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

by Craig Schaefer

  “Trust me, at this point, shit’s gonna go down fast. You could call this a point of critical mass.” Dora gunned the engine and stomped on the gas, steering for the open gate in a dead sprint. “Everything’s getting ready to change. Or blow up. Or burn down. In any case, we can’t throw this party without you and your girlfriend.”

  Nessa squeezed the armrest. The VW jolted out onto the street, swerving left and barreling past the empty convoy out front. In the rearview, men were poking their heads out, pointing, running for their cars.

  “Listen to me,” Nessa said. “My knight is dead. I’m dying. Whatever you wanted from me, whatever you had planned—”

  “She’s alive.”

  The words froze on Nessa’s tongue. She stared at Dora. She couldn’t even blink, like she was afraid the slightest movement would shatter the promise of those two tiny words.

  “Your girl’s alive,” Dora said. “She’s out there, on her own, lost, and she needs you. Almost as bad as you need her. My sister can help you out. If you’re on board for this, and if you’re ready to throw down like you never have before. There’s a fight coming, the fight to end all fights, and you’re gonna have to bring every scrap of strength you can muster. It’s going to cost everything you have. And then some. You ready for that?”

  Nessa said the only thing she could say.

  “Let’s go.”

  Four

  Three miles outside town, at the moment Nessa was claiming her first victim of the day, her father-in-law jerked to a stop in the back seat of a stretch Lincoln. Alton leaned against the leather-wrapped armrest, clinging to it like it might slow the gallop of his heartbeat. He had promised his chauffeur a fifty-dollar bonus if he could get them to Carson Airport in ten minutes or less, and the man had delivered in spades.

  “Pay him,” Alton said, giving Calypso a nod. “I’m not carrying any cash.”

  His “campaign manager,” dark as midnight in a tailored linen suit the color of a sandy desert drift, arched one eyebrow.

  “Bad etiquette, baby. You bet he couldn’t make it on time, and you lost. Never expect another man to pay your gambling debts.”

  Alton shoved the door open and staggered out into the harsh, hot light of the desert morning. Calypso let out a barely audible sigh as he dipped his fingers into his breast pocket. He passed a hundred-dollar bill, crisply folded, through the driver’s partition.

  “Keep the change,” Calypso told him.

  He ambled out, following Alton onto the tarmac. The senator’s private jet—a sleek white Dassault Falcon paid for with a mix of lobbyist money and campaign-fund overflow—was fueled up and ready to go. He hadn’t skimped on the décor: the jet’s interior was a span of snowy white with gold trim, seats done up in leather softer than a baby rabbit’s fur, complete with a glass-enclosed minibar stocked with Rémy Martin and eighteen-year-old Glenlivet whiskey.

  He didn’t usually have a stewardess. Not that the woman in the emerald sheath dress, her skirt cut at a sharp angle like a hard-edged jewel, looked like she was part of the crew. She stood in the aisle, tossed her scarlet hair, and looked past Alton like he wasn’t even there, locking eyes with Calypso.

  “We need to talk,” Caitlin said, her voice a cold Scottish burr.

  “Right.” Calypso put his hand on Alton’s shoulder. “Go sit up front. Watch some cartoons. Grown-ups need to have a discussion.”

  Alton wasn’t budging, trapped somewhere between confusion and anger.

  “This is a private plane—”

  Calypso’s hand tightened, hard enough to shut him up.

  “This,” he murmured in Alton’s ear, “is the right hand of the demon prince of the West Coast, baby. We’re on her turf. And when the lady wants to talk, a smart man listens. Go up front. Sit down. Give us a minute.”

  The senator edged around Caitlin, making his way up the aisle. She watched him like an entomologist studying a dead bug. Then she swung her attention back to Calypso. She gestured to a pair of white-leather chairs, facing each other across a small tabletop.

  “Shall we?”

  “You know,” he said, easing himself into the high-backed chair, “when a woman tells me we need to talk, that’s usually the prelude to her walking out the door.”

  She took the other chair and primly folded her legs.

  “I’m not here to give you material for a new song.”

  “Then I’m all aflutter with curiosity.”

  “You invoked the Order of Chainmen,” she said, “and sent them after a pair of mortal women. Vanessa Roth and Marie Reinhart.”

  “I know, I know, I should have given you a courtesy call before they started tromping on your turf.” He held up his open hands, placating her. “But it’s infernal law, baby: the Chainmen hunt where they want to hunt. They don’t have to respect princely jurisdiction. Plus, I’ve got Nyx heading up the particulars. Girl’s a wild child, and not generally inclined to report in at regular intervals.”

  “I don’t care about the hunt or the hunted. I’m more concerned with the side effects. Nyx and her people attacked the Bast Club in Chicago.”

  “Chicago ain’t your problem, last time I looked at a map.”

  “Daniel, my human paramour, decided—for reasons beyond me, just like most of the things he does—to involve himself. He spirited Vanessa and Marie out of the club, right under Nyx’s nose. You see the problem.”

  Calypso’s manicured fingernails drummed on the lacquered table.

  “Infernal law,” he mused. “You interfere with the hunt, you join the hunt. On the wrong side. Your boy just brought a heap of trouble on his head. Until the job’s done, he’s any demon’s meat.”

  Motes of copper gleamed in Caitlin’s irises, swirling like burning ash on a hot desert wind.

  “Which makes my problem,” she said, “your problem. Because you and I both know that those women did nothing to invoke the Chainmen’s wrath. According to every record I could dig up, every avenue of information, they never even met one of our kind before the night we started hounding them. How did you do it?”

  Calypso shrugged. He glanced down, like he could escape her unblinking stare. “Been around as long as I have, people take your word for solid credit. Told ’em Vanessa had a contract with me and broke the deal, and Marie helped her run. That and a bankroll was all it took to get the ball rolling.”

  “You lied. You lied to the Order and filed a false writ.”

  His gaze dropped lower, down to his lap.

  “You don’t know what’s at stake here.”

  “My lover’s life,” Caitlin replied. “Nyx already wants Daniel dead. Now she has an ironclad excuse to kill him. The law is the law. I can’t stop her. I can’t even retaliate. The only thing that can stay her hand is the end of the contract.”

  His nails rapped the table, sharp. He found some scrap of strength and used it to lift his chin, looking her in the eyes.

  “I need those women dead and buried. So yes, I called in the Order. Face it, when it comes to putting people in the ground, they work faster than rat poison in your martini.”

  “Why?” Caitlin shot a hard look over her shoulder. Alton was on his phone, hunched low, muttering orders. “For Alton’s petty little revenge? You know the consequences of filing a false writ. Why would you risk yourself like that?”

  Calypso snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Hell with his revenge. His son was a disaster waiting to happen; if Vanessa and Marie hadn’t done him in, I would have killed the boy myself sooner or later. That’s not the revenge I’m worried about.”

  “The women. They’re gunning for Alton’s head.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Caitlin pursed her scarlet lips, thinking it over.

  “In a heartbeat,” she said. “Have you considered giving it to them?”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?” She dropped her voice, leaning toward the table. “This entire situation is spiraling out of control. How long ha
ve we known each other?”

  “Centuries,” Calypso said.

  “Centuries. And you were right, that night on the Chrysler Building: something is happening here. Something profound. History is about to change, change in a way we have never seen before, and it’s far too late to stop it. The dominoes are falling, faster and faster. Stand in the way, you’re going to get crushed.”

  “I’m just asking for a little more time.”

  “You’re asking me to choose between our friendship and Daniel’s life,” Caitlin said. “Don’t put me on that spot. You may not like the outcome.”

  Calypso jabbed a finger at Alton, on the far end of the motionless plane. “I banked everything on getting that man into the White House. Everything. I’m a bargainer, baby, this is what I do. You can’t pull a bigger coup than this. Come Election Day, I’ll be legendary. And to do that, I’ve got to keep him safe, sound, and scandal-free.”

  “You’re already legendary in my book. And to be fair, Alton was already a politician when he sold you his soul.”

  “A failing one. Without me, he’d be lucky to be elected city dogcatcher at this point. But I have to take him all the way. If I don’t, I’ll be a laughingstock. All my credit, all my wins, all the stories about the Man of the Crossroads…gone.” He waved a hand like he was shooing away a fly. “Just gone. I’ll be busted, broke, and back at ground zero like a fledgling. A nobody. I’m too old to be a nobody.”

  “So you’ll chase your pride straight off a cliff,” Caitlin said.

  “I just need a little more time. I can still pull off a win and get your boy off the hook, trust me. It’ll make the story even better in the end.” He paused, glancing out the porthole window. “People don’t get it, what we’re all about. It’s not about conning mortals out of their souls. Hell, if I was about quantity, I’d just hang out a shingle on Fifth Avenue. So many humans chasing that next hit, that next high—money, sex, power—I could reap a dozen by lunchtime.”

  “It’s about the legend,” Caitlin said.

  “Everybody knows the story about how Johnny bet his soul for a fiddle made of gold, and played the devil down. Fables. Legends, the kind that mortals never forget.”

  Caitlin held up a finger tipped with a blood-red nail. “Ah. A battle you lost, I recall.”

  “A battle I threw, and everybody downstairs knew it.” Calypso flashed a smile. “Not remotely the same thing. That boy couldn’t play the fiddle worth a good goddamn. See, nobody remembers the facts. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. How about Robert Johnson? Gave the world the Delta blues, a gift for all mankind. And what does the folklore say? Not that he was a natural talent or that he practiced until his fingers bled, no. They paint him as an artist who wanted the music so badly, needed it, aching with every beat of his heart, that he went down to the crossroads at midnight and struck himself a deal.”

  Caitlin didn’t reply. She stared at him, her inhuman eyes still glittering, as if she could see down to the core of his being.

  “What?” he said.

  “I know you,” she said. “There’s a chip in your armor. A hitch in that old, polished swagger. You’re trying to sell yourself on a bargain you don’t entirely believe in. And I suspect I know what’s worrying you.”

  “There’s a legend unfolding before our very eyes,” he said.

  Caitlin nodded back over her shoulder, to the man with the blue suit and the American flag lapel pin.

  “Not his,” she said.

  “I’m used to being the star of the show,” Calypso said. “And I’m feeling, more and more with every passing hour, like a bit player. I saw something when I met Vanessa Roth. Something I couldn’t define, couldn’t understand. Something telling me I’d best get on the right side of this story. And now it’s too damn late.”

  “How’s that?” Caitlin asked.

  He slid his jacket sleeve back and glanced at the golden watch on his wrist.

  “Because right about now, I expect whatever’s left of her is being buried out in the desert. The last domino fell this morning, baby, and it’s shaped just like a tombstone.”

  Alton pushed up from his seat, ambling down the aisle toward them with his phone pressed to his cheek.

  “Just…keep me updated,” he snapped, then hung up. He shot a glare at Calypso. “I thought these people you hired were professionals.”

  “You may stand corrected,” Caitlin murmured.

  “That was the mayor’s office on the phone. Your shooters turned a block of federal property into Swiss cheese, and Vanessa just walked out right under their noses,” Alton said. “No sign of her, no body. Actually, no, plenty of bodies, just none of them hers.”

  “I should be going.” Caitlin rose gracefully from the white leather chair and looked to Calypso. “Still time to change your mind. Don’t squander it. By the by…just Vanessa? What about Marie?”

  Alton scowled. “Dead, according to Vanessa. Good riddance.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” Caitlin glanced between them. “No hunter’s staked a claim, demanded their pay for taking her down?”

  Calypso sank deeper into his chair. He steepled his fingers like a chess player pondering his next move.

  “It’s a combination contract. You take both their heads, or you get nothing.” He frowned at the table. “And no hunter would bag one of them without making damn sure they were in a position to claim the other. We would have heard somebody bragging about it by now, at the least.”

  “You think Vanessa’s lying?” Caitlin asked.

  “I think,” Calypso said, “the fate of this whole shindig hinges on one very important question: dead or alive, where is Marie Reinhart?”

  Five

  Miami—or at least the bizarre looking-glass Miami that Marie had found herself in, jettisoned across space and time in a shattered suit of armor—woke from the top on down. The first rays of dawn struggled to touch ground. They pushed broad gossamer fingers through a canopy of ash and bilious brown haze, the sun nothing but a pale smear of light rising above the impossibly tall skyscrapers. The spaghetti-soup tangle of the aerial roadways, suspended fifty stories above her head, painted the streets below in a twisted mask of shadows.

  Marie had spent the night slumped in the doorway of a liquor store, shoulder pressed to a graffiti-shrouded metal shutter, her back against crumbling stone. The sound of trucks and cars rumbling high above stirred her from what little sleep she’d been able to snatch, a couple hours’ reprieve at best. It was starting to rain. The sparse droplets felt hot and oily against her skin, leaving specks of wet soot behind, and an electric ozone stench clung to the humid air.

  Her stomach was growling, but that was the least of her problems right now. Her armor, invented by this world’s version of Ezra Talon, was a smoking, sparking ruin she’d abandoned in an alley four blocks away. The “return fail-safe” was just that: a one-way trip back to the suit’s origin point, a world she’d never seen before.

  Not in this lifetime anyway.

  But she’d been here. The bum who took one look at her face and ran in a blind panic told her that much. So did the statue she’d found on the next block, a larger-than-life shrine in towering bronze depicting a woman with her face. An inscription laid down the law in stark, bold words:

  Even in Death, She Watches Over You.

  Even in Death, She Watches You.

  OBEY.

  Priority one, above getting her bearings, above filling her empty stomach and finding some painkillers for her stinging ribs and throbbing head, was getting out of sight. Whatever she’d done, whoever—whatever—she was to these people, she couldn’t show her face in public. Marie pushed herself to her feet, biting back a fresh lance of pain that hit her chest like a whip. Her final battle with Scottie Pierce, or the ink-mutated monster Savannah Cross had turned him into, had left her with fresh cracks along her rib cage, a swarm of pulled muscles that jabbed at her like hornet stings with every move she made, and a tapestry of oil-paint bruises that smeared
her skin from her breastbone to her left hip. Right now, just walking in a straight line was a challenge. She gritted her teeth and made it work.

  At least Scottie was dead, one less threat to worry about. She couldn’t say the same for Savannah. There was a good chance the mad sorcerer-scientist had drowned in the wreckage of Deep Six, but until she saw a corpse with her own eyes, Marie didn’t dare count on it.

  The canvas tote bag, covered in tiny craft mirrors and enchanted by Nessa’s hand, still dangled at Marie’s shoulder. It had accompanied her across two worlds now, unseen. That was the magic her lover had laid upon it: to go invisible and unnoticed. Marie took a quick inventory. She had Nessa’s spell book—worthless to her, even if she hadn’t discovered how dangerous the trapped text really was—and the ornate copper bell they’d taken from the cathedral beneath Deep Six, along with the sapphire shackles that had bound its dead guardian’s wrists. Nothing she could use, nothing she needed. It just made her think of Nessa’s face and feel a fresh ache, deeper than flesh and bone.

  Nessa had made it out. Marie saw her there at the portal arch, arm stretched out, hand reaching for her—until the window shattered and the cold alien ocean swept Marie out into the dark, drowning her hopes. But Nessa had made it out. That, she could count on. Marie cupped the thought in her hand, like it was a glowing ember of warmth, and pressed it to the bruises over her heart.

  “Out” didn’t mean “safe.” There were still hunters, human and inhuman, hot on their trail, and they wouldn’t stop. And Nessa’s life was still an hourglass with its sand almost gone. If Marie didn’t make it back to their world in time…

  She felt the hands of despair wrapping around her ankles like ropes tethered to wet sandbags, dragging at her every step. Her resolve was a sword. She sliced through the ropes with a single sharp thought: no. She’d come too far, fought too hard, to fail now.