Playing with Fire (Judah Black Novels Book 4)

by E. A. Copen

  Espinoza got out of the front of the van and walked toward us. He wasn’t wearing all the same tactical gear, but he did have the vest on over his uniform.

  “Reed lives alone with his cat,” I said to Espinoza. “I hardly think his cat warrants military grade weapons response, Espinoza.”

  He gestured to the four men who had already assumed defensive positions at the gate. “Old Boy Scout motto. Always be prepared. You don’t know what’s hiding behind that door, Black. Wards, werewolves, shapeshifters, giants…” He shrugged.

  Abe bobbed his head in agreement. “She does tend to draw the attention of trouble.”

  “Good to know.” Espinoza thrust out a hand at Abe. “Lieutenant Espinoza of the Concho County Special Response Team.”

  “Special Agent Abraham Helsinki,” Abe answered as the two traded grips.

  Espinoza nodded. “My guys are carrying basic protective wards on their equipment but, given that you two are more equipped to deal with any magical protections that might be in place, you two can take point and we’ll cover your six.”

  “Good enough for me,” I said as we started toward the fence gate.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Abe asked.

  “Anything that tells us about Reed’s state of mind, evidence he was involved with rem, or that he knew Hector Demetrius. Espinoza, did Hector happen to show up?”

  “No, but there is someone at the station you’ll want to talk to.”

  “Who?”

  Espinoza paused at the gate and stopped to address me, hooking his fingers in his belt. “Remember that unrelated case I mentioned when you called about the warrant? Might not be so unrelated after all. Trespassing and harassment complaints got filed this morning by some girl out at the compound. Guy we arrested for trespassing happens to be your witness, Black. The kid who was fighting Reed last night.”

  I closed my hands into fists. “Ed. I’m going to wring his neck if he compromised this investigation. Are they pressing charges?”

  “Don’t know yet. It was all pending when I left.” Espinoza shook his head and then gestured to the gate. “This is as far as me and my guys go until you’ve checked for magickal booby traps.”

  Abe slid in front of me. “Allow me.” Abe placed a hand on the gate handle and raised an eyebrow at me.

  I was more than a little irritated at being shoved aside. He knew I was just as capable as him at disabling any defenses that were on the property.

  “Wards are my specialty,” Abe said with a smug grin.

  He unhooked the gate and the SRT officers standing nearby stiffened. “Iron disrupts the flow of magick,” Abe explained with all the patience of an intro level professor. “The iron fence forms a complete circle around the property. Unless it is broken, even the most skilled practitioner would not be able to see what magicks wait on the other side.”

  The smile that Abe flashed me made me feel stupid for ever thinking he would discount me as an agent. He knew better. The two of us had already fought side-by-side before. By taking command of the operation, he hoped to teach SRT a few things before they got in over their heads. It hadn’t been about me and my abilities at all. I rolled my shoulders and pretended not to notice.

  Abe swung open the gate and extended both hands into the space the fence gate had once occupied, his thumb and two fingers extended. “The walkway and front yard are laced with an early warning detection system. There is something stronger attached to the deadbolt ahead and laid over the windows, but I cannot determine its purpose at this distance.” He lowered his hands. “The house is safe to approach, but do not touch the doors or windows until I have finished.”

  He took off through the gate and up the walkway, his long strides leaving the rest of us scrambling to catch up. I almost had to run to arrive on Reed’s porch in the same breath as Abe. He stood in front of the door, fingers extended in the same position he’d used a moment ago, eyes closed. “Your priest has a knack for fire spells.” A smile touched Abe’s voice, though it didn’t show on his face. “Opening the door uninvited would be very bad for anyone’s health.”

  I extended a hand toward the window in front of me and sent a quick pulse of magick into the air, feeling for Reed’s wards. True to Abe’s word, there was something there, something with enough power to knock me on my ass, but I couldn’t tell what kind of ward it was or what it might do once triggered. I withdrew my hand. “Can you undo it?”

  “Not if you wish it to remain a secret. The moment I do, he and anyone else who is watching this location through magickal means will be aware that his protections are down.”

  Abe gave me a wary look. He hadn’t said it aloud, but he was worried someone else might be watching and waiting for a chance to come in and search the place. We might be doing their dirty work for them, breaking down the wards. Once we left the scene, anything we didn’t take with us in an evidence box would be free for the taking.

  I nodded once. “Break it down.”

  He closed his eyes again. The air on the porch took on a heavier quality, making it more difficult to breathe and magick hummed briefly against the door. Then there was a loud pop, a spark of light, and the door popped open of its own accord.

  Abe was the first one through the door. He took two steps and then fell forward, flailing like a cartoon character. Reed’s skinny, white cat scrambled out of the way, narrowly avoiding Abe falling on him. Abe crashed to the floor with a resounding thud. The cat flicked his tail and jumped up onto Abe’s back where he proceeded to sit and lick his paw without so much as acknowledging the rest of us. I stifled a chuckle while Abe had a few choice words in Russian for the cat, who scampered off when Abe pushed himself up off the floor. Abe turned to sneer back at the doorway while several of the SRT guys snickered at him. “You should have warned me about the familiar, Judah.”

  I stepped into the narrow hallway and sidestepped Abe. “Pretty sure he’s just a cat and not a familiar. Come on. We’ll take the room at the end of the hall. The rest of you, fan out.”

  Abe stood, dusted himself off and muttered something about cats never being just cats.

  The room at the end of the hall was Reed’s living room. I’d only been in Reed’s house a few times before, but I thought he was an immaculate housekeeper based on how he kept the rest of the place. The living room reflected that. His coffee table held neat stacks of newspapers and a notebook with a pen resting against the pages. An old, rotary-style phone sat next to the notebook. Behind the coffee table was a well-loved sofa with a Navajo blanket thrown on the back. His Bible sat open on the cushions beside where he would have been sitting if he were writing in the notebook.

  Abe went to check out the sofa and the items on it while I walked the perimeter of the room. Reed’s walls were mostly bare. There wasn’t a photograph to be found anywhere in the room and no knick-knacks. That made the few items on display even more noticeable. I stopped in front of an oil painting depicting a dark-skinned man in a striped tunic holding an infant. The artist had captured Joseph’s fatherly smile as he looked down at his crying son. It was an odd choice of moments to capture, the Son of God crying helpless just like any other child and his father attempting to calm him with a calloused hand on the babe’s chest.

  “Looks like a diary.”

  I glanced at the notebook. “More like a devotional journal. Looks like he stopped mid-sentence, too.” I shrugged. “Not a smoking gun, but might be useful. I’d bag it.”

  I turned back to the wall and walked along it until I came to a bookshelf. It held exactly what you’d expect to find in a priest’s bookshelf. Devotionals, various editions of the Bible, theological guides, concordances, atlases, and histories lined the shelves. The third shelf was only half full, the books stopping abruptly halfway across the shelf against a kneeling angel bookend.

  The living room began to feel crowded as more SRT officers flooded in, so I walked back along the wall to where another narrow hallway waited. An agent stood at the mouth of th
e hall at a parade rest, having searched the rooms down the hall and found them clear. I nodded to him and stepped past to search the first door on the left.

  It looked like a bedroom. Reed’s neat freak streak disappeared. The room was a mess. Blankets had been torn from the bed, dresser drawers pulled out and turned over. Reed was a neat freak, and every man’s bedroom is his sanctuary. If it was a mess in there, it was because someone else had made it that way. The place was tossed, but not destroyed. Someone else had been searching for something, someone who could get past Reed’s wards.

  I stepped in cautiously, sweeping my eyes back and forth and drawing my gun. I kept the barrel pointed at the floor. SRT had declared the house clear, but they could have missed something or someone, especially if they weren’t looking for signs of magick.

  “Who were you and what were you looking for?” I muttered. “And the better question is, did you find it?”

  I spun at a sudden sound, leveling my gun at the closet. A dark shape shifted on the other side. “Come out with your hands on the back of your head!” I shouted. “I know you’re in there.”

  “Take it easy, love” said a familiar voice. The white slatted doors of the closet slid aside and Creven stepped out with his hands in the air. “And don’t alert your vampire friend that I’m here.” He pressed one finger to his lips.

  I cast a look behind me at the open door, dropped my gun and stepped over to close it. “What the hell, Creven? This is an active investigation and my suspect’s home. You can’t just break in here and contaminate any evidence! What are you doing here?”

  Creven slowly lowered his hands. “Orders from above,” he reported. “It’s unrelated to your investigation.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” I said, dropping my gun back into its holster. “You just happen to be tossing the home of my suspect? Orders from who? And what are you looking for?”

  Creven pressed his lips together. “Those answers are more complicated than you realize, lass.”

  “Creven, so help me—”

  I stopped when the elf’s head shot up, eyes glued to the door. A heartbeat later, muffled screams sounded on the other side of the door followed by rapid gunfire that lasted only a few seconds before going eerily silent. I looked to Creven for an explanation, but he shook his head. This wasn’t him or whoever had hired him. Neither of us spoke. We passed about five seconds in silence before we noticed the smoke coming from cracks around the door.

  Chapter Nine

  Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In this case, it must have been on the other side of the door, meaning Espinoza, Abe and members of SRT were either trapped in it, had retreated to a safe distance, or they were dead. The gunfire and its abrupt end suggested the latter. With the smoke pouring in and the temperature steadily rising, Creven and I were about to meet the same fate if we didn’t act quickly.

  I grabbed the blanket off the bed and stuffed it firm against the bottom of the hidden door. My knuckle brushed the doorknob and I came away with several blisters. The fire had to be right outside the door for it to be that hot.

  “Can you get the door open?” Creven asked as I stumbled back away from the door, cradling my burned hand. He stood with the back of his hand against his mouth, ducking just beneath the growing ceiling of smoke.

  I shook my head. “It’s already too hot. Nobody’s getting that open without severe burns and even if we did, we’d be walking into fire.”

  “What about a window?” Creven turned and ran to the window, pulling it open.

  Something warm brushed against my leg. I shouted and almost jumped out of my skin before I realized it was Reed’s cat. Had he followed us in? No, I would have seen him. How the heck did he get in? He meowed at me and paced to the window. The cat stopped, turned back to look at me, flicked his tail once, and then jumped out the window.

  I turned to look longingly at the door. We could get out, but we might not be able to get back in to help Abe and the others. What if they were trapped or injured?

  “You’re thinkin’ of rescuing them, aren’t you?” Creven said from halfway out the window.

  “Can you make enough water to flood out the fire?”

  He sighed, looked out the window. “My focus is outside. I’ll be useless without it, lass. Come on, let’s go. Maybe they all got out?”

  I stepped back up to the door. The smoke pouring through it was more intense now, burning my eyes and scorching my lungs. Even with my shirt over my mouth and nose, I couldn’t get within a few feet of the door. Creven was right. Without focusing his magick through his staff, his magick could go haywire and make things worse. If we hurried, we might still be able to come in the front. Maybe the fire hadn’t spread that far.

  I turned and ran to the window, feeling blindly for the far wall. Creven grabbed my hand and pulled me through.

  We landed on a slight hill at the back end of Reed’s house. The air above me was painfully hot on the back of my neck. I could hear fire crackling and see glowing debris and smoke floating in the air. I tumbled down the slight slope before standing on wobbly legs to look up at the house.

  It was engulfed in flames that shot ten feet into the air. The sirens and horns of a firetruck drowned out everything but the loud crackling of the fire, but they didn’t have any water going down on the blaze, at least not that I could see. I jogged back up the hill alongside Creven and came around the side of the house to the sound of shouting voices. Two members of SRT stood there and turned their weapons on me when we came up on them unexpectedly.

  I threw my arms up in a surrender gesture. “Easy, boys.”

  They lowered their guns, but eyed Creven with suspicion.

  “This is my friend,” I explained. “What happened? Is anyone still inside?”

  “Fire came out of nowhere,” the one on the right reported. “I thought I saw someone walking through the fire and let off a few rounds, but it got too hot too fast. The lieutenant and your partner stayed behind to try and get to you. We tried to go back for them but we can’t get through the front door.” He turned away.

  “Stay here and secure the scene,” I said, nodding. “We’ll handle it.”

  “Aye,” Creven added. “Just let me fetch my staff. I’ll be right back.”

  We broke into a run back to the front of the house. Before I saw it from the front, I was certain that I could create a small bubble of air around myself or use my shield to get through the fire and get the three men trapped inside. When we came around the front, however, I had to reassess my chances of success. The fire had raged out of control. Huge arms of it flashed across the doorway which stood behind a wall of heat that stretched to where we stood. The wood groaned against the weight of itself. Inside, we could hear beams cracking and falling. Even in full protective gear, the firefighters had decided it was safer to stand back rather than attempt a rescue.

  My tiny little shield wasn’t going to be enough.

  A new commotion made me turn around. Creven was trying to push his way past the line of other spectators who had gathered and the firefighters were pushing him back. “Let him through!” I shouted. The police stepped aside and Creven rushed to my side.

  “Stick close,” he said, shifting his staff. “If Luck is with us, we should be able to manage a rescue without becomin’ a barbeque ourselves.” He didn’t say anything else, just turned his staff sideways and marched toward the burning building. The bright blue hue of a semi-circular shield enveloped us on three sides.

  I kept as close as I could. The porch creaked as we stepped up onto it. Fire leapt up off the railing dangerously close to my unprotected arm and I jerked back. Creven steadied me with a hand. “Don’t fear it, love. It’s not a normal fire. This fire is something else.” He ducked through the front door with his staff still out in front of him. I followed.

  The inner hallway was an oven of distorted wood. The fire licked at the walls here and there, but hadn’t yet taken hold in the center of the house. Heat and smoke were
their own problems, though. It made the air almost unbreathable. Every gasp felt like swallowing glowing, hot ash.

  “Where?” Creven shouted over the sound of breaking glass and roaring fire.

  “Straight ahead.” I hoped Espinoza and Abe were in the living room. Anywhere else, and we’d lose valuable time searching for them. Creven broke into a run and I worked to keep up with him.

  The living room was in a full blaze, with fire leaping from the sofa to the chairs and the wall. The bookcase was a charred, black inferno. I scanned the room, frantic to find Espinoza and Abe. “There!” I shouted and pointed to two still bodies curled up under the broken coffee table. “Let’s get them out, Creven!”

  “Let’s do something to make the room a little more bearable first. Hold your breath, love!” Creven spun his staff once and then slammed the end of it into the floor. The floorboards splintered and water sprang up out of the hole he’d made with all the force of a geyser. Hundreds of gallons of water flooded into the room all at once and slammed into the fire where it went out with a hiss.

  I scrambled forward to pull bits of wood and glass off Espinoza and Abe. With a little magick, I found the strength to hoist them both up with a grunt before the flood swallowed them. Creven waded through the water to come and help me fight my way to the window on the far side of the room. He shattered the glass with his staff and rolled the bulbous end around the edge, knocking out the rest of the glass before helping me hoist Abe through the window to the firefighters on the other side.

  We picked up Espinoza and had him halfway through when a blast of fresh fire struck the wall beside me. I let go of Espinoza to dodge aside and he fell out the window, hopefully not breaking his neck when he hit the ground. I tried to grab the wall, but slipped on the torrent of water still rushing into the room and went down on my back just in time to see Reed close on Creven. Creven brought up his arm, ready to call his protective shield, but he wasn’t fast enough. The sword bit into the meat of Creven’s forearm and came away bloody. Creven stumbled back, his shield flickering into place as he hit the ground on his back. The water all around him ran red.