by Sean Grigsby
The wyvern spun around to look for more snacks, and when it did, its massive tail crashed into a handful of people trying to make a run for it. A few slammed into a wall or the stands at the other side of the arena. One of them fell to the dirt in front of me, but their back was smoking and they didn’t get back up.
“Thank you!” Blithe grabbed my arm with two hands.
“Don’t thank us just yet,” I said. “We still have to figure out how to get out of this death trap.”
“Might as well go through that door.” Afu pointed toward the blob of darkness the wyvern had come from.
But we hadn’t taken half a step when two droids marched through the door with their guns raised, laser sights forcing me to cover my eyes. They weren’t going to hesitate this time. I spread my arms, as if to shield Afu and Blithe. And that’s when the firing started.
One of the droids’ heads exploded in a shower of metal and electric sparks. The other took an assault to the middle of its torso.
It was able to let out a final word: “Rats!”
Damn. The PC First bastards had even corrupted the droids with their xenophobic bullshit.
I ducked and darted my head around to see where the shots had come from. Cops flooded into the room, chasing masked people through the stands, and backing away when they saw the wyvern crushing wooden seats and running amok.
Renfro and Detective Rankin charged into the pit.
“Good thing I called the cops about five minutes sooner than you told me to,” Renfro said.
“Assholes took our power suits.” I pointed to the dragon in the stands. “You think you can handle that wyvern by yourself.”
“On it.” Renfro gave me a two-fingered salute and power jumped toward the scaly.
Rankin sucked on his metal toothpick so nervously, I thought he might stain his teeth gray. “I swear I had no idea this was going to happen.”
“Their leader, Duncan Sharp, said something about how the cops gave them a heads up on Blithe,” I said.
Blithe wobbled over, arms wrapped around his chest. “Serve and protect, my ass!”
I put a hand on Blithe’s shoulder. “Settle down, sweetheart. Anyway, Rankin, that’s some terribly deceitful shit if you ask me. Are you in with these PC First people?”
“What!?” Rankin spit out his toothpick. “Hell no! I rushed over here with the few on-duties I could grab. I thought it was the cult. You saying these are those crazy people with the shitty haircuts?”
I squinted, looking into his eyes, seeing if I could spot a liar inside. But I was pretty sure after a few seconds that Rankin was on the up and up.
“If you’re done trying your wannabe psychic shit on me,” Rankin said. “Let’s get your power suits back to you and see if we can find this Duncan Sharp.”
“If he survived,” I said, following Rankin, “he’ll have one hell of a burn on his face.”
Behind us, a heavy thud hit the arena floor. The wyvern had been knocked out.
Renfro hopped down from the stands, dusting off his hands to show a job well done. “You two couldn’t handle one measly wyvern?”
CHAPTER 30
Outside the warehouse, the cops had rounded up a fair amount of the PC First creeps and sat them in a row in the gravel. They went up and down the line one by one, removing their masks.
I didn’t recognize any of them, just their look – the same sleazeball Nazi hair and faces filled with unwarranted disenfranchisement.
“Any of these punks our guy?” Rankin asked me as we looked over each one.
I shook my head.
“Where’s Duncan Sharp?” Rankin asked the line of perps.
They stared smugly at the detective, staying silent.
“We’re going to find him soon enough anyway,” Rankin threatened. “And all of you can rot in a holding cell for all I care. Then, you’ll likely be charged with attempted murder. Still don’t feel like cooperating?”
The guy at the end of the line looked to his compatriots for a second, wondering if any of them would fold, but when he saw they remained statuesque and uncooperative, he went back to doing the same.
Rankin sighed and turned back to me. “He’ll turn up eventually. Between you and me, I don’t know if we’ll have enough to charge him when we finally nab the sonofabitch. And if he gets some dragon blood, that burn on his face you told me about will be healed and nonexistent. Did any of these shitheads actually say they were with PC First?”
I stopped to think about it, a swell of anger rising from my gut as I realized the answer. “No,” I said. “But he called us rats. That’s how I knew for sure.”
Rankin took out his bubble vape and let a glowing ball escape from his mouth. “That’s not promising. But I’ll try.”
Yolanda was calling. I turned away from Rankin and picked up my holoreader.
“I’ve figured it out,” she said.
“The wraith?”
“Come get a gander.” She hung up with a satisfied smirk on her face. I took it for some good news. Finally.
Rankin asked to come along, saying he had some more questions for me and Afu about what went on down in that warehouse. I think he just wanted to take a look at a wraith up close and personal and see if our propellerheads had come up with a way to make his job easier. Maybe he’d finally given up on his cult theory.
Back at Central Fire Station, we walked in and paid our respects to Harribow lying in the cot. He hadn’t improved, but he also hadn’t gotten worse, so that was hopeful. Naveena and Calvinson followed behind us.
Yolanda stood next to a containment cylinder big enough to hold Afu and then some. A dark sheet covered it. Yolanda held her hands out like she was an illusionist’s assistant.
“Any word from Brannigan?” I asked Naveena. She shook her head. “He won’t answer my calls.” “Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”
“I’d stop by his house, but I know that would just piss him off.”
“This dragon blood thing has got him spooked,” I said.
“I don’t blame him. You think the mayor will put a stop to the infusions?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if I know the people of Parthenon City, once the word gets out, there’s going to be a bunch of scared people. And people do stupid things when they’re scared.”
Yolanda huffed. “I’m not going to stand here holding my arms up like this forever.”
“Then pull the goddamn sheet off!” I said.
With dramatic flavor, Yolanda grabbed the edge of the sheet and ripped it away.
Wilkins’ wraith clawed at the cylinder’s glass, floating around at high speed, looking for an opening to get through. The ghost shrieked and gnashed its teeth. It was also no longer the eerie white that wraiths were known for. This wraith had turned a very deep sunset color.
“It’s…” I tilted my head as I stared at it. “It’s orange.”
“Precisely,” Yolanda said.
Afu laughed and pointed. “It looks like a Halloween decoration.”
“I reversed the polarity,” said Yolanda. “Watch.”
She went over to a locked case and brought back a jar with the phoenix ashes inside. The embers roared to life, the flames reaching, stretching toward the wraith inside the cylinder.
“Hot damn!” Renfro said.
“So now you can draw this bird out of hiding?” Detective Rankin said, fiddling with the metal toothpicks in his hand.
“I believe so,” Yolanda said. “The wraith should attract the phoenix, but I have to warn all of you: dragons will still be drawn by the bird if not the ghost. I suggest wrapping things up before you’re swarmed with scalies.”
“You sure this is going to work?” I asked.
“There’s only one way to find out. Right?”
The doors burst open behind us. We all turned with a jolt to see a middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a tank top, standing there beside the lawyer representing the dead Sandusky volunteer’s families. It was Mrs Wilkins. Two cop
s stood behind them, looking visibly uncomfortable.
“We’ll be taking that wraith into our possession,” the lawyer said.
I made myself as wide as I could, hands on my hips. “Like hell you will.”
The lawyer held up his holoreader and displayed a shit ton of digital pages in the air. “We have a warrant, signed by the honorable Judge Linda Mayhue.” The lawyer turned to his client. “Is that Mr Wilkins’ wraith inside that container?”
“He looks like a rotten tangerine,” the woman said, choking up, “but that’s my Johnny.”
Yolanda raised her hand as if she was going to ask for a hall pass. “I understand this is a sensitive issue, but we’re needing this wraith to apprehend the phoenix that’s been terrorizing Ohio. It’s a matter of state security that–”
“Save it,” Jim the lawyer said, raising his own hand, but more like a crossing guard halting any further discussion. “You,” he pointed to Detective Rankin. “You’re police. Tell these people that we are well within our legal rights to take possession of the deceased.”
We all looked to the detective.
He swallowed. “Um, I mean. It’s not really a body or anything, but… if they have a warrant, you guys have to hand him over.”
“This is bullshit,” I said, but I’d known this day would come eventually, I’d just been hoping the phoenix would have been dealt with already.
“I think we should have the city’s lawyer present,” Renfro said.
“No,” the lawyer shook his head. “We already had our back and forth with the city. Place Mr Wilkins’ wraith in a device for transport and hand him over. We have police here with us as you can see, just in case you decide not to be cooperative.”
“You guys are crazy,” said Afu.
I patted him on the chest. “It’s okay, everybody. Yolanda, do what he says.”
The propellerhead twisted her lips and huffed sadly through her nose. She took one last look at the orange-glowing wraith that was spinning around the cylinder like a fiery tornado. Yolanda plugged a wraith remote into the box at the bottom of the containment cylinder and pressed a button. Like vapor being sucked up by a vacuum, the wraith zipped into the remote with a final schloop. The make-shift propellerhead lab got a lot quieter.
Yolanda handed the remote to me, and I quickly gave it to the lawyer before any bad ideas could crawl into my mind.
“Thank you,” he said, and with great care, placed the remote into his client’s hands.
The woman turned to us and held the remote like a club. “Johnny wanted to be just like you. I can’t understand why. All of you are terrible people. You got him killed and kept him from me. You can’t just use people to get what you want. I don’t care if they’re alive or not.”
Tears began streaming down her face.
The lawyer put his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, now. It’s over. Let’s go.”
And they did. Harribow, laying in the cot, squirmed and moaned all zombie like when they passed, causing the woman to flinch and nearly drop the wraith remote to the floor. Harribow calmed down after they’d gone, but it got me worried that we weren’t going to find a way to fix him in time. The rest of us standing in the lab said nothing for a few minutes.
Until Calvinson spoke up, “So, I guess we need to go to one of the enclosures?” He fiddled his hands inside his pockets. “You know, to get another wraith.”
“Calvinson!” Naveena shouted.
The rookie stiffened, widened his eyes. “What?”
“You’re a fucking genius.”
He smiled, showing tiny teeth and making his freckles scrunch together.
“It’ll take me some time to repeat the process,” Yolanda said. “But I don’t see any other option at this point. The firefighters here yelled at me the last time I reversed the polarity. It killed the Feed while they were watching some droid foozeball game.”
“Fuck them,” Naveena said. “They were probably the ones who called that lawyer.”
“Right,” I said. “We all go together. I’m not going to have another situation where we’re caught without backup. Let’s meet up back here in three hours.”
I turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” Naveena asked.
“Getting some sleep.” I sighed and looked over my shoulder. “Then I’m going to go check on Brannigan.”
CHAPTER 31
The next morning, Brannigan’s truck was parked in the driveway outside his house. He turned the garage into his personal art studio – he’d shown me some of his paintings the year before, and I thought it was a good thing he was great at being a smoke eater, because he was shit at painting.
Sherry wasn’t home. A sigh of relief left my lips as I walked to the front door. This would have been harder if Mrs Brannigan was here. She’d hoard her husband away and never let him leave the house. She hadn’t wanted him to be a smoke eater in the first place, although she got over it eventually. But now that there was an added threat of him turning into a flame puppet for the phoenix, there was no way she would let him back as chief. Which made me wonder if he’d even told her what was going on.
I knocked on the door three times but no one answered. I called Brannigan on my holoreader but had the same result.
“I know you’re in there, you old motherfucker!” I shouted. I looked around at the neighboring houses, hoping I hadn’t been so loud to cause someone to call the cops on the crazy black woman trying to break down the Brannigans’ door. “So, let me in and let’s talk. Or are you too chickenshit?”
After that, I heard heavy footsteps coming closer until the front door swung open. Brannigan was already walking away into his living room.
I stood on the front step and watched him take a seat on the big pleather couch in front of a Feed screen. Softly, I closed the door behind me and then joined him on the couch. The Feed was showing a commercial for dragon shelters. This company would come to your house, dig a hole in the backyard, and put a titanium box inside for your family to crawl into in the event of a dragon emergency.
It didn’t make much sense to me, seeing how dragons came from beneath the ground, and it would only make it that much easier for a dragon to munch on a husband, wife, and their two-point-five kids, but people were dumb enough to buy that kind of shit, so hooray for capitalism, I guess.
“Where’s Sherry?” I asked.
“She took Bethany and Kenji to her mother’s house in Wisconsin. I had some propellerheads fly them out in Jet 1.”
“And she didn’t wonder why you were sending them away?”
He shrugged as the Feed went back to the daily news program.
I turned to face him. “Chief, you’re a born smoke eater. We’re thinking there’s no reason to be afraid of–”
“I had dragon blood pumping into my veins for two weeks while I was in that fucking robobox. Anyway, it’s not about me. Sherry received an infusion, too, and I have Bethany to think of.”
“But you’re still here,” I said. “You didn’t go to Wisconsin. So this can’t be you quitting.”
He laughed under his breath. “Funny you should be the one talking to me about quitting. Wasn’t long ago you said you were thinking of getting out.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “But I realized that there’s shit in this world that will never work itself out alone. And there’s only a few of us who can make things better. We need you, old man.”
His next words were soft, the voice of defeat. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, goddamn it, we do!” I jumped off the couch and leaned over him.
“I’ll end up like Harribow and Patrice. I’ll burn and take others with me. It’s better I stay here. Alone.”
I took a step back to get a better look at him. “Do I need to put you on suicide watch?”
He scoffed. “I like myself too much to off it. I figure if the phoenix flies over and turns this dragon blood running through my veins into zombie juice, at least it would just be me and the house getting
torched. I was working on chaining myself to the bed when you showed up.”
“You’re not a fucking werewolf, Chief.”
He shrugged. “Same principle, right?”
I shook my head. “You know, part of me thinks that this phoenix is actually a good thing. Or would have been if we didn’t go fucking around with that blood. I know we couldn’t have predicted any of this, but… the thing eats dragons. It could have ended the whole problem for us. And because we were so hungry to take humans to the next level, all these people are feeling the wrath that was supposed to be for the scalies. It’s a shit show.”
“That’s humanity for you,” Brannigan said. “We try so hard to fix one problem, we end up creating one even worse. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Can you promise me you’ll do it?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Damn it, Williams. Promise me.”
I swore, rubbed my hands across my face and paced around Brannigan’s living room before walking back over to him. “Fine. What is it?”
“I want you to put Naveena up for smoke eater chief. No one should argue with it. She was going to be next in line anyway.”
I could have strangled the old, stubborn bastard.
“You are going to be fine. You hear me?”
“Either way,” he said. “You promised. Don’t fuck with your promise. Not one you make to me. I’ll come back and haunt your ass. And not like a wraith. I’ll sing old country western songs while you try to sleep every night. It’ll be hell. Now, say it back to me. What are you going to do when you get back?”
I rolled my eyes. “I ain’t playing with you.”
“What are you going to do, Tamerica?” he said, more sternly.
“I’ll put Naveena up for chief.”
“Okay,” he nodded and relaxed into the couch.
I was glad, at least, that I had provided some kind of comfort to him. It was like he was already dead, and I had the singular curse of hearing his last wishes from beyond the grave.
What a disappointment. I’d looked up to this man. Thought he was the most badass smoke eater to ever live. He was like a second father to me and to everybody else on the job for that matter. And now he was giving up without a fight.