“Damn it!”
I stomped back to the flower. Even in the open, the titan arum’s powerful odor permeated the air. Lestari raised her tiny triangular face to the breeze, inhaling its moldy locker funk with bliss.
“Let’s get her to the car,” I said.
Jamie led the way, cradling the mourning queen. I huffed after him, the sticky stalk of the corpse flower tucked under my left armpit, the rest of the flower dragging behind me like a Christmas tree from bizarro land. When I reached the driveway, I expected to see Niko pull up. He’d tell me I’d rushed in without thinking, and I’d tell him I’d saved the day; then we’d figure out a place to set the titan arum on fire without igniting the dry grass around us.
Except Niko wasn’t there. The turbonis proved a stronger foe than I reckoned if it kept the optivus aegis busy this long. Yet Mr. Pitt had sensed a similar level of evil here, and it’d turned out to be a poisoned flower. Or had it? The toxic pollen held less atrum than ten imps put together. As horrific as the poisoned flower was, it shouldn’t have registered as such a large problem, even for a souped-up warden. Which meant the titan arum hadn’t been what Mr. Pitt sensed.
The house loomed beside me, heavy curtains hiding the interior. The evil had to be inside. Or it had been. Jacob may have just absconded with whatever Mr. Pitt had sensed, but if I got lucky, he’d have left evidence behind.
“Wait in the car.”
Jamie didn’t protest. He hunched his body protectively around the weeping prajurit queen and continued toward the Civic.
I dropped the heavy stalk and pulled out my knife and pet wood. The blade stuck in the sheath, coming free with a suction of half-dried sap resin. I should have cleaned the blade before sheathing it, but I’d been too preoccupied with escaping the greenhouse.
I pushed lux lucis into the blade and another burst into the pet wood. Checking the road one last time for Niko’s car, I faced the house.
The porch steps groaned and popped beneath my weight. I hunched, checking the windows. The curtains didn’t twitch. Sidling up to the door, I blinked to Primordium. The house washed to gray. A black smear seeped over the threshold. I turned to get a better look, and it disappeared. Frowning, I checked the threshold from the corner of my eye. The atrum returned, barely visible in my periphery.
I leaned down to cleanse it but stopped myself before my fingers touched the porch. Just because Jacob had come and gone didn’t guarantee the house was empty. In fact, if Jacob had an accomplice, he might still be on the premises. Heart pounding and muscles tense, I reached to test the door handle, only to realize both hands were full. I waffled between weapons. Pet wood was my tool of choice, since it was longer—but it was lethal only to pure-evil creatures. Reluctantly, I shoved it into my back pocket and kept the blade out.
The door handle turned soundlessly in my grip, and the door swung open. I jerked back, then peeked into the house. Three feet inside the door, the foyer ended in a wall of lux lucis. Thick rubber trees, hanging vines, bushy ferns, dwarf citrus trees, evergreens—from floor to ceiling, plants obstructed the entrance, so crowded I couldn’t see through them.
A trace of atrum sprinkled the bare floorboards, giving support to my belief that this time, I’d found the barrier of lux lucis Mr. Pitt had sensed. Gathering a trickle of lux lucis in my palm, I looped it and set it free. It ate through the dark energy before feeding into frond tips brushing the floor.
I tiptoed over the clean threshold and blinked to normal sight. Harsh white light blinded me. Shading my eyes with cupped hands, I squinted into the glare. Grow lights hung from the ceiling, half obscured by a tangle of vines. On the other side of the verdant wall, bits of silver gleamed and refracted light. The plants had to be six feet deep, their intertwined branches speaking of months of growth. This house and whatever it held had been here awhile.
The door swung shut behind me. I jumped and lurched for the handle. It opened easily on an empty driveway. I patted my racing heart. This wasn’t a trap; the natural cant of the door had swung it shut. I shivered, eyes bouncing hyper-fast to check my surroundings. As much as I longed to sprint from the house, I couldn’t leave without investigating.
I let the door swing closed but stopped it when it rested against the handle’s tongue. If this wasn’t a trap, my best chance at escaping undetected, or at least maintaining some element of surprise if someone—Jacob—came back, would be to shut the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to close off my escape completely.
I blinked to Primordium, pulling out the pet wood again. Unlike the greenhouse, the air smelled rich with wet soil and green life, and underneath it lay the faint aroma of smoke.
I crept up to the plants. What if the car I’d heard had been a neighbor’s? I’d assumed Jacob had stopped by while I was occupied in the greenhouse and left again, but what if he’d been here all along? What if he was still here? I flashed on the rifle he’d brought to the pooka’s rising, and tensed, primed to duck.
Think you’re faster than a bullet?
I held my breath, listening. My heartbeat pounded louder. The rasp of my coat sleeve against my side filled the tiny room.
A path wound through the plants, hidden except for the crushed gray leaves previously trampled. Encouraged by the silence, I tiptoed forward. I’d take a look inside, see what Jacob was up to, then call Niko. A witness would be wise; then it wouldn’t be Jacob’s word against mine. Plus, it never hurt to have the optivus aegis at my back.
I blinked to normal sight. It’d be easier to spot Jacob in a world of color than to pick out his soul among all these plants. Beneath the hot lights, the air stagnated. Sweat collected along my spine. Each slither of plant leaves against my coat sounded as loud as sandpaper. The floorboard squeaked, and I froze, heart racing. Acrid smoke thickened the air, aggravating my lungs, and I swallowed hard to suppress a cough.
I’d pushed past enough plants to see the silver beyond was a metal wall bolted to the floor and ceiling. It curved out of sight left and right, following the arc of plant life and grow lights. If any normal interior walls remained in the house, they were lost in the jungle.
When no one rushed through the foliage to investigate my noises, I shoved aside a bamboo palm branch and stepped into the empty space between the wall and the plants. I stood in front of a cracked door. Before I could lose my nerve, I pocketed the pet wood and grabbed the handle.
Heat seared my fingers. Strangling a yelp of pain, I jerked my hand back. I started to stuff the scorched fingers into my mouth, but remembering everything I’d touched in the last hour, I settled on flapping my fingers and blowing on them. Hot, smoky air pushed through the widened opening. In fact, the whole metal wall simmered with heat.
Dread tightened my skin. I’d expected to find Jacob’s lair. I figured a rogue would have problems keeping his home clean of atrum, so he’d need to use a barrier to disguise it from the wardens. But inside that barrier, it’d be normal. There’d be a couch, a TV, some food, maybe a nest of imps or a hound as a pet. This wall felt like it held the fires of hell within.
Now would be a good time to go back, call Niko, and wait in the car with Jamie.
No. I was an enforcer. Liam and Isabel thought I was too weak to hold a region, and cowering behind Niko would only prove it. This was my region, and no one was going to foster evil on my watch. Jacob’s days as a rogue were over.
A blast of heat dried my sweat.
I knew opening a door on a room potentially already on fire was dangerous, but considering the door was already partially open, and untold evil lurked within, I couldn’t wait for the fire department before investigating the inner room. Cautiously, I toed the door open another inch, and it swung wide on its own momentum.
The interior of the house was on fire. The metal wall wrapped around the entire hellish scene, amplifying the heat like an oven. Low wilting plants mounded the open floor, and flames guttered within their depths. Heavy gray smoke obscured the ceiling. Defying logic and air currents, al
l the ash collected in a mound at the center of the enclosure.
Flames burst out of nothing in the middle of a thick spider plant. I blinked to Primordium. Atrum coated the floor and spilled up the walls. Black flames ate through glowing plants, and the dark body of a salamander scurried through white plant fronds. It carried a smoldering piece of lux lucis–filled plant to the ash heap, climbing the obsidian mound to deposit its prize next to tiny glistening onyx spheres. Eggs. Handfuls of them. As I stared, a clutch of eggs wriggled and shivered, and a tiny triangular head cracked through one ebony shell, then another.
The dense ring of lux lucis plants, the gutted house filled with salamander eggs—this was definitely what Mr. Pitt had sensed, not the titan arum. Finding the poisoned flower had been a lucky break, though one that’d come far too late for the prajurit.
I eased back a step, pulling the door almost shut with the aid of my knife. Then I turned and ran. I burst from the house and tore down the driveway. My gaze went first to Jamie. He sat in the passenger seat of the Civic, face glum. Lestari lay curled on the dash, hopefully asleep. No BMW had arrived while I was inside. Where was Niko? Was he okay?
Jamie got out of the car and met me at the trunk. “You stink.”
“Thanks. I need you to wait here and watch Lestari a little longer.” I grabbed two jugs of water and balanced yogurt and probiotics on top. “How is she?”
“Hungry.”
Suspecting it was really Jamie who was hungry, I shoved a grocery bag into his arms and raced back inside, slamming the front door behind me.
I considered calling Mr. Pitt, but he’d said to notify him only if I encountered something I’d never seen before. Salamanders fell within the scope of my limited experience, though not on this scale. All those eggs promised untold destruction. I had to kill them before they hatched.
I set the gallons on the foyer floor and poured two yogurts into each along with two opened capsules of probiotics. I gave each jug a vigorous shake, then checked them in Primordium. The water glowed faintly, like an afterimage of lux lucis. Knocking aside plants, I hurried to the fiery room. I sprinkled the threshold to prevent salamanders from escaping, then left a jug just outside and kicked open the door.
Plants clogged the floor in various states of combustion. Chasing down the salamanders in that tangle would be cumbersome and inefficient, not to mention dangerous. I needed to concentrate my attack on the easiest targets first: the unhatched eggs.
In fits and starts, and blinking back and forth between normal sight and Primordium, I threaded through flaming plants and fire-breathing salamanders alike, halting next to the nest at the center. I remained hunched almost in half to avoid the heavy smoke blanketing the top third of the room, even though I couldn’t see it in Primordium. The entire room looked one good blaze away from complete collapse. Ragged holes pierced the ceiling, and through those, I could see holes in the roof, which from afar had looked like a chimney. The entire attic must be filled with smoke.
The salamanders ignored me until I poured lux lucis–enhanced water on the eggs. With the first sizzle of quenched coals, the salamanders charged. I spun, backpedaling to get to a wall. The plants writhed, lizardlike atrum bodies stampeding through their leaves and stalks, and bursts of black flames erupted throughout the room. There couldn’t have been more than a handful of salamanders, but with the shaking plants and fiery explosions, it seemed like a hundred. I splashed any atrum that moved, cursing and hopping to avoid gouts of black flames.
As conservative as I tried to be, the first gallon didn’t quench all the salamanders. With tears running from my stinging eyes, and each breath rasping in a painful fight against a coughing fit, I sprinted to the door, using normal sight to dodge flaming plants, then hopscotched back to the nest with the remaining jug.
Two more salamanders disappeared under the viscous yogurt water, and when nothing more charged from the depths of the burning plants, I turned on the nest. I dribbled water onto each glistening egg, stirring the ash with my knife to ensure each incubating salamander’s death.
The room spun. A coughing fit brought me to my knees, and I remained on the ground, crawling around the nest until I’d killed everything there. Only then did I stagger to my feet and to the door.
The air outside the metal room slid cool across my skin despite the heat from the grow lights. A cloud of smoke exhaled from the front door as I stumbled down the porch steps, and I staggered a few extra steps to suck in delicious clean oxygen. Jamie bounced on his toes halfway between the car and the house, clearly torn between me and the prajurit queen still on the dash.
“I’m fine,” I said, ruining my assurance by coughing until I gagged. Tears blinded me, but I waved him back. I had one last task. The poisoned titan arum needed to burned, and I wasn’t going to waste this perfect opportunity.
Dragging the flower up the steps set me coughing again, but at least with my sinuses clogged with smoke, I couldn’t smell the titan arum’s noxious odor. The flower’s bulk caught on the door frame. Holding the stalk tight in my armpit, I planted a foot on the wall behind me and shoved. The thick petal ripped, and I caught myself on a hand and knee before face-planting. Yanking the flower through the wall of plants taxed my strength, but I barreled on, determined.
The narrow metal door caught the enormous flower, too, and I turned to grab the huge stalk with both hands. The titan arum ripped free, stripping away most of the purple petal to reveal the poisoned center. The metal walls flexed, popping back into place with a thunderous reverberation. I jerked the toxic flower across the room to the embers of the ash nest.
Stumbling down the titan arum’s length, I grabbed the long gray-green tongue and folded it into the flames. Heat swept up my side. I jerked back and blinked to normal sight. Flames leapt from the titan arum above my head, disappearing into the smoke blanketing the ceiling. The torn sides of the petal revealed the center of the flower where hundreds of poisoned pollen stamens blazed with an unnatural blue-white flame.
The fire spread along the titan arum’s length, and I shielded my face from the heat with an arm, staggering toward the door. The ceiling crackled, and I glanced up in time to see the titan arum’s column of flame touch the roof. Like a match touched to gunpowder, the ceiling combusted in a bright flare clearly visible through the dense smoke. With a hiss, the roof above the nest collapsed, blinding me with a spray of embers. When I spun to the doorway, the metal wall wobbled, canting inward as the ceiling sagged to trap me.
“Oh, crap.” I squeezed through the bent metal doorway, flinching away from its searing frame. I tripped and clawed through the plants, blinded by tears and smoke. Heat built behind me, and the lights overhead flickered. A bulb deeper in the house burst, then one closer, as flames licked across the ceiling.
I burst from the house in a cloud of smoke and didn’t stop running until I reached the Civic. Bracing a hand on the hood, I coughed until I thought my lungs would turn inside out. Jamie darted to the trunk and returned with a water jug. I swished and spit before gulping water. Through teary eyes, I watched flames shimmer across the roof.
“Are you okay?” Jamie asked.
I nodded. My cheeks stung as if I’d been sunburned, embers burned at the bottom of my lungs, and my ankle pulsed with pain, swelling against my tennis shoe, but I barely felt any of it. My mind raced to make sense of the day’s findings.
I had answered the mystery of where all the salamanders were coming from, and it made the placement of the poisoned titan arum twice as sinister. Prajurit were natural predators of salamanders. Any prajurit who showed up to destroy the nest would have been overcome by the flower. And murdered.
The death of so many prajurit then freed up the rogue to plant salamanders around our regions without detection. With a nest under his control, he’d had two replacements for every salamander we killed.
I tried to muster exaltation or at least a measure of triumph. I’d demolished the nest. I’d destroyed the poisoned titan arum. Jacob
wouldn’t be able to distribute any more salamanders, and no more prajurit would die. So why was I unsatisfied?
“You’re not going back in, are you?”
I blinked and looked away from the burning house. Jamie stood tense beside me. “No.” The word scratched my throat. Once I could breathe, I needed to attempt to wipe out the atrum, but the fire made going back inside too dangerous.
A billow of smoke drew my eyes back to the house. The illogic of Jacob’s actions gnawed at me. Why would he want to spread the salamanders around? Cheryl had used atrum to make herself look good. If Jacob followed the same pattern, he should have let a few salamanders loose in his region so he could sweep in and save the day. He could have destroyed the salamanders he didn’t need rather than transplant them. In fact, from what I understood about being rogue, killing the extra salamanders would have benefited him, giving him more strength. So why set dozens of fires in all the local regions?
Maybe he had lost control. It would explain why evil had been increasing and spreading for weeks. After committing enough evil, there had to be a tipping point from which he couldn’t come back and he’d stop being able to recover with lux lucis. At that point, maybe he’d have to conserve lux lucis. Or maybe he’d stopped caring about how much evil he unleashed. Yet, when I’d seen Jacob two days ago, his soul had been brighter than mine, and he’d had no problem fighting pooka-enhanced evil creatures.
If he hadn’t lost control, the turbonis could explain the increasing evil. With it to supply him with unending evil, and with some means of transportation I still hadn’t worked out, Jacob could transplant all manner of nasty surprises into all our regions—as we’d all seen in the last week.
But I kept coming back to the same question: Why? Why would Jacob put evil in all our regions? Spreading some around to cast aside suspicion would have been a good strategy, but bombarding all our regions was counterproductive to Jacob’s advancement. With all the enforcers working together, he’d be less likely to shine and less likely to gain power.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 36