Soul Fire

by Nazri Noor

  “Yeah,” I said, disentangling myself as politely as I could. “I’ll think about that, for sure.”

  Wordlessly, the others rose to join me as I approached the bar. Dionysus stayed put at our table, one hand cupping his chin, a lazy grin playing on his lips. I pressed my lips together into the facsimile of a smile and nodded at him, then turned to the others.

  “Hey,” I said. “You guys remember when there was a time we didn’t have to talk to three gods in a row just to get what we wanted? That was fun.”

  Bastion stretched his arm over my shoulders, chuckling and pulling me in. “You’ve been so damn grumpy tonight, Dustin. You’re being such a bore. Relax. We’ll figure this out.”

  I frowned at him. “I honestly can’t see how you can be so blasé about this. Your grandmother,” I said slowly, “came to life, made a man explode, and is now missing in action. How can you be so calm?”

  He shrugged, his fingers digging into my shoulder. “You work with the cards that you’re dealt, you know? What’s the point of me being sour this whole time when I could be directing my energy into being productive, into solving the problems we’re actually faced with?”

  Prudence chuckled and elbowed me in the side. “And that grim determination is exactly why Sebastion Brandt made Scion. The end.”

  Bastion’s laughter was too easy and carefree, almost put-on, but I was distracted by the warmth of his breath as it tousled my hair. The air around us, the scent on his too-close body reminded me of some expensive and frankly intoxicating cologne. Had he always smelled so nice?

  “When life gives you lemons,” Bastion said, “you hand them to the kitchen staff.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Or something like that.”

  I wriggled my way out from under him, clearing my head. Focus, Dust, I told myself. Focus on the job at hand. I filled my lungs with air, expanding my chest and broadening my shoulders, filling my cheeks with charm and radiance. That’s who I was, after all: Dustin Graves, professional charmer, amateur thief, and a total faker.

  At the bar, I rested my elbow just by Artemis’s goblet, leaning onto the counter. I cocked my hip and gave her a flash of my biggest, brightest smile.

  “You again,” she slurred, grimacing.

  “Artemis, old friend, old pal,” I said cheerily. “It’s been a minute. And have I got a story for you. You’ll never believe who makes Snacky Yum-Yums.”

  Chapter 13

  “Haven’t you done enough?” Artemis cried out. She clutched her goblet, like she was about to throw it, and I got ready to duck. She fixed me with a steely gaze, shrugged, and tossed back its contents instead. “Bah. Shame to waste it.” She ran the back of her hand across her lips, punctuating her sentence with a savage belch.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you, too,” I said.

  Artemis blinked blearily, peering past my shoulder to inspect my friends. “I don’t know you people. But I know you’re from the Lorica. Here to arrest me?” She guffawed, banging her empty goblet on the counter. “Hey maenad,” she called out, flagging the single, very attractive woman tending to the bar. “Yeah, top me up. And don’t be stingy, fill it to the brim this time. I pay my tab the same way anyone does in this godsforsaken hole in the wall.”

  The bartender maenad gave her a pointed grimace – brave, I thought, considering who she was giving attitude – then turned to Dionysus. The god shrugged, spread his hands, and smiled. Another drink for the goddess of the hunt it was, then.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m really sorry about what happened between you and the Convocation. I heard.”

  Artemis smacked her lips and grimaced. “Pah. Damn Apollo never could keep his mouth shut. I’m not even that bothered, to be honest. I can live with a smaller realm.” She sniffled, her gaze falling to the floor. “It’s all the animals I’m worried about.”

  “Animals?” Bastion said.

  “The ones she keeps in her domicile,” I said. “What did you have to do with them?”

  Artemis shrugged. “Kept. Domicile’s barely even there, just fits the animals. They’re in stasis, in a way, at the moment. Frozen in time and space. It’s the best I can do for them while I try and fix things. Imagine being evicted from your apartment, and your billion cats have nowhere to go.” Her eyes turned back to me, and she sneered as she pointed one finger in my face. “All because of a shitty roommate.”

  I raised my hands and laughed nervously. “Let’s be honest, Artemis, that’s not the most accurate analogy.”

  Prudence smacked me in the shoulder. “Not the time or the place, Dustin, damn it. Artemis, is there anything we can do to help?”

  The goddess leaned against the bar, her gaze distant and wistful. “Help. Yes. It was so sad, the day the Convocation sent their agents to tear my place down.”

  Romira’s lips parted in horror. “Surely you don’t mean that. Bad enough that they threw you out. They ruined your domicile, too?”

  “Eviction, I told you. The Midnight Convocation, and all those other clans and tribes of entities, we all knew what we were signing up for when we banded our powers together. You mages know better than anyone how important contractual obligation is to the entities of earth.” Artemis smirked and nodded at Romira. “You most of all, daughter of Cerberus.”

  Romira flinched.

  “So these agents of theirs, these servants?” I said. “They invaded, basically.”

  “Yeah. The servitors of the Convocation, they look like humanoid shapes made out of moonlight and shadow. They just showed up in my domicile, wrecked the place. Priscilla – you remember her, Dustin, the gorilla? She led the call to defend our home. It was an intense few days, like a siege. I never knew Priscilla had such a good grasp of battle tactics.” She peered down into her goblet. “Gorilla warfare, man.”

  Bastion chuckled. “You mean guerrilla warfare, right?”

  Artemis raised one eyebrow and fixed him with a sharp glare. “I said what I said. The Convocation won in the end. We got repossessed, basically. Tore away pieces of my domicile until I didn’t have much of anything left. Imagine going from a mansion to a studio apartment. Huh. More like a broom closet.” She pounded her goblet on the counter again. “Bartender, where the hell is that drink?”

  I looked down at my thumbs, the guilt forming like a little ball in my stomach. “And since you’re using it as storage space, not having access to your own domicile means you’re vulnerable. Doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Artemis said quietly. “Yeah, it does. So far I’ve been couch surfing. I’m safe in another god’s domicile, at least. Dionysus is pretty generous about letting me hang at his place, but I really don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

  “Well, what about Apollo?”

  Artemis scoffed. “Last resort. He was the one who got me into this mess. He does have some really nice cabanas in his domicile, though.” She set down her cup and sighed. “Listen. I don’t blame you for this. At least not entirely. But right now I just want to drink away my sorrows for a bit. It’s harder than it sounds. I’m immortal. The wine never hits as hard as it should.”

  I furrowed my eyebrows. “I’m pretty sure I ended up meeting Dionysus specifically because he got so drunk. It was how he lost the Chalice of Plenty.”

  “Oh, he’s a different story. Drinks entire bathtubs of the stuff. No self-control, that one.” Artemis chuckled, then sighed, resting her head in one hand. The color seemed to be settling away from her cheeks, like she was already sobering up. “So what was that stuff you mentioned about Snacky Yum-Yums?”

  “Yeah, that’s why we’re here.” I filled her in on the meeting with Loki, from the tour at Happy, Inc. HQ to his specific suggestion about getting in touch with the Great Beasts. Somewhere in between, Artemis’s drink finally arrived. She picked it up, drained half in one go, then set it down again, her cheeks already flushed.

  “Yeah, all right,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

  I blinked. That wasn’t the response I’d been expecting. “Seriously
?”

  “Well, yeah,” Artemis said. “Big deal. You want to find the Great Beasts? It’s your funeral.” She barked for the bartender again, asking for a pen.

  Five minutes later we had the instructions on how to contact the greatest, most terrible beasts of myth and legend scrawled on a damp cocktail napkin.

  “I’ve done you enough favors, Graves,” Artemis slurred as we said our goodbyes. “The least you can do is find a way for me to get my home back.”

  “I promise I will,” I said, wildly unsure if I could even deliver. Give a goddess her own slice of spiritual real estate? Where did you even begin?

  She reached for the back of my hand, gripping it tight. “Think of the animals. Think of Priscilla.”

  I was careful not to let Dionysus see us on the way out. I’d had enough of gods and goddesses for one night, and I really didn’t want to get into another conversation about tattoos. I was just reaching for my phone to call for a car when Prudence tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Bathroom,” she said. “Too many beers.”

  “Same,” Romira said. “We’ll meet you boys up front. We won’t be too long.”

  That left me and Bastion alone outside on the sidewalk. I hugged my elbows against the mounting chill of the night, and Bastion stuck his hands in his pockets, looking everywhere but in my direction.

  “So,” I said. “Tonight feels a lot like that time we went to see Hecate.”

  Bastion shrugged. “Every communion is functionally the same, if you think about it.”

  “I guess that’s true. You’ve got to draw your circle, make the right offerings, and spill a little blood.”

  He chuckled. “You never did replace that knife that Carver destroyed. I was pretty fond of it, too.”

  “Oh my God, have you really not forgotten about that thing? Fine, one of these days, I’ll get you a replacement. Such a baby.”

  Something silver flashed in the darkness, and in a grim kind of way I figured that Bastion was about to get his replacement after all. He’d just have to pluck it out of my chest.

  “Duck,” I shouted.

  Bastion’s instincts took over, going from neutral to full, arrogant Scion in a second flat. He didn’t duck, but I guess he didn’t have to. The air shimmered as he erected a wall of force in front of us, the shield gleaming faintly like glass. The projectile heading towards my throat slammed into the wall of magic, then clattered uselessly to the ground.

  It was a knife. Even from a distance I knew. But closer, seeing it on the concrete, I could tell that it belonged to Donovan Slint. I curled my hand into a fist as I looked for any sign of him – across the street, down the sidewalk – but nothing.

  “It’s that fucker again,” I snarled. “Donovan, your renegade Hound. He’s around here somewhere.”

  “Sneaky little bastard,” Bastion muttered. His free hand was digging into my arm protectively, the other upraised as it supported his shield.

  “I appreciate the effort,” I said, “but you’re going to have to expand your force field’s reach to cover our backs. Otherwise – ”

  I’d forgotten how quickly Donovan could move. I’d hardly finished my sentence when a blow struck me in my lower back, making me reel from a sudden stab of wrenching pain. Did the fucker just punch me in the kidney? Was that my kidney?

  “Dust,” Bastion sputtered. He swiveled around, the air twinkling as his shield changed positions with him, but still no sign of Donovan.

  I was getting pissed. My fist shook as flames gathered in tiny, barely contained motes in the palm of my hand. It frustrated me knowing that I hadn’t really learned all that much since my first encounter with Donovan Slint. But maybe I never needed to. I stilled myself, waiting for any telltale signs of motion – a scraping of shoes against cement, the sound of breathing. In our first encounter, Sterling spat blood on Donovan to help us mark his movements. Vanitas could have helped with perceiving his invisible body, too, but we were out in the open. We still needed to uphold the Veil. The last thing we needed were normals panicking over a flying sword.

  Ah. There it was. A wrinkle in empty space, rippling like the air over a hot pavement. I took my shot, slamming my open palm directly into thin air – except it wasn’t thin air, but a part of Donovan’s body. It felt like his chest. I thought I felt his heart thump against my hand. I released the flames.

  Donovan screamed. There was no flash of orange fire, because all the power that I’d collected in my hand had been launched into a single, terrible gout directly against his skin. His body flickered in and out of existence, long enough for me to catch the smoldering edges of his burnt clothing, the smoking, hideous crater in his chest. He flickered again, the magic keeping him invisible fading, and he fell to his knees.

  “Holy shit, Dust,” Bastion muttered.

  “I’ve had enough of this crap,” I said. “Knives flashing in the dark, always having to look over my shoulder? No more.” I went down on one knee, tugging on Donovan’s hair, bringing his face up to mine. Tears streamed from his eyes, his face creased with pain, his skin beaded with cold sweat. The smell of burnt flesh and fabric wafted up into my nostrils.

  “Someone could see,” Bastion said, his voice uncharacteristically shaky.

  “Then hide us,” I hissed. “Cover us up so no one sees.”

  Bastion began to mutter, raising a dome of force around us, infusing it with camouflaging properties to hide us from any passing normals. To anyone outside our dome, we would be effectively invisible. Bastion snapped his fingers as he finished his incantation. His eyes were still on me, staring as if I was someone he didn’t recognize.

  But I wasn’t going to apologize, and I wasn’t going to explain myself, not for fending off someone who only meant me harm.

  “Talk,” I told Donovan. “Where’s Jonah, your boss? Where’s the Scion?”

  Donovan grinned, a thin trickle of blood spilling down the corner of his mouth. “Fuck you, Graves.”

  I wrenched on his hair harder. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. We aren’t playing games, and I’m done having to watch myself in case some shitty, upstart excuse for a Hound gets a little stabby and tries to poke holes in my body again.”

  “This isn’t about Jonah,” Donovan grunted. “This is so much bigger than you could possibly imagine.”

  “Try me,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  It happened too fast. Donovan’s hand slashed through the air, another knife slicing in the same arc, and before I knew it a wet, stinging pain was welling at my cheek. I let go of him long enough to reach for my face, feeling the beginnings of warm blood flowing. Somewhere from deep inside my chest, the Dark Room began to rumble. I gritted my teeth, reaching out to grab Donovan again, but he vanished.

  Bastion spun on his heels, looking around the inside of our personal dome. “What the fuck just happened?”

  I wiped the back of my hand against my cheek, my insides a weird mingling of numbness and dread. It should’ve been impossible. The only way to lower Bastion’s shield was to knock him out.

  Donovan Slint was gone.

  Chapter 14

  Bastion could have let the shield down by accident. Maybe he just didn’t notice that there was a gap in the bubble, a crack just big enough for Donovan to slip through.

  “I. Would. Never.”

  That was what Bastion told me when I dared to bring it up. He matched it with a suitably withering look, too, one you’d save for something that you’re trying to scrape off the bottom of your shoe. I had to admit it was mostly denial that even made me believe someone as powerful and as magically skillful as him could fail at something that simple. Bastion didn’t make Scion for farting around, that was for sure.

  We stood in a loose semicircle around Carver’s desk, joined by the boys of the Boneyard. Carver had grown more and more relaxed about who he allowed into our home these days. Even he knew that there was value in learning to trust our select few friends from the Lorica, partly bec
ause we really didn’t have that many friends to begin with.

  “I couldn’t make much out of it,” I said, handing Carver the napkin with Artemis’s instructions. I chuckled. “It’s all Greek to me.”

  I yelped when Prudence elbowed me in the gut. Carver frowned at me, then down at the napkin.

  “I do not understand, Mr. Graves. These directions are clearly written in English for your benefit.”

  I sighed. All this time we spent socializing Carver and he still couldn’t grasp modern human humor. “It was a joke. Get it? Because she’s a Greek goddess. And I couldn’t understand what she wanted us to – you know what, never mind.”

  From his lap, Banjo growled softly at me. I glared back. “A waste of time,” Carver said coolly, before turning his eyes down to the napkin. “Ah. Yes. We might manage this after all.”

  Sterling placed his hands on the desk, standing on the tips of his toes, angling for a glimpse of the napkin. “So, another shopping trip then? We can swing by the Black Market, no problem.”

  “Actually,” Carver said, “you may be surprised to learn that we have everything we need for the communion right here. The ritual doesn’t call for anything especially rare or exotic. Crushed gemstones, we can manage. But most important of all is this.” He handed the napkin to Sterling, tapping at something written at the bottom.

  Gil peered over Sterling’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “The cry of a magical beast. Seriously? Where do we get one of those?” He looked down at his hands. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”

  “Not quite, Gilberto. Lycanthropy means that you entirely qualify as a supernatural being, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call you magical.” Carver lifted Banjo tenderly, then placed him on his desk. Banjo snuffled at the desk curiously, doing a little circle, his fluffy tail wagging the whole while. “We have a magical beast right here.”

  Banjo looked up at us, then yipped. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bastion jerk in surprise. I tried not to laugh.

  Asher reached out to scratch Banjo behind one ear. “The ritual isn’t going to hurt him, is it? This isn’t one of those situations like – well, I just keep thinking about the screams of anguish we needed the last time, and how we collected them.”