Thoreau and Smith had lived around the same time in the New England area, during the Second Great Awakening, and so it would do. My family would never end up in this room, but I still felt their eyes watching me, judging me, feeling like I was persecuting them if I slandered their heroes.
“Thoreau, you bastard, what are you up to?” I said, pinching my bottom lip between my thumb and forefinger, staring at the board.
I added a few more images and threads connecting them. Void demons. Vampires. Uriel. It would all make sense soon if I kept doing this, I hoped.
I sat down and took a drink of red wine, staring at the board, waiting for inspiration to strike.
Before long there was a knock at the door. I got up and opened the door, blocking the view inside with my body.
“Dred, can you come out here? I need to show you something,” Viv said, her eyes glowing bright. She looked excited.
I walked into the hallway and shut the door behind me.
“What’s up?”
“Come here.” She led me into the front room, a bounce in her step, and I followed. Vito, the neighbor’s cat strutted in from the kitchen and rubbed against my legs as I walked, nearly tripping me.
“You let the cat in?” I asked.
“He’s cute. I thought he was yours.”
“He’s the neighbor’s and not welcome in here.” He meowed up at me and my heart softened. “Ugh, fine.”
We still hadn’t talked over everything that had happened, but I’d set up an appointment with the Jungian psyche-ologist that treated the Flamehearts when the job got to them. I was fine, like usual. I took this stuff in stride. But even so, I set up an appointment for myself. Just to unload on Bronwy. She’d love it.
Vivian directed me to sit, which was hilarious in my own house, but I counted it as a win that she felt comfortable enough to behave like this was her home.
I sat down in the armchair in the furniture arrangement, worked my bare feet into the shag rug to get cozy, and sipped my wine.
“What’s up, doll?”
“First, don’t call me doll.”
“Fine. How are you, anyway? How do you feel tonight? Last night was insane. Anything you want to talk about, kid?”
“Don’t call me kid, either.”
I cringed. I was really striking out here. She hadn’t figured out yet that it was a term of endearment. That or she knew, and didn’t care and saw it as an insult.
She suddenly looked bashful, then it passed and her usual teenage snark came back. “I’m fine. I can handle it.”
“Handle what? What happened? Anything you haven’t told me?” I mentally looked for my Colt—it was in the console near the front door. “Do I need to take anyone out?”
I’d do it too.
“He’s already dead.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Only with fear. I think he was trying, but you killed him. Otherwise he was mostly just conversational. Talking about his grand plans.”
Hold up, why hadn’t she told me this before? This would be useful. If I pushed, knowing her, she’d hide it. “Ah, so he did the Bond villain egomaniac shit.”
“Yes, how’d you know?” She cocked her head and sat down on the sofa that was perpendicular to my armchair.
“They’re all like that. It’s how they become villains, Viv. They’re so narcissistic, they actually believe all the lies they tell themselves about how great they are. So, basically, the guy who appeared after? He’s also a Bond villain. The dead guy? Bond villain. Bond villains? Bond villains.”
“So, they’re all just trying to be like the bad guys in James Bond movies?” She bit a nail, then put her hand down and shook her head like she was trying to quit the habit.
“No, just that there’s a reason our archetype of villain is always the same. Often the principles they become obsessed with are decent. It’s when they get a little bit of power that all that goes to hell. Pol Pot. Mussolini. Chavez. Castro. They’re also charismatic.”
“Like that guy who came after the other one died? What was his name? Joe Smith?”
“That guy is a charismatic. Yes. And probably beginning some type of cult of supernaturals.”
“A cult?”
“Yes. Their magic, among other things, is in turning people into followers. They hold powerful magic that sways the minds of humans. But let’s talk about that later. What did you want to tell me?”
She let out a big sigh and then held her hand out. “Look.”
I did, and a tiny flame appeared over her hand like her palm was a birthday candle. Vivian smiled at me.
“Magic. Fire magic,” I whispered.
THE END
Stone to Bind continues the chronicles of Dred Dixon.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to the Flamehearts Beta Team for their hard work in helping to bring this story into the light of day through their vigilant reading and corrections. Without their insights, this project would be much less stellar! They rock:
Audrey Cienki
Myles Cohen
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And to the Torchkeepers Beta Team, who picked up the second round of beta, reading the revised version and catching new errors. They’re the bomb:
Marie Anderson
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Additional thanks to the incredible mentors, friends, and coaches who helped make this project a reality:
John P. Logsdon
Greg David
Eric Quinn Knowles
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Robyn Wideman
Kate Brock
Stone to Bind Preview
You never want to find yourself in a commune full of half nude giants.
But, if you do, ask yourself which is better—half nude giants, or an entire nudist colony of giants.
At least they were wearing a sort of loin-cloth this time. Last time, they’d gone buck naked. I counted my blessings.
I stood on a pinnacle—a spire, if you will—of red stone that looked like it had been hewn straight from the heart of the earth. Iron in the soil gave it that brilliant reddish-orange color. The ground that cut into my bare feet was smooth, dotted with tiny curling fingers of sagebrush, gnarled scrub oak, and broken pieces of sandstone. One of the giants had placed me there, otherwise there was no way I’d have achieved such a height, nor was there any way I’d even want to be standing right there.
Winds soared through the canyon of this branch of the San Rafael Swell in eastern Utah, nearly blowing me off the top. Below me, my partner Henry Stone was in the process of completing his initiation.
My former partner Theo Scott and myself had both done this, so I was already an honorary part of this clan. Hank needed to pass this outrageous test of character before this clan would let us sit in their circle and hear what the hell was going on.
What was going on, was the reason Hank and I were even here at the moment. The Sprinter van—aka Large Marge—was parked a mile away outside the village and its sacred land. We’d slept there the night before. Dawn had just barely crept over the canyon. The sky overhead broke my heart with how blue it was, contrasting against the sheer, smooth red cliffs that floated above us.
The issue? Rock giants were vanishing. Four had already gone missing.
Giants were super hard to misplace. Something to do with their size. I
t’d be like misplacing a skyscraper. Or a house. Or, like a capital city.
They don’t simply disappear.
So something was happening.
I crouched as a gust of wind smashed into my back. It was hot as a furnace outside, but the minute sweat appeared on my skin, it was sucked up into the atmosphere, probably becoming a raincloud over Colorado at some point.
I squinted, watching Hank. Like the giants observing the ritual from vantages around the perimeter of the canyon, he was also stripped to his boxer briefs as he worked through the initiation.
Can’t say that I didn’t appreciate this fact—Hank, half-naked. I grinned to myself.
He’d already crossed a rope stretched across the creek running through this artery of canyon, and cut a slab of sandstone from a wall using just his fingers and voice. Only two more trials to go.
I hissed as he slipped and fell, dangling from one hand that was clutching a hold on the cliff face. This was the rock climbing part.
Trust a clan of rock giants to include rock climbing in their initiation. I’d done it, but at least I had some experience in the sport.
Hank was a newbie. This was his first time attempting to climb. It couldn’t be boosting his confidence that he was in his underwear and barefoot.
And I was watching.
I was sure he wanted to shout something at me, like stop watching me, Dred, thank you very much. But the ritual required complete silence.
If Hank couldn’t complete these trials, then our last option would be for him to head back to the van and wait for me. I’d have to hear all about the clan’s issues alone, because they wouldn’t confess them to a non-clan member. It just wasn’t done.
“Your friend is weak,” the giant, Ueleet, said. Her face hovered near the edge of the plateau where I crouched.
“Not weak. Just inexperienced. He’s from New York City,” I said, rolling my eyes at the mention of the vain east coast spot.
She nodded. “I’ve heard of this city.”
“What have you heard?” I cocked my head to the side.
“It’s power is well known here.”
“It thinks it’s powerful.”
“A city that thinks?” She arched an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “Villages are better.”
“I agree.”
She raised her chin in thought, considering Hank on the rock. “You, Dred Dixon, completed the initiation easily.”
“Well,” I shrugged and stood up straight, dusting my hands off, never taking my eyes from Hank’s figure as he resumed the climb. “I’m a woman. And women are stronger. And better at things like this, just in general.”
She laughed, a soft huffing sound that came out in powerful gusts that nearly sent me flying off the cliff like a ticket stub on the wind. “It’s true. I appreciate these things.”
“Me too.”
Giant clans were matriarchal, which really warmed my heart. Males in the clans weren’t necessarily weak, however the clan recognized that without the female, there’d be no clan. It was a balance. What I appreciated most was how the females never seemed to belittle the men and heard and honored their voices as well.
“Woman,” a male giant whispered, suddenly appearing near my companion. Though he whispered, it was quite enough to almost deafen me. I glanced at him, taking in his lowered brow. For being giants, they moved with surprising stealth. “This initiation is taking too long. He has failed and cannot be admitted to the clan.”
She rolled her eyes and gave him a placating nod. “That is for me to decide. And the other elders.”
“Admitting weak humans into our order weakens the entire clan.” He folded his arms across his orange chest, which evoked the sheer stone of the cliffs around us. Flat planes with straight edges as though he was also cut from rock.
They kind of were, these rock giants. Though my understanding of the history of their origin was still spotty.
“Say what you will. The elders make the final decision.” She caught my eye and shook her head in a way that suggested exasperation.
Still, despite the female chiefs hearing all clan voices, they didn’t simply roll over when a male told them to. I held back a laugh at her antics, surveyed the valley below, and found Hank, again glued to the rock like his life depended on it.
Not an understatement.
I bit my lip as I watched his toe slip on a hold. He caught himself with his hand as it reached for a hold above him and held fast to rock.
Nice.
His feet connected with the rock again and he resumed the climb. Soon I realized that my heart thundered in my chest, a gong against my bones that got louder and louder the higher my partner rose on the wall.
It was the same route I’d done for my initiation. The same one Scott had done. And I knew that it wasn’t a beginner’s climb. Nor was it one a person should be soloing, like Hank was doing right now—no safety ropes, no shoes, no harness. What was the objective?
My thoughts raced as I considered everything I knew—the rock giant clan were allies, of sorts. But, they were also secretive, as their methods to protect themselves showed. I couldn’t blame them for requiring proof of worthiness to enter their sacred ground, see them in their humanesque form, and be included in diplomatic talks about what was happening.
And whatever was happening, was something serious—if four members had vanished already, that told me this had been going on for days. Perhaps they’d even tried to work it out alone, but they’d reached a tipping point of tolerance and desired extra assistance.
I wanted to know and wanted to help.
But did I want to know so desperately that I was willing to sit upon this ivory tower of safety and watch someone who I’d begun to form a bond of partnership with potentially die?
The partnership bond was as sacred as the rock giant clan’s land. I’d already lost one partner—something that I still struggled to stare at in the face. It haunted me. What could I have done differently, how I could have saved him, why had it been Scott and not me?
It also gave me pause when it came to standing aside as danger rained down on us.
Hank half-nude climbing a rock wall wasn’t danger raining down on us. It was ballet on a cliff face. A dance with the earth that a person saw nowhere else. There was literally a hundred metaphors for what rock-climbing was, all of them illuminating in their own ways, but it was rife with danger, potential death, and other forms of gut-wrenching aches should he fail.
And it wasn’t just Hank who could fail.
The rock held its own secrets. One of the earlier trials illustrated that—cutting a slab of sandstone away with just his hands and voice was enough to remind me that these gorgeous formations were riddled with weakness and fissures that could fail beneath his weight and let him plunge to his death.
I bit my tongue. He’d ascended to twice his height. That was nearing a level where if he fell, we could say goodbye to healthy leg bones. At this point, each foot he raised himself introduced new variables to what he could lose with a fall.
It was senseless.
I’d done it. Yes. But I spent time in the local climbing gyms and had occasionally hit the routes with Scott. And neither of us had dared to back down when the trials had been presented to us.
In short, we were stupid. I saw that now.
There’s nothing like death to instill a deeper respect for life into a person’s heart.
If Hank fell…
…I wasn’t sure it was a personal hell I’d return from.
I glanced at the rock giant chief next to me. Her eyes lazily watched Hank.
They weren’t so different from humans that I couldn’t interpret the fairly casual disregard for Hank’s life written on her face. She wanted our help, but she had nothing to lose were she to lose Hank.
Or, perhaps I was being swayed by my fear of losing him.
I didn’t want to lose him.
That wasn’t a crime. That wasn’t bad or weak of me.
That was why he was my partner. I was there to make sure the fool didn’t get in over his head.
And the chief had no clue what he was made of.
He was strong, loyal, and dedicated. But he was also too proud to admit that he had zero ability to engage in a climb of finesse like he was trying.
One look at his technique and I knew that. He was trying to muscle his way up the route entirely with his upper body. That would only work so far. And then he’d need to rely on his legs as much as his hands and arms.
But if I stopped the trial now, I’d have a pissed off Hank to grapple with, and an irritated clan of rock giants who might assume I didn’t respect their traditions.
I was caught between a rock and a hard place, so to speak, ha.
I bit my knuckle. I felt the sun hot on my forehead. An eagle screeched somewhere in its hunt and the wind whistled across my ears. Beside me, the chief had shut her eyes and began to fade into another state—the hoodoo state. Her features faded. Her chest turned into the smooth surface like the canyon walls around me. She was dozing in the morning light.
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat, then coughed. Her eyes flashed open and she again looked like a giant human made of rock.
“Do you think, Dred, that he will make it?”
An opening! “I don’t know. But I know he won’t give up. Either a slab will break free and he’ll fall, or he’ll make a mistake and fall.”
“You don’t sound like you believe in him.”
“No, no. I do. I trust him with my life.”
She nodded, quietly considering this. “And is he safe entrusting his to you?”
Bitch-slap. I blinked. My mouth was open to answer, defensive-like, but Hank fell before I had the chance to say anything.
Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1) Page 24