Phoenix Falling

by Laura Bickle

  Wind roared against the front of the building, and it sounded as if someone threw a handful of gravel against the glass. The fire was here.

  Petra growled and took two steps toward him, but Gabe pulled her back. “Let’s go.”

  Petra picked up Sig, who was sleepy and as full as a stuffed tick, and they made their way to the back. Gabe had no sooner opened the back door than fire from the next-door building slid down the roof and dumped a ton of flaming debris three feet ahead of the Bronco’s hood. The truck was trapped. And on foot, there was no way to outrun this. He slammed the door shut.

  “Do you have a basement?” Petra panted in panic.

  Lev grunted. “Yes. But this is a safe place. Come and have a drink.”

  Petra slowly walked back to the bar with Sig in her arms. Lev was drinking a White Russian and fiddling with the knob on the radio.

  “When you say that this is a safe place . . .” she said slowly.

  “I mean that this is a safe place,” he said. “In the time I’ve lived here, I’ve put up what you could consider to be a magical fire suppression system. So cool your jets.”

  Petra slowly set Sig down. Gabe climbed onto a bar stool. Sig stretched out beneath the bar and yawned. Petra winced as fire hammered at the stained-glass windows outside, casting weird amber shadows in the interior gloom.

  But the windows held.

  Lev passed her a hard cider and Gabe a lager. He always knew what people wanted to drink without asking. The cider was sweet on her parched throat, and it seemed to take some of the taste of the smoke away.

  A tremendous boom rocked the structure. Petra clutched her beer and nearly fell off her bar stool.

  “That must be the gas station,” Gabe said softly.

  “Oh no,” Petra said. Bear’s Gas ’n’ Go was a town fixture. Her heart ached for Bear, and she hoped he had good insurance.

  Lev took out a cutting board and began making what looked like antipasto salad. Petra’s gut growled, and Sig perked up.

  “So, you have magical sprinklers in here?” Petra asked.

  “Of a sort. This place is deeply rooted in the land and was easy to ground. All those years of people praying in it and seeking sanctuary made it even easier to ward.” Lev dropped a piece of meat to Sig, who gobbled it up. “I probably would have done better to use that magic for an anti-intruder system, but after the fires in 1988, I was a little paranoid.” He glanced at her when he said “anti-intruder system,” and she was reminded of how she’d broken into the bar and fallen into his homunculus.

  Petra slumped. “Lev, I’m sorry about running off with your homunculus. Truly.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “I’m getting over it. Really. Death is normal. I forget that sometimes, and try to rail against it in really futile ways.” He gave a wan smile that seemed to see through her. “And I see that you’re struggling with it, too.”

  Petra’s mouth flattened. Lev might be used to death, given his otherworldly long life. But she wasn’t ready to accept the death of her father.

  Gabe reached over and put his hand on Petra’s shoulder.

  She shook off the hand. “My father’s not dead. His body is here. If we can just remove Lascaris, can’t we find my father’s spirit, wherever it is, and . . . and . . . reinstall him?” She refused to believe what Lascaris said, that he was gone.

  “For Lascaris to be wearing your father’s body,” Gabe said slowly, “he must have sent your father into the light.”

  “And you believe him?” she spat. “Couldn’t he have my father locked up in . . . in a spiritual dungeon somewhere? Could my father be a ghost, wandering around? Or still in his body, but repressed? Could . . .”

  “You went to the spirit world yourself,” Gabe said gently. “You didn’t find him.”

  Lev, who seemed to have been listening to something in the back of the bar, nodded and turned to face Petra. “I take no satisfaction in telling you this. But the dead tell me that your father is gone. He is in the light. At that point, a spirit is irretrievable, like my son’s. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  A sob escaped Petra’s lips, and Gabriel wrapped his arms around her. He can’t be gone. Can’t.

  As her mind reeled, it barely registered the radio, but it slowly crept in: “. . . Temperance has been overcome by the Magpie Fire. The fire on that front continues to head east, with several smaller fires leading the way. On the southeast front, the fire is moving more slowly. Evacuations are occurring along the ten miles beyond the East Entrance of the park, south to the reservation . . .”

  Gabe leaned forward. “That’s near the Rutherford Ranch.”

  Petra frowned. “The tree. You think the tree will burn?”

  He stared down at his drink. “It’s been shielding itself as much as it can, magically, trying to hide from the phoenix. If it fails, I don’t think it’s strong enough to come back this time. I don’t think that . . . it will want to.”

  “What will that mean for you?”

  But Petra knew the answer. And Gabe didn’t deny it; he just lapsed into silence.

  She reached over to lace his fingers in hers. “When the fire passes, we’ll go there. We’ll stop the phoenix. Save the tree. And we’ll deal with my father. Or whatever’s left of him.”

  Lev placed two plates before them. “For now, though, you will both have to wait. Pepper?”

  The fire passed quickly, the way a summer storm would.

  The fire howled with a voice that Petra would never have expected, a hiss and growl that sounded like the waves of the ocean pounding surf. Sweltering heat filled the Compostela, nearing a hundred degrees, and Petra fed Sig ice water and blotted at her blistered face with ice. But the air remained breathable. She took the time to bandage her wounds and Gabe’s. As she dabbed ointment on her own burns, she shook her head at the short amount of time she’d been able to keep her new body in mint condition. A pitifully short period. If Lev disapproved, he said nothing.

  Gabe’s wounds were curious. They were fading a bit, and she assumed that was his supernatural ability to heal. But a closer inspection of the wounds showed the black had just moved under the skin and swelled, as if he’d been attacked by necrotizing fasciitis.

  Clearly Lascaris’s handiwork.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything she could do about that—only the tree might be able to heal him. He smiled sadly when she looked in his eyes, knowing he was thinking the same thing: If the tree survived.

  Not wanting to dwell on that scenario, she set about getting her guns cleaned up as a way to keep busy. The carbon black cleaned off for the most part in Lev’s sink with some steel wool, and the pearl grips were mostly intact. But there was a curious feather-like pattern burned in the metal and the pearl. It reminded her of her trip to the spirit world: Hugin and Munin, thought and memory. For some reason, seeing them made her heavy soul feel just a touch lighter.

  When she came back out, she saw that Lev had dug around for some ammunition to give them. Petra wanted to refuse; he might need it to protect the bar from looters. But he held up the shotgun he kept under the bar and said that he would be in good shape.

  And for all the fire and heat and destruction, the Compostela stood. After some time of ringing silence, punctuated by the dull murmur of the radio, Lev opened the front door. Smoke drifted in.

  Petra and Gabe peered around him. The street was strewn with black debris, bits of small fire and ash. The gas station across the street was a black crater. I-beams from the structure were still visible, but not much else. A scorched soda can rolled down the street, making a metallic scraping sound.

  All along the street, it looked like a war zone. The roof of the hardware store still burned, and the pawnshop’s windows were blackened and broken. The post office was still partially standing, but the carcasses of two charred cars were parked along the street across from it. The one stoplight overhead was dark and burned out.

  Petra felt tears welling in her eyes. Temperance had fought all
manner of supernatural horrors, but this fire had obliterated it. She walked out into the street to peer down the gravel road at the Airstream. She could make out a blackened can in the distance. There was no telling what else—other than the Compostela, which only sported a few scorch marks on its exterior—might have survived.

  “I’d say the local economy is pretty well screwed,” Lev observed.

  With trepidation, she walked back into the bar, through the back door, and to the alley to check on the Bronco. To her startlement, it was in relatively good shape—and a lot of the “relative” came from the fact that it hadn’t been in great shape to begin with. A small fire was burning on its roof, but she quickly brushed it out by removing the debris with a broom. The glass was still intact, there was fluid in the radiator, and the tires looked okay. It seemed that it had been in the shadow of the building when the fire swept through, and that it perhaps was in the Compostela’s magical shadow, too.

  The three of them set to shoveling the debris out of the Bronco’s way. The vehicle started right up. Sig, overcoming his lethargy, launched himself into the truck. Petra tried to shovel him out, but he remained in the back, among the garbage bags, giving her a dirty look.

  “We’re not going home,” Petra said. “We’re going to try to stop the phoenix. You have to stay with Lev. He has meatballs.”

  Sig backed himself into a small space between the garbage bags and lay down. He was not leaving them.

  Petra groaned. Gabe climbed into the Bronco and nodded to her.

  Gently, Petra drove the Bronco past the hot debris and to the street. She drove quickly, then, not wanting the hot asphalt to melt her tires. She hit the gas and plunged down the road away from the ruined town, toward the Tree of Life.

  She chewed her lip as she drove. Signs of the fire were all around—the dark sky, burned weeds on the shoulder of the road, a destroyed house or two. In the distance, they spotted a helicopter with a giant bucket, dumping fire retardant on something at the horizon line. It was like using a paper towel to mop up the ocean. The fire was beyond any hope of control. Even if they stopped the phoenix now, the fire would keep going. It had gotten too large. Petra cringed as she imagined it continuing to travel southeast, to the reservation.

  She called Maria and put her on speakerphone. Maria picked up on the second ring.

  “Yes?” Her voice was staticky, and Petra frowned at the weak cell signal. Only one bar.

  “Maria, it’s Petra.”

  “Petra. I heard back from Vicki. Her family got driven back out of the park by fire, and then the National Guard wouldn’t let them back in. But they saw your father’s car from the air . . . what was left of it. They saw no sign of him. But apparently an ass-ton of ravens,” Maria added wryly.

  Petra swallowed. “He hijacked another car and killed another person. Please tell them to stay far away. He’s . . . he’s not my father anymore. It’s Lascaris, wearing my dad’s body.”

  “What?”

  Petra gave her the short summary, and managed not to burst into tears while doing so.

  “Oh God. I’m so sorry,” Maria said when she’d finished.

  Petra rubbed her nose. “Are you okay?”

  “We’re getting ready to evacuate. Nine is at the animal shelter, trying to get the dogs and cats loaded up with the rest of the volunteers.” There were unshed tears in her voice. Petra knew that Maria had spent her whole life in that house. And if the reservation was destroyed a lot of good people would lose everything.

  “We’re still on the trail of the phoenix,” Petra said. “But I don’t think that will stop the fire.”

  Maria blew out her breath. “I don’t think so, either. But keep fighting the good fight.”

  “I will,” she said. “Be careful.”

  “You, too.” She hung up and stared into the windshield. Everyone she knew stood to lose pretty much everything.

  “It’s all slipping away, isn’t it?” She could feel it in her marrow. “Burning up.”

  Gabe put his hand over hers. “Then we burn together.”

  Chapter 21

  Showdown at the Tree of Life

  They reached the Rutherford Ranch by early evening. The light was odd. Sunset tried to burn through the smoke, casting eerie red light over the land. They’d arrived ahead of this front of the fire. The one that had washed over Temperance had been faster by several miles. This front churned slower, hotter, but just as inexorably toward the ranch.

  “There may be something that will buy us a little time,” Gabe said. “Lascaris will likely be heading to the old location of the Lunaria to summon the phoenix, to try and tap into its power to attract the bird. Once he realizes that it’s no longer there, then he’ll have to find its new site over the underground river. It will delay him, probably by hours, but he’ll figure it out eventually.”

  Petra nodded. “Phoenix first. Then we’ll worry about . . . him.” She didn’t want to call him Lascaris. He still looked too much like her father.

  She turned the wheel over to Gabe and held the Venificus Locus in her lap. She punctured a blood blister from a burn on the inside of her arm. Artlessly, she dribbled the blood into the compass. The red swished over to Gabe and turned toward the Lunaria as they got closer to the tree. Petra held it in her hand as she looked out over the dark horizon. A third droplet dislodged and began to approach the others. Powerful magic was coming, converging on this place.

  The tree came into view, standing sentinel over its hillock. It seemed to sense the approach of the fire. Its leaves stirred in the wind, hissing, rattling against each other like the chatter of birds. Perhaps it was afraid. Petra thought that it certainly should be. They parked and climbed out of the Bronco, staring at the once-familiar landscape.

  Flames surged down, over the foot of the mountain. The scrub forest and fields before them were alight for miles, the very picture of hell. And there—a comet-like streak in the sky began to approach, the air crackling as it flew—was the devil.

  The phoenix had come.

  Petra put the bloody compass away in her pocket and handed the mirror to Gabriel. If they could only convince the bird to look at its reflection . . .

  “Shit,” he muttered, looking over his shoulder.

  An SUV approached, driving erratically over the landscape. It was distant now, but would be here in moments. At her feet, Sig growled. Petra’s eyes narrowed. It had to be him.

  “You deal with the phoenix,” she said. “I’ll handle my . . . Lascaris.”

  Gabe nodded and walked downhill, toward the field and the phoenix.

  Settling into a shooter’s stance, Petra lifted one of her guns to her right eye, shut her left, and aimed for the patch of ground where the SUV’s tire met the earth. She shot once, twice, missed—but on the third shot, the front driver’s-side tire blew out. The SUV careened wildly, wobbling, and flipped over on its side. It smashed into the Bronco, rolling it, before skidding to a stop.

  Petra advanced carefully. The SUV came to rest on its roof, creaking and spitting gas and antifreeze. Broken glass rattled inside. The windshield had caved in with a red spiderweb crawling across the safety glass.

  Petra approached it warily, with her gun trained on the shattered driver’s-side window. She steeled herself to see her father’s bloody, broken body hanging upside down from his seat belt.

  This is not my father, she told herself. It may look like my father, but it’s not. There is no part of my father in there; there is nothing I knew . . .

  She sucked in her breath, bent down, and peered inside. The interior was littered with broken glass. A dangling seat belt reached to the roof . . .

  . . . and there was no old man inside it.

  Growling emanated from the front of the SUV. She pivoted in a crouch, gun raised before her. A grey blur—Sig, she realized—launched itself across her field of vision an instant before she glimpsed a muzzle flash and heard the report of a gunshot. An arrow of brilliant heat slammed into her left shoulder,
spinning her back into the side of the SUV.

  She turned her head to see Sig tearing a gun from the grip of the old man. Blood covered one eye, dripping down his shirt. He snarled at her with curled red lips.

  She shot the old man. She shot him in the gut, twice, red blossoming from his belly. He crumpled and went down, tumbling to the dried grass.

  “Sig,” she gasped. She holstered her gun to press her right hand to her profusely bleeding shoulder. Her left arm was numb, and she guessed that her rotator cuff was shattered. She hoped that the bullet had missed her lung. Trying hard not to hyperventilate, she crawled away from the truck to where Sig lay on the ground.

  She ran her quaking hand through his fur, fearing that Lascaris had managed to lay his terrible touch of death on the coyote. Sig horked and spat, as if he’d swallowed something terrible, or been poisoned.

  “Oh, Sig,” she sobbed.

  The coyote made a curious squeak, as if he was confused, and stopped wriggling. Petra took his head in her good hand and tried to pull him into her lap. Sig slowly stood up and licked her face. He gazed at her with clear brown eyes. He wasn’t disintegrating before her; he was okay.

  She threw her arm around him and sobbed again, this time with happiness.

  But his chest was coated with her blood. She pressed her hand back to the aching wound, willing the flow of red to slow. She was losing a lot of blood, and she hoped to hell the bullet hadn’t shredded an artery. Her pulse roared in her ears. She was pretty sure that she was gonna throw up, and that was never a good sign.

  Sig whined, pawing at her lap.

  She winced. “I guess this body is pretty darn well human after all.”

  And she was beginning to regret that.

  Fire washed through the field below. Gabe plunged into the brittle grasses, his knuckles white on the mirror in his right hand. The sky had blackened, and sparks fizzled through that darkness like fireflies, a fearsome imitation of night. The phoenix was coming, and it would annihilate all he held dear. It had already destroyed Temperance and threatened the reservation. Only Petra, Sig, and the Lunaria remained. He was prepared to give his life to defend them, even if that meant his charred body offered up a mirror to the bird.