Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  Was?

  I turned and saw that Jenkins had snuck out while Rogola and I were talking.

  “And don’t think you’ll be able to get anything out of him. I put an explosive bug in his neck. If I hear him even hint at revealing my location… kaboom. And all I have to do is move somewhere new. I have plenty of places to go. Places no one knows about.”

  “Seems you have it all figured out.”

  Rogola snickered. “A wise man knows his enemy.”

  “And that explosive,” I pointed at my own neck, “is that something else you got from the Yūrei Corporation?”

  “They make a hell of a lot of interesting toys, don’t they?” Rogola reached out of the holographic view and righted his chair, sitting like the victor, the king on his throne.

  I pulled out the wraith-catching remote and waved it above my head. “Like this toy?”

  “What is that?”

  “You know what it is. You thought you had it all wrapped up. But it looks like Jenkins missed one.” I wiggled the remote again.

  Rogola thinned his eyes, but remained seated.

  “I’d been thinking long and hard about how you did it,” I said. “Put the wraiths into the TV where my firefighter died. The speakers outside our headquarters. The holostereo in my own house.”

  Rogola swallowed.

  “A Professor Poltergeist video said it best. We all have electrical energy inside us. It’s basically what a wraith is – angry energy created by the scalies.” I walked over to one of the shī statues, the things that were supposed to ward off evil spirits.

  “What are you doing?”

  I found a compartment on the side of the statue, popped it open, and plugged the wraith remote into an empty jack. “Just returning your ghosts.”

  I hit the release button. Rogola jumped from his chair, stifling a scream, still unsure he was in any danger.

  Hell, I didn’t know if it would really work. Until it did.

  Dozens of fuzzy wraith images floated into the hologram’s beam until, on the other side of the desk, fully embodied ghosts materialized and floated around Rogola, flexing their claws and gnashing their teeth.

  That’s when Rogola really screamed.

  The wraiths added their own shrieks before they tore into him. The hologram camera on the mayor’s end tipped over. The image warbled into static, even though the sound of screaming and the tearing of flesh continued.

  I turned my back to it.

  Sometime soon, a rash of dragons would spring up and we’d know exactly where Rogola had been hiding the whole time.

  When I left the office, Naveena stood behind the receptionist with a hand on the trembling woman’s shoulder. The receptionist sucked on her vape and blew out a bubble that grew in size as it floated above our heads. It was glowing white.

  A few days later, DeShawn sent me a message via holoreader. I thought it might have been an electronic, Christian witnessing tract at first. But I’m glad I didn’t instantly delete it because it helped me make a decision about my future with the smoke eaters. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t choke me up a little. He wrote:

  “Cap, I want to apologize for what happened at the funeral home. I should have listened to you. I want you to know that I’ve always appreciated everything you’ve ever done for me. You were like a father, and I don’t just mean to me. Everybody on the job felt like that. I know you never had kids of your own, but you should be proud of how much your leadership and experience helped all of us young punks do the right thing, even when it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.

  “You’re everything I hope to be someday. And even though we’ve taken separate paths, I hear your words in my head every day, telling me how to be better.”

  “So are you excited?” Sherry asked as she handed me another screw.

  I sighed and began drilling it into the wall. “I’m tired and frustrated with these damn electro blinds.”

  “The store clerk said these are only a pain when you put them in. After this, we’re supposed to love them.”

  Kenji bounded in and said, “Neoneun igeos-e kkeumjjighae!”

  Yolanda had been a life saver in helping me put him back together. I really couldn’t have done it without her. She even gave him a better paint job. He looked like a real Dalmatian.

  Refraining from rolling my eyes at my dog, I began drilling the last screw into the wall. I hated being Mister Fixit because I was better at wrecking stuff. A horn honked from outside and it made me jump and strip the screw.

  “Fucking hell!”

  “Cole!” Sherry smacked my bottom. “You’re going to have to watch your language from now on. That’s not something I want our little girl learning.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The next day we were going to welcome a four year-old girl named Bethany into our home. She was brown-haired and had been giving the orphanage people hell, once tripping a nanny droid to fall down a flight of stairs.

  I liked her immediately.

  I laid down the drill and patted Kenji on the head. The dog grabbed the tool and ran off somewhere in our new house, shouting something smartass. We’d gotten a good deal on the house since it was near an area previously destroyed by dragons. Even with all the work the smoke eaters had been putting in to keep scalies outside the city with wraith gates, people were still skittish of living near a formerly cordoned area. Almost like avoiding moving into a haunted house. We could have paid it off with my smoke eater money, but considering we had to pay for dragon insurance anyway we got another mortgage and would spend the majority of our money on toys and dresses for Bethany.

  Sherry wrapped her arms around me and I gave her a big kiss. Her neck injury was completely gone, along with the tiny amount of arthritis that had been bugging her for a few years. I’d been sneakily trying to test if she had any smoke eater abilities – holding a candle a little too close to her hand, smoking a cigar and blowing the smoke near her face. She slapped away my candle attempts and slugged me in the arm with a baseball for the cigar. That crap wasn’t allowed in the house.

  “See you tomorrow,” I told Sherry.

  We kissed again, and I walked outside.

  Naveena leaned against the chief’s vehicle, wearing her green uniform and showing off a smug smile. The cannon truck was parked behind.

  She tossed me the keys. “We’ll follow you in.”

  “I know how to get there.”

  “Yeah, but you might change your mind midway and veer off the road.”

  “Have I ever changed my mind after making it up?”

  She toed my driveway with a boot. “Brannigan, if I knew what went on in your head, I wouldn’t have gone through half the shit we’ve had to deal with.”

  “That’s Chief Brannigan to you.”

  “Yes, sir.” She looked me over. “That uniform looks good on you.”

  I glanced down at my orange chief’s shirt. “I feel like a walking citrus fruit.”

  “Come on,” she said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat and got behind the wheel of what used to be Donahue’s truck. The funeral we gave him was grander and yet more secretive than any firefighter funeral I’d had the misfortune to attend. He’d requested to have his body set adrift on water and burned afloat.

  Donahue’s wife picked a place just west of the city. The procession had to be the longest in funeral history, with apparatus from both the smoke eater division and the fire department trailing up the highway for the ceremony. Hell, even a few police cars came along in support, not even for traffic control. It was good to have actual human cops back in charge of law enforcement. They were at least a tiny bit more competent than the droids. They’d found and arrested Jenkins in a matter of days. We’d yet to find out if that thing about the explosive in his neck was true.

  At Donahue’s funeral, Sergeant Puck said a few words, as did Naveena and a few other firefighters Donahue had worked with in Cincinnati. The stories were th
e best part. They knew a side to Donahue I never did.

  I declined to speak.

  When it was time, we took Donahue’s body off the top of Slayer 3 and set him on a raft at the water’s edge. We all sang an ancient tune from a band called The Doors. Something about lighting my fire. Donahue had put some strange requests in his will.

  The smokies with lasers shot at the corners of the funeral raft, where the propellerheads had placed a couple canisters of something incendiary they’d whipped up in the lab. It was supposedly taken from one of the Behemoth’s ignis glands. The raft blasted into an instant inferno when the lasers struck. That fire had to have burned for a good hour and a half before the ashes sank down to the lake’s bottom.

  As far as funerals go, it was pretty nice. I’d want a send-off half as good.

  I walked into Smoke Eater Headquarters a different man from when I’d first arrived. Sure, part of it was the way my dress shoes squeaked against the tile floor. The other part was that I was now in charge.

  Fire isn’t all bad; it can heal as much as it can hurt. But it always changes what it comes in contact with. My personal change may not have been visible – besides the godawful orange I now had to wear – but it’d been a lot deeper than a chemical reaction.

  A multitude of faces greeted me when I walked around the corner in the east wing. They looked as nervous as I felt, so that was something. Their eyes widened when they saw me, but they stayed silent, waiting for me to start. Each of them was as different from one another as could be. Some were black, others Asian. Some were white or Latino or a mixture of different races. Half of them looked as old as me or even older. Some didn’t even look old enough to drink. Women outnumbered men.

  I cleared my throat. “I want to thank each of you for waiting patiently and going through this entire process. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have at least a minuscule desire to help others.” I smiled. “And let’s be honest, we have some pretty cool toys.”

  That got a laugh out of them, even though they still shifted in their seats or trembled slightly.

  “I’m Chief Cole Brannigan. I’m new to this position, but not new to a dangerous job. And that’s what this is. Each of you will see your neighbors having the worst day of their lives. You have to be their strength. You will face literal monsters, and maybe even some ghosts. But we will give you the training you need to be able to encounter all of these things and more, if you’re willing to meet us halfway and give the best you have. Dragon blood can improve and save many lives. It saved your own. We used to be slayers. Now we’re evolving into something more productive to society.”

  I crossed my arms and inched closer to the glass room where they sat. “You were told before that you can leave any time during this recruitment process. I’m here to say that again. If any of you want to leave right now, you have our permission and our well wishes. It’s true that our curate saved most of your lives, but please don’t feel like you owe us something. You don’t. This is entirely your choice. The door is always there if you choose to walk out.”

  That was something else I changed when I became chief.

  A few of the recruits looked around to see if someone would leave. None of them did. I waited an extra minute or so just to be on the safe side.

  “All right, then,” I said. “This last test is for you as much as it is for us. Our highly trained medical staff is waiting just on the other side of this room in case anything goes wrong. I went through this same step. Don’t worry. When the smoke comes, breathe deep.”

  I hit the button and dragon smoke poured into the glass room, blocking the potential recruits from my sight. Hopefully, they were all able to breathe. Hopefully, we’d have a good number of smoke eaters on the payroll soon. But I wondered if there’d ever be an end to this – the scalies, the wraiths, the ash.

  Well, I’m saying right now, there won’t be an end to it. There will always be dragons. You can either run, and eventually burn, or you can take up your lance and do what you were born for.

  I’ve made my choice.

  Sink or swim.

  Acknowledgments

  The first person I have to thank is you. Since you’re reading this, you are that special reader, dare I say book-buyer, who actually reads the acknowledgments. I hope you enjoyed Smoke Eaters. And if you dig my writing, please keep an eye out for my future books.

  Paul Stevens is my agent and I can’t thank him enough. His experience and insight into publishing is invaluable. I’m glad he’s always there, not only to help brush up my manuscripts and get me the best deal, but also to talk me down when I get too amped up.

  Michael Underwood thought this book was cool enough to bring to the attention of the other Angry Robots, and I’m so thankful for his support, as well as his marketing and sales acumen. Phil Jourdan helped me make Smoke Eaters even better than I could have imagined. His understanding of story and human emotion is almost god-like. Penny Reeve is such a fantastic publicity manager who always has the best ideas and knows how to sell books better than most people know how to breathe air. Publisher Marc Gascoigne is such a pleasure to work with, and his concept for the cover blew me away. I’m glad he’s running Angry Robot, both as a writer and a reader. Speaking of the book cover, Lee Gibbons is a badass. I’m definitely getting that dragon and Maltese cross tattooed on me somewhere not embarrassing.

  Special thanks also goes to Lauren Adams, who was such an awesome beta reader and is my number one fan. Jason Nelson will always be my mentor and guide, aka person I vent to. The members of the Pitch Wars 2015 group are some of my closest homies, thanks also to them.

  I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all my author friends who’ve rooted for me on this journey to my first published novel. You guys know who you are, and I wish I had room to add each of your names. Even the smallest kindness went a long way for me.

  Finally, I want to thank the women and men of the international fire service, who daily ride out to help strangers in their toughest times. I’m proud to call myself your brother.

  About the Author

  Sean Grigsby is a professional firefighter in central Arkansas, where he writes about lasers, aliens, and guitar battles with the Devil when he’s not fighting dragons.

  seangrigsby.com • twitter.com/seangrigsby

  Sign up to the Robot Legion mailing list for book releases and cool robot news.

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

  20 Fletcher Gate,

  Nottingham,

  NG1 2FZ • UK

  angryrobotbooks.com

  twitter.com/angryrobotbooks

  Rain of fire

  An Angry Robot paperback original 2018

  Copyright © Sean Grigsby 2018

  Sean Grigsby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  UK ISBN 978 0 85766 773 1

  US ISBN 978 0 85766 773 1

  EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 774 8

  Cover by Lee Gibbons.

  Set by Argh! Nottingham.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins
Media Ltd.

  ISBN: 978-0-85766-774-8