Submerging Inferno

by Brandon Witt

  Piao had moved his family to California when De became pregnant with their second child. They had thought the government would give them an exception to the “one-child” policy. That hope had been crushed when they’d found out De was having a girl.

  Piao, De, and six-year-old Lake, Sonia’s older brother, left everything they had in Shanghai. By the time Sonia was born as an American citizen, Piao had already established Shining Dragon, the jewelry store that would help him and his family achieve the American Dream.

  I’d never met Lake. Shortly before I moved in with Sonia, he and Piao had argued over the future of Shining Dragon. Lake wanted to be an artist. Piao told him not to return until he chose to honor his family. There hadn’t seemed to be such pressure placed upon his daughter.

  “JUST turn up there on Russ Boulevard. Take a left.”

  Finn gaped at the houses as we drove past. “Sonia grew up here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.” He fell into speechless silence as we drove the final two blocks to their house.

  “Right there. We can just park here and then walk through the gate. I’m not sure how to get into their driveway.”

  “Here? As in, that one?” Finn pointed up the small embankment.

  I nodded.

  “As in the biggest and nicest castle on the block?”

  I laughed nervously. “It’s not a castle.”

  Finn shook his head. “Remember my house? This is a castle.” He looked at me narrowly. “You said you wanted to do this on your own. But with not knowing about Derek, I think it would be best if we both go. That okay?”

  I nodded.

  THE wrought iron gate that led up the walking path to the front door was always unlocked. I closed it behind Finn after we slipped through. As always, everything was immaculate. Gorgeous.

  “You know, I don’t think we needed to be worried. Everything is the same as always.” I looked up the sweeping lawn at the turreted house, its huge curved windows glistening and welcoming. I turned to Finn as we reached the bottom step that led up to the main door. “I don’t think I can do this. How do I tell them their daughter is dead? How am I supposed to explain?”

  Finn didn’t answer. He was looking ahead at the front door.

  “What? Do you see something?”

  “No. I don’t know. Something just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Are they home? Can you sense them inside?”

  He didn’t answer me for a moment, his honey eyes going unfocused. Finally, he shook his head. “No. Nothing. Not even a pet.”

  I let out a sigh. “That’s actually a good sign. De never leaves home without Sapphire.”

  Finn looked at me quizzically.

  “Her dog.” I held my hands out, one about six inches above the other. “She’s this little Maltese. They’re inseparable.”

  “Oh.” Finn continued up the steps and stopped at the door.

  His flat response made the hairs on the back of my hands stand up. I followed him.

  He turned to look at me. “It’s locked. Do you want me to break in?”

  “No, did you try the doorbell?”

  His brow furrowed in a worried expression. “I scanned already, remember?”

  I looked between him and the door several times. If Piao and De came home, they wouldn’t be worried about Finn and me breaking in after they learned why I was here. “Yeah, get us in.”

  Finn turned away from me and placed his hands around the knob in an almost protective manner. In less than a second, he swung open the door.

  Relaxing a little, I looked around the main entrance. Although massive, the entire first floor could be seen from the atrium. The huge, elaborate living room with the glowing cherry floors. The library, which was more like a museum of precious gems. The kitchen, its white marble floor and the onyx granite counters glistening. The formal dining room, with crimson walls adorned with gold-leaf dragons cavorting across the expanse.

  I turned to Finn, expecting to see him standing in wide-eyed wonder at all the marvels the house had to offer.

  “See, everything is fine. Perfect, as always.”

  When he didn’t reply, I followed his gaze up the spiraling staircase that swept above the shining grand piano.

  “Let me go upstairs by myself.” He turned to me, imploring. “If I need you, I’ll yell.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, Brett. I just think I should go up there alone.”

  Without waiting, I leapt for the stairs, taking three or four at a time.

  Finn called out for me, his shorter stride making it impossible for him to catch up.

  I paused when I reached the top, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. I had only been to the second story once. There were only three rooms. Over half of the top floor was the master suite—an enormous bedroom, a closet the size of my living room and kitchen combined, and a bathroom that seemed like it belonged at the top of Trump Tower. The other two rooms, which were also huge, had been Lake and Sonia’s bedrooms before they moved out. Last I knew, Piao and De had left them how they were.

  By the time I entered the master bedroom, Finn was beside me. Again, everything was pristine. The black-and-gold bedspread was tucked tightly, without so much as a crease, into the immense modern bed frame. The sitting area under the bay windows looked as formal and uncomfortable as ever.

  “I think you’re just worried, Finn. You don’t have to protect me. All I was worried about was telling them about Sonia. I never stopped to think that they might be in danger as well.”

  Finn quietly walked across the bedroom and opened the door into the bath. I followed.

  At first, I didn’t see him. The oval pedestal bathtub in the center of the room was empty and shimmering in the sunlight coming through the picture window overlooking Balboa.

  It was the reflection in the mirrors over the his-and-her sinks. Turning away from them, I barely suppressed a yell as I saw Piao. His thin naked body was crumpled on the floor of the walk-in shower. There were only a few places where his skin was devoid of bite marks and chunks of missing flesh. His blood had dried to a dull rust color between the black stones encasing the shower. His eyes stared at me with a dull, milky haze.

  “De!” I turned and rushed from the bathroom. “De!”

  Finn caught me by the arm, forcing me to stop. “Brett. Stop. Remember, I already scanned. No one is alive here. Go downstairs. Please. I’ll find De if she’s here. There’s no reason for you to have to see her.”

  I glared at him. “She can’t be dead. He couldn’t have killed them all. He couldn’t have!”

  He whipped his hand off my arm and shook it in the air.

  I glanced down to see my hands and arms billowing steam. Looking back at Finn, I expected to see reproach in his eye. “Sorry.”

  He gave me a sad smile but didn’t reach out to touch me. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You can’t help it. Please let me finish by myself.”

  “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have to do it. I owe it to them. To Sonia.”

  He let out a long breath. “Fine. Which room next?”

  The answer was obvious. “Sonia’s.”

  Carefully, Finn reached out and clasped my hand, giving a little wince but not letting go. “Lead the way.”

  Sonia’s bedroom door was open. We walked in.

  De lay in Sonia’s old bed. Her eyes were wide in frozen terror. One wound was visible on her neck. Two relatively tiny pricks. From her pallor, there was obviously no more blood in her body, but neither was there any blood around her. Her hands were folded on her breasts. Her long skirt splayed out on the bed, arranged perfectly.

  Finn’s hand tightened on mine. “I’m so sorry, Brett.”

  My breath left me in a gush. I stood there. Numb. No more terror. No more shock. No more. Sonia was gone. Her parents were gone. Maybe that part was a blessing.

  Instantly, I shoved the thought away.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.”
Finn paused before starting to move. “Brett, I think we have to assume Derek is dead too.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “I’ll call Officer Torres. He’ll handle it. That okay?”

  “Yeah.” I started to move, but just before I turned around, I noticed something beneath the bed skirt.

  Stepping closer, it was obviously a small pool of blood seeping from underneath the bed. I stooped over, lifted up the fabric, and peered beneath.

  Sapphire lay in a tangled mass of blood and fur. Here and there little unsoiled white tuffs stuck out. She looked as if every bone in her tiny body had been shattered.

  My knees hit the floor as I dropped the cloth back into place.

  Finn knelt beside me, his arms encircling my back, pulling me to him as I began to sob.

  Chapter 23

  DESPITE how exhausted I was from not sleeping the night before and the stress of the day, I couldn’t fall asleep. It felt like I lay there for hours. One minute I would start thinking of different ways to track the vampire. Then pondering over how to find an angel. We could bring them back. All of them. As long as I could find Sonia’s body.

  I’d get so worked up that I’d stand and start pacing the room, only to fall back into bed, twisting and turning. I couldn’t believe I was actually thinking about how to track down an angel. Sane people don’t try to go looking for angels. Of course, sane people don’t normally catch on fire at what seemed to be increasingly short intervals. Sane people didn’t continuously find dead people on an escalating basis. There had to be a way around the whole “magic can’t bring back the dead” thing.

  Such thoughts kept returning me to the fear that I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to bring Sonia back. That she had died needlessly and violently, and there was nothing I could do despite all my newfound power.

  Not for the first time, I wished so desperately that Sonia were here. I wasn’t really sure what she would say about discovering that there are witches and vampires, or finding out her best friend is a fire demon. I was fairly certain she would have loved the idea, probably would have been jealous that she wasn’t a part of it. Well, I guess she was a part of it now, wasn’t she?

  I didn’t hear him knock, or call my name as he walked across the room, or feel him climb into bed with me. It wasn’t until his arm snuck around my chest that I realized I wasn’t alone. I flinched at his touch.

  “It’s okay, Brett, it’s okay.” Finn’s arm grew tighter around me. “I wasn’t trying to startle you. I was just in the bathroom, and I couldn’t help hearing you cry.”

  I was crying?

  “Sweetie, you’ve got to stop shaking. Here, lean back into me. Just let it go.”

  I hadn’t realized I had curled up into a ball at some point and started sobbing. Again. I’d never been a crier before. Since Sonia’s death, I didn’t seem able to stop. I’d never felt so weak. I ran the back of my hand over my nose. “Ugh.”

  I felt him lean away from me, heard him rustling with something. “Here.” He handed me a wad of tissues.

  I blew my nose.

  All of the sudden, now that my shaking was starting to come under control, I realized that I was starving. Ravenous. Even more, my skin was crying out to be in the ocean. Diving deep. Lost in the currents. Detached, I figured that was probably a good sign.

  I leaned back into Finn as he slipped his right arm under my head to wrap me fully in his embrace. “It’s okay to grieve, Brett. I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I just couldn’t leave you alone in such agony.”

  Sniffing, I nodded. “What time is it?”

  “We went to bed about two hours ago. It’s almost one in the morning.”

  We lay there in silence for a long time. My body finally relaxed against Finn’s. With tender fingers, Finn traced lightly over my chest and stomach. His cool skin felt soothing against mine. Every so often, I would feel his breath against my ear as he whispered how sorry he was and how he wished he could fix everything for me.

  After what seemed like hours, my shaky voice shattered the silence. “I don’t know how to do this, Finn.”

  “Do what, Brett?”

  “I don’t know how to get through this. I don’t know how to let her go.”

  He was quiet for several moments before he gave a response, his voice cracking. “I don’t either. You just do. You keep waking up, you keep breathing, you keep putting one foot in front of the other. You fake that you’re really living, and one day you’ll wake up and realize you’re not faking it anymore.”

  After several more seconds, with his fingernails lightly massaging my scalp, he continued. “And you focus on the good times. You give thanks to God for allowing her to be in your life as long as she was. You ask him to keep her safe and to somehow bring the two of you back together one day.”

  His answer took me by surprise, serving to distract me momentarily. “You mean like in Heaven or something?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You believe in God?”

  He paused as if caught off guard. “Well, sure I do.”

  “But you’re a warlock!”

  A small chuckle escaped him, “Yeah, I know. Why does that mean I can’t believe in God?”

  “Do you think he loves you?”

  Another pause. Again, “Sure, I do.”

  I thought about it for a moment. It was surreal to have this discussion with him. Not only was he a warlock, he was gay. I could just imagine what my grandfather would say. There would be a very special place in Hell for the likes of Finn. And me, for that matter.

  My voice was even quieter. “And you’re gay.”

  “Again, yeah, I know.” He gave my nipple a quick tug, letting out a soft laugh. “Nothing slips by you, does it?”

  “And you really think that God loves you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about your family?”

  “They love me too.”

  “No, no. I mean, what do they think about God loving them?”

  “Brett, I grew up in church, just like everybody else. We’re Methodists.”

  I hadn’t even considered witches and warlocks going to church. I wondered if there had been some in my grandparents’ church. “But if we are descended from demons, then how could God love us?”

  “Remember what I told you? Don’t you know what demons are, where they come from?”

  Being raised in church, I didn’t think twice. “Sure, they are the fallen angels. The ones that followed Lucifer when he challenged God and was ejected from Heaven.”

  “Exactly. They are angels. They’ve made their choice. Just because they procreate doesn’t mean that their offspring don’t have a say in the matter. We still all have free will.” I felt him give a little shrug. “Sure, those closer to their patronage have a harder time with not being evil, but the further away that gets, the less that’s an issue.”

  “And the gay thing?”

  “Well, God let me be born a warlock and be born gay. Why would he have a problem with either?”

  “Well, if you really grew up in church, then the problems with that should be obvious.”

  “I said I believe in God, not everything preached from the pulpit. Although the church has good intentions, for the most part, I don’t believe that what is preached and God’s true nature are necessarily the same thing.”

  It seemed a little oversimplified, but at the moment, simple worked. I wanted to believe in a God who loved me. Loved me in spite of being gay, in spite of being a demon. In Finn’s way of thinking, not in spite of, but maybe because of those qualities.

  “Ah, Brett, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you cry again.”

  I wiped my eyes and awkwardly turned in Finn’s arms so we were facing each other. “Kiss me.” I held his gaze with mine. “Please.”

  His eyes grew wide in the dark, then softened. Slowly, his lips touched mine. At first, barely brushing them with his, then with more pressure. His hand came up and cradled my jaw and cheek in his palm as h
is kisses deepened, his tongue leisurely caressing mine.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and back, pulling him closer to me. His bare chest was covered in a light sweat from my heat.

  The passion took its time building, both of us content for our hands to gradually discover each other’s bodies, enjoying every touch, every sensation, every kiss. We didn’t talk; we didn’t need to. Something had changed. We had been through too much, and we weren’t strangers any longer. We didn’t know all the intimate details of each other’s lives, but there was certainty that we had plenty of time for that.

  By the time our shorts were off, our faces were both rubbed raw by each other’s stubble.

  I forgot the pain of the past few days. I didn’t forget Sonia, but I also knew if anyone would approve of the unspoken choice Finn and I had made, it would be her. I lost myself in the hardness of his muscles, the softness of his full lips, the slickness as our stomachs slid over each other, in the way his penis felt as it mashed into mine, his low groans, his contented smile as we found our rhythm.

  Just as Finn opened the drawer and pulled out a strip of condoms, his cell phone rang from the other room.

  Our eyes met in a mixture of concern and trepidation. “I don’t have to get it.”

  “Finn, of course you do. It must be important. It’s gotta be past four in the morning by now.”

  With a sigh, he slid off me and rushed through the bathroom and into his bedroom, the moonlight from the window catching the curve of his ass as he went.

  “It’s Mom!” he hollered from the other room.

  I sat up, my stomach sinking.

  He walked back toward the bed, and in spite of what I was certain was bad news, I couldn’t help enjoying a thrill from the movement of his naked body as he came closer, the way his penis shifted from side to side.

  “Yeah, Mom. We’ll be right there…. I know. I love you too.”