting at the tiller. Gray haired, neatly trimmed, with sharp dark eyes under a high brow and a nose that Sam could only think of as precise, he was handsome enough to model suits on a billboard. Sam smelled predation on him.

  “My name is Max. I work with Gabriel Argent. If I meant to harm you, I would have done so before you ever left the Salton Sea.”

  “You’re Argent’s hound,” Sam said.

  “I believe that’s more or less what I just said.” He didn’t wait to be asked what he wanted. “We have an operative on the island. Her objective is to provide Daniel Blackland with intel about the island’s most current conditions. We are not in continued contact with her, so she doesn’t know that Daniel’s injured and not coming. Our operative’s instructions are to leave any intel she gathers at a dead-drop.” Max gave them the name of a café in Avalon, Catalina’s former tourist settlement.

  “If you have people there, then why do we have to do this?” Sam said. “We’re not professionals.”

  Em took exception to this. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Mr. Argent is risking enough by placing someone on the island,” Max said. “As it is, this woman doesn’t even know who she’s working for. She just knows she’s being paid an outsized amount of money to observe. The fact that I’m in your boat, talking to you, constitutes an even more ridiculous risk. But Mr. Argent wants the firedrake destroyed. And on that note.” Max sprang from the boat, onto the sidewalk.

  “Wait,” Em said. “If this is all so important, give us some real help. We don’t even have transport to the island.”

  Max gave the dinghy an appraising look. “No, you don’t. This thing will capsize at the first wave. I suggest you steal something better.”

  With that, he set off down the sidewalk through a gentle rain of jacaranda petals.

  “You ever get the sense we’re being used?” Em said.

  Sam pulled the start cord. “I never feel any other way.”

  ELEVEN

  Daniel and Moth entered the lobby of the Ministry of Water and Power, Los Angeles headquarters. Gabriel Argent had done a nice job on the place. Waterfalls cascaded down the four-story atrium into a reflecting pool. The air echoed with the sounds of water trickling over rocks and pleasant rain. This was still the kind of place where you took a number and sat in a chair until summoned to a customer service window, but you could fool yourself into thinking you’d come here to enjoy the scenery instead of waiting to ask a question about your bill.

  Daniel walked up to one of the service reps.

  “I don’t have a number,” he said, preempting the obvious question. “I want to see Gabriel Argent. My name is Daniel Blackland. Tell your supervisor and pass it up the chain. I’ll be right over there.”

  Without waiting for a response, he took a seat on a nice leather couch and skimmed a pamphlet about water conservation.

  “We should go see Cassie after we’re done here,” he said.

  Moth glowered. “No.”

  “What do you mean no?”

  “By no, I mean the customary thing usually meant by no.”

  Daniel tried again. “We need to talk to her—”

  “You want to talk to her. That’s not the same thing.”

  “—to see if she knows anything about the kids. If the boy made it here, he might have gone to her.”

  “Then I’ll go and ask. But you’re not seeing her. Not now.”

  “Look, she and I are totally cool. You know how well we still worked together after we broke up. I’ve even talked to her on the phone a few times the last couple of years, just to check in and catch up.”

  “And after this job is over, you can go check in and catch up and even hold hands at the malt shop. But not until after.”

  Daniel needed to stop talking. He didn’t want to start raising his voice in Gabriel Argent’s stronghold.

  “Moth, what’s your—” He cut himself off and tried again with less volume. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem is that if you go see her now, when there’s stakes, when she sees you’re in trouble, then she’s going to want to help you. And you’ll try to talk her out of it, you’ll say it’s out of the question, you don’t want her involved, yadda and so forth. But you won’t mean it. You’ll think you’ll mean it, but not enough to turn down her help.”

  “I can turn down her help.”

  “You didn’t turn down mine.”

  “I … I just want to check with her about the kids.”

  Moth sighed. “Okay, I’ll try something else.” He held up his left hand, fingers splayed out. “See this?”

  “It’s kind of in my face and super huge, so, yes.”

  “Chopped off by a helicopter rotor last year.”

  “I don’t even want to know.” Daniel turned the page of the water-conservation pamphlet. Apparently you could save entire riparian habitats by putting a brick in your toilet tank. “Fine. Tell me. What was your hand doing in a helicopter rotor?”

  Moth made a fist. “That’s beside the point. The point is, it grew back, because I can’t be hurt.”

  “Sure you can. It’s just more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “My point is, you can be hurt. And Cassie can be hurt. And if you go see her, she’ll sign on with us, and I’m not having it.”

  “And you’re deciding that? She doesn’t get a say?”

  “D, when we’re on a job, you’re the boss. But when it comes to protecting my friends, I am.”

  “Our friends,” Daniel said. “I think you meant protecting our friends.”

  “Come with me.”

  Gabriel Argent’s hound stood before them, hands clasped behind his back, dazzling with his good haircut and light-gray suit.

  Daniel snatched a number from the ticket dispenser, just for fun, and they followed Max from the lobby. A private elevator took them deep into the wells of the building, and deeper into the wells of the earth.

  “You know, last time I was here I was being extorted,” Daniel said conversationally.

  “Last time I was here, I was held prisoner inside a coffin filled with water,” Moth said.

  “Man, why you always gotta one-up me?”

  Max closed his eyes with great weariness. “I don’t like buddy movies. In any case, that was Gabriel’s predecessor. He’s dead.”

  “Right,” Moth said. “William Mulholland. You shot him through the back of the head. You’d think Argent would wear a helmet.”

  “I do, too. Alas, he doesn’t listen.”

  The elevator doors opened on Argent’s throne room. He sat on an elevated chair, some thirty feet above a pool of flawless black water. Hundreds of copper pipes descended from a glass-domed ceiling, like the tendrils of mechanical jellyfish. Almost hid
den in the nest of pipes, Argent turned valves and wheels, his movements quick, controlled, and sure. Daniel knew what skilled sorcery looked like.

  “You’re being awfully indiscreet, coming here,” Argent said without looking away from his work. “I thought I made it clear I don’t want my association with you publicized.”

  “Your desires aren’t my lookout, Argent.”

  “It’s dangerous for you, too. Puts an even bigger target on your back. And compromises the Catalina mission.”

  “I don’t care about the Catalina mission. Sam is missing.”

  “So you said.” Argent looked up to the ceiling. Behind the glass dome, more pipes spread out in a complicated web. He turned some more valves. “Why call on me? If you think he might be in Los Angeles, why not confront the people you think want to do Sam harm?”

  “Because, you fucking drip, your water goes into every last capillary in this city. If you don’t already know where Sam is, you can search for him. You can find him.”

  Daniel suppressed the buzz of kraken storm building under his skin. He didn’t want to have a violent confrontation with the chief water mage in his own stronghold. Or at all, really. He and Argent weren’t friends, but neither were they enemies.

  He kept his electricity below the surface, but it crackled in his bones.

  Max took a warning step forward. Moth took a countering step.

  Argent looked down at Daniel briefly before turning his attention back to pipes and valves. “Sam is of the Hierarch’s bones, and the Hierarch had defenses that prevented my predecessor from keeping tabs on him. But even if I could find Sam, I wouldn’t look for him. The reason why should be obvious.”

  “Because if I find Sam, and he’s still alive, I’ll stop him from going to Catalina. And you want the dragon slain, so you’d much rather he go to Catalina even if he dies in the process.”

  Daniel watched Argent’s face. He wanted to see some clue that he’d misrepresented Argent. He wanted Argent to deny what Daniel was saying, for him to clarify or correct.

  No such indication came. Daniel was surprised how sad it made him.

  “You once said you didn’t want to be enemies,” Daniel said. “I always considered you at least an ally. Not a comfortable one, but still.” He turned his back on the water mage and headed for the elevator. “That’s over, Argent.”

  “Can you wait a second, Daniel? I just want to show you something.” Argent spun some more valves. Concentric ripples spread out across the black pool, and the glossy dark surface of the water gave way to images of devastation. Mountains of debris, and sideways houses ripped from their foundations, and a tangled mass of cars and boats spread across a field of mud. Torrents of brown water pushed along a cargo of torn-away roofs. The bloated carcasses of cows and horses bobbed like rafts. People were pressed against a flumeway overpass, the water risen at least forty feet, debris building up behind them, crushing them.

  Argent climbed down from his throne. He was close enough to touch. Close enough to burn.

  “Mother Cauldron once poisoned the Ivanhoe Reservoir. I responded by cutting off the taps to her possessions for eight hours. No water, no power, canal traffic frozen. What you’re looking at is her response. She dissolved the Ivanhoe Dam. One hundred and sixty-seven people dead, easily four times as many homeless. Not to mention the economic loss. This is what happens when the powers squabble, Daniel. If it’s known I sabotaged the Catalina dragon, it won’t be a squabble. It’ll be war, and I’m not strong enough to take on the combined forces of Otis Roth, Mother Cauldron, and Sister Tooth. We can’t have war, Daniel.”

  The image shifted to the inside of a house. The waterline was a foot below the ceiling. Amid the floating papers and sofa cushions was a family of four, two adults and two children, clinging to one another as a disaster they had no hand in making took their lives.

  Daniel had some sympathy for Argent. He knew what it was like to have nothing but bad options.

  “If harm comes to Sam, you’ll have a war with me, Gabriel.”

  Argent looked into the water. “Yeah. Life’s funny.”

  Daniel knew exactly what he meant.

  * * *

  The Enamel Tabernacle loomed above an Orange County labyrinth of strip malls and cul-de-sac canals lined with sand-colored stucco houses. Two towers fashioned to look like basilisk tusks spiked the blue sky, sunlight glinting off their pearly surfaces. On weekends, thousands of worshippers passed between the towers through a great arch of mammoth, mastodon, and monocerus tusks. On a late Wednesday morning, Daniel and Moth entered the church alone.

  The place’s official name was the Church of Dantis, but Daniel had always called it the Enamel Tabernacle, Bicuspid Basilica, or the Molar Mosque. Once inside, his smart-ass names no longer comforted him. Sunlight came through panes of translucently thin dragon enamel, casting the space in a warm, milky glow. The floors and walls and even the pews gleamed with polished ivory. Above, tusks the size of telephone poles formed a dome.

  “The only known world-elephant tusks in existence,” said a man, walking down the nave toward Daniel and Moth. He was yellow haired and white, smiling in a blue blazer and tan slacks. “It’s something to behold, isn’t it?”

  “That’s a lot of magic,” Moth said. Daniel heard cash-register bells in his voice.

  The man maintained his pleasant smile and clasped his hands. “It certainly is, but it’s just a reflection of the grace the Lord invested in all of us. Is this your first visit to the church?”

  “I’d like to see Sister Tooth,” Daniel said.

  The man was only momentarily taken aback by the absurdity of Daniel’s request. “Of course. She’ll be leading our Sunday-morning service. It begins at nine, but we advise worshippers to arrive no later than eight if they want a seat, though there is standing room in the balcony. In the meantime, you’re welcome to explore the visitors’ center and library, which are just past the drinking fountain to your left.”

  “I’m Daniel Blackland and she’ll see me now.”

  The man’s smile faltered. “I see. I’ll have to check if—”

  “Thank you, brother.” From the distant altar, Sister Tooth approached, her heels echoing off the bone-mosaic floor. She wasn’t wearing her full helmet and armor, just a long, wine-red dress under a breastplate fashioned from a spade-shaped tooth of some gigantic creature. This was the first time Daniel had ever seen her face unobstructed. Her skin was white as marble, the contours of her cheeks and jaw forming sensual curves. If she was a monster, she was a beautiful sort.

  The grip of an ivory sword peeked from the scabbard belted to her hip. Legend held that the sword was a single dragon fang.

  “Lord Blackland,” she said with a gracious little head bow.

  “I’m not a lord. You can call me Daniel, or mister, if you’re feeling formal.”

  “If you’d chosen a different path, I might be calling you Lord Hierarch.”

  “Turns out I like truck stops more than palaces.”

  “The point is, my lord, that castle or campground, it was your choice to make.”

  “Did you try to kill me?” he said.

  She seemed neither surprised by the question nor affronted.

  “Did someone try to kill you, my lord?”

  “It didn’t work, obviously, but I can’t let that go unanswered.”

  She seemed to take this as a given. “There are any number of people made nervous by the fact that you’re still alive. I acknowledge that I’m on that list, but I shouldn’t think I’m at the very top.”

  “The venom was custom designed for me. Whoever crafted it must have had access to my essence.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if she’d just solved the last clue in a crossword puzzle. “Your teeth. Yes, I do know your teeth. Your father brought them to me when he wanted to know how to extract the most magic from them. He wanted to use them to make a golem from you. I did try to warn him.”

  The light changed, growing cooler, darker.
Clouds outside must have drifted in front of the sun.

  “Warn him?”

  “That it was an ill-advised notion, making a golem from teeth. Teeth are potent sources of osteomancy, but they are fire, and rending, and consuming passion. For a golem, you need large bones, through which great quantities of blood have flowed, soaking their osteomancy into the hollows. Or else the golem is a sad thing. Broken. Incomplete.”

  Daniel had met his golem, very briefly, when they were both children. He was just as Sister Tooth had described: damaged.

  “The attempt on me was to snatch the Hierarch’s golem,” Daniel said. “And now he’s missing. Do you know anything about that?”

  Sister Tooth’s unblinking pale eyes were almost white. “I have tried to procure your boy many times. I don’t want you as an enemy, but the Hierarch’s golem is simply too rich a treasure to leave alone. Nonetheless, I would never send assassins for you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when I take your teeth, my lord, I’ll have them from your living head.” She smiled. Her teeth didn’t match. They were many colors. Many shapes. They came from many different creatures. “I have answered your questions. Now I have one for you: Will you fight me, here, in my own house? Or will we wait another day?”

  “Moth, by the way,” Moth said, waving. “My name is Moth. I’m standing right here, part of the world.”

  Daniel remembered the satisfaction of plunging his hands into the Hierarch’s chest. Cracking through his breastbone. Grasping his heart and pulling it free. He remembered biting into it and tasting the flavor of his magic. Sister Tooth wasn’t as richly osteomantic as the Hierarch, but she’d make someone a very fine meal.

  “Later,” Daniel said.

  * * *

  The La Brea Tar Pits were the historical heart of osteomantic power in Los Angeles. The first magic excavated by the Hierarch came from there, and it was the land upon which was built the byzantine castle of the Ministry of Osteomancy’s headquarters. The Ministry now made do with drabber quarters on less hallowed ground, and the castle belonged to Mother Cauldron.