A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2)

by Rebecca Chastain

  “And you’re not attracted to a book with a well-turned spine?”

  That’s different.

  I’d been teasing, not expecting Val to get the joke. Biting my lip, I dropped the subject. I did not want to venture into the-birds-and-the-bees conversation with a book.

  I convinced Jamie he didn’t need another shower, then helped him pick out clothes. I made another mental note to get the boy underwear after a lengthy argument about the uncomfortable ridges of the only pair of jeans I had that fit him and the necessity for him to wear them. Not just underwear: I needed to get him a whole wardrobe of his own. Which reminded me I needed to check for a pooka budget to assist newly imprinted enforcers.

  Mr. Bond circled us, demanding attention throughout the morning, but when we headed for the door, he flopped on the recliner and stretched his head out on his paw. Sad eyes tracked us. Jamie wanted to bring him with us, and I was more than a little tempted. Surely I could add one more creature to my traveling menagerie. Except bringing along a cat was far different than a pooka or a sentient book. Mr. Bond would end up spending the day in the car instead of the apartment, with nothing to eat and nowhere to go to the bathroom. He’d also likely escape and get hurt. With a heavy heart, I shut the door, and his forlorn expression haunted me.

  We stopped at the grocery store to restock salamander-exterminating supplies. Jamie loaded the cart with two grocery bags’ worth of snacks while I filled the rest with gallons of water, a tub of the cheapest yogurt, and a small ice chest. We were transferring everything to the trunk when my phone rang. I dug Medusa out of my purse.

  “Get to the office. Now,” Mr. Pitt said, then hung up.

  Adrenaline sparked in my stomach and frizzled to my extremities. He’d found something. I shoved the rest of the groceries into the trunk and zipped out of the lot.

  Sharon greeted us with her usual cheer. Jamie ignored her, which I decided was an improvement over their first staring match. I waved jauntily to make up for him.

  “In here, Madison.”

  I’d rounded the conference room wall, expecting to see Rose creating more cito spray—those working the mall would continue to need it through the end of the year—but Mr. Pitt had commandeered the large room. A huge map covered most of the long table, and the pull-down screen against the back wall contained a projection of the map Liam had made for the meeting a week ago. The markings on the map flickered every five seconds with the time stamp, noting spots of evil in the last two weeks, complete with yesterday’s data. It was my first viewing of the map since the meeting. We weren’t doing well. The frequency of evil had increased in the last week, despite everyone’s best efforts and group coordination.

  Mr. Pitt looked like he’d aged a dozen years since I’d left him last night. Gone was his healthy glow and bright eyes. This morning, his skin lay sallow under the fluorescent lights, dark purple underscored his eyes, and weariness sat heavy on the corners of his mouth. He wore yesterday’s clothes, now wrinkled like tissue paper, the previously neat blue shirt untucked and unbuttoned to reveal a few inches of a white undershirt. Steam rose from the coffee cup in his hand, and the burnt smell of it permeated the room.

  “You should not have agreed to do this.”

  I jumped at the deep, irritated voice. If I’d had any doubt I’d been working too hard lately, overlooking Niko proved it. He leaned against the wall beside the door, leather-clad arms crossed over his chest, long legs braced shoulder width apart. His dark eyes smoldered, and his full lips were pulled flat. Yep, even pissed off, he was hot enough to lick up.

  “Hi, Niko.”

  He pushed off the wall and stalked toward me. I backed up a step, bumping into Jamie. The pooka twined his fingers in mine and squeezed, sticking close to loom in my periphery, shoulders taller and wider than they should have been. I darted my gaze away from Niko’s to the pooka. Jamie’s jaw was hard and defined.

  Niko grabbed my shoulders. Heat from his fingers seared through my thin sweater. I jerked my gaze back to the optivus aegis.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked. Over Niko’s shoulder, I could see Mr. Pitt drumming his fingers on the tabletop and glaring at Niko’s back. What had Niko’s panties in a bunch?

  “Giving Brad your lux lucis was foolish and dangerous.”

  Ah. That. If I opened Val, I told you so would be written in huge letters across his main page. Niko studied my face from far too close, then ran his eyes down my body. He was checking my soul, but it didn’t prevent me from blushing. Didn’t this office have air-conditioning?

  “You did the same for me once,” I said, referring to my disastrous first run-in with the demon and the energy Niko had fed me to help me recover.

  “I gave you enough to bring you back to consciousness. I didn’t drain myself into you. I didn’t—” Niko’s fingers squeezed my shoulders with bruising force.

  “You did what was necessary. So did I.” Without looking away from the furious heat of Niko’s eyes, I asked, “Mr. Pitt, did you find what we need?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it was the right thing to do.” I leaned back, tired of being held. I’d done nothing wrong. My voice came out hard. “I followed my warden’s wisdom. Just like you said I should.”

  Niko’s jaw bunched; then he released me. I caught my balance and shook my wrist a little to remind Jamie he was squeezing the blood from my fingers. The pooka uncurled his fingers and stepped back.

  “Did Brad tell you how dangerous it was?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think we can all see Madison survived, Niko. Now, if you two are done with your hellos, we’ve got problems to take care of.”

  Problems was an understatement. Thanks to my lux lucis, Mr. Pitt had used his enhanced warden senses to label the paper map on the table with dozens of red dots, each signifying a hot spot of evil. His labels extended deep into Liam’s region to the south, past Isabel’s region to the west, and far into the foothills to the north and east. The discrepancies between Mr. Pitt’s map and Liam’s map were blatant. Liam’s map made our region appear to be the epicenter of evil. Mr. Pitt’s map put the bulk of the problems in Isabel’s region and added a fair number to Liam’s region.

  When I commented on the discrepancies, Mr. Pitt released a disgusted snort.

  “That’s the problem with getting the inspectors involved,” he said. “Now everyone wants their caramel crap to look lemon drop sparkly.”

  “Are you saying Liam and Isabel haven’t been reporting some of their problems?” I asked.

  Mr. Pitt spread his arms wide, sweeping the map in a vigorous “see for yourself” gesture.

  “Some of this could be skewed by Jacob not being present,” Niko said, ignoring Mr. Pitt’s theatrics and tapping the middle of Isabel’s heavily marked region. “But not all of it. Maybe Jacob isn’t as good as we’ve been told and Isabel’s covering for him.”

  Or maybe my original suspicion of Jacob was spot-on. If he was rogue and cultivating evil in his region, it would flourish while he was laid up. Summer and Grace would have their hands full today.

  “I don’t give a caramel crunch about Isabel’s region!”

  I jumped at Mr. Pitt’s explosion. His mask of fatigued impatience gave way to pure, vein-pulsing fury. Mr. Pitt jabbed a blunt finger at two locations on the map marked in red and circled until the pen had ripped holes through the paper. One sat within the confines of our new territory, the other on the northwestern fringe where Isabel’s, Margaret’s, and our border met. “Something’s here and here. Something big. Sitting right under my butterscotch-blind nose. The rest of this”—he swirled his arms over the red-splattered map—“is taffy turds.”

  “What’s so special about those?”

  “Both are big evils, bigger than all the rest, and ringed in lux lucis.”

  “So they’re contained?” I glanced between the men, confused.

  “We don’t contain evil,” Niko said. “We eliminate it. Someone or something
planted these problems and then disguised them.”

  “They did a sugary job, too.” Mr. Pitt scrubbed his face. Stubble rasped against his palm. “They could have been here a day or a year. Gofer gumdrops on fruitcake! All the lux lucis around them blinds my normal senses. I probably could have stood right next to them and never felt them without Madison’s enhancement.”

  “How do we know who put them there?” I asked. Was Jacob hoarding evil in our region?

  “There should be clues on-site,” Niko said. “I think you’ve found the source, or sources, of this area’s problems.”

  “At least we weren’t the only target. It looks like this one”—I pointed to the southern circle in our new territory—“might have been meant for Liam.”

  “Maybe,” Niko said. “Or it could have been placed there in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s the cookie-crumble problem: I didn’t even know they existed yesterday!” Mr. Pitt drummed heavy fingers on the tabletop. “The location of both is suspect. They’re both close to the borders of multiple regions, yet still within our region. If I were setting someone up, this is exactly how I’d go about it.”

  “How do you want to proceed?” Niko asked.

  “We don’t have time to waste. Niko, you take whatever’s here,” Mr. Pitt said, pointing to the circle previously in Liam’s region. “It’s the stronger of the two. Madison, you’re on the other one.” Mr. Pitt fixed his bug-eyed gaze on me. “It should go without saying that whatever you’re walking into is dangerous and you should use all the caution you’ve yet to exhibit. If it’s something you’ve never encountered, call me. Niko will check in with you as soon as he’s cleaned up his area.”

  My heart thumped in anticipation. Considering I’d fought less than ten types of evil, the odds were high I’d be on the phone with Mr. Pitt in a few minutes.

  * * *

  “He told me about his LA past,” I said to Niko when we were nearly to our cars.

  “Good.” Niko divided his attention between me and Jamie, who trailed behind us, peering into the sleepy offices along the hall.

  “Do you think it’s happening again?”

  “A rogue enforcer?” Niko stopped, his dark eyes unreadable. Wind lifted my hair into my eyes, and I tucked it behind an ear. “A person who is learning too fast, who seems capable of handling more than she should? That sounds familiar.”

  “Are you talking about me? Do you think I’m rogue?” I expected him to laugh, but his serious expression didn’t change.

  “I think it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions. Be careful, Madison.”

  “Feeling cryptic, are we?” I grumbled, but I waited until I closed myself inside the Civic before I spoke.

  “You’re strong,” Jamie said. “You could be full rogue in a few days.”

  I goggled at him. “Ah, thank you, but no. I like being all lux lucis.”

  Jamie sighed.

  Medusa played “Sexy Back” as I merged onto I-80 at Eureka. I hit speakerphone and gunned the Civic in front of a semi.

  “Niko? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’ve found a turbonis, a large one. About the size of my car. This is going to take me a while. If you encounter the same, call me. Do not attempt to unravel it on your own.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “No.”

  “What’s a—” The phone went dead. “Turbonis.”

  I peeled off the freeway at Rocklin Road and spun a hard right onto the frontage road. “Jamie, do you know what a turbonis is?”

  “Twisted.” He powered down his window, filling the cabin with freezing wind. I turned the heater on high. I should never have introduced him to Sam. Somehow he’d picked up the teen’s slang in the few seconds they’d talked.

  We arrived at our destination minutes later. With the accuracy of my lux lucis, Mr. Pitt had pinpointed the mysterious disguised evil spot down to a specific house. I checked the address and parked a few car lengths from the end of the driveway. Interstate 80 ran a few hundred yards behind me, hidden by several twists in the road. Farther ahead of me, subdivisions bisected the rise of the hill in tidy rows, but here huge native oaks surrounded a smattering of homes on large irregular lots twisting around a creek and old quarry.

  The house looked innocuous. Like the rest in the neighborhood, it was a single story, with the bland architecture indicative of homes built in the ’90s and a carport instead of a garage. The house sat farther back from the road than most, and no fence contained its yard. Beyond the house, the rain-deprived landscape sloped toward a band of lush native flora thriving along a creek. Smoke rose from the roof. Someone was home despite the lack of a car in the driveway.

  I wiped damp palms on my thighs and pulled Val from his strap.

  Twisted is far too simplistic, Val’s first page said.

  “What?”

  Check the turbonis page. You’ll see.

  I flipped through the glowing pages, knee jiggling with suppressed nerves.

  TURBONIS. Sometimes called an atrum tornado, a turbonis is a vortex of pure evil. Usually they are created from atrum stirred to action by the continuous movement of evil creatures within a confined area. Once formed, a turbonis can evolve all atrum it encounters, including creatures. Unpredictable, these phenomena must be carefully unraveled. Use caution: New evil spins within the vortex and will emerge at random, fully formed, even as the funnel is unraveled.

  Beside the text was a sketch of a tornado, the base surrounded by imps. Twisted. I got it now.

  “What do you mean, it ‘evolves’ atrum?” I asked, flipping back to Val’s first page.

  To put it crudely, a turbonis sucks in atrum—pure or in sentient form—and spits out something stronger. It might consume an imp and spit out a hound.

  “A real, physical hound?”

  It can’t make anything physical, but a pure atrum hound can cause as much, if not more, damage than a flesh-and-blood hound. However, creatures of pure atrum are rarely intelligent. A turbonis might devour a bunch of evil and spit out a demon no smarter than an imp.

  “Like the one Summer encountered while I was stuck at the mall? Rafi took out one yesterday, too. Could they have come from the turbonis?”

  Brad said lux lucis surrounded it. The only reason someone would do that is to control the turbonis and hold it in a location, if they were stupid. If there is something strong enough to disguise and hold a turbonis, it would be strong enough to eliminate anything the turbonis created.

  “Could someone harvest the creatures and transport them?”

  It’s possible.

  The turbonis had been in Liam’s territory, Liam’s and Summer’s. Why hang on to something so evil? Maybe Liam hadn’t held on to it because he wanted it. Maybe he’d netted it like a hound and had been waiting until things died down before tasking his enforcers with taking care of it.

  If so, why not tell Niko? Why keep it a secret? Out of shame that it formed in his region? Or for a more sinister reason? If he’d netted the turbonis before yesterday, Liam should have told Mr. Pitt about it when we took over that part of the territory. Maybe that was intentional. If a turbonis appeared in Mr. Pitt’s region, it could be perceived as one more check mark on a long list of reasons to kick Mr. Pitt out. All of which assumed Liam had known of the turbonis’s existence and didn’t explain the second contained evil I was psyching myself up to face.

  I circled back to my theory of Jacob being a rogue enforcer. Maybe he’d planted the turbonis and had been waiting to unleash it until he could step in and be the hero, and Jamie had mucked up those plans when he skewered the enforcer. But that didn’t explain why Jacob would have planted it in Liam’s region. Why not capture and contain the turbonis in his own territory? Even if he thought to discredit Mr. Pitt, Jacob hadn’t known Mr. Pitt and I would take over that slice of Liam’s territory. At the time, he’d been at the hospital.

  “What are we waiting for?” Jamie asked.

  Courage. I didn’t s
ay it out loud. Whatever lurked at the end of this driveway, it wasn’t going to be fun or easy. Half of me hoped I’d find another turbonis. Then I could call Niko and wait for his assistance. Maybe I should wait for him anyway. I could exert caution, as Mr. Pitt wanted, and wait to have the big, bad optivus aegis at my back.

  I blinked to Primordium. The landscape looked exactly as it should: gray house, gray dead weeds, white trees, black sky. No atrum coated the driveway. No demons lurked behind trees. Not even a single imp bounced our way. All was quiet and calm. It would be foolish to interrupt the peace, right?

  A prajurit dropped to stand on the windshield in front of me. I jumped and hit the horn by accident. It—no, he—lifted on a blur of wings and zipped down the driveway, disappearing into the white oak tree canopy.

  I undid my seat belt. With the exception of the night Jamie’s wild energy had called a few prajurit—along with half the state’s population of evil creatures—no one had seen a single prajurit in our troubled regions. Pinpointing the reason for their disappearance was almost as important as discovering the source of all the evil currently plaguing our region. I needed to catch that fellow; a prajurit appearing here, now, couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I took a deep breath and grabbed the door handle. It was time to prove I was the enforcer I claimed to be.

  22

  Betrayal Never Comes from Your Enemies

  “Stay close.” I would have told Jamie to stay in the car if I thought he’d obey, but his soul whirled with excitement, white and black swooping through his limbs in an endless riotous waterfall. I looked away before I became dizzy.

  Jamie bounced out of the car. I stood and checked my arsenal. Val on the hip. Check. Pet wood and Medusa in my back pockets. Check. Knife at my belt. Tentative check. Please don’t make me need to stab anything. Enough water and probiotics to kill a congress of salamanders. Check. One unpredictable pooka. Che—

  Jamie lifted his nose to the air, scenting, then sprinted around the side of the house.

  “Jamie!” I hissed. Growling, I jogged after him, but my footsteps slowed to a creeping tiptoe close to the house. I felt exposed and jittery. Heavy drapes shrouded the house’s windows, and I strained to hear movement inside. A soft wind rustled the oaks’ bare branches and pushed dried leaves across the gravel, but the interior remained eerily silent. Any second, the door was going to burst open and unfathomable evil would spill out.