Soul Fire

by Nazri Noor

  His gaze flitted to meet mine, then went down to the floor. I remembered that all too well. We needed a particularly strange ingredient to enchant the amulet I wore around my neck, and collecting it had been an agonizing experience for me, one that involved Carver reaching around inside my heart. I shook my head, clearing my mind of the image of me strapped to a stone table, of the sound of my own screams.

  “No,” Carver said. “Banjo will not come to any harm, of that we are assured. The ritual is unique in other ways as well, I should note. It appears that the Great Beasts do not have a tether, no address anchoring a portal from our world to theirs. I suppose the difficulty of acquiring a magical beast was considered enough of a challenge. The good news is that we can perform the communion right here in the Boneyard.”

  He rose from his desk, picking Banjo up and letting him rest in the crook of his elbow. Carver chuckled softly as Banjo licked at his jaw, then snapped his fingers. I staggered back as Carver’s desk – chairs included – erupted in a pillar of amber fire. The flames died, leaving nothing in their place.

  “I guess we’re doing it right here, then,” Prudence said. “Right now.”

  “Correct.” Carver’s eyes swept across us all, and I had a keen feeling that he was examining us one by one, assessing us. “Then one thing remains: who will accompany Dustin on this communion?”

  Bastion stuck his chest out and stepped forward. “Me. No question.” By then I was done trying to interpret his motives. Weird behavior or not, it would be good to have someone as competent as Bastion along for the ride. No one had to tell me that this was going to be an extremely dangerous mission.

  “And me,” Prudence said, cracking her knuckles, then nodding at me. “Team Lorica, hey? Same group that went to see Hecate that one time.”

  I grimaced. “Let’s hope there isn’t a repeat of that. I’m not sure that I’m up for a fight just now.”

  “Oh,” Romira said, her eyes wide. “You’re going to get one. No question. I’m in no mood to see Cerberus. I know I get my extra power from him, but – he still gives me the creeps. I’m staying right here. I can help with scrying Agatha’s location.”

  Asher’s words came in a sort of stammering blubber. “I – I’ll stay, too. I can help as well. I’ll tap into the network of the dead. I’m getting better at that.”

  It was true. As a necromancer, Asher had access to a kind of gravesight, seeing through the eyes of the dead, an odd and grisly way to gather information, but a useful one. I smiled at him, knowing the real reason he wanted to stay behind. Sure, he’d be of more use helping the others look for Agatha, but it was no huge secret that he had a little crush on Romira.

  “Both fair points,” Carver said, nodding. “Sterling, I suggest you stay as well. There’s no telling what’s waiting in the meeting place of the Great Beasts. Sunlight, for example.”

  Sterling sighed as he stretched his arms, his leather jacket squeaking. “So handsome and so strong, but brought so low by a little friendly sunshine. The curse of greatness, I guess. Nobody’s perfect.”

  Gil rolled his eyes. “I’m coming with. No question.” He strode up next to Prudence, joining our little huddle.

  “Me too,” Mason said, pushing himself into the group.

  “No,” Carver said. “I forbid it.”

  Mason’s eyes went huge, the skin at his neck going reddish, the angelic glyphs tattooed across his chest glowing a pale gold. “That’s not fair. I can fight just as well as anyone. I can help.”

  Carver cleared his throat softly, bringing his hand up to his own cheek, then tapping it, indicating the scar on Mason’s face. Mason scowled, mirroring the gesture, running his fingers across his still-healing wound.

  “That was an accident and you know it,” he said. He glared at me, then at Carver. “I won’t let my guard down again.”

  “Mason. You are young and inexperienced, unlike the others gathered here. You came into your abilities very recently, and I would very much like for you to develop a firmer grasp on your control of the Vestments – and on your ability to hold your own in a fight, for that matter – before we throw you into situations that will gravely endanger you. Your talents are important to us. As a nephilim, you are – ”

  “Rare and valuable, I get it,” Mason spat, throwing his hands up. “You’ve said it enough times anyway. Me and Asher, we’re not just some jewels for you to keep in a box, Carver. It’s not fair.” Mason kicked at the ground, grumbling to himself as he stomped off into the corridor.

  Carver sighed, shaking his head as he turned to Prudence. “Do you see how he talks to me?”

  Prudence nodded sagely. “Teenagers.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Sterling said. “It’s for his own good. I’ll go check on him, make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, like hitch a ride in Dust’s backpack.” His boot heels clacked across the stone floor as he lazily turned to follow after Mason.

  “That’s right here,” I said dumbly, pulling on my backpack’s straps. Vanitas was parked safely inside, probably pacing impatiently in his pocket dimension, waiting for a fight. I turned to Carver, my forehead creased. “Did you want me to take Banjo in the backpack? He should be safe in here.”

  “I suspect that he won’t be needed after his role in the ritual is complete,” Carver said. “Perhaps it’s best to leave him here after all. If there is to be a potential scuffle with the All-Father – should the ritual somehow attract Odin’s attention – I should like to be present, to protect Banjo. So here I must remain.”

  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone fall as hard and as fast as Carver did for Banjo, but who was I to judge the love and loyalty of a lich and his little corgi friend?

  “You’ll need this, before I forget,” I said, handing him Agatha Black’s old brooch. Carver secreted it somewhere in his suit pockets, nodding as he retrieved a small leather pouch from inside his jacket.

  “If everyone is quite prepared, please find your way into the circle.”

  I looked at the floor, then back up at him. “Sorry, what circle?”

  Carver snapped his fingers. Plumes of scorching flame burst from the cracks in the stone floor, immediately receding again and leaving behind a perfectly drawn summoning circle, traced in Carver’s signature amber fire.

  “That circle,” he said, clearly restraining a smug, satisfied smile. Psh. Show-off.

  I stepped in with the others, Bastion, Prudence, Gil, and I each taking a separate corner of the circle. Carver waved his hand again, and at each of our feet appeared a gemstone. The jewel between my shoes looked like a sapphire. If I had to guess, the others were a ruby, an emerald, and a diamond.

  “Ooh,” I said. “Shiny.”

  Bastion nodded approvingly. “Good quality, too.”

  Carver’s voice rasped across the room as he hissed another quick incantation. Each of the gemstones shattered instantly into a pile of dust. Bastion gasped.

  “Don’t worry,” Carver said. “There’s more where that came from.”

  And where his riches came from, exactly, we could never be sure, but I imagined that living for centuries gave a lich ample time to build wealth. I wondered if Carver knew about the concept of compound interest.

  “I have to ask, though,” I said to Carver. “A magical beast’s cry? I’m still wary about how that’s going to work out.”

  “Throughout history, man has done strange things to acquire reagents,” Carver said. “Ground-up mummies to make oil paints, crushed beetles. Magic, too, is an art. Is it truly so odd to think that it would sometimes demand things that are rare and bizarre, things that are nonetheless of great value?”

  He placed Banjo on the ground. After a few seconds of sniffing, Banjo trotted into the center of the circle, as if he somehow knew of the part he would play.

  “One of you will need to produce blood, of course,” Carver said, his tone only slightly condescending.

  “Done.” Bastion extended his hand, then slashed across it with
the end of one finger. A bead of blood welled up from his palm, drawn by the invisible blade he’d produced. Just the guy we needed for the job, a walking telekinetic artillery platform.

  Bastion grimaced as his blood dribbled to the ground, hitting the stone with a faint hiss. Banjo looked at it curiously, tilting his head, as if listening for something. Carver, for some reason, stepped back.

  “What about the incantation?” I said.

  “Ah.” Carver stepped even farther away from the circle. “What is uniquely interesting about Artemis’s ritual is that Banjo’s voice is not, in fact, one of the reagents. It is the catalyst. Here is your incantation.”

  Banjo sat on his haunches, threw back his little head, and howled.

  That sound could not have come from a corgi’s throat. What started as a small dog’s yowl quickly magnified and transformed into the moon-hailing howl of a wolf, not so far from something Gil might emit in his werewolf form. The howl was soon joined by other voices, some deeper, others shrill, as if Banjo was being accompanied by an entire wailing chorus of horrible unseen hounds.

  The ground shook. I exchanged glances with the others, and they were braver people than me, every one of them, but I could still detect the glimmers of panic behind their eyes. Banjo’s incantation grew louder and louder, the Boneyard itself rumbling and shaking at its very foundations.

  At each of the four corners of the circle, the stone simply crumbled away, sinking into nothing. Banjo continued his baleful song, howling at the starless ceiling of the Boneyard, as the four of us fell screaming into the abyss, the darkness between dimensions.

  Two minutes later, we were still falling.

  Chapter 15

  The first thing I sensed, when I came back to consciousness, was the ocean, the unmistakable scent of salt and sea. The second was the stink of ozone, the telltale odor of lightning that flashed bright enough to penetrate the thin skin of my eyelids. That was when all of my senses came rushing back.

  I must have hit my head, or the strain of dimensional travel must have knocked me out. Me, and the others. My eyes flew open as I gasped for air, sitting upright, my hand pushing into the slick, wet rock underneath me. I glanced down, my heart pounding as I saw how near I was to open, churning water, to what looked like a boiling ocean.

  I was on an island, if you could even call it that. A large expanse of rock was more like it. Prudence and the others were sprawled around the same island, only just returning to consciousness themselves. Around us was angry green water, waves crashing with peaks of white froth that burst across the rocks, then trickled in rivulets back into the furious sea.

  A storm howled in the gray sky above, sheets of rain cutting into my skin. Banjo’s yowl of a thousand voices was still clanging in my ears. The clouds were dark, almost thick enough to blot out the rays of the horrible green sun that hid behind them. But each time lightning flashed, I saw the shapes moving among the clouds. I saw the things that breathed the lightning.

  “Dragons,” I mumbled. My clothes stuck to my skin, the damp running down my back, my thighs. I was shivering, but not because of the cold.

  The mists surrounding the island made no sense with the ferocity of the winds, but there they lingered, like curtains. Dark, ominous silhouettes moved beyond the fog, like shadow puppets, with the slow, heaving gait of old and terrible things that predated man, and the world itself.

  Bastion groaned as he sat up, then rubbed his eyes. “I am not a fan,” he said blearily.

  “Understatement,” Prudence said. She shook Gil until he snorted and woke up. He glanced around hurriedly, then stiffened. The look on his face told me that he’d have been happier to stay knocked out.

  “Don’t look now,” Gil said, sitting perfectly still. “But we’ve got company.”

  The sound of low, threatening growling pierced clear through the crash of wind and waves. An enormous wolf the size of a horse crested a jagged, mound-like protrusion, a massive sword gripped between teeth as huge and sharp as tusks. Fenrir, the wolf of Norse legend that was fated to eat the sun. Slightly beyond it was a great, hulking dog with three slavering heads. Cerberus. Ah, the locals were coming out to welcome us.

  Just at the edge of the island, glaring at us with malevolent eyes, was the upper body of a beautiful woman with weeds and coral in her hair. She sat silent and waiting in the eye of a huge whirlpool, queen of her personal maelstrom, the tentacles of her lower half stirring and beating the water into a frenzy.

  Then a red squirrel, of all things, bounded across the rocks, observing us with black, intelligent eyes. A curious member of the Great Beasts, I thought, until I figured out who it was: Ratatoskr, the little creature of Norse myth who gnawed at the tree of life.

  Despite appearances, the Great Beasts all had a few things in common. The words chaos, terror, and destruction came to mind. And for the most part, they were exactly as advertised: larger than life, primal, terrifying. Also, for whatever reason, they were pissed. Like, really pissed. More shapes drifted in the fog, more silhouettes appearing on the crags of rock around us. The entrance to the home of the Great Beasts was small and confined by design. We were surrounded.

  “You are not welcome here,” Scylla said, in a voice that burbled from somewhere deep beneath the ocean. I held my tongue. Talk about stating the obvious. One of her tentacles reared up over her head, poised to strike, like the tail of a scorpion.

  Fenrir came first. With a snarl, the great wolf launched at me, the sword clenched in its jaws dripping with slaver. I couldn’t tell if I had more to fear from its huge fangs or the vicious blade it somehow wielded with the finesse of a swordsman. I flinched, ready to flatten myself against the ground, shadowstep if need be –

  But Fenrir collided with thin air, its huge body making a wet thump against an invisible wall. It whimpered as it slid against the wet ground. I could feel the vibration of its massive bulk crashing on the rock. Fenrir clambered to its feet and bared its teeth at me, eyes burning with feral rage. Bastion called out to me, his hands outstretched as he maintained his barrier.

  “Look alive, Graves. They mean business.”

  Blue fire filled the edge of my vision as Prudence activated her magic, bathing her wrists in brilliant azure flame. A second wolf joined us, this one our ally, standing on two legs and bristling with fur as black as the hair on Gilberto Ramirez’s head. I reached for my backpack, flipping it open, hearing Vanitas roar furiously in my mind as he swept into battle. With my hands I summoned spheres of pure flame, hoping against hope that I could build fireballs strong enough to resist the constant pelting of rain. There was always the Dark Room, I thought. A last resort.

  My heart pounded with excitement, but mainly with fear. Between the five of us, we’d fought against gods, stood toe to toe with the Eldest themselves. But we’d never been quite so outclassed, outnumbered. Great Beasts that I couldn’t even name were emerging from the rock, rearing up from the waters, and the things that soared through the storming sky, the things that breathed fire and lightning hadn’t even descended yet.

  I lobbed a ball of flame at one of Scylla’s tentacles, its grotesquely long body thrashing in the waters. Dustin Graves wasn’t going to succumb to doom. Magic flashed across the outcropping of rock, streaks of white, orange, and blue arcane energy.

  This wasn’t the end, I thought, even as Fenrir loped towards me, its fur matted with blood and rain, its fangs as long and wicked as knives. This couldn’t be. Fenrir snarled, then leapt. I thrust my palm out, calling on the Dark Room.

  But Fenrir hesitated, catching itself in its assault and skidding against the rock, then backing away. The darkness never came, even as I called for it – at least not from my body. Instead a great shadow shrouded me, as if a cloud had passed across the domicile’s poisonous sun. Fenrir gazed up at the sky, its eyes filled with something like malicious glee. I looked up, too, and couldn’t find the voice to scream, even when a massive, scaled hand closed its cold, wet fingers around me.

&nbs
p; The ground sped away, my friends shrinking as I ascended. Bastion reached a hand out towards me, shouting something I couldn’t hear or understand, but I was too far for his magic to reach. I looked down at the enormous hand that held me, at fingers that ended in yellowing talons like old ivory, at reptilian skin covered in scales that shimmered, first like shards of emerald, then sapphire, an iridescent mosaic of sea blue and green.

  I could have squirmed, forced my way out of the thing’s hand. But then what? Fall to my death? Would the thing that owned the hand squeeze and crush me if I so much as tried to escape? Being lifted away from the conflict, I could have almost believed that this was better. My friends could handle themselves without me.

  “Vanitas?” I thought, reaching out to him with my mind. No answer. I’d never been so far away from him on the field of battle that our telepathic connection would be severed. I had to be hundreds of feet off the ground. I told myself not to let the thought of it flood my insides with terror.

  I looked up into the enormous, gaping maw of the beast that had “saved” me, and I knew that it was worse. This was much worse. I realized right then that I had never before truly known what it meant to despair.

  A skyscraper. Imagine that a skyscraper had come to life and somehow sprouted great, sinewy limbs that ended in wicked talons, had grown a long, reptilian face with eyes as huge and as menacing as a pair of suns. I had never felt smaller, weaker. I had never felt less important.

  “You,” the thing said, in the voice of a woman, in the voice of a dragon, in the voice of a tempestuous ocean. “I know you. The thing of dust.”

  “Dustin Graves,” I said, barely able to speak without stammering. “My name is Dustin Graves.”

  “No,” the thing said. “You deserve no name. You are a man, formed out of dust, and to dust shall you return. A speck of nothing. Only dust.”