Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  Even better, regardless of what I did, I did it in a Federal park, where state authorities had no jurisdiction. The loophole which bit my ass in Atlanta helped me in Hawaii—without a state charge to trigger on, the US Attorney couldn’t prosecute a Misuse of Magic charge.

  So I went free . . . and the Internet went wild.

  In the thousands of videos which were posted to YouTube over the first few days were two innocent-looking videos shot from suspiciously close up—from the ridge overlooking the crater, Science City, where two construction workers had seen Pele taking off.

  Then, on day ten, the bombshell hit—a video filmed by a scientist with a telescope hooked up to his camera phone, which had caught most of the initial part of the spell . . . in close enough detail to show the infinity lens, a climbing figure . . . and the interaction of my Dragons.

  Now my magic has been seen round the world. It started with the clock I inked for Alex, continuing with photographs during the graffiti fires, and then with my stunt in Union Square. But the YouTube clip, Haleakala Tattoo Dragon Summoning, blew away them all.

  They’re calling me the Caster at Haleakala now.

  And so, Alex assures me, the next season of The Exposers will be a hit. I was forced to get an agent just to help me turn down all the offers I’ve got for interviews and appearances, but soon the agent started, tentatively, to suggest things that I . . . approved of.

  I haven’t taken a one of them, of course. My gut tells me to fulfill my obligations, then quit. But deep down, I know I’ve got too much of an exhibitionist streak for that—the publicity has been great for the shop. I don’t know what to do . . . or what this will do to my life.

  That’s not quite true, of course. It’s already started doing things to my life. I have to be a little more careful in public; we have a lot more traffic in the shop. But the money pouring in from my inking is nothing compared to that first paycheck . . . when Alex paid up.

  This time, I didn’t rush out and blow it all. No new house, no new car, not even the new Vectrix motorcycle . . . but I did pour that money into Cinnamon’s 529 plan. Hang the gift tax, screw the deductions. Cinnamon now had enough to send her grandchildren to college.

  And the publicity, or perhaps the disaster, made the Magical Security Council even more real. After some coaxing, Lord Buckhead did visit the fae in San Francisco, in secret, and gave his blessing to the Northern California Practitioner’s Conclave, in a private ceremony.

  Apparently, the visit of a small-g god can do more than just smooth fae feathers or unite werekin factions. After Buckhead’s visit, the Conclave created its own Security Council, the Magical Supervisor’s Board, with Carnes as chair—and Lord Kitana as an uneasy advisor.

  With the vampires, the fae and the wizards on my side, even Fire Prince Daniel Hill is playing along. He’s agreed to abide by the rules of the San Francisco Magical Supervisor’s Board—and to participate as one of my Stewards of the Liquid Fire.

  I have no illusions that Daniel and the Fireweavers or Carnes and the Wizarding Guild are playing along willingly; the only reason they haven’t tried to seize the fire yet is because Philip is holding the cauldron of fire in a secret location even I don’t know.

  But we’ve given each of them the tiniest droplet of liquid fire: a milliliter each, enough for Daniel to renew the fireweaver’s supplies, for Devenger to conduct his studies—and for the DEI to assess how dangerous the material is, and whether it should be released at all.

  I think it should be, and Philip is backing me up. He’s walking a tightrope: he and my fellow Stewards know he’s holding the fire, deep in the MIRChold vaults, but his superiors in the DEI think I’m holding the fire in some secret location—giving Philip cover.

  When last I extended my trust to the DEI, they betrayed me and destroyed the community that Cinnamon had called home. Now Philip was bending over backward to prove that his organization was one that could earn the Edgeworld’s trust.

  So far, it’s working. The DEI has been following my playbook on how to handle the Haleakala Caldera. They’ve sealed it off, begun surveying it, begun mining it. It isn’t clear what fractions of liquid fire can be salvaged, but with Professor Devenger’s help, they’re trying.

  What Carnes and Devenger and Philip and I—and even Daniel—are worried about, though, is what will happen as this knowledge inevitably leaks out. We’re not worried about the immortals anymore; we probably have enough pure fire for one round of spells.

  We’re worried about people like Jewel.

  Daniel calls Jewel a crazy dictator. I wouldn’t go that far. She lied to me, but she drew back from the brink. She had some principles at her core—she just really wanted to spin fire. But I think she also wanted to clear off that mountaintop and break Hawaii off the Union.

  The Hadean Dragon we now call Pele was the most powerful single organism the human species has ever seen. Her hatching shook the Earth; her launching actually changed its spin, infinitesimally, but measurably—they’re going to have to reset every GPS on the planet.

  If Jewel had succeeded . . . an army with Pele at its head would have been unstoppable.

  And her reality is inescapable. Few people saw her hatch; not everyone believes the YouTube videos. But when Pele hit the edge of airless space, and unfurled her great dragon wings into vast butterfly membranes ten times their original size to catch the solar winds . . .

  You can still see her, with a powerful enough telescope.

  We now live in a world where almost everyone has seen a real dragon. We live in a world where children everywhere have her rainbow butterfly wings on their T-shirts. And a world where you can see from space the crater left by a magic spell more powerful than an atomic bomb.

  So it’s not just Cinnamon I’m trying to protect anymore.

  Now I’m using everything in my arsenal to push the Magical Security Council farther than ever before—using my magic, my contacts, the publicity, and even politics to try to get people on our side. To establish not just rules—but an early warning system.

  Because we can’t put liquid fire back in the bottle. Scarcity is only temporary—the Washington Monument has a crown of aluminum because it was so valuable; a few years later, cheap electricity made aluminum so cheap we now use it for disposable food wrapping.

  Sooner or later, someone like Devenger will reverse-engineer liquid fire, or figure out how to mass-harvest firecaps, or will invent a completely new source. We don’t know how yet, but we’ve got to figure out how to stop bad spells, rather than banning magic substances.

  Because, sooner or later, someone like Jewel will do something terrible.

  I know bad people will use magic for their own evil ends, but I’m not going to give up my own magic or let innocents suffer at their hands anymore. I have to get the power, the resources, the will—and the knowledge—that I need to keep us all safe.

  ———

  I’m Dakota Frost, skindancer, and magic is my domain—don’t screw it up.

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  About Anthony Francis

  LIQUID FIRE had an unusually long gestation—I started five novels and finished two of them between the time I started it in April of 2008 and the time I sent version 121 to Debra Dixon at Bell Bridge Books in February of 2015.

  In that time, I had awesome
support from my friends. Many of the crew at the Write to the End writer’s group either beta read or helped me work through problems, including Gayle, David, Liza, Betsy, Keiko, Nathan, Ruth, and several others.

  My family and friends also helped as well, including my wife Sandi, my mother-in-law Barb, many of my friends in the Edge, including Gordon and Jim, and many of my friends in the Dragon Writers Group back in Atlanta. Thanks to you all.

  I also had great research assistance. Keiko O’Leary’s linguistic analysis was invaluable to me in keeping Cinnamon sounding like Cinnamon. John Kim, Prosecutor of the County of Maui, helped me understand jurisdictional issues.

  Thanks go out to my friends in the Georgia Tech Taido Club, and special thanks to Andy Fossett, a 5th degree black belt who reviewed the Taido scenes in this book. Any Taido mistakes are mine. Any Taido misspellings are Dakota’s.

  Thanks also to The Crucible of Oakland for providing both wonderful performances and a great space for learning the fire arts, and to Lara Hopwood, the instructor at the Crucible who taught my wife and me to spin fire.

  The first major chunk of LIQUID FIRE was written in National Novel Writing Month of 2008, and thanks go to Chris Baty (for creating Nano), Grant Faulkner (for running it), and Ann Arbor (for letting me read clips of LIQUID FIRE on KFJC).

  Of the many, many books I read for research, Helen Gaines’s CRYPTANALYSIS and Martin Gardner’s CODES, CIPHERS AND SECRET WRITING are called out in the text; I also recommend MAUI by Jan TenBruggencate and Douglas Peebles.

  LIQUID FIRE is set in the world next door, so thanks to the familiar haunts of Atlanta and to the new haunts of the Bay Area, especially San Francisco’s Union Square, Stanford’s Bookstore, Palo Alto’s Nola, and the much missed Asia de Cuba and Borders. Also thanks to Maui . . . for letting me blow it up. Sorry about the park.

  Thanks again to my editor at Bell Bridge, Debra Dixon, who helped me hammer on LIQUID FIRE until it was shorter, tighter and punchier than BLOOD ROCK until, in short, we were both satisfied that you’d be satisfied with it.

  Finally, I want to thank you, my readers, for making FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK a success. I hope you enjoy the continuing adventures of Dakota Frost in LIQUID FIRE.

  —the Centaur, February 17, 2015

  P.S. Thanks, Big G. You know who you are.

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  About Anthony Francis

  By day, Dr. Anthony G. Francis, Jr. builds intelligent machines and emotional robots; by night, he writes science fiction and draws comic books. He received his PhD from Georgia Tech in 2000 for a thesis applying human memory principles to information retrieval; since then, he’s worked on 3D object visualization, search engines, robot pets, military software, police software, and software for the CDC. He cannot confirm or deny that he is currently working on robotics at Google.

  Anthony loves exploring the collision of fantasy with reality; in the Skindancer series, he explores what Atlanta, Georgia and the San Francisco Bay Area would be like if populated with vampires, werewolves, wizards, and fae. Anthony spent almost two decades in Atlanta before he and his wife were lured out to San Jose by the Search Engine That Starts With A G. Like Dakota, Anthony dropped out of college chemistry, loves math, and is a brown belt in Taido, but unlike Dakota, he doesn’t have a single tattoo.

  LIQUID FIRE is the third in the Skindancer urban fantasy series, following FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK, and Anthony has plans for many more. You can visit Anthony on the web at dresan.com, or learn more about the world of Dakota Frost at dakotafrost.com, or on her Facebook page facebook.com/dakotafrost.