Fire Season

by Stephen Blackmoore

  Even if I pull the trigger this close, whatever magic is protecting her will likely keep her going for a little while. She’ll outlast Gabriela.

  “I’m listening.” I know what she’s going to say. I’ve already done the math and I’m not sure I can refuse. Every action I can think of might end with Sastre dead, but definitely ends with Gabriela dead. All except one, and it’s looking like the only viable course.

  “Leave with your friend. Get her help. Let me go. We finish this up another time.”

  It’s a tough call. I could end this here and now. Not forever. I can’t kill Quetzalcoatl by throwing ghosts at him. But I can slow him down, get the lighter, get this assassin out of my hair.

  All for the price of one dead Bruja.

  “What are you doing with the sticks?” I say, stalling for time I know I don’t have.

  A sly smile on her lips. “Let me go and you’ll find out.”

  Fuck. “We will finish this,” I say. “Soon.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.” She steps back, puts her Bowie knife on the ground, hands on top of her head. I keep the Browning aimed at her as I stand. I pick up Gabriela’s machete—she’ll be pissed if I leave it—and put her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Hot blood pours out of the wound in her chest, soaking my shirt and the back of my pants. She’s unconscious, but her breath is a raspy wheeze and I can feel her heart hammering. Punctured lung, massive blood loss, at the very least.

  I back out of the factory, reaching behind me with one hand to open the door while balancing Gabriela on my shoulder. Sastre watches as I leave. I stop just outside the doorway, one foot holding it open.

  Aw, fuck it. I pop off two shots and bolt, not bothering to see whether I hit anything or not. I round the corner of the building, glancing behind me to see if she’s following or if Q has gotten the ghosts off him, before I shove the Browning into its holster. I get a better grip on Gabriela and run hard for the car. I only hope it’s not too late.

  I get Gabriela into the BMW’s passenger seat, shoving the machete next to her. I can’t heal her, but I can keep her from dying. More or less. I drip a couple drops of blood in her mouth and cast a spell that mimics death. It slows her heartbeat way down, cools her metabolism. Stick her in a morgue drawer and you won’t be able to tell the difference. But it only slows down death. It won’t stop it.

  I grab my phone in a hand so slick with blood it takes me three tries to dial the warehouse. I tell the guy who answers that they need to get Vivian to the warehouse right fucking now or their precious Bruja’s going to bleed out in this car. I hang up without waiting for an answer and stomp on the gas.

  I’m weaving through thinning traffic on surface streets, blowing through stop lights at a hundred and twenty, when the first cops show up behind me. I don’t have time for this shit. I dig one hand through my messenger bag until it snags on the thing I’m looking for, a small mirrored globe about the size of a golf ball.

  I put my hand out the window and squeeze the globe until it pops. A blast of light fills the air. My left eye goes blind. My vision will come back in a minute, but in the meantime, I’m driving one-eyed past cars that suddenly can’t see me anymore.

  It’s like the you-can’t-see-me charms, but bigger. The cops are still coming, but as far as they and everyone else knows I’ve disappeared. A mage will see right through it, but it’ll keep the normals and any recording equipment from seeing me. As an added bonus it mimics whatever car it’s going past every few seconds just to make things more confusing.

  It’ll only last a few minutes, but at this speed that’s all I should need. I come up onto the warehouse and brake too late, spinning into the parking lot. The only thing that keeps me from being road pizza is the fact that they opened the gate before I got there.

  Three of her people run over with a gurney to help get Gabriela out of the car. Vivian’s a step behind them with an EMT trauma bag. She checks Gabriela’s pulse and goes pale. In a flash she’s on the gurney starting compression and it takes me a second to remember what I did in the car.

  “Hang on, no, she’s not dead. Just really, really asleep.”

  Understanding dawns on her face. She’s seen me do this trick before. “Got it,” she says. “Let’s get her upstairs. How long will this last?”

  “Couple hours, but once I pull her out she’s gonna go downhill fast.”

  “Then let’s hope a couple hours is enough.”

  Chapter 14

  Every day, over seven thousand people die in America. More than two thousand of them in hospitals. Trauma wards, ICUs, ERs, posh rooms with cable and internet and machines that sing one note dirges when you’re gone. Rich, poor, men, women, the just and the sinners. They all die eventually.

  You want to find ghosts, you spend a lot of time in hospitals. Searching for the newly dead, waiting for the about-to-be-dead, hoping to dig up an old spook who’s been hanging around the site for the last fifty years.

  I’m not a fan of hospitals. They’re like charnel houses. Sure, people die all the time, but in a hospital nobody dies easy. And all the rest of us can do is sit around and wait for it to happen.

  I hate waiting.

  Strictly speaking, this isn’t a hospital, but it might as well be. Some of Gabriela’s crew and I are all on the top floor outside her makeshift surgery suite waiting for her to die.

  I’ve seen all the emotions on display here before. Pre-emptive grief, fear, anxiety, anger. More than a few throw glares in my direction, knowing that I got their leader, their hope, their protector hurt, if not killed.

  A few see something else in me. They offer me coffee, or a place to wash up, worry writ large in their eyes. I know I look pretty bad. Even after washing the blood off my hands and arms, the spatter from my face, I’m still covered in gore. My shirt and pants are soaked through, stiff from dried blood.

  I’ve spent a lot of time covered in blood. You do death magic, you get used to it. Only this is different. This is the blood of someone who shouldn’t die, someone who cares about the world more than I ever have. I’ve only run into that a few times, and never like this. By the time they get to a hospital, they’re DOA.

  I’m worried, but it’s a distant thing. Pushed aside along with everything else by a singular, blazing-hot thought: How do I kill Quetzalcoatl and his pet assassin and make it hurt?

  About an hour and a half after they disappeared through the door of Gabriela’s makeshift surgery, Vivian comes out, stands in the doorway. She looks exhausted. I’ve never seen her so tired. She waves me over.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ve patched her up, but she’s still under that spell. You need to bring her out and I’ll be ready in case anything goes wrong. I’m not going to know for sure that what I did helped until she’s a little more alive.”

  I follow Vivian inside and she closes the door behind us. Gabriela’s lying unconscious on the surgical table, intubated, hooked to a ventilator and an IV, a blue sheet covering everything but the wound. The conditions aren’t ideal—hey, it’s a warehouse—but Vivian’s a professional and she knows her shit.

  “I don’t know how this works,” she says. “When you bring her out will she need to be sedated?”

  “I have no idea,” I say. “I’ve never done this on an injured person. She could come back and still be unconscious, or she could wake up screaming.”

  “Joy. Well, I can knock her out with a spell and then dose her with fentanyl if I have to. She’s closed up, and I’ve got an antibiotic enchantment on the room, so she’ll be fine, but scrub up, anyway. You look disgusting.”

  “Unless you’ve got a power washer I don’t think it’s gonna make much difference. Do I need gloves?”

  “You sticking your fingers in her intestines?”

  “Not today.”

  “Then no, you don’t need gloves.”

  I tear open a sponge
packet at the sink, scrub the dried blood out from under my fingernails, dig into the crevices of my palms. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get the last of the blood out. Funny. I always thought that was just a metaphor.

  When I’m done I go over to Gabriela, stand at the head of the table, and put my hands on either side of her head. Vivian wheels over a crash cart.

  “You ready?” she says.

  “I just did it.” The monitor next to the bed begins to beep as everything returns to normal.

  “You ass,” Vivian says. “I thought her head was going to explode, or something.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t.”

  “Goddammit, Eric.” She turns her attention to the monitor. “Vitals are looking good. You think she’ll be out for long?”

  “I’ve only brought someone out of it once, and that was more on a timer. I wasn’t actually there for it. Could be minutes, hours, I don’t know.”

  Vivian frowns and I can see the gears turning as she puts things together. When I first got back to L.A., her fiancé, my friend Alex, was kidnapped. Vivian wanted to come with me to get him, only I had a better idea of what we’d be up against.

  I wasn’t about to see her get killed. So I sort of knocked her out with the same spell I used on Gabriela. Yes, it was a dick move. And if I had to do it over again, I probably would.

  The gears finally click into place and Vivian says, “Is it the same spell—” But she doesn’t finish, because a massive jolt slams through the building, almost knocking us down. I hear glass shatter, car alarms go off. I throw open the door to see shattered glass, a few injuries, and the entire top floor bathed in a red-orange glow.

  The building’s on fire. They followed us back here and set the place alight. Then I realize no, that’s coming from outside. Through the shattered windows I watch a fireball the size of an oil tanker billow up into the sky.

  I note the direction, estimate the distance. Sonofabitch. When Gabriela and I got out of Vernon, Quetzalcoatl and Sastre set the factory to explode. A blast like that must have taken out the whole facility at least. We’re only about three miles away. Far enough away to be safe, but not so far we can’t feel it. Fire crews will be swarming the place soon. It’s going to take them hours to put that out.

  But as I’m thinking that, another explosion just as large erupts near the first. It happens so fast and it’s so bright that I don’t quite register before the shockwave hits. I feel it punch through my chest, pushing me back.

  Then there’s another, and another, and another, and so many more I lose track and all that’s left is a two-mile wide, five-hundred-foot tall wall of flames that dances and shimmers in multiple colors lighting the night up brighter than daytime. Reds and oranges, greens and blues. All those toxic chemicals cooking off, blowing up into the air.

  We all stand there watching the flames. Watching Vernon burn in stunned silence, letting the sounds of car alarms and sirens fill the space. Let’s be honest, it’s not a huge loss. I mean, it’s Vernon. You think about L.A., you don’t think Vernon. There are only a couple hundred people who live there. The same kind of blasts along Hollywood Boulevard would kill thousands.

  I can’t see anything besides the flames, it’s still three miles away, but with the power of those blasts I can’t imagine there’s anything left standing. Buildings are going to be rubble, anyone inside them dead. Night workers, security, that one guy who just had to stay late to get the spreadsheets done. They’re nothing but burning paste spread across shattered concrete.

  I wonder how bad it will get before the night is over. How many neighborhoods outside the blast are going to catch fire as burning debris rains down onto a city of tinder? How many foundations will have cracked a mile out from the shockwaves? How many fallen homes?

  A massive twist clenches around my heart and squeezes, almost taking me to the floor. At first I think I’m having a heart attack, but it’s a familiar feeling. It’s so strong, stronger than I’ve ever felt, I don’t realize what it is for a moment.

  Every necromancer I’ve met, at least the ones who didn’t try to kill me and I was able to ask, can feel when somebody nearby dies. It’s a twinge. Barely noticeable. We’re attuned to death the way a lawyer is to car accidents.

  One death, enh, no big deal. Thirty or so, like what happened on a Metro train I was on a while back, that stings a bit.

  This is hundreds.

  I take deep breaths, let it wash through me. I almost have my breathing under control when I see it. A giant form in the flames that, if the normals noticed it and took a photo, would end up on a tabloid headline come morning. A winged snake of fire two hundred feet tall flows out of the flames and hovers there. I can’t tell for sure, because its eyes are just tears in the surface of flames, but fuck if he isn’t looking right at me.

  And then I’m hit with another wave of death as more explosions rip through the distance. I can feel the body count rising. In the days and weeks ahead, survivors will die from their wounds, infections, and toxic gases. Suffocate on a pocket of escaped cyanide gas, vomit themselves to death from arsenic, go slowly insane as mercury eats through their brains.

  Every new explosion brings with it more hammering against my chest, like I’m getting slammed with a shovel. I’m not sure how far away I need to be to not feel it, but this is definitely way too close to ground zero.

  “You all right?” Vivian says, coming out of the surgery and seeing me on the floor clutching my chest. “Shit, you’re having a coronary.”

  I shake my head no and manage to hiss “I’m okay” before another wave of deaths washes through me. Not everyone leaves a ghost, even in a situation like this, but with so many dead, you’re going to get a lot. And I feel them tearing away from their souls, confused, hungry, scared. Hundreds and hundreds of them. L.A. will be infested by morning, not that anybody but me is gonna care, or even notice.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say, my eyes never leaving Quetzalcoatl’s form burning above the flames. Then another explosion erupts, swallowing him up in its flames, the death toll landing one last sucker punch before I pass out on the floor.

  Chapter 15

  I wake up on a couch on the second floor of the warehouse, dirty yellow light streaming in through the blown-in windows. What little air conditioning has been running is shot, with no way to keep it all in, and the heat is even worse than before. My shirt sticks to my skin despite the dozen or so fans placed around the room, losing a war against the smoky air that has drifted inside.

  I sit up, groggy, hungover, my mouth tasting like pennies, my body feeling like I’ve gone a few rounds with a pissed off skinhead. I wipe sweat from my face and forehead. It must be a hundred degrees in here.

  I’ve never been near that many deaths before. That split-second moment between living and dead has always left a bad taste in my mouth, but this. Jesus. I try to estimate how many, piece apart the individual ones, but they’re all a nightmare blur of burning agony, crushed bone. And then there are the ghosts. I can feel a clot of them in the distance, an itch I can’t scratch, a noise I can’t shut out.

  The fire’s still burning, though in the daylight and the haze of smoke it’s harder to see. I can’t tell if it’s spread or not, but it’s definitely still kicking. Thick clouds of smoke rise up along the horizon. Helicopters and tanker planes drop water and retardant from above, and I can barely make out streams of water from pumper trucks.

  “Hell of a sight, isn’t it?” Vivian says. She comes up behind the couch, eyes sunken, pulled-back hair matted with sweat. Like everybody else here who isn’t me, she’s changed into something for the heat, shorts and a tank top. I’m the only one here wearing pants.

  “How long was I out?” I say. She takes a cigarette from behind her ear and lights it with a flick of her fingers. She takes a long draw before exhaling. I didn’t know she smoked. But then, there’s a lot I don�
��t know about her these days.

  “Twelve hours, give or take,” she says, voice flat and empty, eyes never leaving the fire out the window. “Once I knew you weren’t having a heart attack, I had a couple of the guys toss you onto the couch to get through whatever the fuck it was you were going through.”

  She finally looks at me. “What the fuck were you going through?”

  There are things about necromancy I never talked to her about when we were together. Some were things I didn’t know, hadn’t learned yet. Others were things I didn’t want to talk about. Like this.

  “I can tell when people die,” I say. “I feel it. Half a dozen I don’t even notice, but you start ratcheting up the numbers? Well, a lot of people died last night. It was . . . unpleasant.”

  “Looked it. You always been like that?”

  “Yeah. Usually I can ignore it.”

  “Never told me about that.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s like bringing up a wart on your asshole. It’s not something that makes for good sexytime talk.”

  She takes another drag on her cigarette. “The news says estimates are at about 800 dead. Mostly night shift workers in Vernon, but some residents in Alameda and South Park. Houses and apartments collapsed from the shock waves, some burned down. They’re saying it’s the worst disaster L.A.’s seen. They’ve declared a state of emergency and are trying to evacuate people from areas around the fire. Hospitals are swamped.”

  “Kinda surprised you’re not helping out in an emergency room.” I’ve never seen Vivian like this. There’s no animation in her voice. She’s not angry, not sad, not manic. The hell is wrong with her?

  “I don’t do that anymore,” she says. I want to ask why, but something in her tone tells me that’s a bad idea.