by C. Gockel
Fates:
I Bring the Fire Part IV
Copyright © 2014 C. Gockel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below:
[email protected]
The I Bring the Fire Series:
I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves
Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
Other Works: Murphy's Star a short story about “first” contact
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Author's Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Sneak Peek at Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V
Appendix of Names and Places
All Stories By C. Gockel & Contact Info
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I want to thank my editor, Kay McSpadden. Kay read and reread this story more times than I can count. I also would like to thank Gretchen Almoughraby. Her suggestions helped me clarify situations and make the action more believable. Also indispensable was Patricia Murphy. She consulted on aspects human and horse. My brother, Thomas, was great as a myth reference. Shelley Holloway was the final editor of grammar and content and a delight to work with.
I also want to thank all of my readers. Your continued encouragement helped give me the confidence to write this story. I love you guys!
Finally, thanks must go to my husband Eric. If he hadn’t to stop writing fan fiction and start writing something I can own, this story never would have happened.
Author's Note:
This is a fourth in series (plus one-half!) I've tried to include brief descriptions at the introduction of each character to get readers up to speed. However, I've also included an appendix of names and places at the end of this story, for those who want more background.
PROLOGUE
Bohdi Patel shifts in his seat, eyes glued to the white door in front of him. The door leads to the familiar halls of the FBI’s Department of Anomalous Devices of Unknown Origins Chicago headquarters. It is locked. They locked him in. Like a criminal. Was it Hernandez who turned the bolt, or Steve? He bites his lip. Running his hand through his hair, he looks around the room. He sees thin, dirty, brown carpeting, and a single foldout table. The chair he’s sitting on creaks.
The radiator in the room is ticking, and it’s probably too hot—must be too hot because there is the tiniest prickle of sweat on the back of his neck—still, he shivers.
He turns. There is also a window. Standing up and walking over, he presses his hands to the cold glass and peers through the grime. He’s three stories up, facing an alley, but there is a fire escape a few feet to the left. He shakes the hand crank on the sill and feels it give a little.
Bohdi swallows. With trembling hands, he pulls out his wallet and flips it open. He has $23.00. No credit cards. The only ID he has is his badge for HQ. “Bohdi Patel” it says below his picture. It’s a lie of course, just like the ID he had been found with—credit cards, driver’s license, social security card—were lies. He is not Bohdi Patel. Bohdi Patel was an American citizen who died twenty-six years ago at the age of six months. The only reason ADUO calls him Bohdi is because no one knows what else to call him.
Six weeks ago, Loki, so-called God of Mischief, Chaos, and Lies, attacked Chicago, let loose trolls and wyrms and other nasties, killed thousands of people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and in a comparatively trivial bit of mischief, wiped Bohdi’s memory. All Bohdi knows about the time before Loki comes from Steve, and even that’s not much. Apparently, during the chaos, Bohdi had shown up at HQ, given his name as “Bohdi Patel,” and volunteered to help ferry people out of the city, in what later turned out to be a stolen cab. Kind of heroic. According to some people in the office, kind of criminal.
Bohdi is probably Indian, but he doesn’t have a passport. He shivers. The only reason he wasn’t deported was because no one knew where to deport him to. He frowns. He also suspects that Steve had wanted to keep an eye on him—after the accident his brain had briefly hummed with magical energy.
Bohdi flips past the ADUO badge. There is only one piece of authentic identification in his wallet. It is a photo of a dark-skinned man in white shirtsleeves and a woman with slightly fairer skin in traditional Indian attire punctuated by a bright orange sari. Both are smiling widely, all their attention on a chubby baby balanced on the man’s knee. The baby has a lopsided baby smile and is looking toward the camera, oblivious to the rapt attention but obviously thriving under it.
The photo isn’t labeled. Bohdi’s not sure if he is the child, or even if the couple is his parents, but usually he likes to think that they are. Not so much today. They look so clean, happy, and so good—what would they think of him if they knew what he’d done?
He had done it with the best of intentions. The security loophole was glaring and dangerous, even if it was only on the intranet, and behind firewalls and logins. After weeks of alerting ADUO and nothing being done, he’d proven it.
A true criminal would have put the personal details of all of ADUO’s personnel on the Internet. Bohdi just changed all the names to Pig Latin—a silly language he had learned from Claire, Steve’s eight-year-old daughter.
A true criminal’s hands wouldn’t tremble at the memory of the confrontation with Steve afterward.
“Do you think this is funny?” Steve had demanded, hovering above Bohdi’s desk.
Unable to suppress a smile, Bohdi had replied, “Esyay?” He’d meant to launch into a defense, an explanation of how easy it would be to change the names back, and how now Steve could get funding for more tech support. He’d never gotten the chance.
“Don’t you understand we’re busy protecting people out there,” Steve had shouted, pointing to the ruins of LaSalle Street where magical beasties still had a habit of popping up.
“Of course,” Bohdi responded. “But this is about protection, too…protecting your employees’ identities from espionage and blackmail!”
Face going a shade darker, Steve snapped, “You acted unilaterally—without respect for authority. You made this department look bad, and me look bad, at the worst possible time.”
Bohdi’s skin heated. That was what Steve thought this was about? Trying to make him look bad? His vision had gone red around the edges.
“There’s no ‘I’ in the word team, Bohdi!” Steve shouted.
Bohdi’s lips curled into a snarl. “But there’s
a ‘U’ in fuck.” As soon as he had said the words, he regretted them.
Steve’s face melted into a look of such unmitigated rage that Bohdi shrank in his chair, all his own anger vanishing. “I’m sorry,” was on his lips, but Agent Hernandez had interrupted him. “You do realize, you are now a felon?”
Bohdi hadn’t even realized Hernandez was there. Chin tilted low, eyes glinting in Bohdi’s direction, Hernandez said, “You’re not an American citizen. Do you know what we could do with you?” Hernandez shook his head, his fists tight at his sides. When Steve had fought to keep Bohdi at ADUO, Hernandez had argued he should be deported—or even sent to Guantanamo.
Fear twisted so violently in his stomach, Bohdi felt like throwing up.
“Get up,” Steve said, jaw tight. Bohdi just barely managed to stand. His legs felt like rubber.
Hernandez and Steve had led him to this room. Steve ordered him to sit; then they left and shut the door. He heard the lock click.
Bohdi looks down at the picture in his hands. The man, woman, and baby are seated outside, behind them rises dark green vegetation. The sunlight makes flecks of dust glimmer in the camera’s eye and burnishes his parents’ shoulders. He imagines that is how the sun is in India, a warm hand on your shoulder all the time. Not like the sun in Chicago in winter. He looks out the window. The sun’s position is impossible to know behind the gray of the clouds and smog.
He imagines what the smiling woman would say to him. “You had a good thing, with good people, and now you’ve ruined it!” He wipes his face with his hand. He did have a good thing. Steve looked out for him. He’d gotten him a job—and okay, even if it is just as a glorified receptionist, it’s probably better than driving a cab—and set him up with his parents in their enormous greystone out west near Garfield Park. Ruth and Henry Rogers fuss over him like a second son.
Now they might deport him... If he’s lucky.
He looks toward the fire escape. He thinks if he just opens the window, he can make it. And then where? He’d have to leave Chicago.
His breath steams the glass. The only frame of reference he has for the country beyond Chicago is the child’s map in Steve’s boyhood bedroom. In Bohdi’s mind, each state is a different bright color, with some landmarks—the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty—drawn in friendly caricature. Beyond Chicago, nothing is real. He’d be no one in nowhere.
Bohdi backs away from the window, nearly knocking over the chair.
The door clicks and he drops quickly into the seat.
Steve walks into the room, shutting the door behind him with a bang.
Not meeting his eyes, Bohdi stammers, “I’m sorry.”
Steve doesn’t respond until he’s sitting down on the table. “You’ve got to be more than sorry.”
Bohdi looks up in alarm.
Silhouetted against the cheap fluorescent lights, Steve’s skin looks so dark it is almost flat black. His expression is difficult to read. In low, clipped tones, Steve says, “It is not without precedent for the US government to hire talented pranksters with the idea it’s better you’re with us than against us.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Bohdi feels a weight lifting off his chest.
“But I can’t do that because you’re not even a goddamned citizen,” Steve says.
Bohdi shrinks back in the seat. Shoving his hands in his pockets, his fingers go to his lighter. He begins to nervously play with the thumbwheel.
“What do you want me to do?” Bohdi says.
Without a word, Steve holds out a hand with a Post-It note. Taking it, Bohdi sees an address and phone number on it. “That is the nearest Marine Corps recruitment center,” Steve says. “I’ll hold off the filing of the charges…somehow. If you prove that you are willing to fight and die for this country, I’ll have something to tell the higher ups.”
Bohdi stares at the handwritten scrawl. Die?
Steve exhales sharply. “I’ll have to think of a way to get you out of the Corps later.”
Bohdi looks up.
Steve shakes his head. “You’re brain is too valuable to lose if you get shot.”
Bohdi almost smiles.
“But boot camp may teach you some discipline,” Steve says.
Bohdi fiddles with the corner of the Post-it as Steve says, “Stodgill’s already working on the recruiter to deal with the paperwork that will result from your special situation…”
Bohdi nods at the mention of the legal counsel’s name. He’s needed her help a lot. It seems like you need a social security number for just about everything in this country.
“…all you’ll have to do is show up and sign the papers.”
Blinking up at Steve, Bohdi nods again, hoping he looks sufficiently grateful.
Raising an eyebrow, Steve says, “Just don’t wander off into the desert and die during boot camp. Someone always does that.”
Bohdi’s eyes go wide. Beyond the door, shouts can be heard. Bohdi hears the words “troll” and “new gate.”
Grumbling, Steve slides from the table and heads to the door.
Standing shakily, Bohdi says, “Thank you.”
Steve meets his eyes just before he leaves the room. “My mother would kill me if I let them send you to Gitmo.”
Before Bohdi can respond, Steve’s gone. But he leaves the door open.
Bohdi looks down at the address in his hand. He can picture it. Not the building, but the blue dot on the public transit map he’s memorized that marks the Blue “L” line stop nearby. He takes a shallow breath. What choice does he have?
Crinkling the paper in his hand, he heads toward the door, the nearest “L” station, and the recruitment center.
He almost makes it.
x x x x
Why the University of Illinois Chicago Medical School hasn’t been used for a horror movie’s set Steve will never know. The centuries-old, gothic-style building is a hulking dark form on the downtown’s southwest horizon. It’s the sort of place you’d expect a troll to pop by. Thankfully, the creature was quickly dispatched with goat meat loaded with explosives.
Now Steve is standing in a crumbling archway with other ADUO agents and police, fielding questions from the press, as cameras flash in his eyes.
“Director Rogers, when will the troll sightings stop?” someone asks.
Most likely never. “As yet, that is uncertain,” Steve says.
“Is it certain whether or not you’ll be running for mayor?” someone else asks.
There are shouts and cheers through the press corps.
“What about president?” someone else shouts. “We need you to take on the trolls and wyrms in D.C!”
There are some more cheers and the adoration feels like electricity under his skin. His mind feels sharp and clear; he feels strong and alive. “Uncertain at this time,” he says and the crowd gives a collective “aw” of disappointment, and it just buoys the rush.
Fighting to keep from smiling, he wonders if this is what drugs feel like. Someone else raises a hand, but an obnoxious ringtone that Steve certainly didn’t download begins to blare over his phone.
The moment is over; his jaw ticks. He doesn’t have to look at the ID to know who it is. Giving a quick excuse to the press, he turns and walks back through the arch, clicking to accept.
“Bohdi,” he grinds out. “Tell me you are at the recruitment center.”
“I was almost there,” Bohdi says, sounding a little frantic, “but then I ran into Amy Lewis.”
Steve starts to pace when he hears the name of the girl who had been Loki’s…well, something. “What happened?”
“I was just walking, and I saw her as she fell. I ran over to help. She didn’t have her phone, so I couldn’t call her grandmother…”
“Bohdi, what happened?” Steve snaps.
“We’re at the hospital. She’s having a miscarriage.”
Steve stops mid-stride. He hadn’t realized Amy was pregnant. Had she hidden that tidbit of information fr
om him deliberately?
“Can you call her grandmother?” says Bohdi.
Steve draws his tongue across his teeth. Amy’s grandmother, Beatrice Lewis, is Amy’s only real family.
“Sure,” says Steve, motioning with a hand for Hernandez’s attention. “What hospital are you at?”
Bohdi gives him the hospital name and Steve says, “I’ll be right there.”
“What about her grandmother?” says Bohdi.
“Hanging up right now to call her,” says Steve as he hangs up on Bohdi. He immediately turns to Hernandez. “Get the car started.”
With a nod, Hernandez takes off. Steve stares at his phone. The FBI has been waiting for an opportunity like this. He doesn’t look for Beatrice’s number. Instead he makes another call. After a few short words with the agent at the end of the line, he heads over to the waiting car, smiling and waving for the press as he goes.
A few minutes later, Steve is at the front desk in the ER, holding up his badge. “I’m here to see Amy Lewis. She was brought in about half an hour ago. She was having a miscarriage—”
The nurse behind the counter looks at his badge and her brow furrows. “You’ll have to wait; the doctors are in with her now.”
“This is very important,” says Steve. It’s been only eight weeks since Loki disappeared, and he has no doubt whose baby it is.
“Then maybe you should talk to the father,” snaps the nurse, pointing down a nondescript hallway. “He’s in the waiting room around the corner.”
“The father is here?” Steve says.
“Yes, he—”
Before she can finish, Steve is bolting down the corridor, nearly colliding with an attendant pushing a wheelchair. As he slides around the corner, his hand falls to the Glock at his hip. He almost pulls it out before he remembers it would be useless.
Breathing heavily, he enters the waiting room. Magic detector silent, his eyes scan over the dozen or so people seated there—the only person he recognizes is Bohdi.
Striding over to him, Steve says, “Where is he? Where is Loki?”
Murmurs go up around them. Bohdi glances around. “I don’t know.”
