Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1)

by N. A. Grotepas

  “See? Not so bad.”

  “Bad is the only right word there.” He shook his head. “When are you going to trust me enough to tell me what happened with your other partner?”

  Oh, this. This is what’s bothering him. “Didn’t Fua already tell you?”

  “He gave me hints. That’s all.”

  “Is that what you were talking about with him earlier?”

  He shifted on his stool, as though uncomfortable. “Sometimes a person needs to know stuff like that. Sorry.”

  “I’m not mad. Facts are facts. Trust is earned, not a given.”

  “I asked him what I should know about it. He said your partner’s death wasn’t your fault.” His dark eyes found mine through the murk of the bar atmosphere. “Is that true?”

  “You know that I’m going to blame myself, even if it wasn’t my fault. So, I’ll give you the quick answer, Hank.” I swallowed, feeling the darkness of that event threatening to overcome me. “Someone else killed Scott. I couldn’t stop them. And that’s why I blame myself.”

  I felt his hand on my shoulder, then on my back giving me a reassuring pat. “I’m so sorry, Dred.”

  My first instinct was to push him away. But I was working on instincts like that, and clenched my fists. I didn’t want to become obsessed with self-destruction and isolation like I’d seen happen to colleagues. Hank’s gesture was small, but sincere, I felt, and it moved me enough that I had to swallow a lump forming in my throat. It was unfair of my body to betray me, but I would fight it into submission and not show any emotion. That was for the best.

  I wiped my eye—because it itched, not for any other reason.

  Hank seemed to notice and interpreted the move as me crying—as though that would ever happen—and he stretched his arm across my shoulders and pulled me into the crook of his arm.

  I leaned back to get a good look at his face. “And when will you tell me, Mr. Stone, what happened back in New York that got you moved out here?”

  His arm pulled away. He cleared his throat. “About that, Dred…”

  “Yeah?”

  He exhaled. “I can’t go into it. Not yet.”

  “Hera’s ghost, Hank, that’s not fair,” I said, reactively. I should have held my tongue, but it had seemed like we were about to have a breakthrough.

  He had to know that I wondered—in the midst of fan-hitting shit-storms—whether or not he was about to go AWOL. Because I’m not naive or dumb. And I knew he wondered that about me. We’d come together partially because of a hiccup in both of our pasts. It was time to accept that I could trust him with the knowledge of what happened to Scott and by default, me. And he needed to know he could trust me. So, why didn’t he trust me with the information? And if not now, when?

  “So you’re not ready, fine. But then I need to know, will whatever it was interfere with you being on top of your game?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “To be fair, it could. I don’t think it will. But it could.”

  “Hank, what the hell?”

  He sighed. “Look. I will tell you this much, Dred. What happened involved a kid. Not my kid. Not my fault. But, last night—the thing with Vivian just brought it to the surface. And I’m worried about her. And now I’m worried about us. This thing with the demons and vamps—it’s much worse than I thought. And I’m left wondering if it’s too big for us to handle.”

  I chuckled. I guffawed. I gave him a hefty jolly-good-fellow slap on the back. “Too big for us? Hank, come on. Us?” I shook my head and gulped the dregs of my drink.

  “That mob last night nearly got us.”

  I blinked and twisted on my stool to look straight at him. “Were we at the same battle?”

  “How did you not feel it?” he asked, glancing sidelong at me and shaking his head.

  “Are you trying to overpower me with despair? Whose side are you on, Hank?”

  “I’m on your side. But I’m being realistic.”

  “You’re being a pessimist. There’s a difference.”

  “I disagree, Dred. Realism looks like cynicism because it accepts the likelihood of failure.”

  I didn’t answer. I sat there, thinking, wondering if he was right. In a way, the aftermath of the battle did feel heavier, almost like a loss because it came out of nowhere, and it forced me to accept there was another dimension to the unseen world, one where events happened right under my nose and conspired to rise up against us unbeknownst to me.

  The battle had also involved a lot of destruction and violence. Brutality like that had a way of eroding the sense of order a person relied on to feel normal and at ease with the world. Not only that, the unexpected nature of the conflict added another dimension to it that caused it to feel graver than bloodshed with supernaturals usually did.

  “Maybe you’re right, Hank. Maybe so.”

  He turned on his stool to fully look at me.

  “Did I just win this argument?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Odds bodkins,” the bartender said in her scratchy smoker’s voice, drawing our attention. “Another one?”

  She was looking at the large fish tank behind the bar, shaking her head.

  I perked up. A distraction! A blessed distraction. “Another what, Beatrice?”

  She marched up to the tank and pointed to the top of water. “Can’t you see it?”

  We couldn’t, not from our angle.

  “Another fish died.”

  Faeries. They loved to keep pets, but were the worst pet owners known to all creation.

  A chill glanced across my skin. Despite how many times I was sure they’d accidentally killed their fish, this one felt ominous.

  “You should check the water,” Hank said. “Make sure it’s balanced for the kind of fish you’re keeping.”

  Beatrice smirked. “Thanks, Sherlock.”

  Hank put his hands up in surrender. “Right, right. I can take a hint.”

  An uneasy feeling settled over me as the two of us got up to leave, the sense of a curse of death hadn’t really let up since Scott’s passing. I hoped I could shake it.

  37

  Since my partner wasn’t going to tell me what had happened. I’d have to just keep trusting him.

  At least a little bit. Was trust a two-way street? I think I’d always said that it was. Being totally honest, I was irritated as hell that Hank wouldn’t confess what shadows haunted him from his past.

  But I had to work with the guy. And so far he hadn’t shown me any reason to not trust him.

  Nevertheless, I fantasized for a brief moment about walking into the captain’s office and telling him to take me off the case. There might have been a hand slamming down on Fua’s desk in the scenario playing out in my head, and demands being made to work alone because I was at my best as a loner. That if Fua expected me to work with the kind of person who refused to trust me, then by hell, I wasn’t going to do it.

  It was impractical and dramatic. So I sucked it in and figured out how I could manage the hand I’d been dealt.

  Which meant that it was time for me to focus on what I knew. When doubts plagued me, when the shadows of the unknown stretched long in my path, when the Universe passed me a Rubik’s cube of mystery, the only way I’d learned to sort it was to make a plan and take action.

  So, when we got back to Flameheart fortress, Hank meandered to his desk and sat down, still seeming like life had bitch-slapped him. And I turned to head up to the library before a call could come in and I ended up out in the field with Hank, battling supernaturals.

  Fua shouted something at me as I left the main floor, trying to stealthily make my way up to the library level unnoticed. I cringed at the sound of his bellow but kept going. I’d check with him later. My mistress, the library, was calling.

  I perused the magickal craft section, looking for a book of spells that I wasn’t sure even existed. Dorothy was planning to teach me to cast a primeval spear of light, but what if I couldn’t replicate it? The magic her syst
em was built on was foundational. It would be like trying to use binary when the only programming language you knew was Java or C++. And I didn’t even know what those languages were, I just knew they were different. One was older and buttressed all the others, but you couldn’t make binary with Java or C++ That much I knew. At least, I thought I knew that.

  So maybe I had no idea what I was talking about, but it made sense to me. Fantastic.

  I pulled a book off the shelf called A Pagan’s Grimoire, 55th Edition. It sounded… old. It sounded as though there had been at least fifty four previous editions published, that whatever content was in it might be traceable back to the earliest centuries of writing.

  I looked inside. The pages were replicas of illuminated manuscript, so I knew that it was possibly quite ancient. I found a note at the beginning that claimed it had originally been translated from runes, but before that, it had existed entirely as an oral book of knowledge.

  As I studied the pages, running my fingers across them—was that bad? It ran through my mind that it was, but I did it anyway—and feeling the impression of ink upon paper, the sense that the book held knowledge that I needed overcame me.

  But, just to be on the safe side, I grabbed three more books that looked like they could contain ancient knowledge—A Druid’s Study of the Esoteric (what could possibly be esoteric to a druid, since they were the very definition of esoteric?) and Yncantations from the Ancients and Olde Yncantations of the Holy Goode (if I couldn’t learn the spear of light spell, then maybe Bianca could find one and learn it).

  Back at my desk on the main floor, I began to look through the books. The problem was, before I could get very far, Fua appeared at his office door.

  “Dred. Get your ass in here.”

  I left the books at my desk and trotted across the floor to his office. I made eye contact with Hank—who was at his desk—just before I went inside.

  “What’s up?”

  “This could be a bubble. A disturbance, Dred. Or it could be something else.”

  Bubbles and disturbances were something that the captain and I were looking into as being possibly related to the Fabric. Since he couldn’t see it and I had seen it because of my encounter with the Fates, we were looking for evidence of it. Together we’d developed a theory that a lot of death in one place could result in disturbances further away from that spot, like aftershocks rippling away from the epicenter of an earthquake. This would be a Fabric quake.

  He was pointing at the screen above his desk—a map of Utah which then zoomed in on Salt Lake City. Glowing lines like the sort you’d see on a topographical map were concentrated around an area. The lines swelled and pulsed like something coursed through them, blood through veins, electricity through wire . . . magic through the Fabric. Adelaide had developed it. She was annoying, but she did good work.

  “Is that—” I began, squinting at the map.

  “Temple square. To be precise, on top of the Mormon temple I’m thinking. I’m going to watch it. See what materializes. Could just be a blip that dissipates over the next few hours, I’ll have my eyes on it. Might need you to check on it and contain it if it turns out to be something like that dragon.”

  “Let’s hope it’s nothing more than a bump that smooths out with no trouble. The people at Temple Square are already testy about stuff because of the dragon, you know.”

  “Where angels and demons fear to tread, Dred.”

  I went back out to my desk and found Hank sitting beside it, staring at my books.

  “What?” I asked, sitting down.

  “Some light bedtime reading?”

  “Except I’m not in bed. But yes to the rest—light and reading.”

  He nodded and aimed his sunglasses at me. “Have you seen Vivian?”

  My senses perked up. After what he’d said at Oberon’s Scepter, that would be happening any time he mentioned the kid.

  “Dorothy’s on kid duty. But, there’d been talk about her starting training with Bronco—self-defense. After what happened with the vamps.” I shrugged.

  “I’ll go check.”

  “Why, Hank?” I asked as he stood up and headed for the door. I spun in my chair to follow him with my eyes.

  “Don’t know. Just want to check on her.”

  As he was leaving, Bianca, Flick, and Cristian entered the room looking harried. From the sound of it, there was an argument going on about what the clean up crew had reported.

  Sargent Flick had been on assignment in southern Utah—St. George—for a while, since my old partner’s death. Seeing him again made my gut tie up in knots. I bit my lip and gave him a curt nod. Bianca’s gaze connected with mine and I motioned for her to come to my desk. She extricated herself from their heated discussion and came to my desk. She took the seat that Hank had just vacated.

  “What’s going on?” She let out a back-cracking sigh and her blue eyes studied the books on my desk. “Digging into the dark arts?”

  I laughed and leaned close to her. “Dottie’s going to teach me how to cast a primeval spear of light. But—her magic. Different from mine. Right? I’m looking for something else in case I can’t replicate what she does.”

  “Good idea. I’ve never had to worry about fighting a void demon. If they’re suddenly on the menu, gonna need a way to punch out the bastards.”

  “That’s why I grabbed these other books. If I can’t do it, maybe you can.” I batted my eyelashes at her in what I hoped was an imploring manner.

  “So you want me to look through those tomes for a spell?” Bianca laughed. “I can’t read Middle English.”

  “Some of them are in old English.”

  She chuckled and gave me a doubtful look. “Even worse, Dred. Can you read either?”

  “I’ve been learning.”

  “You find a spell and I will most certainly learn it. No questions asked. But you’ll have to translate it for me.”

  “So what happened? Why’s Flick acting like you and Cristian need to do time in detention?” I motioned with my chin toward where Flick was gesturing wildly at Cristian.

  “We were arguing about the reason for that mob last night. The clean up crew said they found a weird black canvas sack. Human sized. Flick thinks it was related to the attack. I think it was someone’s gardening project that got left out.”

  I frowned. “Like the sack would go over a shrub or something?”

  “Exactly. Flick says no. It was for one of us. But which? He doesn’t know.”

  A chill passed through me. I’d convinced myself it was more of a random event than a targeted attack, even though evidence pointed toward a coordinated thing. They’d been coming for us. For what reason, I wasn’t sure. But the amount of demon power and vamp power suggested it.

  I had a hunch now and I didn’t like the answer.

  Everything seemed to rush at me all at once. Hank’s reference to New York and a kid. Hank looking for Vivian just before Bianca came in. And as I sat there, a flood of other things hit me too—the vamps grabbing Vivian and seeming to fight over her. The dark, shadowy figure wandering around Gingerbread, its face covered by the cowl of a cloak. Had it been a human?

  And now, a human sized canvas sack? The vamps hadn’t been trying to feast on the kid.

  They’d been trying to take her. But why?

  As though to confirm what I’d just put together, Hank broke through the door, slamming it into the wall with a thud.

  “Dred, Vivian’s gone. Do you know where she went?”

  38

  I found it hard to not feel like a total failure.

  “This seals it. I can’t ever have kids, Hank.” He was on the other end of the line. I sat in my living room, rubbing my eyes. I was exhausted on top of frustrated. And the frustration ate through me, making my hands a little rougher with my face than I should have been. What was I going to do? Rub my own face off?

  Stranger things…

  “She’ll turn up.” His reassurances didn’t sound very reassuring, a
s though he didn’t believe them himself. There was something in his voice I’d never heard before. A pang flashed through me, thinking about what might be disturbing him.

  He still hadn’t confessed to me what he meant about what had happened in New York City having a kid involved. That probably played into why he sounded as glum as I felt.

  “She left on the moped?”

  “Been over it,” I sighed. “Not going to stumble on a new fact by repeating old ones.”

  “We might. And it helps to refresh my memory. So let’s do it, Dred. Dottie said she took off on the moped to, and I quote, ‘get a soda.’”

  I growled and sat forward, needing somewhere to focus my rage. “Why’d Dottie let the kid go? I’ve never wanted to punch the old lady before, but I kind of do now.”

  “I’d love to see that,” Hank said, actually sounding like he’d be into seeing her call down her powers and wipe me out.

  “Jerk,” I said.

  “I know. Seemed funny for a second, but now I’m just worried about the kid.” His voice was laden with the frail tones of concern.

  Our search had gone on for hours. Was it time to alert the normal police force and send out a missing person’s report? Our standard wait time on that was a day, but that was because we were usually dealing with supernaturals or paranormals which meant we needed to rule out supernatural factors.

  Vivian still hadn’t manifested magic. She was technically still a normal even though she could see the supernatural. I wanted to do the right thing, but at the moment, what that might be eluded me.

  “Get some sleep, Hank. I’m going to bed now. We’ll take up the search again in the morning.”

  I hung up and stared into the muted ambience of my living room. The house felt emptier without her in it, even though she’d only been staying with me a few days.

  How had I lost a teenager? And how was I going to live with that? What if something terrible happened to her?

  It wasn’t like I expected miracles from myself, although a miracle here and there would be nice, but I did expect myself to manage the basics—feeding a pet if I had one, wearing clean clothes, not letting a teenager who was in my care vanish.