Into the Fire

by Patrick Hester

  I couldn’t even process that sentence.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Ronan. “What’s the matter?”

  “Golem,” he responded.

  Behind me, Father Rosario fainted dead away.

  * * *

  “What the hell is a Golem?” I asked as I cradled the head of the priest in my lap. He was out cold. A very loud boom caused Ronan to bounce away from the door. Dust cascaded down from the ceiling, and the entire house shook violently.

  “The incredibly powerful creature attempting to get into the house,” Ronan replied.

  “I’m surprised the door held it back!” Father Rosario’s face had gone pale, but he was breathing. I slapped his cheeks. “Time to wake up, Father.”

  “The door?” Ronan laughed. “It has not touched the door yet. It is working on the threshold. When that fails, the door will mean nothing to it.” Another loud boom, and the whole house trembled. Again Ronan bounced off the door, then back onto it. “Will not be long now,” he offered with a grin.

  “What the hell is a Golem?” I asked again.

  “A construct,” answered a weak voice. Father Rosario was coming around. “A creature of clay and mud, animated by magic—one I hoped never to see or hear of again. Difficult to create and control, more so to destroy. Thank you, my dear,” he smiled, looking up at me from my lap. “I’m sorry. Been a very long time since I’ve had to deal with anything of this sort. I can get up now.”

  I helped him to his feet, then offered him support until he steadied himself.

  “They are also fairly single-minded,” Ronan offered with a smile. “Since this one took little notice of me, I would say he is here for you, Samantha. Unless you have been up to no good again, Father? I seem to remember some trouble you started in Madagascar …”

  “That—” The Father sputtered. “I did not start that. By God, I finished it, though.”

  Ronan laughed merrily.

  “Call me Sam,” I said through my teeth, giving them both equal measures of glare. Great. Just what I needed to start the day off, a Golem. “How do we kill it?”

  “Any writing on it you could see?” asked the Father.

  “No,” Ronan said.

  “Then you will have to cut off its head,” Rosario said. “There is most likely a scrap of paper in its mouth with a written spell animating it. Cut the head off or remove the paper, and the Golem will simply stop. Eventually.”

  “Not an easy task,” Ronan said as he bounced off the door. Another boom caused the house to rock and rumble.

  How long would a threshold last?

  “It has a very thick neck,” he laughed. He seemed to be enjoying this!

  Absolutely insane.

  “Can you use magic on it, Samantha?” asked the Father.

  “Call me Sam,” I repeated myself. “And no. Well, probably not. I’m still learning. I didn’t even know you could write a spell on paper to animate something. I do have this, though,” I said, pulling my gun from its holster. “Bullets hurt it?”

  “Probably not,” said both men at the same time. They stared at each other, and Ronan smiled again.

  “Although it might slow it down for a moment or two,” the Father added after a moment. “I’ll get my shotgun just in case.” He scurried down the hall.

  “Threshold is about to go,” Ronan said.

  “Then what happens?” I asked.

  “Door goes, then we go,” he answered. “Unless you can work something up other than your gun.”

  “I’m not Mayfair!” I snapped. “I don’t have any sort of control over it. It comes and goes when it wants to, not when I call it.” I thought a moment. “That’s not true. It does seem to respond well enough to my freaking out!”

  Another boom, and then a sound I could only describe as the sound thunder makes when it cracks right on top of you, only a thousand times louder.

  “Time to freak out, then,” Ronan laughed. “One more punch, and it will be through the threshold.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Give me a second.”

  “If I had a hundred, I would gladly give them, but I do not. Whatever you intend to do, do it quickly.”

  Okay, Sam—now what? “Headache!” I said.

  “What?”

  “I need a headache! Whenever I have a headache, magic stuff happens.”

  “Bang your head against the wall if it will help,” Ronan offered.

  I had to admit, it was worth a shot. Another boom, and several of the pictures on the wall in front of me fell, the glass shattering in the frames. I decided against it.

  “Plan B,” I said. I sat down on the floor in front of Ronan. A couple of deep breaths, and I closed my eyes.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Meditation,” I snapped. Mayfair had used this once to try and calm my brain; maybe it would work again. Only this time, maybe it would also let me do a little magic. I could hear Mayfair’s voice in my head, walking me through the meditation.

  “Breathe in through the nose, deep breath, then out through the mouth. Try to clear your mind of all distractions. Breathe in, then out. Let all the tensions of the past few days melt away. Listen to the sound of your heart beating, become aware of the rhythm and how your breathing begins to slow it. That same rhythm flows throughout your body, pulsing with each beat. Focus on the beat, on the rhythm, and let it wash over you.”

  I did it, the breathing, the relaxing. I pushed all the crap away from me, clearing my head. Everything around me melted away, and then I heard my heart beating within my own chest, a steady, strong rhythm. As it pulsed, the pain in my forehead went away, replaced by a solid pressure behind my eyes. I knew the headache, recognized it now. Ready to finally take control of this magic thing once and for all, I opened my eyes … and saw nothing at all except Ronan holding onto the door as a thunderous crack tore it right off the hinges and sent him flying.

  Chapter Thirty

  I managed to roll out of the way as the front door flew at an awkward angle, top slapping into the ceiling, spinning it end over end before it went sailing down the hallway, crashing with a hollow-sounding boom. Ronan stayed attached to it, but I didn’t have time to check on him.

  Jumping to my feet, I faced off against a massive, two-legged thing blocking the outside light that should’ve been flooding in through the hole where the door used to be.

  The Golem had the color of dirty clay, with wide shoulders, thick legs and arms, and a torso that would have made any Chicago Bear unstoppable on the football field. On those shoulders rested a pyramid-shaped head with a rounded point. Proportionally, the head didn’t fit with the rest of the body. A thin line cut across the head, and I assumed this had to be the mouth with the paper in it.

  It stood there with one arm extended forward, hand in a fist that had punched right through the security door. With a protesting shriek of metal and wood, it pulled the arm back, ripping the security door and most of the door jamb away from the house. With a flick, it tossed it aside as if it were no heavier than a feather.

  Exhaling the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, I emptied my gun directly into its head. I don’t even remember drawing my weapon, but I shot to make my instructors proud, all clustered right in the face. It staggered back, bullets ricocheting off its head, but didn’t go down.

  Ronan appeared in the hallway with Father Rosario in front of him. The little priest carried an impossibly long shotgun in his hands. He brought it up, pointed it at the Golem, and fired. Two things happened: the explosive force of the gun going off blew the Father off his feet and backwards into Ronan, causing both men to fly back down the hallway. Second, the Golem, on the other end of the explosive blast, rocked back and off its feet, landing with a thud about a yard away from the front door.

  I had absolutely no idea how long the thing would stay down or where the good Father got his hands on a damned elephant gun, but I knew I had to do something, and fast. We were getting our asses kicked here.
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br />   Dropping my gun, I reached up onto the little table, snagged one of the coffee spoons, and ran for the door. The Golem seemed to still be stunned, laying on its back just shy of the circular drive. I ran a little wide of it, and came at its head from the right side, spoon in hand. Diving for the head, I tried to ram the spoon into its mouth to pry it open. My aim was pretty good—I hit the mouth—but the spoon did not survive, bending back on itself under my weight.

  The mouth didn’t open, not even a little.

  “Shit. I really thought that would work,” I said.

  Something hit me. Hard.

  I flew away from it and landed on my back, all the breath expelled from my lungs when I hit the ground. Stars spun in the sky above me.

  My chest hurt in a way my brain equated with serious damage. Rolling over didn’t help. My vision blurred in and out of focus.

  The Golem hadn’t moved. One arm stuck straight up. Slowly, it lowered down, and the torso started to rise. In seconds, the arms staying stiff behind it, the damned thing got back to its feet again.

  Blinking through the sweat stinging my eyes, I had nothing left to try, no options left.

  The Golem, on the other hand, seemed to be fine with turning toward me and taking an ominous step forward, followed quickly enough by another, and then another.

  Pushing to my knees, I tried again to calm my mind and focus on the magic. Instead of calming down, laughter bubbled forth at the ridiculousness of the situation. The whole thing, my life, magic—magic was fucking real? A walking blob of rock-hard clay was going to smash me like a pancake? Death by pottery would look wonderful on a gravestone. I laughed some more, tears streaming down my face. All so fucking ridiculous. Here lies Sam Kane, loving daughter, killed because she didn’t own a kiln.

  “Hey, fuck you,” I heard someone say, startled to find that someone to be me.

  The Golem kept walking forward, blackened bits of its chest standing out to me. The Father’s elephant gun had done more damage than all of my efforts combined.

  I shouted this time, “Fuck you!”

  Rage welled up inside me, and my blood boiled. I thought about my partner’s death, my job, my father’s health, my boyfriend ruining our good thing, about Nevil being a dick and possibly the bad guy in all of this. My mind flashed on Chase going down on one knee like some goddamned romantic twit and my wondering why he would ask me that question knowing how I felt about marriage, and my face flushed from the heat pouring out of my body. I remembered the apartment, the Ghost, the Werewolf, being taken to a Vampire’s house for tea, and rescuing my little brother from a club full of the freaking things. Flashing out of sequence, these things kept coming, over and over. My breathing steadied; my vision cleared. The weight of everything I’d been feeling lifted, and a sense of calm washed over me. From deep within a well I didn’t even know I had, something new rushed up, elemental and raw. It filled me to the brim, prickling my skin.

  Magic.

  “Fuck you,” I said quietly.

  Fire ripped through the air and struck the Golem square in the chest, staggering it back one step, then two.

  The Fire raged within me, coursing through me, eager to escape and do whatever damage it could do. I obliged it, focusing all my rage and anger directly at the creature before me. I could see clay melting away, falling in globs onto the yellowed grass, landing with a hiss. Massive arms came up and crossed before it, trying to form a barrier, a shield from the heat. It leaned into the Fire the way I might lean into a heavy wind, and its arms melted slowly away.

  It tried stepping forward, but raising its foot caused the other to slide back another three or four feet before it plowed the raised foot back into the ground like an anchor.

  I could feel the sweat pouring down my face and back, icy cold despite all the heat raging inside and around me. The Fire appeared to flow up from the ground, in from the air, swirling around and through me all at the same time. Part of my brain noted I didn’t really know what I was doing, only that it worked and I needed to keep it going.

  The other part giggled like a madwoman.

  And the line of Fire reaching from me to the Golem thinned slightly.

  My lungs burned, and I took a breath that tasted better than any breath I’ve ever taken before in my life. All of my senses were alive like they’ve never been. My eyes saw the colors of magic swirling all around me, my nose smelled the yellowed grass, the flowers in their beds, the clay melting away from the Golem, even the gunpowder still left on what was left of its chest. My knees ached, the dry, yellowed grass beneath them cutting sharply into my jeans. My back, leg, and arm muscles strained as if I’d been working out for hours and hours without a break. I wouldn’t be able to keep doing this much longer.

  As if on cue, the Fire raging through me lessened. The line reaching out to the Golem’s chest thinned again to half what it had been a heartbeat ago, still a raging bar of bright blue flames, just less than a moment ago. Worse, the Golem no longer leaned as far forward as it had. Half its chest and arms were gone now, sitting in puddles at its feet, but its head remained untouched. Even as I considered shifting the line of Fire towards its head, the line thinned again, and I suddenly gasped for breath and fell forward, my hands hitting the grass to keep from falling on my face. I winced at the pain in my palms as the dry grass cut into them. It should’ve been nothing, but with my heightened senses, it stung like razors slicing through my skin.

  On the other side of the yard, the Golem took a step forward.

  My Fire sputtered, and it took another step forward before the line hit it again with just a little less force than before.

  I couldn’t keep this up, not long enough to melt the damned thing. I just didn’t know enough to do this well. Another gasp for air, and the Fire guttered out completely as the last of the Golem’s arms melted away, falling into a clump of mud at its feet. Cold spread through my body faster than the Fire had come, causing me to tremble and shake. Oddly, ice had formed in a circle all around me.

  Staying upright seemed pointless and necessary all at the same time. I failed, tumbling to my side to lie on the ice-covered grass.

  The Golem completely righted itself and took a step forward. This was it. The end. Another step.

  Ronan came out of nowhere, a croquet mallet in his hands. Three steps and he leapt, swinging the mallet like an Olympic hammer thrower, delivering a blow that staggered the creature back. Ronan spun and spun, the mallet whizzing through the air. On his third or fourth revolution, he slammed the mallet into the Golem’s head again, causing it to crack sideways. The Golem fell back, unable to defend itself now that it had no arms. He gave it no time to figure out a new defense, spinning and swinging to land another blow, then another, each causing the Golem to retreat further from me while widening the crack in its head.

  Ronan brought the mallet down right where the torso and the left leg met, which was already weakened and melted by my Fire. A loud crack broke the mallet and the leg all at once, sending the Golem into an uncontrolled spin of its own. It landed with a boom, bouncing me where I lay.

  A disheveled Father Rosario appeared from the house, hair sticking up wildly, a snow shovel in his hand. With a toss, it tumbled head over handle through the air to Ronan’s outstretched hand. Catching it easily, he slammed it down, decapitating the Golem. With a flick, the head flew a few feet away to bounce off into the gravel of the driveway. The rest of the body continued twitching for just a moment before going still.

  Sensing the danger had passed, I allowed myself the luxury of passing out.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Day Five

  October 31st

  I woke to the steady rhythm of a beeping clock. Or what I thought to be a beeping clock. Didn’t have quite the insistent cadence of an alarm going off. No, it had to be something else.

  Opening my eyes took effort. They were crusted over, scratchy. When I managed to pry my eyelids apart, dark and blurry greeted me. At which point I noticed a
gaggle of moths had laid cotton eggs in my mouth, which had hatched into more moths, who in turn had laid more cotton eggs, leaving me unable to speak, swallow, or otherwise communicate.

  Moments passed. Dark and blurry became simply dark, which didn’t help.

  Trying to move really didn’t help. A pressure in my chest hurt when I turned. I wanted water. With muscles gone to mush, water seemed an impossible dream. Every movement hindered by a thick layer of molasses swaddling me like a baby. My nose ached and hurt, drawing my attention in an urgent way. My hand flailed around, landing there and identifying what could only be some sort of tube attached and blowing air up into my nose, drying me out.

  “Here,” said a voice. “What do you need?”

  “Water?” I croaked.

  Warm hands grabbed my cold hands, guiding them to a large cup with a straw.

  I wanted to drink it all, every last drop. Bending my arm hurt, but I managed to get the straw to my mouth. Warm water, but who cares? I drank until I couldn’t drink anymore.

  “Take it slow,” said the voice. Strong voice, good voice.

  The silhouette of a man with short-cropped hair and broad shoulders leaned over me.

  My breath caught. “Pop?”

  “No,” the voice said, sadness dripping off the word. He reached up behind him and turned a light on.

  Michael Kane, Jr., my older brother, appeared from the shadows, his face filled with equal measures sadness and relief. His reddish hair had that military-style cut, though he wore civvies and not his Air Force uniform.

  Reaching out, he put his hand on mine. “Just me, brat.”

  The voice sounded the same, just as the face looked the same, only younger, full of life. My brother’s resemblance to our father had always been incredibly similar. Everyone mentioned it. My younger brothers and I took more of Mom’s features—sharp noses, high cheekbones. I don’t know why.

  “Hey, Mikey,” I said. I raised my hand to my head, and my arm hurt again. An IV trailed from my elbow to the shadows behind me. Reaching up, I touched the hose snaking into my nose, providing oxygen. The beeping came from the heart rate monitor. “Where am I?”