I opened my mouth to call for him again but thought better of it. I was attempting to be stealthy. Leaving the water bottles against the tree, I scrambled three steps up the slope, only to slide back to the base on a protesting ankle. I glanced around for a different route up, then back at the fire. The flames weren’t waiting on me or my wayward pooka.
In the early days, they always stay close. “Any other gems of wisdom, Mr. Pitt?” Sarcasm didn’t mask my fear. Had Jamie been afraid of the fire, or had something caught his attention? The thought gave me a chill. I pictured a congress of salamanders at the top of the hill and Jamie frolicking among them, feeding them atrum. He had a knack for growing creatures out of proportion, enhancing all their negative qualities. I glanced down at the jugs; I didn’t need to see a salamander to know two gallons against an overgrown one would be laughable.
If I lost control of Jamie on the first day, I didn’t stand a chance of turning him into a good creature. If he went dark on my watch, my region—and my life—would be destroyed.
No. I wouldn’t jump to the worst-case scenario.
This was only the first day. I would get better. A lot of enforcers had worked with and turned pookas in the past. If they could do it—
They were real enforcers with lots of experience. What makes you think you can?
Maybe he’d just wanted to explore. On his own. While I was occupied.
Enough. I shook out my hands and turned to face the fire. The pooka had proved he could cause trouble as easily as he breathed. Left unattended, there was no telling what sort of mess he’d make. But a salamander’s destructive potential was evident: It had already started a fire. If this blaze got out of hand, it’d destroy homes.
I hobbled back to the water bottles. Stay safe, you stupid pooka. Please.
I collected the gallons and crept closer to the flames. Blackened smoke settled in the twisting gully, turning afternoon sunlight to murky shadows. Farther up the trail, several powerful arcs of water bathed the fire from both sides of the gully banks, and I caught glimpses of firefighters through the smoke. I stayed well back from the main blaze. I wasn’t here to battle the whole fire. My quarry was much smaller.
I blinked to Primordium and stopped in my tracks. The thick smoke had vanished. More shockingly, so had the blaze. I could still smell smoke and feel it heavy in my lungs, could still hear the fire crackle and pop, could still feel warm swirls of hot air mixed in with the cool moisture of the stream, but the flames themselves were invisible. Like a swarm of locusts moving over the tall trees, a gray tide ate up shining lux lucis, leaving behind dead charcoal trunks and limbs. Flecks of bright white lifted into the air before evaporating. I couldn’t see the flames—they were another form of normal-sight light that didn’t translate to Primordium—but I could see their destructive aftermath.
My palms grew slick on the gallon handles. Facing down a creature who could breathe fire was scary enough without being blind to the perilous flames.
I switched back to normal sight, and the flames reappeared, brilliant red and yellow among the black smoke. It would have been a relief, but in normal sight, I wouldn’t see a salamander approaching. Heart hammering, I backtracked to a side trail and jogged to higher ground, then crouched behind a tree to think. I couldn’t run into the flames, brandishing a few gallons of water and probiotics, and expect to evade the firefighters, find and extinguish the salamander lurking within, and escape unharmed. I needed a plan.
Using Primordium for an unobstructed view of the gully, I searched for my prey. Most noticeable at first were the firefighters. Without the interference of smoke, their glowing souls highlighted them against the dying landscape. None were close, but they were working my way. I needed to move quickly. I turned my attention to the center of the fire.
Atrum flickered in the center of the scorched landscape. The plastic gallons sagged to the ground, and I stood to get a better look. It wasn’t a trick of the distance making the dark energy appear to move: It flapped and flared like real flames burning at the heart of the larger, currently invisible fire. Outside of Jamie’s soul and pre-hatching energy, I’d never seen atrum move of its own volition. Worse, the unnatural ebony flames would make a perfect blind for a black fire-loving salamander.
I traced the line of atrum along the base of the gully. Pockets of black flames dotted the dead grass ahead of the main fire. The firefighters might assume these smaller fires sparked from floating embers, but as I watched, a fresh burst of atrum flared several feet ahead of the previous patch. The evil energy caught on charcoal-dead plants and lux lucis–filled ones alike. I blinked back and forth between visions, swaying from self-induced dizziness. Where the atrum flames started, small white-hot flames smoldered and caught, spreading quickly in all directions despite water-soaked grounds and a concentrated effort from the firefighters. The aberrant flames were quelled only after all burnable vegetation had been consumed.
I finally grasped the magnitude of evil the rampant salamanders represented. Most evil creatures attacked individuals directly, infecting people and sometimes animals on a case-by-case basis. Salamanders used fire to spread evil through the physical world on a wholesale basis, leaving nothing behind but atrum-soaked scorched earth. Salamanders destroyed lux lucis at its roots, robbing the world of the passive, perpetual enhancement plants supplied.
Those anomalous atrum fires were my target, the salamander. It moved away from the main action, which worked to my benefit. I wouldn’t have to attract any attention. All I had to do was plant myself in front of the salamander, douse it, and slip back to my car before the firefighters noticed me. All while avoiding real and atrum flames. Real fire would scorch my flesh; the salamander’s flames would burn through my soul.
I patted Val, taking as little comfort from his company as he probably took from being dragged along with me. I was tempted, oh so very, very tempted, to call Niko for backup. I didn’t want to confront a living flamethrower. Putting myself in the path of a moving, uncontrolled fire was idiotic—especially when I couldn’t see the real flames in Primordium.
Hefting the jugs, I switched back to normal sight. Unfortunately, nerves did not justify the call. Other enforcers handled more danger than a single salamander on a daily basis, and they’d been doing so in my region while I worked at the mall. Calling Niko now would be admitting I wasn’t capable of doing my job and would give Liam all the ammunition he needed to fold me into his region and steamroll Mr. Pitt. Worse, it would negate my insistence on being able to handle my region—and Jamie—on my own.
Please be safe, Jamie. And good.
Why did I have to prove myself in a test of fire?
Circling back to the base of the gully, I crouched in the salamander’s path. My heart pounded in my eardrums. From my precarious position, I couldn’t see the main blaze, which meant I squatted out of sight of the firefighters—and any potential rescue, should I need one. Wind swirled smoke in every direction now, and each breath burned. Bouts of flames ate up my buffer of safety, revealing the advance of the salamander. I waited until the latest burst of fire ignited a mere five feet away before I locked wobbly knees. It took willpower to blink to Primordium and blind myself to the deadly flames.
Waddling through tall stalks of dead grass, a foot-long salamander advanced on stubby legs. It chewed on bites of lux lucis–filled ground cover still thriving in the shade of the dead plants, then opened a triangular mouth and belched an atrum fireball the size of a basketball. The grass in front of it caught fire, flames of atrum eating through the dead material as easily as the live bits at the base. Real flames followed the atrum ones; I could feel the heat on my face. The salamander walked through the fire.
I fumbled forward, afraid to remove my eyes from the salamander to check my footing. The lizardlike creature stopped, a front leg suspended in the air. It swiveled to look at me. Small dark eyes glowed against a dark body, jaw moving as it chewed. I tensed for a charge or, at the very least, to dodge a fireball.
In a flash, it turned and scurried toward the hillside, sprinting on tiny legs and disappearing into the gray weeds. My burst of light-headed relief that it hadn’t attacked was drowned a millisecond later in sickening alarm: The salamander was escaping.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I ran after it, jumping the atrum flames. Heat licked up my legs; then I was clear. I kicked in an extra burst of speed, ignoring pain shooting from my ankle to my knee. Ripping a cap free with my teeth, I upended a jug of lux lucis water onto the salamander. It shot forward, panicked, and I leapt after it, dousing it with the second gallon. The salamander didn’t make it more than three feet before it shrank to half its size. I leaned closer, drowning it in glops of yogurt.
I waited, reserving half a jug’s contents. My breath rasped loud above the crackle of flames. When nothing moved beneath the mound of gelatinous dairy and water, I grabbed a stick and poked the viscous mass, poised to leap aside if the salamander launched atrum flames. Rooting through to the soil, I found nothing but a puddle of speckled atrum half eaten through by the yogurt.
“We did it, Val.” I straightened, grinning. Take that, Liam. I doubted even wonder enforcer Jacob could have done any better.
Blinking back to normal sight, I checked the distance between me and any real flames. The last patch burned a few feet away. A sharp wind flattened it, almost extinguishing it, but the atrum flames rekindled the blaze. Seeing as my salamander chase had gone undetected, I crouched and rolled lux lucis toward the flames. Pushing lux lucis across the bare ground wasted energy, but not having to get up close and personal with the fire made it worth it. When I’d negated all the atrum, I doused the patch of flames with my reserved water.
Inspired, I crept to an untouched, healthy oak tree and planted one palm on its bark and the other on the ground. The atrum flames would burn until they ran out of fuel no matter how much water the firefighters used, but I had something more powerful than water.
The zigzagging and dotted path of atrum flames clearly marked the salamander’s progress through the larger blaze. I gathered a wad of lux lucis in my hand and rolled it into a fast spin from the tips of my fingers to my wrists and back again. When it whirled in an almost seamless blur, I released it. Lux lucis shot up the scorched gully, eating through the first two patches of atrum and starting on the third before dwindling out. My other palm sucked fresh energy from the oak, replenishing the expended lux lucis as quickly as it escaped. I repeated the move twice more, checking the tree between each blast to ensure I didn’t overtax it. Each time, my lux lucis rolled farther, as if it slid frictionless across the white energy already coating the ground before slowing to counter the atrum.
Satisfaction suffused me with giddy energy. This was what it meant to be an enforcer. In ten minutes, I’d made more of a difference than I had in three days at the mall.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
I whirled and sprawled on my butt when my ankle gave out. A beefy firefighter in head-to-toe gear hustled toward me, alien behind an air mask. I must have looked equally frightening, covered in dirt and soot, crouched with a hand on the ground and another on the tree, as if I were a cave woman cowering from the fire, afraid to run.
“You need to leave.”
You think? “I got turned around,” I said, which I realized was the truth.
A deep baying jerked my gaze toward the slope. Jamie the Great Dane stood at the top of the hill, grinning.
“That’s my dog. I need to—”
“This way.” The firefighter took my elbow, forcing me to leave the empty jugs behind. He marched me up a steep trail to the top of the park where Jamie waited, and I used his support to baby my throbbing ankle up the incline. I would pay for my ardent salamander chase, but it’d been worth it.
At the top of the slope, the smoke thinned to reveal three fire trucks parked across the bike trail, firefighters using hoses to douse the flames below. No bloated imps bounced among them. No Godzilla salamanders loomed on the horizon. Whatever had distracted Jamie, he hadn’t fed it. My knees weakened with relief, and it took repeated astringent assurances of my well-being before the firefighter allowed me to leave without calling an ambulance. He radioed ahead to a policeman at the exit to let him know I was coming. He probably thought I was too brainless to leave the park on my own.
Jamie kept his distance, trotting to my side only after I’d left the firefighter behind. I’d also received a truncated lecture about leash laws and dog safety. I’d happily promised to never leave the house without a leash again. Physically tethering Jamie to me was the best pooka-training idea I’d heard.
I found if I didn’t push it, the pain in my ankle subsided to a dull ache. It was a good thing, too; with my shortcut through the nature trail designated off-limits by the firefighter, I had to walk a good half mile to the park’s exit and back to the car.
I savored my victory on the long walk. I’d survived my first salamander encounter. So what if I’d lost control of Jamie for a few minutes? He’d come back, and in the meantime, I’d saved the park. Well, I’d helped save the park, and I’d saved the firefighters a worse blaze.
The dried weeds and stately oaks of the native section of the park gave way to manicured soccer fields that glistened like an endless white carpet in Primordium. A gentle breeze pushed the smoke away, lifting the fumes from my clothing, and a few bends in the trail muffled the cacophony of the ongoing battle. Jamie ranged near me, examining the plethora of curiosities the world offered the keen senses of a dog. I’d deal with reprimanding him later, when he changed back to human form. For now, with my heart rate returning to normal and post-adrenaline jitters fading, I savored the unexpected tranquility.
I didn’t expect to encounter anyone else in the evacuated park, but when I neared the path between the soccer fields and the baseball diamonds, a man bustled toward me, waving to get my attention.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. He was big. Tall, with shoulders too wide for the average doorway and a chunky middle gone soft. Despite the sixty-degree weather, he wore shorts and a T-shirt, exposing tribal tattoos on both biceps and swirly Old English text down his forearms. If not for his average gray soul and the teacup Yorkie prancing on the leash at his side, I might have hurried in the other direction.
“I’m fine. Just got a little close to the flames.” My voice rasped over the words, and I swallowed a cough. Soot smeared my cream coat, and my pants looked like I’d camped in them for a week. Not my best look.
“My wife sent me to check on the fire. I had to sneak in. They’ve got all the roads into here blocked. We live in this neighborhood and have a right to know what’s going on. If that fire gets out of hand, it could be my home in jeopardy.”
Since he indicated his home stood in the opposite direction of the fire, his only worry would be getting all his windows closed to keep out smoke, but I assured him the firefighters were in control.
Jamie trotted out of the bushes, and the Yorkie went on point, barking in high-pitched yips. It threw itself against the end of the leash, straining on hind legs to get to Jamie.
“Don’t worry, he’s friendly. I, uh, lost his leash back there.” After the lecture from the firefighter, I felt defensive.
“Now there’s a real dog,” the man said. “This thing’s my wife’s, but who’s the one picking up Princess’s poop? George, that’s who.” He thrust a thumb at his chest.
“Uh-huh.” George thought he had it bad; the Great Dane had poops larger than Princess.
Jamie touched noses with the runt. Her tiny tongue darted out to lick his face and I cringed on his behalf. I’ve never been one for sharing saliva with other species or seeing others do it.
“Well, I’ve got to . . .”
Jamie’s soul flared from his body, enveloping the dog in atrum. In a flash, Princess’s soul changed from bright white to heavy pewter.
“. . . go.”
20
Dog Is My Copilot
Princess spun on George
and sank her teeth into the excess flap of his Birkenstock’s strap.
“Princess, no!” George stomped his beefy foot. Princess hung on, growling through her mouthful. “Let go, you little shit.” Princess tried to shake her prey and tipped herself over. She recovered, launching herself back at George with furious, squeaky barks. When she latched on to the toe of the shoe, he scrambled out of it. “Bad Princess!” George remembered he had an audience and said apologetically, “Damn dog’s never liked me, but she’s never tried to bite me.”
I nodded. Princess wasn’t Princess anymore. Not by half, at least. With shocking ease, Jamie had changed her. She wasn’t a full-blown (if world’s smallest) hound, but she was halfway there. A glimmer of her inborn good nature remained in the residual lux lucis, enough to turn an attack on George into a mauling of his shoe. A hound would have gone for blood.
Jamie barked, dropping his front legs to the ground, his hind end wagging. Princess looked up from the tooth-marked shoe. Yipping, she raced under Jamie’s belly, then around his front toes, growling when he playfully bit the air near her.
I found my voice. “Jamie, you can’t do this.”
Princess’s leash wrapped around Jamie’s front legs, and she spun to attack the nylon. Jamie rose and casually stepped on the strap as he untangled himself. The loop jerked from George’s hand. I lurched to grab the leash, but Jamie bounced sideways, blocking me as he dipped for another playful strike at Princess. She ignored him, prancing by with the leash in her mouth like a prize, tail high. When George lunged for the trailing tip, she whirled to snap at him, and he jerked back with a curse.
“Jamie, this isn’t a game. She’s going to hurt someone.”
George shot me a confused look. Jamie ignored me.
I had to get my hands on Princess. If I did, I could cleanse her soul. A dog her size couldn’t hold more atrum than a handful of imps, especially only half tainted. One thing was certain: I couldn’t leave her and hope she’d revert back to her previous pure lux lucis soul. Every time she lunged for George, her soul dimmed. Already, the pewter had darkened to a grim soot.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 30