Fire: Demons, Dragons & Djinns

by Rhonda Parrish

  I shrugged. “I may not know you yet, but I’ll happily name you after I kill you.”

  I fired at his face. He flinched despite his protections. I leapt over the hole in the floor. The necromancer started and backpeddled. Right into the wall. Nowhere to go. I punched him in the nose. Hitting him was like hitting steel. Slammed his head into the stone. He didn’t drop. His ward—a cloak pin—blazed in my Grave Sight. I snatched it and elbowed him in the temple. This time he slumped, groaning.

  One more tombstone bullet and a red flower bloomed on his throat. Blood streamed as he gurgled and gasped. The lighter and something smaller, also metal, tumbled out of his hand to clink and clatter over the floor.

  “Who’s the deluded fool now?”

  He didn’t answer, but there was someone else who might. Life pulsed into view through my goggles: someone alive—and hiding—down the entrance hall. An innocent who’d followed me in, or an apprentice?

  “You may as well come out,” I called, turning on the flaring lights in my jacket’s double M logo. “I see you.”

  Shuffling, cautious steps inched closer. I recognized her despite the arm held over her eyes. She’d been the one in the film crew with the blue hair. Jennifer . . . something.

  I turned off my lights so she could see me and demanded, “What are you doing here, Jennifer?”

  She jumped at the mention of her name. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Fingers knotted behind her head, Jennifer’s eyes drifted from the fallen necromancer to me. “Did you kill him?”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “He . . . he was in the crew. Our new PA.” She took a step back. I shook my head and she froze.

  “He’s a necromancer. Was. The one who killed Todd Bickle.”

  I knew how nuts my explanation sounded. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to give one. I didn’t care how I sounded to civilians. Not anymore. Only the Fight mattered.

  “Todd burned to death. An accident. A terrible accident.” Her voice said she didn’t believe that last part. Ghosts were one thing, but necromancers were obviously a bridge too far. “Electrical short in his camera.”

  I holstered my Colt and gestured at the necromancer. “An arsonist’s ghost this creep stirred up caused the fire.”

  “And that’s why you’re dressed like a superhero?”

  Close enough. I also would’ve accepted black mask or vigilante. Comic heroes were my inspiration. Their black and white goodness, their purity, kept me going when I’d lost my parents to real evil. An origin story I shared with my inspirations.

  I tapped my logo. “I’m the Midnight Man.”

  Oddly, she didn’t find me crazy. Maybe she’d heard of me. Or, considering what she did for a living, she saw a new reality show in the making.

  “What’s with the deal with the Jolly Roger?”

  “To scare the bad guys.”

  She furrowed her brow. “You fight ghosts and necromancers. Why would they fear skulls and bones?”

  “It took them time to get the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Death comes for everyone. Even the undead.”

  And those who raise them. Especially for them.

  “I wanted to see for myself,” she said, “the place where Todd died.”

  She had spunk, but she was also ignorant of the Kingdom and ghosts in general—let alone Frankie Flame. There’s no hell. No heaven. Only aimlessly wandering the Kingdom until something worse ate your spirit. I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Not yet, anyway.

  “We stopped the necromancer. We figure out how he planned to wake Frankie Flame and the deaths should stop.”

  “Frankie Flame?”

  “My name for Francis MacDonald. The arsonist’s ghost.” I shrugged. “I name my villains.”

  “Villains.” She rolled her eyes. “And if the deaths don’t stop?”

  “I stop him too.”

  I almost didn’t hear the flick of a lighter being ignited, didn’t smell the butane, or see the small guttering flame as the Zippo arced toward the unlit brazier. The brazier ignited the instant the lighter landed. That couldn’t be good.

  “Francis MacDonald come forth and do my bidding. Francis MacDonald come forth and burn again,” the necromancer rasped, smirking, as he stood. My bullet oozed from his body. “I’ve three lives left, Midnight Man.”

  I hate necromancers.

  But his boast also gave me his name. Triple Tombstone.

  I couldn’t wait to carve all three of his markers. Later.

  Triple Tombstone held a clenched fist toward Jennifer and she doubled over in pain. “Release her.”

  “No.” He laughed and held a knife to her throat for added insurance.

  I might’ve been able to tag him, but I couldn’t count on it. And if he wasn’t lying, tagging him might not do any damned good.

  There was a racket from below as the furnace started. Frankie was awake.

  We did our little dance, me trying to get a shot off, him hiding behind Jennifer. He’d kill her, I knew. One way or another. But if his boast was true, and I shot through her to kill him, he wouldn’t be done, and she’d be dead for nothing.

  Besides, I wore the double Ms to kill necromancers, not add to their body pile.

  Triple Tombstone glanced downward. Something had caught his eye. My chance. I had a shot but Jennifer took the option from my hands. She snapped her head into bugeater’s nose. He shrieked and she shoved him away, diving to the side. I fired but I couldn’t tell if I’d hit him.

  Frankie Flame stirred and I had a civilian running around. Now that Frankie was crackling, in the next thirty minutes one of us would die.

  I ran toward the exit, barely stopped before Triple Tombstone’s ward trap would’ve fried me. He gambolled over the field toward the graveyard. I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. Tricky creep made a ward passable from the outside. Anyone who came looking for Frankie tonight would’ve been stuck, same as me. My Grave Sight goggles showed me the wards, but I couldn’t unthread them. I had to laugh. I could see the exit, but the invisible barrier was solid real oak.

  We were locked in. My bullets weren’t.

  I fired. Triple Tombstone fell. I watched for him to get up. When he did, I shot him. The third time he tried to stand, he didn’t rise again.

  Maybe he’d actually told the truth about his three lives. If he hadn’t been such a braggart, he might’ve left here with two in the bank and a score to settle.

  “Mister . . . Midnight?” Jennifer said.

  “Midnight Man,” I corrected.

  “Is he dead?” Her voice quavered at the question.

  “I think so.” Unfortunately, if I watched his corpse until satisfied, we’d join him. Trust a necromancer to make me waste my life to confirm their death.

  Jennifer wiped sweat from her brow. “I don’t feel good.”

  When she brushed her hand aside, I saw a ring. That’s what Triple Tombstone had dropped with the lighter. Frankie Flame’s ring. Thick gold band. Fire opal centrepiece. Three rubies on either side. It’d been Frankie’s pinkie ring. Jennifer wore it on her thumb. His lucky charm, except the charm—or his luck—wore off. On the plus side, now I at least knew which of us would die first.

  “Where’d you get that?” I demanded.

  “I found it. After I hit the necromancer.”

  “You shouldn’t have put it on.”

  Her face turned ashen. “Why?”

  “Cause it’ll burn you alive.”

  “Like Todd.”

  “Yes.”

  She jerked at the ring and screamed as if already aflame. Jennifer hit the ground with a thud; an ash cloud billowed.

  I knelt at her side. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “You’ll stop him? Right?” She held out her hand. “Stop this?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, pulling her to her feet. What I didn’t say: Not likely before you die.

  UNDER GRAVE SIGHT ash cloaked Jennifer like a shr
oud. Embers glowed underneath her skin, and with every second they brightened. I asked, “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible,” she croaked, coughing. “My head pounds. My body aches. I can barely catch my breath.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  She regarded Frankie’s ring. A flash reflected in her eyes. Fire. Smoke. Pain. Knowledge. “I don’t remember putting it on. I remember . . . They burned him alive. Alive. Oh God.” She looked at me. “That’s waiting for me, isn’t it?”

  No point sugar-coating it. “If you live through this, you might be able to control that fire.”

  “Then what?”

  I shrugged. “Join the Fight? Keep dead things in the ground?”

  She considered and nodded. It was hope. A mad hope. The belief she could fight against what waited in the night. I knew the look. I saw it in the mirror.

  “I’ll need a name.”

  I loved naming duty. Her name was Jennifer. She had blue hair. “How’s ‘Blue Jay?’”

  She pulled a face and shook her head for emphasis. “Ugh. That’s terrible.” After a moment, she murmured, “Acetylene.”

  I didn’t like “Acetylene” any better than she’d liked “Blue Jay,” but I supposed it was her name to bear. “You do you.”

  TRIPLE TOMBSTONE’S ZIPPO still burned in the final brazier, unharmed, arcane runes blazing blue against the orange and yellow flame. A dangerous trinket in anyone’s hands except mine. The Zippo or the ring had woken Frankie; they might put him back to sleep. I kicked over the brazier and spread the coals with my boots. No fires died.

  I snatched the lighter. Its heat seared my hand through my leather glove; I snapped it shut and the fires flickered, as if I’d denied them air, but didn’t die. I tucked the lighter into my belt and affixed Triple Tombstone’s cloak pin to my coat.

  “What now?” Acetylene asked.

  I pointed to the hole in the floor’s centre. “Down we go.”

  THE FIRES IN the basement were no longer phantom flames reflecting the Kingdom. No longer visible only through Grave Sight. They were real. And growing. The furnace room floor was a twelve-foot drop, but only seven or eight to the casket table. I lowered myself, dropped the final span and hoped my weight wouldn’t collapse the table. It creaked, holding.

  I gestured for Acetylene to follow. When we were both in the crematorium’s bowels, I breathed easier. Acetylene couldn’t stop coughing. I jumped off the table and ash puffed around me. The pillars supporting the crematorium tower were caked in it. Every crack in the building’s foundation glowed like hot embers; tongues of flame crept, slithering vines, hunting new fuel. Litter snapped with ignition and new fires spawned in every corner.

  I drew my Colt, though I didn’t know what to shoot at.

  “Is that a magic gun? Can it kill ghosts?”

  It was, and it could. Sort of.

  “Can I have one?”

  Not the reaction I’d expected. And an intriguing one. She was ready to join the Fight. Another shooter would be handy, but I didn’t trust strangers’ trigger discipline. There’s no such thing as a flesh wound with tombstone bullets. “No.”

  When Acetylene’s time was up, Frankie Flame would make sure she took me with her too. His fires would cross over from the Kingdom and bring the crematorium down around us. And then he’d be free to return to his old business.

  I could’ve found a way out. There’s always a way out if you’ll pay the price. The price for tonight’s freedom: let Acetylene burn. Deal with Frankie Flame and Triple Tombstone later. A choice which would’ve made me the same as the necromancer who’d killed my parents. I’ve made tough calls, bad calls, and sketchy calls, this one was easy.

  The furnace’s rumble took on a human cast, the groan of an old man who’d sat too long, and yet must rise. The groan changed pitch, becoming a scream. Acetylene covered her ears, shaking her head, as if the sound was something beyond the physical realm.

  Frankie was fire in a man’s shape; his eyes were as blue as Acetylene’s hair, and his body mimicked a once-powerful build. His flicker and glow showed he ostensibly wore the clothes Frankie had died in—a power suit, complete with a fiery tie. When he saw us, he screamed again. Fire shot from his body to fill the chamber.

  My clothes frayed and smoked, but the leather held, and Triple Tombstone’s lighter and pin protected me from burning as the heat in the crematorium grew unbearable. Frankie’s ring protected Acetylene—as it had Frankie in life—and would until he killed her or took it back, but no trinket would keep us safe forever. Sweat pooled on my back and beaded from my scalp, streaming from my Hades cap and into my eyes, stinging.

  “My ring,” Frankie snarled. “Give it to me.”

  “Do not do that,” I yelled over the crackle of flames.

  “Yeah,” Acetylene said. Flames gathered around her arms and she hurled them at Frankie. “No chance.”

  The furnace fire snapped, cracked, and roared Frankie’s displeasure. Any trace of Frankie would’ve been long burned to ash, but the furnace was a direct conduit to the Kingdom and Frankie’s rage. If I jumped in and survived the trip, I’d have a path to where the monsters came from.

  “Always outnumbered, never outgunned,” that’s my motto. I wasn’t ready to make that jump today. Throwing my life away for revenge meant Acetylene would die and Frankie would burn Mort Cheval to its bones. The Fight—Acetylene’s life, and every life in the city—outweighed my own desires. Snuff Frankie. That’s the job.

  Binding his spirit with a ball-and-chain bomb probably wouldn’t work. Frankie had no meat to be locked into. Normally when you kill the necromancer you don’t need to worry about summoned things. They run back to the Kingdom or they go poof but Frankie was just warming up.

  Tombstone bullets wouldn’t stop him. I fired anyway. Frankie’s heat envelope was so intense, it cracked my granite bullets, turning them into birdshot before they reached his “body.”

  He screamed though; while my shots didn’t end his manifestation, they hurt him. I was an irritant. Pissing at an inferno. Assuming the bullets’ enchantment survived their breaking, they might slow him down. Or they might make him really irritated. Considering he already wanted to burn me alive, I wasn’t sure I wanted Frankie Flame angry.

  I shot again.

  Since I’d been lucky with the bullets, I tried a ball-and-chain bomb. Its eggshell-thin casing burst, releasing a puff of silver dust. The dust sparkled as it coated Frankie’s body. Now he roared. Grave Sight showed me why: the bombs had worked, if not as expected. Normally ball-and-chain bombs locked a spirit in whatever meat it’d possessed and my bullets sent it back to the Kingdom. My bombs had severed the connection between Frankie and the Kingdom. When his fuel extinguished, he’d be snuffed.

  Unfortunately, we were currently standing among his fuel, and I doubted he’d be inclined to let us leave.

  He slapped me across the chest with a heated backhand that was palpable for all he was not. I reeled backward from the impact, skidded into a burning trash pile, and rolled away trying to keep the flame from igniting my uniform.

  “My ring!” he roared, burning brighter, growing larger.

  I needed another tactic.

  “Francis,” I said. He turned back to me. His name had been used to call him. It might put him back to sleep. “Francis MacDonald.”

  He advanced, orange flames going white. The echo of his screams still remembered his name, but no one in that much pain couldn’t easily find slumber. Not without more help than I knew how to give.

  I gripped Triple Tombstone’s lighter before me. “Francis MacDonald, rest again in your ashes. Burn no more.”

  He wavered, before turning to Acetylene and advancing on my nascent sidekick.

  She scrambled away from him, creating a fiery wall to obscure her retreat. A fast learner. I liked that. I gave her cover, snapping off a rapid succession of tombstone bullets, interposing myself between them. Both furnace and Flame roared.

  There had to be a
way. Acetylene’s ring. Frankie’s name. The lighter. We had the means. Somewhere. I caught a wild-eyed look from Acetylene in my peripheral vision. Frankie had found her.

  I snapped open the lighter, flicked it on. The fires seemed drawn to it. Frankie turned to me as I repeated his name. I snapped the lighter shut. Smaller pockets of fire died.

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  Acetylene hurled a ball of white hot flame at Frankie. Fire with Fire. “I hope it’s a good one.”

  “Get upstairs.”

  I hurled another ball-and-chain bomb, holstered my Colt, and cupped my hands for Acetylene. She ran to me, setting her foot in my locked fingers. I alley-ooped her out of the basement as the crematorium crumbled in on itself. We needed the ring and lighter both, working in concert to wake, or snuff Frankie. And since Acetylene couldn’t take off the ring . . . I’d die quick and ugly without the lighter’s protection. Triple Tombstone’s cloak pin may work against fire as well as impacts, but I couldn’t be sure. Still, no choice at all.

  Her life or mine.

  I hoped she’d take up the Fight when I was gone. I only wished I had time to show her the hideout. And my car. Especially the car.

  In the distance, sirens cut through the night. I couldn’t count on the Mort Cheval fire department to free us.

  I held up the lighter. “Take it!”

  I wouldn’t last long without it. But we didn’t have long left anyway. Acetylene was sharp. She’d figure it out. I tossed it to her and the moment the lighter left my hand, the heat in the furnace room dropped me to my knees. Soon the smoke would suffocate me. My gloves caught fire.

  Over the flames, I heard the snap of a Zippo opening; the rasp of striker over flint. Despite the smoke, burning butane filled my nostrils. Frankie ignored me. I had nothing he wanted.

  A fiery ladder formed with a gesture from Frankie, and he ascended like a risen god. One plus: he dragged the heat and smoke with him. I could almost breathe. I rolled, beating out the flames that’d caught on my leathers. I’d live long enough to deconstruct the mess I’d made tonight.

  The Zippo clanked shut and Acetylene yelled, “Francis MacDonald. Rest again in your ashes and burn no more.”