A Ritual of Fire

by J. L. Hendricks

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna work, girly,” he said, a sinister grin stretching his lips. “Not from there anyway. You’ll have to get a lot closer if you want to shoot me.” He gestured at me with the knife. It had a bejeweled handle but the blade looked to be rusting at the hilt. Still, I could tell the weapon was ancient and filled with a type of dark magic. Either way, dragon or not, I really didn’t want to get cut by it.

  “Yeah, I can do that,” I growled, holstering my gun. The crazy thing was, I wanted to do it. My inner dragon screamed for me to rush at him, for me to tear into him with my bear hands.

  “Excellent.” He took a step toward me as I unsheathed the short sword I had strapped to my right leg.

  His eyes widened is surprise as I rushed through the melee toward him. Unfortunately, he recovered from his shock by the time I reached him, and as I got near enough to attack, he lashed out at me with the knife in his hand.

  I deflected his strike with my sword as I pulled the gun from my belt and shot him. While this time the bullet hit him, it still barely seemed to affect him. He didn’t even stagger backward. Instead, he thrust his knife at me.

  I sidestepped his next thrust, getting a too-close look at that knife as it went past my face.

  “What’s the matter, upset your little trick didn’t work?” the man asked as his knee shot out, catching me in the stomach and driving me back a couple steps. “Honestly, I expected more from the FBI.” He shook his head. “You’ll barely be a fitting sacrifice.”

  “Buddy, I haven’t even started trying to kick your butt,” I said, shrugging off his blow. It hadn’t been that strong, but it had caught me by surprise. “And I won’t be needing this to do it.” I sheathed my sword and raised my fists.

  As he began to laugh, my dragon’s might filled me. “You expect to fight me unarmed—”

  I interrupted him by driving my fist into his stomach. The blow knocked him backward a few steps, and as he bent over to try and regain his balance, he stumbled over the woman he had been sacrificing.

  She cried out in pain as the man toppled over crashing into the stand and knocking the statue and book to the ground.

  The man shook himself, trying to regain himself as I moved to the woman.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her arm, and as I went to pull her to her feet, the guy tackled me. We slammed into the ground hard and my head cracked against the stone floor. As my vision went dark around the edges, he reared back to hit me.

  As I tried to raise my arms to defend myself, his fist crashed into my chin. Stars shot across my eyes and pain shot through me. The taste of blood filled my mouth as he struck again. This time I caught his fist.

  His eyes widened as I bore down with all my strength, and the bones in his hand creaked painfully. A scream tore from his lips, but that didn’t stop him from trying to hit me with his other hand. Only as he raised his fist, the witch I’d saved came up behind him with the statue from the stand in both hands. With a desperate swing, she slammed it into the back of his skull.

  He roared in pain as he collapsed to the ground beside me. This time, I wasted no time, leaping atop him and pinning him down.

  “It’s over,” I cried, and as the words left my lips he began to laugh.

  “You can’t stop us! We are many and more are waiting to be called.” Then, before I could ask him about his special brand of crazy, he burst into flames. The smell of charred meat hit my nose, and if I’d been anyone other than me, I’d have caught on fire. Fortunately, I was me, and so while the fire was annoying, I managed to get off of him without getting immolated.

  “How did you survive that?” the witch asked, staring at me in confusion.

  “FBI magic.” I nodded to her before turning to the rest of the battle. While one of the werewolves was lying on the ground, dead, three more were still engaged in battle with the witches.

  “I need one of them alive,” I yelled out. “If I can interrogate one, maybe we could figure this out.”

  Brenda nodded to me right before thick black smoke erupted from her fingers. It hit the charging wolf full in the face, and as his hands went to his eyes, she drove her knife into his right forepaw. A blood curdling scream erupted from his lips as he fell to the ground, screaming and whimpering far out of proportion to the damage he’d taken.

  “There’s your one.” Brenda snorted, before turning to help her sisters-at-arms, and shouting something in Latin.

  “What did you do?” I asked as I rushed over to wrangle the wounded wolf.

  “I cast a pain spell that increases pain by one hundred fold. Hurry, help me to tie him up.” Brenda pulled some rope from her pack.

  Nodding, I hopped on top of the writhing beast, but even with my enhanced strength, it was hard to keep it pinned. “Stop fighting,” I growled right before I drove my elbow into his chest.

  The earsplitting howl that burst from the werewolf nearly shattered my hearing, but it made it a lot easier to hold him down. Man, I really needed a spell like this. “Why don’t you use this spell every time you fight? Seems like it would help turn the tides in your favor.”

  “It takes too much of my energy to wield it. I only use it when I need a prisoner, otherwise, I just try to kill our enemies,” Brenda reasoned as she uncoiled the thick rope.

  There was an explosion to the left, and as I glanced toward it, I saw the two remaining wolves had been flung through the block wall. Sparks leapt from their skin as they struggled to rise, but before they could, the witches rushed in, swords raised. It was over before I even turned my attention back to the wolf beneath me.

  “Help us to keep this one from running,” I called from atop the beast.

  “On it,” the left witch said, hand splayed toward me. Green light exploded from her fingers moments before emerald chains erupted from the ground, wrapping around the wolf and holding it down. Even still, I could tell the binding wouldn’t last long, but then again we didn’t need long.

  Taking advantage of the situation, Brenda quickly finished tying up the beast, and the second she was done I got right into his snout and began my interrogation. “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he snarled. “You won’t be able to stop us. This world will be cleansed and you will not survive.”

  “Neither will you if you open the veil between Hell and Earth,” I countered. Was this guy serious? “Those demons won’t let you live. They will destroy the entire planet. It will literally be Hell on Earth. Why would you want to let them out? It’s suicide!”

  Instead of replying, he snapped at me. His fangs passed within inches of my neck, but I was way too fast for him to catch me given our current positions.

  “Oh no, that won’t do,” Brenda chided right before she threw a handful of herbs onto the werewolf. Another scream tore from the beast as his body pulled itself back into human form against its will. Just watching it made me feel bad.

  “What did you do to me?” he asked, looking around wide-eyed before fixing his gaze on the witch.

  “Making you more willing to answer our questions.” She smirked. “Go ahead, Alyson. Ask away. You’ll find him much more inclined to answer.”

  “This is why we fight.” He spat at her.

  “That doesn’t matter.” I smacked him just hard enough to get his attention back onto me. “Why are you letting the demons out?”

  “Nothing you do to me will matter.” He began to laugh. “Once the demons come, they will help us destroy all who do not join us.”

  “They won’t be controlled by werewolves. Surely you must realize this!”

  “We already control them.” He was nuts. The power must have done something to his brain.

  “Who’s in charge? Who’s telling you what to do?”

  “You will never get close to our leader. There are hundreds of us protecting him.”

  “Where are they? If he has so much protection, surely it won’t matter if you tell us his location.” I hoped he’d fall for it but doubted he would.r />
  “You don’t deserve to be in his presence. You might as well go home and enjoy your last days on Earth.” He spit at me.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, partially because getting spit on always pissed me off, and partially because there was no way in hell I was letting a guy like this start the apocalypse. “Answer the question. Tell me where to find—”

  Before I could finish, I heard screaming off in the distance followed by Vlad yelling for my help.

  16

  Alyson

  “See if you can get any more info out of him,” I said, leaping to my feet and heading back the way we’d come. While I wasn’t sure what had caused Vlad to call for me, I knew it must be bad. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise. That almost made it worse because it meant he was in trouble, and the idea of him getting hurt scared me a lot more than I’d expected.

  My chest heaved with effort as I reached the exit and stepped outside. Vlad and the six witch warriors protecting Mara were fighting a losing battle against a dozen werewolves. There was no way they could beat all of them. Worse, two witches were already down and only one werewolf was injured.

  “Mara, use that magic of yours!” I screamed as I pulled out my sword and raced forward. While I wanted to use my Glock, I couldn’t risk shooting any of my allies.

  “I am! These wolves have somehow found a way to counter-act my magic! It’s not working,” the great witch screamed as she threw a spell at a nearby wolf like she was trying to illustrate her point.

  Light blue electrical arcs ripped across the shifter’s body, knocking him flat on his back. Only, by the time I’d made it to Mara, he was back on his feet. His claws raked out, slashing against Mara’s shield, and that’s when I realized the problem. Everyone else was inside Mara’s shield.

  As the werewolf sprang at me, claws raised, I shifted into my dragon form without thinking. The world seemed to stop for a handful of seconds as everyone paused and just stared open-mouthed.

  I doubted any of them except for Vlad had seen a dragon before, but that was fine. I could use this too my advantage. While they were still shocked, I let my fire-filled scream erupt. The blast caught the leaping werewolf full on, reducing him to a pile of ash in the blink of an eye.

  The rest of the werewolves took one look at the handful of ash that remained of their companion before taking off. Ignoring the witches who were safe behind Mara’s shield, I heaved another blast of flame at them.

  My dragon fire caught another, reducing the top half of his body to cinders. That’s when two of his buddies tried to take advantage of his death by leaping at me. I spun, smashing the first with my tail. His body exploded like a bag full of raspberry jam.

  My forearm caught the second one in the chest, knocking him into the far wall with enough force to reduce him to a smear.

  Unfortunately, while the two of them had attacked me, the rest had continued running, and part of me wondered if they’d sacrificed themselves so their friends could get away. Either way, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t letting them escape now that they’d seen me.

  My wings unfurled and I tried to get into the air, but the warehouse was too small for me to fly around in. I barely had enough room for my head. Standing at full height, I was almost twenty feet high and my wingspan was double my height.

  The majority of the wolves were trying to get to the back of the warehouse where an emergency exit stood. They weren’t going to get away so easily.

  I charged toward them while sucking in another chest full of air and let it rip. My fire consumed everything in my path, including the remaining werewolves. Unfortunately, as my flame washed over the emergency exit, I realized this building wasn’t going to survive my fire, either.

  Dragon fire was far deadlier than a normal fire. The more oxygen I took in, and the greater my rage, the closer I could get to spitting out a purple flame, the hottest, brightest flame I had ever produced. It was rare, but I had done it before. So far, my inferno was orange with a few white tipped flames, but that was still more than enough to devour nearly everything in its path.

  In front of me, everything I could see was up in flames, my flames. The emergency exit door was covered in a firestorm. My fire licked up the paint covering the metal door before starting to scorch and melt it. No one was going to leave that way.

  I turned to find Vlad and Mara were the only ones left in the room. Vlad had a frown on his face while Mara’s eyes were open wide in astonishment.

  “We got everyone out,” Vlad said in a voice that told me he was trying to make the best of the situation. “You saved a lot of lives, Alyson.”

  Smoke blew out my nose as I tried to calm down and make sure I didn’t burn up the remaining exit. “Sorry about the place,” I grunted in a deep, guttural voice.

  Mara finally seemed to recover. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you killed all of them before they could leave. We have a lot of injured to take back to our safe house. Can you switch back to your human form and help us?”

  Vlad spoke up for me, “She has to stay in this form for a while. Since she doesn’t shift often enough, when she does take her dragon form, she needs to stay in it for at least an hour.”

  “Oh.” Mara bit her lip, thinking as she scanned the warehouse. “Where is Brenda?”

  “Back that way,” I pointed to the far end of the warehouse. The flames hadn’t reached that far yet, but they would given enough time.

  “I’ll go get them,” Vlad said before gesturing outside. “Alyson, two werewolves got out behind us. Why don’t you scour the area and see if you can find them?”

  I nodded in reply, careful as I turned around to not hit them with my fifteen-foot tail. It was extremely dangerous for me to shift while in the confines of a warehouse given the small confines. One wrong move and I could accidentally crush one of my friends.

  Dragons just weren’t meant to be indoors. We were designed to roam the skies and live in gigantic caves on the tops of mountains most people wouldn’t dare climb.

  As soon as I sensed that Vlad and all the witches were safely away from the building, I barreled through the blazing wall and out into the open night.

  I took to the skies as soon as I was clear and looked for any signs of the werewolves. I couldn’t let them get away. They knew my secret. Once they shared it, I would be on everyone’s hit list. My identity would no longer be a secret. My life would be in more danger than it ever had, especially if he ever found out.

  17

  Vlad

  “Mara, please know I’m truly sorry we were unable to get there in time to save everyone,” I said as we reached the safe house in Compton. “However, Alyson just sacrificed herself to save you. You must swear an oath that you and your coven will die protecting her secret. If anyone finds out she’s the last living dragon, her life will be over.”

  I still couldn’t believe Alyson shifted in front of everyone to save Mara. She didn’t even like Mara. I was absolutely grateful for her sacrifice but scared as well. The secret was out.

  There was always a group of hunters who wanted to find dragons. Something about dragon scales having immense power and making the best flak jackets. Bullets couldn’t penetrate dragon scales, after all. That was aside from the general shifter power struggle. Dragons were naturally at the top, but since they’d been gone for so long, other groups were vying for power. Should they find out dragons still existed, those still in charge would seek to take Alyson down just to cement their place in the hierarchy.

  “Don’t worry, Vlad.” Mara met my eyes, and the depth of understanding I saw in her eyes surprised me. “Alyson is now a part of our coven, just like you. We protect our own and never share their secrets, not even with other covens. Alyson saved over a dozen witches today. Trust me. Her secret is safe.” Mara bowed her head, a sign of true respect from a great witch.

  I didn’t doubt this coven would go to their graves keeping Alyson’s secret, especially after she’d saved them. Witches were particular like that. />
  No. The hard part would be making Alyson understand that. It wouldn’t be easy. When I first found out she was a dragon, she’d almost killed me on the spot. That was also when I’d been assigned to be her partner. Our Section Chief figured if I was her partner, then she would accept I not only knew the truth, but with my mind-altering abilities could help her keep her secret.

  Still, I couldn’t erase the memories of the werewolves who got away. It made me hope she would find the fleeing werewolves and fry them all. She’d feel better if she did. Then maybe she’d listen to reason.

  “How are the women we rescued from the ritual? Do they know anything about what’s going on and who’s behind it?” They had been captured and held for at least a day, maybe longer, so who knew what they might have gleaned.

  “They will be fine. My witches will heal with some rest and a little nourishment. They did overhear some of what’s going on, namely that those eco-terrorists are working with the werewolves.”

  “So it’s like we suspected. Now we know for sure.” I nodded once. “I’m going to try and call this in to command. Hopefully, the phones are working now.”

  I left Mara alone while I went to the kitchen to make the call. The sun would be up soon, and while I needed to sleep, this call was important. The FBI needed all the pieces to this case, and we needed more help.

  Unfortunately, like before, the call just rang and rang. Not even a voicemail picked up. Tomorrow, we’d need to make a trip to command.

  We needed more firepower, more men, especially since magic wasn’t working like it should. After all, if we couldn’t blast them with magic, a few M-16 bullets would put them down.

  Annoyed, I walked back into the living room where Mara sat with her daughter, Stella.

  Her brow was furrowed and she was hugging her mother. “Mom, are you sure you’re all right? Using so much magic these past two days has to have drained you.”