Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3)

by Craig Schaefer

  Harmony’s partner passed her, pacing in the opposite direction, fingers poking at her phone.

  “It’s already on YouTube and half a dozen UFO sites,” Jessie said. “Footage going viral in three, two—yep, here we go. Think we should start issuing takedown notices?”

  Harmony stopped pacing. She tapped at her forehead.

  “No. No, if people start thinking the government wants the footage erased, that’ll make it ten times worse. We go the opposite direction. Ride the momentum.” Harmony looked up to the speakers. “Kevin, call off the dogs. No squash orders, formal or informal. Let it play.”

  “You sure?” the voice asked.

  “Buy up a website, brooms-don’t-fly-dot-com or something. Make it look like a professional skeptic’s site and tear that footage apart frame by frame. Show every possible way it could have been staged. Get it online, get it trending, spread it to the media, and by tonight I want seven or eight more websites parroting the same information but reading like different people wrote them and came to the same conclusion on their own. Spam it across skeptic and believer web forums, too, under at least a dozen different accounts. Can you handle that?”

  “You got it, boss. One disinfo campaign coming right up. If you need me, I’ll be down on the troll farm.”

  Harmony turned toward the main console. April sat in her wheelchair, the Irish woman’s eyes sharp behind her steel-rimmed bifocals as her thin hands caressed the keys. On the wide map screen above her, a curving parabola in yellow light traced a line from Pyramid Lake. A cup of tea, cold and untouched, rested at her side.

  “We need to know where Vanessa Roth is headed,” Harmony said. “Doctor?”

  “I’m building a trajectory model by pinpointing every sighting thus far,” April replied. “Won’t take long. She’s not exactly being subtle.”

  Jessie stood at Harmony’s shoulder and lowered her voice. “This is a problem, and beyond the obvious one. Vanessa is alone. Only one reason she’d leave Marie behind.”

  Harmony stared up at the map screen, watching the flight path as it arced downward, across the desert.

  “Marie Reinhart is dead. Which makes Roth a ticking time bomb. More than she already was.”

  The overhead speakers trilled.

  “Agent Black?” asked a nasal voice. “Operator from Pennsylvania Avenue, section four. We have an urgent call incoming from SAC Brannon, authorized under a one-four-three. Should I put her through?”

  “Do it.” She paused as the speakers clicked. “Special Agent Brannon? This is Harmony Black.”

  “Good to hear your voice,” said the older woman on the line. “I don’t know if you remember me. We liaised last year, during that attempted bombing on the Vegas Strip.”

  “Of course,” Harmony said. “What can we do for you?”

  “I wish I could tell you. We have a situation here, and it’s…strange.”

  Bars of light flickered on the map screen as April attempted different combinations, trying to connect Nessa’s trajectory to Las Vegas. She looked back over her shoulder and shook her head. That wasn’t the witch’s target.

  “Strange in what way?” Harmony asked.

  “My office handles all Bureau activity in the state of Nevada. I’ve just been contacted by the Carson City mayor’s office to verify a call they received about a planned CIRG group exercise at the Carson City Federal Building. Said there was going to be a simulated terrorist attack for training purposes, and they were asked to keep police and emergency workers clear from the area.”

  “Not the first time. When is it scheduled for?”

  “This morning,” Brannon said. “ASAP.”

  Another curving yellow line flickered up on the screen and locked into place. April gave a thumbs-up from her wheelchair. Nessa was headed for Carson City.

  “That’s…short notice for a major training exercise,” Harmony said. “The Critical Incident Response Group normally gives at least a month’s warning.”

  “Exactly. And nobody contacted me about it, either. So I reached out to the CIRG offices over in DC for confirmation. Next thing I know I’ve got some mid-level flack from the DOD on one line and Senator Cheng from Ohio on the other, neither of which have any reason to call me, let alone know I exist, and they’re both telling me to call you, pronto. You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  April was one step ahead of Harmony’s racing thoughts. A side monitor flashed, switching from a tactical map to a listing of the occupants of the federal building. The third entry down strobed, lit in a bar of lime-green light. Senator Alton Roth rented an office there.

  “Keep everyone clear,” Harmony said. “Everyone. Police, EMS, your people. Treat that building like it’s radioactive until I say otherwise.”

  “So you’re…confirming that this is a tactical exercise?” Brannon asked.

  “I’m confirming that you need to stay clear, on my authority.”

  “Last I checked, Agent,” Brannon said, “I outrank you.”

  Harmony clasped her hands behind her back. April was still racing ahead; on a third monitor, she pulled up a flight plan, filed with the FAA eight minutes ago. Alton’s private jet was being fueled up for a last-minute trip back to Washington.

  “Ma’am, I believe you recall a number of…inconsistencies in Bureau operating procedure the last time we crossed paths. Inconsistencies you were later contacted about by your own superiors and encouraged not to include in your official reports, for the well-being of your career.”

  Brannon held her silence for a moment before she replied. “I do.”

  “I believe you were also assured that you would be insulated from any negative fallout, as a result of your cooperation.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You will be insulated,” Harmony said. “Keep the area clear. I’ll be back in touch shortly.”

  They broke the connection. April pulled on her wheels and swiveled her chair around.

  “Senator Roth is her target,” April said. “But he saw her coming. He issued the bogus ‘training exercise’ order, and now he’s fleeing the city.”

  Jessie squinted up at the screen, watching the slowly bending line of light trace Nessa’s flight path.

  “Only one reason to do that. Calypso, the senator’s personal demonic genie, is calling in the heavy reinforcements. Alton won’t be there when she arrives, but his shooters will be.”

  “Damn it.” Harmony went back to pacing. Her migraine spiked like an ice pick behind her left eye as the cargo jet’s floor shuddered beneath her, riding hard on the storm. “We’re too far, we’ll never make it in time. Do we have anyone in the area?”

  April turned back to the console and typed fast. She shook her head. “Nearest team is on a mission in Sacramento. It’ll be at least two hours before we can get them geared up and on the scene.”

  “It’ll be over by then.”

  Harmony walked up to the tactical map. The screen cast her upturned face in glowing, shifting geometries of light.

  “Vanessa Roth is flying right into an ambush. And she’s on her own.”

  Two

  The Carson City Federal Building was a long, tall slab of beige stone and tinted rectangular glass. It had been a post office once, before its conversion into rented office space. This morning, with the sun rising in the arid desert sky, shadows painting the city in shades of dusty turquoise as the sky came to life, it wasn’t anything at all: the parking lot stood empty, save for a few lonely cars scattered here and there, abandoned since the night before.

  Nessa came in for a landing. The broomstick swooped down above the building’s facade, arcing like a child’s swing, and yanked to a sudden stop. She hopped down, her buckled shoes landing gracefully on the pebbled rooftop. She stared out over the edge of the roof, one pale hand cupped over her eyes to cut the sun’s glare, and frowned.

  There should have been people here by now. Office workers, maintenance people, upturned faces along the broad walkway below to
witness her arrival. She didn’t need an audience for what she had planned, but she didn’t like being denied one.

  The building had been evacuated before her arrival, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. After all, Daniel Faust had been adamant about the need to keep magic a secret from the slumbering world. A rule she no longer cared about, if she ever had, but Alton still thought he could survive this. And if his pet demon was planning to flex his muscles in Alton’s defense, he’d want to do it outside the public eye.

  An access stairwell stood at the edge of the roof, with a locked door barring her way. Nessa twirled her fingers and produced an antique skeleton key. It felt like a lifetime ago, back in Manhattan, when she’d just awakened to her true nature. She’d found the long, heavy key at an antique shop and enchanted it in her workroom, a tool to gain access to her traitorous psychiatrist’s private office. It had served her well then, and now it would help her to put a second traitor in his rightful grave.

  She pressed the key to the lock, cold antique iron bumping against modern stainless steel. Now, as it did then, the words of the incantation rose freely to her lips, driven on a spear of raw willpower.

  “No man’s design will bar my path. No locks, no wards, no hopes, no dreams. I am the night wind.”

  Wispy clouds slid across the rising sun, casting the rooftop in a long, slanting patch of shadow.

  “I am inevitable consequence,” Nessa whispered, “and I will not be denied.”

  The steel of the lock ran like hot mercury, melting aside as the skeleton key slowly, impossibly, slid inside for a perfect fit. She gave it a twist and the lock clicked. The door swung wide. She strolled down the stairs, down to the top floor of the office building, looking for her father-in-law. Thanks to the occult disease in her veins, her hourglass was running low. Alton’s, on the other hand, had just run out.

  * * *

  Nessa wasn’t the only hunter in Carson City.

  A spotter, watching with binoculars from a distant rooftop, saw her land and gave the signal. They rolled in heavy, a mismatched convoy of vans, SUVs, and pickup trucks, anything they could scrounge or steal at short notice, pulling up against the concrete bollards that lined the pedestrian walkway. Doors swung open, trunks popped, and combat boots hit the ground running. They formed packs, some charging the main entrance while others circled around the building, cutting off every exit.

  Some of the men were human, urban mercenaries with prison ink who would pull the trigger on anyone for a buck, called in on a last-second contract they were promised would be easy money. Cannon fodder. The other hunters, the ones with eyes that ran like rancid egg yolk and bruise-blotched fingernails, hung back and moved with caution. They knew what they were up against. Or they thought they did.

  In a parked minivan, a woman in black leather, her platinum-blond hair coiled in an elaborate, waist-length braid, leaned back in her seat. She watched the action unfold, pensive, her eyes shrouded behind jet-black Wayfarers. One of her men paused. He glanced back at her as he jumped down onto the sidewalk.

  “Ma’am? Are you coming?”

  Nyx’s fingers stroked the collar of her biker’s jacket, the slick leather clinging to her bare skin. Just above the valley of her breasts, under a dangling zipper, purple veins spread like shock waves from an impact crater and offered a hint of the concealed horrors below. Damage she was still healing one agonizing quarter-inch at a time. She’d taken eight high-velocity rounds, shells designed to plow through engine blocks and turn armor to confetti, straight to the chest and belly. The last crumpled slug had wormed its way out of her intestines, shredded tissue mending itself in its wake, just before dawn.

  “This one will supervise from here,” she said. “When you capture our prey…this one will join you inside for a chat.”

  Calypso had called her an hour ago. She’d never heard the bargaining demon’s voice on the verge of panic before. It was a pleasant sensation, but Nyx only had one question for him: she wanted the cop, the one who had shot her. Calypso didn’t know where Reinhart was, but he knew who would. Vanessa Roth. And once she was in Nyx’s hands, her skin peeling one slow and ragged strip at a time, Vanessa would tell her anything she wanted to know.

  * * *

  Alton wasn’t here. Neither was his demon. The senator’s rented offices, on the third floor, stood empty, papers scattered and a cardboard cup of coffee—still warm against Nessa’s fingertips—left abandoned on a receptionist’s desk.

  “Coward,” she hissed under her breath. Fine. He couldn’t have gotten far. She strode into his office and paged through his desk calendar, looking for a lead.

  Sudden movement and the muffled sound of squealing tires drew her attention. She glanced out the window and saw the convoy pull up, the mob of hired guns rushing the doors, men circling the building to cut off the exits and pen her in. Alton had called his friends for help.

  “Oh no, we’re trapped.” Nessa rolled her eyes. “Honestly, as if they didn’t just see us literally fly in on a broomstick. What do you think, Marie? Should we—”

  The words died on her lips. So did the ghost of her lover. She could have sworn Marie had just been standing beside her. She’d caught her outline in the corner of her eye. Now she stared at an empty doorway.

  She was alone.

  She took a deep breath and it felt like she had broken glass under her skin. It shifted, filling her lungs with cutting shards as she curled her hands into fists and stalked out of Alton’s office.

  For just a moment, she thought she could invite the delusion back in. She could escape the agony of grief, wrap herself in the comfort of madness, if she just believed hard enough. She pictured Marie’s face, her smile, the warm soft feeling of her hand.

  “What do you think?” she asked out loud. “Shall we face them together?”

  No. Madness rejected her courtship, and even her hallucinations had abandoned her. She was always alone in the end.

  Down in the parking lot, one of the vehicles hadn’t been completely abandoned. Nessa’s eyes narrowed to slits as she gazed out the hallway window, down at the woman in the back seat. Nyx seemed to sense her. She looked up.

  “I came for Alton,” Nessa said. Her voice was a razor-thin whisper, but she had a feeling Nyx could hear every word. “But I’m starting with you. You and your hired help. We’ll call it an appetizer. A little taste of things to come, so that the entire world can see what happens to people who cross me. I’m going to make an example of you. It’s going to be a very long morning. Very red. Very wet.”

  She was practically a blur at this distance, but there was no missing the mocking, shark-fanged smile that split Nyx’s face in half. Or the slow beckoning of her flame-blackened fingernails.

  “I’ll be down in just a minute,” Nessa told her.

  Dark, fluttering wings beat against her breastbone and wove a magic spell. Alchemy. Transforming her loss, her grief, her pain, into a lit-gasoline trail of rage. She had enough pain to share, to spread to the entire world.

  If Marie was dead, then so was Nessa. What remained was the Owl. A creature of perfect cunning and perfect hate.

  And the Owl wanted to hunt.

  * * *

  Deshawn was a triggerman out of Reno. He worked two or three times a year. Most of his targets were cheating spouses, or ones that were just too much trouble to divorce. He’d make the kill look like an accident—he was good at accidents—and split the insurance payout with the happy client. It was a decent life. Still, he knew there were better opportunities out there. Bigger targets, bigger paydays.

  He’d gotten the call-up to the big leagues just before dawn, the trill of his phone hauling him out of a whiskey coma. He wrestled off his hangover and downed a lukewarm bottle of water while this guy, a bartender who kicked referrals his way now and then, gave him the good news.

  “Get your shit and get down to Carson City pronto. This client’s got me calling all the local talent I can muster up. There’s a target on the move with a
very small window of opportunity—as in, this has to get wrapped up before lunchtime—and the early bird definitely gets the worm.”

  Now he was bracing his steel in a two-hand grip, rounding the third-floor stairwell with cold sweat on his face, and feeling for the first time in his life like he might be on the wrong side of history. The nameless loser-to-be in the kind of battle where historians only talked about the winners.

  “Just put my mind at ease, man,” he said softly. “Tell me what I just saw out there in the parking lot, because I know I did not see some bitch riding a motherfucking broom.”

  His partner of the moment was a tight-lipped man with a beetle brow and a Desert Eagle. The gun was bigger than he was, and it swung in his grip like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. He spat a curse under his breath.

  “You’re not even a member of the Order, are you? Local talent. Great. These assholes are trying to get me killed. You screw up one job—”

  “Hey,” Deshawn said. “Hey. Talk to me. What is this?”

  They emerged onto the landing. The third-floor hallway was a silent stretch of doorways, half shut and dark beyond the pebbled glass, half yawning open on either side of the gauntlet ahead of them. Corkboards and nameplates decorated the drab beige walls. Beetle-Brow slowed his footing, careful now, eyes faster than his feet as he scanned for threats.

  “Target’s a witch,” he whispered.

  “This a joke? Y’all are pranking me, right?”

  “Target’s a witch,” Beetle-Brow repeated. “She’s not immortal. One bullet to the head, two to center mass, she goes down like anybody else. We get the drop on her, we live. She gets the drop on us, we die. Simple as that.”

  “Agreed,” said the voice at their backs.

  Deshawn spun around just in time to meet a gust of glittering, sandy dust. It scorched like he’d rubbed his face, with eyes wide open, against a roll of insulation. His eyes teared up, blinking fast, and he tried to squeeze the trigger on the blurry outline of a woman in black—but his finger wouldn’t obey him. Beetle-Brow was down on the ground, his legs kicking, the rest of him motionless as a rock.