Into the Fire

by Patrick Hester

  Someone laughed nearby. Wasn’t me this time.

  All the pain of the past days flooded back in. The colors of magic fled as quickly as the pain returned. A field of stars twinkled everywhere I looked. They spun, too. Counterclockwise.

  Several things came into sharp focus. The pain in my face? New. The stabbing fingers of death wrenching my back right now? Also new. Lungs? Burning. Eyes? Blurring. The red stuff on my fingers as I wiped my nose? Blood. Lots of it.

  My brain started assessing the damage and giving it real names. My nose had to be broken, lungs and eyes struggling due to all the smoke I could no longer push away from me. And the laughing? Had to be the Vampire.

  Thinking about him brought him into focus, pacing like a caged lion just a few feet away from where I lay.

  “Ah, Detective,” he said. “For a moment, just a moment, I thought I was in trouble.” He paused his pacing. “You blazed like the sun, full of righteous fury! I thought here, at last, a Wizard would claim my head like some trophy for her mantle.” He laughed. “Imagine my delight to find none of it to be true. You really are what you appear to be, a little girl getting in over her pretty little head.”

  I spat some blood in his misogynistic direction.

  In response, he moved faster than I could track and slapped me across the room.

  I hit the far wall, and all the air went out of me.

  “Tell me,” he said, kneeling down to look me in the eye. His breath stank, a combination of rotting flesh and putrid meat.

  Bile rose in my mouth.

  “What did you think would happen here?” he asked. “Surely you didn’t think you could exact vengeance in his name?” He laughed again—a sound like nails on a chalkboard.

  I tried pushing myself back to my feet so I could pull the magic in again and wipe that stupid, grotesque smile off his stupid, grotesque face.

  He clamped his hand around my throat and pulled me up, feet dangling a foot from the floor.

  With a squeeze, he cut off the air to my lungs. The stars swam through my vision again. I slapped at his hands, his face, kicked with my feet, anything I could think of to get him to let me go.

  He said something I couldn’t hear or focus on.

  My chest ached. Blood boiled. I needed to breathe!

  I bounced off another wall and collapsed to the ground in a coughing fit, gasping for every precious breath I could manage. My brain told me my ears had heard a crunch of bone when I hit the wall, but I couldn’t focus, not when my lungs cried out for air.

  When I opened my eyes again, the stars had fled. Vladymir stalked across the Italian tile floor with a measured stride.

  Again I begged for the magic to fill me, for Fire to come and burn this son of a bitch into a pile of ash, and again, nothing happened.

  Vladymir bent down, grabbed me by the left arm, and wrenched me up into the air.

  His grip snapped my arm, and I screamed.

  He dropped me as quick as he’d picked me up.

  I cradled my arm. My legs quivered, or maybe it was my whole body, but I managed to stay standing.

  He gave me a nearly sincere smile, then kicked my leg so hard the bone cracked and I fell in a lump to the floor.

  Hot tears streamed from my eyes. The drums had been replaced by the weak thrumming of my heartbeat and rasp of Vladymir’s chuckling laughter.

  Every breath brought smoke and fits of coughing.

  “The rush of beating someone to death,” he said softly. “I have denied myself such simple pleasures for far too long. But you murdered her—my child. For that, you must suffer.”

  “Shut up,” I rasped, spitting the blood from my mouth in his general direction.

  In an instant, he had me in his grip again, lifting me by my broken arm and causing me to scream like I have never screamed before in my life.

  The first couple of backhands to my face didn’t shut me up, but soon it was all I could do stay conscious. Then I flew again. I hit the brick fireplace hard, then smacked the mantle on the way down to the hard brick hearth. Something in my chest snapped—maybe a few somethings—and my lungs suddenly burned with a new type of fire. I tried to move, tried to do anything at all to defend myself, but all my strength had fled.

  The bricks, slick with my blood, seemed a fine place to sleep and let all of this just fade away.

  Odd, isn’t it, what you think about at moments like this? Moments when you know you’re going to die.

  Right then and there, I wondered where the hell my hat had gone.

  “I think your death tonight will not be enough vengeance.”

  The voice, Vladymir, moved through the room, careful to avoid the spreading fire.

  The thought made me try, again, to grab Fire, harness it to my will, but it slipped through my fingers. Plus, the distractions of my body, of all the new cuts, breaks, gashes, and overall pain, kept distracting me.

  “You have taken many children from me this night. Perhaps I will take one from you. I must admit, your brother is a handsome young man. Don’t you think it would be a delicious irony, turning your little brother into one of my children? Making him part of my family.” Again he laughed.

  But the world had stopped moving. The fire no longer popped and cracked. The smoke hung heavy in the air, frozen. Even sound failed.

  “What?” Vladymir asked.

  The pain in my body retreated. All the thoughts, all the memories, all the self-doubt, pain, and recriminations, fled.

  The colors of magic swirled all around me, through me, and I grabbed them like a woman drowning in a raging river reaching for a branch. They responded, and the weaves formed.

  Vladymir moved as fast as he ever had before, and it wasn’t enough. He slammed into a wall of Air, rebounding off it and changing course only to slam into another solid wall of Air. A prison all around him, and nowhere for him to run.

  “You screwed up,” I muttered, the world speeding up again. “You should’ve kept your mouth shut about my family.”

  I guided Air, lifting him off the ground to hover before me. Fire whispered to me, and I listened, sweeping it across the floor even as the Vampire shed his human form, beating against the walls he could feel but not see. Up it crawled, swirling around the bottom, building in form and appetite.

  “No!” an odd voice screamed from within the Air prison, sounding of Vladymir and something else all at the same time—something deep and ancient.

  I pushed, the walls collapsing a hair, then another and another, eventually penning him into a space three foot square. Fire hissed and cracked around it, licking the edges. A wail cut through the room as the Fire made its way in through a small opening at the bottom, the Vampire receding as far from it as it could. I filled the space with Fire, feeding it all the rage, energy, hate, and guilt I had left within me.

  The thing Vladymir had become knew fear.

  Fire lashed out, engulfing him. The black, undulating mass spun, bouncing from wall to wall, Fire eating away at it. Vladymir’s face appeared, contorted, locked in a scream, before disappearing again. Fire and Vampire tumbled and wrestled, over and over, the mass getting smaller and smaller, until there was nothing left at all. And still I let Fire rage.

  He had been the strongest of them all, their progenitor.

  As he died, so did they die all around me. I could feel their screams rather than hear them, Vampires dying here and all over the world. All linked to this creature, the one I had destroyed.

  I released the weaves.

  Smoke poured in, attacking me, choking me. The heat of the fires raging all around slammed into me.

  The house didn’t have much longer before it collapsed in on me. I needed to get out, get to safety, but the floor was comfortable. The magic fled and took with it all I had left.

  I lay there, ready for death.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Eyes too heavy to stay open, they closed. A few ragged coughs bubbled up from my chest, sending spikes of agony through my body. Every in
ch of me hurt now. Broken bones, trouble breathing, blood gushing out my nose and filling my mouth. One eye felt swollen, but so did most of my face.

  Whatever juice I’d gotten from Jack Mayfair had faded.

  Just Sam again.

  This is where you came in way back when.

  “I don’t think anyone could have predicted that one stupid, irrational girl could cause so much trouble in just one week.”

  The voice … I knew it. I tried to push myself up so I could see who it was, hands slipping and sliding in my own blood. Progress was slow. I managed to sit up, but just barely. I needed the brick fireplace at my back to keep me from falling over.

  “I really should thank you. You have done more to further my agenda than anyone actually in my employ at the moment. Really, well done. Bravo.”

  The smoke parted, pushed aside by magic.

  Nevil stood there.

  Freaking Nevil!

  The last I’d seen of him, he looked like someone had run him through a meat grinder—barely alive. Now he stood before me without a scratch on him.

  He grinned and crouched beside me. “You look horrid.”

  “That’s the consensus,” I tried to say. Blood filling my mouth made it more of a gurgle.

  He brushed a few hairs out of my eye, and I pulled away from him, immediately regretting the movement as pain raged through my chest and side where the ribs were definitely broken.

  With a smile, he said, “I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on.”

  “A little,” I croaked. My throat was raw, my voice hoarse. Probably from smoke inhalation. I needed to get out of here, but doubted I could. My legs were useless. Sitting up and not falling back down took all I had. Walking out of here under my own power? Not gonna happen.

  “Jack, Jack, Jack,” Nevil said, standing again. He strolled a few feet away, turning, admiring the mansion going up in flames around us.

  I knew he must’ve been keeping the flames and smoke away from us by using magic—I’d done the same thing not long ago, but I couldn’t see it. Reaching out, I tried to feel the colors again, see them, will them to help me, but that world had gone cold and dark to me. Empty.

  After fighting it for so long, I suddenly knew what it was like to be blind and deaf.

  “I’ve blocked your magic, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said. “Didn’t know you could do that, did you? Jack didn’t either—not really. So much Jack didn’t know. A simple weave, yet far above his ability.”

  “How do you know something Jack didn’t?” I wheezed.

  “Oh, I know lots of little bits Jack never imagined. I always wanted to learn, to know more. Jack, he wanted to help people. Like you,” Nevil said. “Like when he came to rescue me.”

  I coughed to clear the blood from my mouth. “To be fair, we thought you were the big bad. Rescuing you was an accident.”

  “The big bad? Ah, there it is. That American wit of yours. Do try not to interrupt. This is my monologue, after all. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. You and Jack rescued me. You see, I wasn’t the victim in the ritual as much as the focal point.”

  “Kinda figured, given you’re here bragging.” So. Nevil went to the dark side after all. Jenni called it. I still tried to call on magic—any magic, anything that could help me, but whatever he’d done, it worked well. If he told the truth about blocking me … damn. That’s dirty fighting.

  “I needed Jack to be there at the end,” he said. “But it had to be his idea for all of this to work. See, Jack never liked reading or studying, making it difficult to find just the right bread crumbs to place in front of him. Do you know how long those books lay hidden in the library? Months. Months of waiting for him to get a clue, to do what I needed him to do. So tedious. I suppose I should thank you for facilitating their discovery.”

  “I’m dying here, jackass,” I said. “I’d rather get it over with, so if you could find a point to all this soon, I’d appreciate it.”

  He barked a laugh and pointed a finger up. “Jack learns of the rituals.” Another finger. “Jack suspects me of skullduggery, then discovers me as the victim, not the mastermind.” A third finger. “He takes me in and trusts me as never before. Once in his good graces, he names me as apprentice, at which point he meets an unfortunate and untimely end,” the last finger went up, “and I become Steward.”

  “A lot of trouble just to take the guy’s job. Plus, who says skullduggery?”

  Nevil raged, launching himself at me and slapping me hard enough to knock me over. “It’s not just a job, you stupid twit! The Stewards have real power! Power I need for the next step!”

  With some effort, he calmed himself. Then laughed. “I owed you after the library … I’ll still have his job, as you put it. That hasn’t changed.”

  Something gently lifted me and set me with my back against the fireplace.

  I wiped blood from my mouth onto my sleeve.

  He said, “Nothing has changed except the path. Jack killed by a Vampire, his apprentice dead while attempting revenge. Injured, I couldn’t make it in time to save her. They will hand me the title of Steward on a silver platter.”

  “You put yourself through torture for that?” I asked.

  “Not torture. More of an initiation,” he replied. “The world has changed so much more than Jack ever realized.”

  “How come you look so much healthier than the last time I saw you?”

  “The prize for enduring the ritual includes the knowledge to heal oneself from injury.”

  “Jack said magic couldn’t heal,” I said hotly.

  “Jack lied. I’d tell you more, but there’s really no point. You won’t make it out of this house.”

  I remembered why I hated him before. His voice grated, his attitude sucked, and his nose pointed straight up in the air due to the stick up his ass. He figured he’d won. But he’d cheated. Cheaters never win.

  “I do have to give you credit, though,” he said as he turned around, staring out at the house. Flames had spread everywhere. Chunks of ceiling crashed down around us. Only his magic held it all back. “I never thought you capable of this. It makes my life so much easier. I had planned on killing Vladymir, but not for some time. He had his uses.” He clucked his tongue. “Too bad. I might’ve found some use for you. Instead, you have to die here, tragically, alone.”

  Knowing this is strapped to your ankle, that you have a plan b, will give me piece of mind. It’ll be like Pop, and me, are there to back you up.

  Pop’s gun.

  Nevil had his back to me. Moving carefully, I reached down to my ankle. When a crack announced another bit of debris crashing down, I opened the Velcro and pulled the gun from its holster.

  “I’m never alone.”

  Nevil turned, a smile forming on his lips.

  I pointed the gun at his head and fired. The shot went right between his eyes, his face twisting in horror. He stared at me for a second, and I at him. Then I squeezed the trigger again and again until it clicked, empty. He fell, and the last bullet went wide of the target. The magic vanished; the smoke rushed in.

  I couldn’t see or breathe. The heat crashed in on me, pushing me down hard. The ceiling cracked, flaming bits breaking free and crashing down where Nevil lay.

  I rolled away, into the fireplace. Everything going black. My chest burned, my body numb.

  I closed my eyes and heard my father’s voice whispering to me.

  “I did good with you, kid.”

  Epilogue

  Unlike Samantha, I’ve not been close with my family for centuries.

  “White female, approximately thirty years old, multiple fractures in arms and legs, broken ribs, collapsed lung, had to resuscitate her twice en route. BP is low, pulse thready, oxygen levels low due to smoke inhalation.”

  “My god, what happened? Did we go to war with Boulder and no one told me?” asked the healer.

  Humor. Humans always use it to deflect and diffuse tense situations. This has always been your way
.

  “Get her into trauma two!” the healer ordered.

  I suppose you would call her a doctor. Forgive me. At times, my mind wanders in and out of the past; words come and go, others pale. Being an immortal—an elf—can be difficult on the mind. Or perhaps it is simply the immortality.

  How fascinating, the human condition. How fragile your lives, how wondrous your tenacity, your passion to hang on to that which is so fleeting compared to the true nature of time. You exist for a millisecond on the cosmic scale and yet accomplish so much. Yours is a lifelong struggle to pack as much as you can into a millisecond, to experience so much in such a finite existence.

  Humbling. To a degree.

  Perhaps that’s why I have been so enamored by you, why I’ve spent so much time living among your kind. Samantha’s kind. Straining what relationships I’ve had with my own family nearly to their breaking point. Mother has never approved. A strong woman, she might even like and respect Samantha, were they to meet.

  These brief glimpses into the human psyche have given me unparalleled insight into you and the world you’ve built in such a short span of what you perceive as “history.” The arrogance amuses me but offends my mother. A constant source of strife between us. Once.

  I made the call soon after the heal—doctors—began their work. No guarantees, of course. But I owed Jack Mayfair, and such debts are not easily repaid. A voice on the other end answered, her accent vaguely familiar. She took down the information, asked a simple question.

  “Are you prepared to pay the cost?”

  The personal cost would be high, but I see no alternative. It must be done.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  A click.

  Now, the waiting. Both mine and her family’s.

  So much pain, so much grief. Understandable, given the circumstances. It radiated from them in waves that I could taste like so much bitter fruit, turning my stomach. Humans have such high tolerance for pain and grief—you deal with so much of it every day—but this day it was worse for this family. This day, it seems too much for them to bear.

  I doubt my own family would weather such shoals as well as this one has. To lose a single elf these days? A terrible thought. To lose two at once? Unthinkable. Not just my family, my entire people would mourn for hundreds, even thousands of years.