Desert Flame

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “I thought witches used salt,” he said, watching her place the crystal.

  “We do, and it would be preferable for this kind of spell, but we’re a little short on table salt at the Outpost.” She looked up at him and smiled. “In the absence of a metric tonne of the good stuff, we have to readjust our expectations a little. Besides, it’s not good for the environment out here.”

  “And the crystal?”

  “Quartz is a natural amplifier and battery pack,” the witch explained. She stood and dusted the ochre dirt from her knees. “It can produce an electrical reaction given the right conditions. Put enough physical stress on it, and you have a little battery with a positive and negative end. That’s not magic…it’s science.”

  Hardy grinned. “Science and magic. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

  “Oh, and clocks. Quartz has a precise frequency standard that helps regulate time.”

  “You’re a wealth of knowledge.” He nodded towards the crystal on the ground. “Where to next?”

  She pointed across the highway. “The other side.”

  They crossed and the witch repeated the process, setting the crystal into position and angling it so it reflected the best light.

  “How do you feel about it?” Vera asked as they hurried to the third point.

  “About?”

  “Everything,” she replied. “Is revenge really what you want?”

  Hardy shrugged and sidestepped a clump of vicious spinifex grass. “I never approached it like Joseph did. He had it a lot worse than I did, and I was never the kind of man who defaulted to violence.”

  “So, you don’t want to kill him?”

  He’d thought about it but had never tried to find Darius or plan any kind of punishment for what he’d been put through. He’d simply tried to move past it by going out into the world in an attempt to work out who he was as a vampire. Frederick Hardy wasn’t the same person who’d tried to steal medicine for his dying sister—that man had died in Port Arthur.

  “Darius saved me from certain death, but he also condemned me to suffer through his tutelage,” he said. “Part of me will always want to honour the life he gave me, and the other part will always hate him for it. For me, revenge isn’t as simple as it is for Joseph.”

  “Mercy isn’t a strategy we can afford right now,” Vera warned. “There’s much more at stake here.”

  “Oh yes,” Hardy said. “He certainly needs to be stopped, but it doesn’t matter to me if I am the one who ends his life or not…if it has to be ended at all. Maybe it is as simple as helping him find another way back to his world.”

  “Even if we offered, do you really think he’d listen?”

  Hardy grimaced and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  The loss of any life was a damn shame, even the life of someone considered bad. Everyone was the hero in their own story, and no one was purely good or evil. Right and wrong was a constantly shifting barometer that moved wildly within the confines of society. He’d seen it change over the course of his long life as the world matured and modernised. What was acceptable a hundred years ago would never fly in the twenty-first century. What was evil now wasn’t evil then.

  And Darius…? A thousand years had twisted his soul until he saw neither good, evil, or the barometer of society. All he saw was his own self interests. Add in vampirism and his predatory nature, and the only person Darius was good for was Darius. He was his own hero, after all.

  “There’s nothing that ties him to this world,” he said as Vera placed the last crystal. “There is nothing here he cares about. No family and no history other than his quest to return to where he came from.”

  “He has his own revenge planned,” Vera mused. “I wonder what happened to him? Someone had to have been angry with him to send him all the way here.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  They’d reached the next point and Vera took another crystal out of her bag. She knelt and positioned the milky white quartz, checking the alignment with the sun.

  “Hardy?” Vera looked up at him. “There is a way out of this, isn’t there?”

  He didn’t reply straight away. He didn’t want to frighten her, but he wanted to be realistic. Every story didn’t always have a happy ending. Some were tragic, some just faded, and some never came to a close. He wasn’t sure which of those this mess with Darius fell under.

  “There’s always a way out,” he finally told her. “We just have to have the courage to find it.”

  They returned to the pub once all the crystals had been placed.

  Vera knew Hardy was just trying to be realistic yet optimistic about things, but she’d faced her own fair share of trouble to know the magnitude of what was coming for them.

  Finn sat at the bar, snacking on some hot chips, while Blue loaded some shells into his shotgun. Joseph lingered, eyeing the gun with exasperation.

  Wally stood as Vera and Hardy came in. “All set?”

  “All set,” she confirmed with a nod.

  “Where do you want me?”

  “Here.” She sat on the floor and gestured for Wally to sit beside her. The old wolf managed it, with some grumbling about his old bones, and took her proffered hand.

  “So, what do I do?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “Just sit still and don’t say anything.”

  “Any trouble out there?” Joseph asked.

  “All quiet,” Hardy told him. “Hopefully, it was the good kind of quiet.”

  “Shh,” Vera hissed. It’d been a long time since she’d done this kind of magic—being possessed by the Nightshade didn’t count—and she needed to concentrate.

  The pub fell silent, and she closed her eyes. Calling on her power, and searching out Wally’s werewolf magic, she opened her mouth to begin the spell…but the words died in her throat.

  The door flew open and Darius stormed in, his eyes black and fangs bared.

  He smashed a piece of quartz against Drew’s temple, sending the shifter flying across the pub. The dingo slammed against the wall with a bang and blood poured out of his torn flesh.

  Blue reached for his shotgun, but he had no hope. Luckily, Darius thought the same thing and let him be. The vampire picked up a chair and smashed it against the wall and picked up the broken leg.

  Joseph launched himself at the vampire with a roar, but his flight was met with the shard of splintered wood. Darius rammed it into his chest, staking Joseph in one fluid motion.

  Then, as Finn’s magic began to rise, the vampire grabbed the fae around the scruff of the neck and threw him over the bar. Shattering glass echoed through the pub as Darius turned, grabbed Hardy’s head, and twisted.

  Hardy went limp and crumpled to the floor, and Vera stood, her magic flaring. Before she could unleash it, Darius scooped up Hardy’s prone body and disappeared.

  It was over in seconds.

  Vera let her magic wane and Wally scrambled across the floor to Joseph.

  “Bloody hell,” the werewolf cursed, leaning over the vampire. “He’s turning grey.”

  “The…” Joseph coughed, spitting blood. He swatted uselessly at the chair leg protruding from his chest. “The wood…”

  “It’s next to his heart,” Vera said, pushing Wally aside. “It’s killing him.”

  “Pull it out,” Joseph gurgled.

  Vera didn’t think twice—she would’ve chickened out if she did. She straddled the vampire, wrapped her hands around the splintered chair leg, and heaved.

  The wood came free with a sickening slurping sound, followed by a strangled cry of agony from Joseph, and she tossed it aside.

  “Did it work?” Wally asked, his eyes wide.

  Joseph gasped and sat up, almost knocking Vera flat. His skin was regaining its colour and his lips quirked. “Yeah, it worked,” he said, smirking at the witch. “I didn’t know you liked me so much.”

  She scrambled off his lap and wiped her bloodied hands on his shirt. “You wish.”

  He u
ndid the top button and pulled the fabric aside, and they all watched as the gaping hole in his chest healed.

  Blue handed Drew a clean tea towel as Finn dragged himself out from behind the bar.

  The fae picked glass out of his dreadlocks and surveyed the scene before him. “Well, that was a performance. I didn’t even get a chance to use my magic.”

  “We had no hope,” the shifter groaned and pressed the tea towel over the gash on his temple.

  “He took Hardy,” Blue said, his hand still on the butt of his shotgun.

  “And my spell is screwed,” Vera added, picking up the bloodied crystal off the floor.

  Joseph dragged himself to his feet and stumbled towards the bar. Reaching over, he grabbed the nearest bottle of alcohol, which was a Jim Beam and cola pre-mix, and unscrewed the lid. Blue didn’t stop him as he chugged the whole thing.

  “He’s got a hostage now,” the vampire said, dropping the bottle into the sink. The glass clattered loudly. “And we’ve lost the element of surprise.”

  “So why didn’t he kill you?” Finn asked.

  “He almost did,” Joseph replied. “If it wasn’t for Vera, I’d be brown bread. I’d like to say Darius doesn’t miss, but the chap has gone all sloppy like.” His accent had deteriorated into something that Vera recognised as a thick London cockney.

  “Brown bread?” Drew asked, screwing up his nose.

  “It’s cockney rhyming slang.” His near-death experience had obviously gotten to him and his mask was slipping. The real Joseph Cheapside was bleeding through—no pun intended. “We need to rescue Hardy,” Vera went on. “I’m not going to leave him at the mercy of that man. Kyne or Eloise wouldn’t want it.”

  “Darius won’t kill him,” Joseph said, his gaze moving to the door. “Not yet, anyway. We’ve got a bit of bird lime.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Vera warned, stepping in front of him. “You’re not going up there guns blazing until Eloise and Kyne get back.”

  The vampire snorted. “From their magical mystery tour? You seriously think they’re going to find all the answers in some old woman’s cave?” He pointed towards the door. “Darius has Hardy, and I know the kinds of things daddy dearest is going to put him through. It’s nothin’ but Barney Rubble. He won’t wait until your elementals get back from their honeymoon, and he certainly ain’t going to rabbit and pork. The only language Darius understands is violence.”

  “I don’t understand half the things he’s saying,” Drew muttered sourly. “But I reckon I get the gist of it.”

  “The only cockney slang I know is Khyber Pass,” Blue said.

  Finn perked up, suddenly interested. “What’s that?”

  “Your arse,” Wally told him.

  “Shut up!” Joseph shouted, slamming his fist onto the bar, which let out a loud crack. “Don’t you people take anything seriously?”

  “Careful there, mate,” Blue growled, “that’s my bar you’re breaking.”

  “Of course, we take things seriously,” Finn said with a scowl.

  “We do things differently around here,” Vera said before things deteriorated. “We’re not vampires, and we’re certainly not prone to violence. Hardy wouldn’t want us rushing in there to save him at the cost of our own lives…not unless we had no other choice.”

  Joseph threw his hand into the air. “So you’re just going to sit in here and wait?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “I’ll forgive your anger, Joseph, because you’re new around here. You don’t know us and the things we’ve already been through to protect the seal. I’ve seen the things Eloise has done since she’s arrived, and I trust when she says Andante has the answers.”

  “Might have,” Drew muttered.

  “If there’s a way we can rescue Hardy without putting the entire world at risk,” the witch went on, “then that’s the route we’re going.” She narrowed her eyes and lifted her hand. Briny blue magic pooled in her palm and she pointed at Joseph. “If you try to screw things up for us and Hardy, I will stop you. I don’t give two flying fruitcakes about your revenge.”

  The vampire snorted and eased back against the bar. “Spoken like a true witch.” He nodded to the bloodied crystal she’d set on the table. “So, is there anything you can do with that in the meantime?”

  Vera sighed and picked it up, turning over the beautiful piece of cloudy white quartz. It was one of her favourites. “Yeah,” she said, setting it back onto the table. “Actually, there is… Anyone got a hammer?”

  “I do!” Finn declared and slammed his fist down onto the quartz, which shattered, splitting into five almost equal pieces.

  Vera stared him open-mouthed. She’d felt his magic for the first time and was shocked. The fae camp had a barrier of its own around it, but she knew it was an illusion—something Unseelie fae were masters of—and a trick wouldn’t have kept Darius out.

  “How long have you been able to do that?” she asked.

  Finn smirked. “Oh, for about a thousand years or so.”

  Chapter 20

  Eloise looked up at the boab tree and thought about Coen.

  Kyne stood beside her as they waited for the Indigenous man, his expression grim.

  “Have you noticed that Hardy’s speaking all proper since Joseph arrived?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I have. He sounds like all my essays in high school,” Kyne mused. “I’d put all the ‘don’ts’ as ‘do nots’ to up the word count.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You didn’t!”

  “Nah, yeah, totally did.”

  Eloise smirked and looked up at the boab. “I did, too.”

  Kyne took her hand. “I knew you were a rebel.”

  “Hello.”

  Eloise jumped, her heart lurching, and looked up. Coen sat in the branches of the boab, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he grinned down at them. How he even got up there, she didn’t know. The boab trunk was smooth and wide, but everything he did was mysterious. It was best not to ask questions unless she wanted to have her mind blown with a cryptic answer.

  “Coen,” Kyne said with a wave. “How’s it going?”

  “It goes,” he replied. He looked to the north, his brow creasing. “And you?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” the miner told him. “We’re running out of time.”

  “We need to speak to Andante,” Eloise added. “Can you help us find her?”

  Coen nodded as if he expected her to ask and pointed to the east. “Make paths by walking.”

  Kyne made a face. “Just walk east? Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I am,” he said with a chuckle. “You are both elementals. The Dreaming calls to you.” He poked Kyne in the chest. “Even you can hear through the rocks in your head.”

  “I’ll pretend I’m not offended by that,” the miner grumbled.

  “The vampire lingers, but he won’t see you,” Coen added. “Walk and you will find her. East, in the dark spaces between the stars. It’s time she woke up.”

  Eloise blinked, wondering if it was Coen’s way of saying Andante needed to come out of her cave. She hoped so.

  “So, we just walk and we’ll find the cave?” She looked up, but the Indigenous man was gone.

  “Sometimes I’m not sure if we should take everything he says literally, but then, at times like these…” Kyne nodded to the east. “We better get a move on.”

  They headed into the scrub, weaving through the gum trees and dodging clumps of spinifex. Kyne showed her the way, using the sun to guide them. The vegetation thinned the farther they went from town, but it was still a winding maze and it was easy to get turned around without a point of reference. Eloise had learned that the hard way.

  The land was flat, the outback stretching into a plain of red and sunbaked green. A few rocky outcroppings littered the horizon, rearing like jagged shards of rusted metal, but none of them looked like they harboured an invisible cave.

  Eloise was just wishing they’d brought water with them when a flash shone
through the scrub.

  “Did you see that?” she asked, tugging on Kyne’s arm.

  “See what?”

  She pointed as three golden lights emerged in the distance, peeling away from the scant shadows and began bobbing through the scrub.

  “The Min Min,” Kyne said.

  “In daylight? I thought they only came out at night.” Eloise watched the orbs dance about, transfixed as they flared brighter, then dulled. She remembered them in the darkness when she was lost and was glad there wasn’t a kadaitcha—a vengeful shadow spirit—lurking out there. There’d be a lot of snakes sunbaking on rocks this time of day, but thankfully, she’d seen few of those.

  The miner looked around and breathed deeply. “I don’t think we’re in our own world anymore.”

  Eloise tensed and peered at the sprites. Had they stepped onto a path that led them to the Dreaming? She wasn’t sure she should be here, all things considered, but Coen had pointed the way. He trusted them—if he didn’t, she was sure the way would’ve remained shut.

  “Do we follow them?” she asked.

  “Normally, I’d say no. The Min Min have a habit of leading travellers astray…but I reckon we’re good.” He kept walking, allowing the sprites to guide them along the path.

  They’d been following the lights for about fifteen minutes before they darted around wildly, buzzing like busy bees, then flew straight up, disappearing into the heavens.

  As Eloise looked around, she gasped as the air shimmered, revealing a large rock formation rearing into the sapphire sky. The veil cast by Andante’s magic fell away like a clear gossamer curtain, the spider-like webs sparkling in the sunshine.

  “Now that’s some magic,” Kyne murmured, holding his hat in place as he looked up at the rust-coloured rock. His eyes flared amber as he reached out with his elemental power. “It’s quartz sandstone, eroded over millions of years, to form cone karsts.”

  Eloise stared up at the rock formations in awe. They looked like giant beehive-shaped towers, each made of banded stone in yellows, oranges, and browns. Another remnant of the ancient coral reef that gifted them with the opal that built Solace.