Into the Fire Read online

  “How did—?” I started to ask, but he gave me a slight head shake. Turning back, I saw that the laughing had died and the Vampires had shifted from lazy relaxation to tense readiness. Vladymir himself looked ready to spit venom. He’d come halfway up off his stone chair. With visible effort, he leaned back onto his cushion and waved for the others to do so as well. His face went from barely controlled rage to blank and expressionless in a heartbeat, and his eyes never left Mayfair.

  I watched the balance of power shifting between Wizard and Vampire and concluded they really were afraid of him.

  “Jack, how … curious,” Vladymir said. “What brings you to my home?”

  “Oh, just wondering what could be keeping my apprentice. We did have an appointment,” he said to me.

  I just nodded, glad he’d showed up, especially if it put the vamps off balance.

  “And my guards? They simply let you in?” Vladymir asked.

  “Guards?” Mayfair asked. “I didn’t really encounter any guards. In fact, no one bothered me at all.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “I admit, you have a lovely piece of property here. I quite enjoyed the pleasant walk across the grounds.”

  “I see,” Vladymir said, voice cold.

  “No doubt they were preoccupied with other pursuits?” Mayfair offered.

  “No doubt. I’ll have to speak with them. At length. Still, now that you’re here, perhaps we can all have a chat.” That predatory smile returned.

  My stomach sank. A fight after all, and I couldn’t see any way out of it. My hand still rested on my gun. If I drew fast enough—

  The Vampires went from lounging on their couches to standing in front of them, and I never saw the movement in between. Nothing moved that fast! Several swayed back and forth like cobras ready to strike, and something told me all Vladymir had to do was twitch and they would attack. Mayfair would do something magical while I blundered with my gun and some Vamp slapped me aside faster than my eyes could track. Maybe I could take out Number Two, who I at least had a shot at hitting.

  “I’m afraid not,” Mayfair said, pulling me in close. “We have Wizard business to attend to.”

  Vladymir’s face contorted and bulged as if something inside wanted out, reminding me of the scene from Alien when the creature bursts out of the guy’s stomach.

  A voice—Valdymir’s voice, though it didn’t come from any mouth I could see anymore—said, “I did not give you permission to leave, Jack.”

  “I didn’t ask,” Mayfair replied, hand closing on my arm like a vice. About to object, my words became a scream when the world all around me began to shift. Quicker than even the Vampires could move, I was suddenly being squeezed down through a multicolored funnel. The air around us roared like a banshee. The world had been ripped away, and I fell through some psychedelic black hole with multicolored light spinning all around me. I tried to close my eyes against it, but this pressure held them open and tugged at my arms and legs, trying to separate them from the rest of my body. I screamed, but the sound was swallowed up by the deafening wind and the drums, oh—the drums! They thundered in my ears! An army of them beating away!

  My brain tried putting it into perspective, relating it to the first time I rode a real roller coaster, stomach lurching, heart in my throat as the car shot down the first steep incline and bent into an impossibly tight curve. This? Easily ten billion times worse.

  Fear washed over me, and I had no way to shut it down. These bright colors ebbed and flowed around me, spinning wide and loose, then close and tight enough to squeeze the air from my lungs. Part of me found the whole thing fascinating and thought I should know those colors. They were separate and apart yet flowed together like thread in a pattern to make up a larger picture, one I couldn’t see but could feel just out of sight.

  The other part of me concentrated on not peeing my pants.

  I couldn’t see him, but I could feel Mayfair there just out of reach, the strong, reassuring presence of his hand on my arm never wavering. He hadn’t done something weird or left me. Somehow, he radiated this aura of warmth, trust, and security. I found myself wanting to trust him, to embrace him and let him in, but something harsh and off-color held me back and told me to keep him at arm’s length. I had no other way of explaining it.

  Turning my head proved impossible, as did moving at all. And all the while, the colors streamed around me. Just as panic—real, wild, uncontrollable panic—threatened to send me into hysteria, the wind stopped, the colors vanished, and my feet hit solid ground again. The world stopped spinning, but I hadn’t, spiraling away from Mayfair, windmilling my arms in a vain attempt to stop myself from face-planting into the dirt.

  I failed.

  I pushed to my knees, about to tear Jack Mayfair a new asshole for whatever fresh new hell he’d just inflicted on me, when my stomach lurched. Everything I’d eaten or drank that morning spewed forth from my mouth in place of the tirade I’d planned.

  “Sorry,” he said. “First time is always the hardest.”

  While retching into a bush, I willed whatever magical powers I had to force Jack Mayfair to puke his guts out.

  Nothing happened.

  “You get used to it,” he said a moment later. “After a fashion.”

  Something about the way he spoke bothered me. I heard the snap-click of his lighter as the next wave hit me.

  Took a few moments before I could get out a “What?” The full question I’d meant to ask went something like, “What the hell did you just do to me, you rat bastard?” I put as much of that into the first word of the question as I could.

  “Teleportation,” Mayfair replied. “I told you I preferred alternate transportation. How did you get there?”

  Deep breaths. You do not have to puke again. Don’t look at that bit of undigested bagel on the ground. Concentrate on calm thoughts. “He sent a car with a goon squad and an invitation to chat,” I replied.

  “Typical. You shouldn’t have accepted.”

  I nodded, turning away from the puddle that had been my breakfast. Not enough. I could still smell it, so I crawled a few feet away to continue breathing.

  “Treaty?” Another wave hit me, and there was nothing I could do but open my mouth and let it flow, dammit.

  “One exists,” he said dismissively. “They only invoke it when it casts everyone else as the bad guy or they can use it to gain some kind of advantage.”

  Good to know, I guess. Wish I’d known that before I got into the limo. Was Jack slurring?

  “How did you find me?” I asked, wiping my mouth with my hand. I hated being sick. Worse, I hated puking with all the aftereffects that came with it. I could already feel a headache building behind my eyes.

  “Tracking spell. You left your shirt here.” He paused. “You called me from a den of Vampires, then you never called me back. I worried. When you didn’t show up this morning and you didn’t answer your phone when I called, I tracked you down. Never thought I’d find you at Vladymir’s place.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Given everything that had happened last night, I hadn’t even thought to call him and check in. I really did feel bad about it. Not enough to ignore the fact he smelled like a distillery. Had he been drinking all night?

  “You need to keep in mind that no one knows who or what you are yet,” he said. “Gives you power. You could’ve said no, intimated a threat of some kind. They wouldn’t have known what you could or couldn’t do and, most likely, would’ve backed down rather than test you. That window won’t be open for long, but you might as well use it while you can to keep them off your back.”

  “Right,” I said. “Good to know.”

  Jack finished his cigarette, shredding the filter and shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

  “Want to talk about the drinking?” I asked.

  He cocked his head to the side and stuck a hand out to help me to my feet.

  Brushing bits of grass from my clothes, I said, “You hit the bottle pretty hard in the dungeo
n last night. Sounds like you didn’t stop once I left.”

  “You called me from a Vampire den and went dark after,” he said with a shrug. “I worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, I am. After I got Simon home, I went home and crashed pretty hard.”

  He nodded. “I tried to track you last night and couldn’t. For all intents and purposes, you vanished off the face of the earth for about ten hours.”

  “What?” I asked. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Unless the mess of magic in your head somehow cloaks you when you sleep.”

  I thought about the night before, and the headache bloomed and pressed against the back of my eyes. Spots formed, grew, died, and formed again.

  “What’s wrong?” Mayfair asked, hand gripping my elbow.

  “Headache,” I said, shaking my head. The spots faded and the pain dulled.

  “Might be another side effect of teleportation. Everyone reacts a little differently,” he said. “I’m glad I found you this morning, even if it was in the garden of the oldest, strongest Vampire I have ever known.”

  “He really wasn’t happy to see you.”

  “No, he wouldn’t be,” he said. “He thought his property couldn’t be breached by magic. Right now, he’s probably amping things up and trying to find the vulnerability. Teleportation isn’t widely known or practiced, so he doesn’t know how I got in. Vampires can’t use magic, so he’ll be wanting to hire someone to beef up his wards.”

  “They can’t use magic?” I asked.

  “First component in any spell is Soul, and Vampires don’t have one,” he said. “They employ human Wizards, sometimes Fey, or other creatures to protect their lairs with various magical traps and wards.” He grinned impishly. “And none of his caught a whiff of me coming. I love that I ruined his morning.”

  I couldn’t help but smile myself, though it slowly turned into a frown. “Why would any Wizard work for Vampires? Aren’t they the bad guys?”

  “Yes, but Wizards are human, Sam. They come in all flavors and sizes, some good, some bad. There’s more than a few who will sell what they can do if the money is right and they think they can do it without getting caught.”

  “So now he’s thinking what he paid for was garbage?”

  “Or I am much more powerful than he originally thought,” he said. “That could work for me in the long run. Short term, I wouldn’t want to be a Wizard who sold Vladymir magic.”

  I took a deep breath, the scent of overgrown grass and bushes warring with a faint decay in my nose. “Where are we?” I asked, turning around. Plenty of trees, some tall; brown grass tipped in green; a few raged bushes.

  “Banba, of course,” he replied. Walking off, he called over his shoulder, “Time for you to learn about magic.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I need you to trust me, Sam. Can you do that?”

  What could I say other than “Okay, sure”?

  “I know it’s not easy,” he continued, “but we have to start somewhere. So from now on, when you’re inside Banba, I’d like you to keep your gun in your desk and not on your hip. You’re in one of the safest places in the world. Nothing and no one can get in here who isn’t invited.”

  This meant that three glasses of water, some bread, and a couple of aspirins later, I stood in the basement without my gun, feeling rather naked and vulnerable. Mayfair nursed his third extra-strong cup of coffee and had me wondering, once again, when the world had turned upside down.

  “Magic comes in a lot of different flavors, but it all stems from the same basic building blocks of nature: elements,” he said, standing across from me. “Fire.” He raised a finger, then another. “Air. Water. Earth. And Spirit.” As he listed each, another finger went up, ending with his thumb.

  “By Spirit, you mean Soul,” I said.

  “Correct. And our eyes and brains interpret them as the colors red, blue, yellow, green, and white.”

  “I saw them,” I said. “At least, I think I did. When you brought us here—the colors swirling all around us.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Very good. And yes, those are the colors of magic. Separate, they’re strong; combined, they can destroy worlds. Or build them. The web inside your head has kept you from sensing any part of magic or your own power, but the web is breaking down.”

  “Which is why I can suddenly do stuff.”

  “Exactly. You’ve already used Fire, so we’re going to start there.”

  Mayfair had me stand inside the circle on the floor, a candle on a tall stand before me while he stood outside the circle. For protection. From me. Joy?

  “Light the candle,” he ordered.

  “I’m gonna need a little more to go on here, Yoda,” I replied.

  He chuckled. “At least you didn’t call me Dumbledore. You used Fire already, so it stands to reason you can use it again. Light the candle.”

  I bit my lip. “Lend me your lighter?”

  Another chuckle. “Watch closely. Tell me what you see.”

  I nodded. When the candle in front of me sparked and a flame bloomed, I jumped.

  “The candle wick sparked,” I said.

  Mayfair rubbed his chin. “Nothing else?”

  “Nope,” I admitted.

  “Huh,” he said. “You saw the colors before?”

  “I did,” I said with a nod.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Okay, Fire is easy.”

  “Fire is easy?” I repeated.

  He held his palm up, and a tiny flame appeared there, hovering about a half inch above the skin. My skin prickled at the sight of it. I couldn’t feel any heat, but my brain said “danger” and “heat,” like I should be sweating because of it. If anything, the room had gotten suddenly colder.

  “Yes,” Mayfair said. Closing his hand, the flame vanished, but I had an afterimage thing going with my eyes. “Fire is what you used on the Werewolf, what destroyed the building. Fire comes easy because it’s all about emotion; passion, love, hatred, and fear—strong emotions that come quickly and can overwhelm. They feed Fire, give it power and intensity above and beyond what you might intend. So in the end, Fire is easy.”

  “So … the stress of the situation, the fear and terror I experienced, somehow caused the Fire I … used?”

  “That, plus rage.”

  “Rage?”

  “You can’t stand there and tell me you didn’t feel rage, Sam. Your partner ripped apart right in front of your eyes? I know how I would have felt.”

  Jorge. Thinking about him made the muscles in my neck tighten. My hand inched towards my cell phone. I caught it and made it about scratching my hip instead, Jenni’s warning not to call still fresh in my head. I really wanted to know, but I trusted her instincts.

  Aware Mayfair watched me, I said, “Angry.” An understatement. I rubbed my forehead; the aspirin I’d taken had not yet killed the headache.

  “Exactly, and it built up inside of you fast and had to be released. Fire comes easy. Control, not so much.”

  “Got it.” Mostly. “But I’m not angry now.”

  “Right, right!” He snapped his fingers. “I’m an idiot. Sam, what if I’m approaching this all wrong? I’m thinking about you like a newly discovered adept. You’re not. Your ability with magic didn’t manifest itself overnight; it’s always been there, but someone, somehow, put that web in your head to keep you from accessing it. So what if it blocked you consciously but couldn’t block your core survival instinct?”

  I thought about it for a second. “So what you’re saying is, put in the worst possible situation—”

  “Your mind reacted instinctually. Like a fight-or-flight reaction. It called Fire to protect you.”

  “I can see that, I guess,” I said. “Like the mother who lifts the car off her baby.”

  “Yes. We need to push you to react on instinct again. This won’t work,” he added, blowing out the candle and moving it off to the side. “No, we are
going to need something more drastic.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of—”

  “I know!” He spun, and Fire bounced between his hands. With a motion, he pushed a bloom of angry blue Fire away from him.

  Right at me.

  * * *

  Everything slowed like a Super Bowl replay after a coach’s challenge.

  Jack Mayfair stood a dozen paces from me, body halfway through a spin. Fire moved in a straight line away from him and towards me. My own hands came up painfully slowly and crossed before me. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced for what could only result in my own fiery death.

  In that moment, I thought about how he’d asked me to leave my gun upstairs. Essentially, I had no way to defend myself. Maybe this had been the plan all along. Get me into the basement and roast me alive. Could Jack Mayfair be the bad guy after all?

  And then I thought about my parents. They wouldn’t know what happened to me, would they? I’d just be gone, and they’d be left wondering. Pop for a shorter time than Mom, obviously, but I’d never get to tell either of them how much they meant to me, never get to say goodbye.

  “Sam? Open your eyes.”

  I did. Let’s not talk about the fact I stood there, arms crossed before me, half-crouched in an “oh shit” sort of pose, one leg up with my knee bent in my best impersonation of Scooby-Doo when he comes across the monster of the week, okay?

  Fire blazed in the air, beating against something I couldn’t see or even sense. The barrier held Fire at bay. Roiling in the air, the blue flames were quite beautiful, forming and reforming patterns, moving back and forth like a snake doing a hundred across a smooth surface.

  My voice caught, and I had to clear it before saying, “What is it?”

  “A shield,” Mayfair said. “Damned effective one, too. And you have absolutely no idea where it came from or how it formed, do you?”

  I leaned to my left so he could see me shake my head.

  “Instinct, Sam,” he said with a smile. “Absolutely incredible. If I had a hundred years to …” he trailed off. “Sam!”

  The Fire winked out. Mayfair rushed to his bench and grabbed a dusty towel, shoving it in my face a moment later.