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

by Craig Schaefer

  Daniel snarled and flicked his wrist. A vintage stage magician’s wand, concealed in a spring-release sheath, dropped from his sleeve and into his curled fingers. A fresh deck of cards riffled in a stream from his breast pocket, landing in his other hand.

  “Canton’s Multiplication,” he snapped. “Now.”

  He twirled the antique wand and the cards flew. They billowed from his grip, fifty-two, then a hundred, then two hundred and more, pasteboard dancing in an impossible whirlwind. They swept out like a sandstorm. Nessa threw a hand in front of her eyes as they continued to multiply, the storm growing and blotting out the world.

  The shooters were blind now, spraying bullets in all directions, screams and gunfire ringing out over the fluttering cards. Daniel’s hand closed over Nessa’s. Her fingers curled around Hedy’s and he gave her a tug, leading them into the maelstrom.

  “What happened to ‘no magic’?” Nessa called out over the din.

  “Sue me,” Daniel shouted back over his shoulder. “I like breathing more than I like being right. Let’s grab Carolyn and get the fuck out of here.”

  * * *

  Carolyn and Badger dropped to the laminate floor when the shooting broke out, just like everyone else in the bar. Then the card-storm erupted, a whirling sphere that blotted out half the casino floor. Carolyn cupped her hands over her head as a wild burst strafed across the shelves, bottles erupting and glass raining down in a razor-edged waterfall. They waded upstream together, battling the human stampede going in the opposite direction. On their left, the lobby was jammed with tourists, squeezed shoulder to shoulder and fighting their way through the smoked-glass doors. Carolyn watched a man fall with a bullet in his spine, bleeding out at the carpet’s edge, groaning as panicked escapees trampled him under their feet.

  Daniel, Nessa, and Hedy burst from the storm, the shooters lost somewhere in the blurry cyclone behind them. Daniel waved to Carolyn and pointed across the casino to a softly glowing marquee on the far side of a forest of green felt tables.

  “Meet us over at Frankie’s,” Daniel called out. “We’re going out through the kitchen!”

  They wound their way through the chaos, past bullet-riddled tables and overturned stools, tourists huddling behind the walls of slot machines with their heads down and hands cupped over their ears. The enchantment broke, cards forgetting how to fly and splashing across the blood-soaked carpet in a tidal wave.

  Badger looked back. He put his hand on Carolyn’s shoulder, shoved her down, started to shout something. She never found out what his last words were going to be. Three rounds from Nyx’s rifle raked across his chest. The bullets slammed him back against a slot machine as it shorted out, and he left a slug trail of blood, crumpling to the floor. Another burst was meant for Carolyn, but it went high as she stumbled off-balance. The rounds blew out the faces of a row of slots and showered her in broken glass and electric sparks. She fell to her hands and knees. The ruptured machines spat plumes of acrid gray smoke.

  She scrambled on all fours, staying low, trying to keep her bearings in the maze of corpses and trilling machines. She crawled around a roulette table and saw Daniel at the edge of Frankie’s Steakhouse, back to the wall at the restaurant archway’s edge and brandishing a revolver. Fifteen feet of open ground marked the distance between them, and two dead tourists decorated the carpet in the middle of no-man’s-land. Daniel spotted her and held out his free hand.

  “C’mon, I’ll cover you,” he shouted. He leaned out of cover and opened fire as Carolyn broke into a stumbling sprint, her back screaming and knees aching, digging for her last reserves of strength.

  * * *

  Daniel emptied his revolver as Carolyn raced toward the restaurant’s arch. One of Nyx’s shooters caught a bullet in the lung and went down choking on his own blood. That was enough to encourage the others to dive for cover, at least for a second or two. Only Nyx still stood in the open. She turned, almost casual as she raised her rifle to the glistening shoulder of her leather jacket and took careful aim.

  So did he. His last bullet punched into her kneecap.

  Her leg twisted and she went down, muzzle flashing, firing a burst into the casino ceiling as she fell. She dropped the rifle and clutched her knee, howling between gritted teeth. Carolyn sprinted across the last few feet of open floor. Daniel reached out, grabbed her hand, and hauled her into cover.

  The crumpled bullet was already squirming its way out of Nyx’s body, flesh and bone reknitting itself under her torn leathers. She clamped her hands over the wound and screeched, a feral wail of frustration and pain.

  The steakhouse was abandoned. A couple of white-shrouded tables had been flipped as a makeshift barricade near the exit. A puddle of red streaked the hardwood floor next to a shattered bottle of wine. Daniel pointed to the swinging door on the far side of the restaurant.

  “Let’s go, before they rally. Everybody in one piece?”

  Hedy looked to Carolyn, then over her shoulder, blinking. “Where’s Badger? He was with you, wasn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry,” Carolyn told her.

  That was all she needed to say. Nessa watched the light behind Hedy’s eyes flicker and die as the reality set in. Another one of her students was gone. From the moment she’d gone to war with the Sisters of the Noose, to their escape from Mirenze, to now, Hedy had watched over half of her coven die. Nessa reached out. Her fingertips rested on Hedy’s arm.

  “I never would have gotten you involved in any of this—”

  “But someone did. Someone made sure we got involved. And there’s only one reply when someone sheds our family’s blood.”

  Hedy turned away.

  “You taught me that,” she told Nessa.

  “Hey,” Daniel said, “I’m out of ammo, and in about five seconds they’re going to figure that out. We gotta go.”

  Nessa brandished Clytemnestra. The hilt of the Cutting Knife tingled, electric, in her grip. She led the way, shoving through the swinging door and into the kitchen, toward whatever was waiting for them.

  Twenty-Two

  Daniel had told them to wait three minutes. It felt like an eternity. Tony eyed his watch, the seconds draining down. Then he punched the elevator call button. He and Janine herded Gazelle and the rest of the coven on board, then took up stations in front as the door quietly slid shut.

  “Seriously.” Tony nodded to Janine’s shotgun. “Do you know how to use that thing?”

  “My grandpa has a place in Vermont, used to spend every summer there as a kid. Mostly skeet shooting.”

  “Clay pigeons don’t shoot back,” he said.

  Janine kept the muzzle low and her eyes high, watching the floors count down.

  The elevator opened onto a battleground. Fallen cards and corpses littered the tropical carpet. Janine’s first step sank into wet fabric, and the air reeked with a coppery stench. Tony held a finger to his lips for silence, took three quick steps ahead, and waved for everyone else to follow.

  Nyx and her men—one of them down and writhing, hands pressed to a chest wound and blood leaking between his fingers—held their ground in the heart of the casino. They had their eyes and their barrels trained on the steakhouse on the far side of the floor and hadn’t noticed the new arrivals.

  Janine raised her shotgun and took aim at Nyx’s back. Tony put a hand on the barrel, gently pushed it down, and shook his head. He pointed in the other direction. An overhead sign showed the way to the parking garage.

  They crouched and moved fast, picking their way through the wasteland of fallen, scarlet-spattered cards and the bodies of the victims, innocent gamblers whose vacation had become a lethal nightmare with no warning. Janine wiped at her face, her eyes suddenly stinging.

  The pack made their way down a long, carpeted ramp, untouched by the carnage. Tony broke into a jog, leading the way to the sliding glass doors at the corridor’s end, and the others followed in his wake. The doors whisked open and the night air gusted in. Hot, tinged with the smell o
f gasoline, it carried the sound of thunder and torrential rain.

  They emerged onto the parking deck. With concrete under their feet and above their heads, the open sides of the garage were blotted out by darkness and the storm. The rain echoed against the deck and thrummed down like the echo of war drums. It washed in on gusts of sultry wind, painting the far edges of the yellow-striped concrete and the silent cars left behind.

  “Okay,” Tony said. “I think we’re clear. We’ll go down, get to the sidewalk, and we’ll be home free.”

  Someone was coming, jogging up the ramp, looking like a tourist until Janine caught the glint of gunmetal in his hand. She shouted a warning and crouched behind a parked pickup truck as his first shots cracked overhead, swallowed by a peal of thunder. Tony answered with two rounds from his pistol, cool and quick. One chewed into concrete and the other landed home, carving into the shooter’s guts. He squealed and fell back, bracing himself against a pillar, still in the fight.

  He wasn’t alone. A bullet plowed into the pickup’s side mirror, blasting it into a twist of ruptured metal. Janine spotted movement in a jagged fragment of glass: the shooter’s partner was hunkered down behind a sedan about twenty feet to their right.

  Gazelle was next to her, eyes wide as she clutched her new weapon to her chest. She leaned out from cover, held the Glock in an uncertain grip, and opened fire. Her shells stitched a line along the side of the sedan, opening potholes in the dusty steel, and her last bullet blew out a window before the gun clicked empty.

  “Changed my mind,” she said. “Hand cannons are good, but swords are better.”

  “You have to practice,” Janine said.

  She rose up at the same time Tony did. His next two shots caught the first shooter in the chest and crumpled him to the concrete. His partner sprang out of hiding, rifle high, but Janine already had him in her sights. She squeezed the trigger. The shotgun’s roar rivaled the thunder as it kicked like a jackhammer against her shoulder, and what was left of the gunman slumped over the trunk of the sedan.

  She stared, frozen, at the corpse. It slowly slid, tumbled over the bumper and down to the yellow-striped concrete. Tony was right. Clay pigeons didn’t shoot back. They also didn’t bleed. They weren’t men who had names, lives, a history, all erased with one pull of the trigger.

  Tony put his hand on her shoulder. He was talking. She hadn’t heard him.

  “I said, can you hold it together until we get out of here?”

  Janine’s grip tightened on the shotgun. She wanted to throw it away, as hard as she could. Her rational mind knew better. She nodded, and the gesture sent a tremble down through her body.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said, “what you’re feeling right now? That’s how it’s supposed to feel. C’mon, let’s go.”

  * * *

  Nessa’s hip slammed the stainless-steel island as she jumped back, a butcher’s blade catching the overhead lights and slashing the air in front of her eyes. She’d taken the lead, a charge through the abandoned steakhouse kitchen. The back door almost hit her as it flew open and Nyx’s backup barged in from the opposite direction.

  His gun was down on the stark white tile, fallen in a scarlet puddle. Nessa’s knife had been quicker than his trigger finger, and she stole a heartbeat of surprise, using it to carve his wrist open to the tendons. He had dropped the pistol, thrown a punch with his good hand that cracked against her cheek and sent her reeling, and snatched up a knife of his own from a block at the counter’s edge.

  She swung high. He ducked, jabbed, and a lance of white-hot pain shot through Nessa’s hip. Her fury, her grief for her daughter’s loss—so many losses, so many of them because she had blundered into Hedy’s life—all mingled with the agony of the wound and threatened to send her spiraling out of control. She felt her magic seethe inside of her, a boiling cauldron under a trembling lid.

  She feinted, slashing at him then pulling back, and moving with him as he dodged. Her free hand clamped down on the hunter’s face.

  She couldn’t let it all out, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t dispense a little taste.

  The craft surged through her, down her arm and along her clenched fingers, hate-fueled power coursing over him. He stumbled back. The knife fell from his hands, clattering to the tile. He grabbed his face as his eyes went wide with horror and he struggled to speak. Not easy, with lips and a jaw turned to sea-green glass, forever frozen. His shoulders hit the wall and he slumped to the floor, onto his back, struggling to breathe. The magic spread halfway down his throat before Nessa’s spell finished its work and burned itself out.

  “Just a tiny curse,” she murmured. “I’ve got more.”

  Hedy grabbed a white linen towel, ignoring the dying man as she pressed it to Nessa’s hip and soaked up a blossom of fresh blood.

  “Let me look at this,” she said, tugging Nessa’s blouse up.

  “We don’t have time—”

  “Mother.”

  Hedy gave her a sharp glare, then crouched down. Carolyn grabbed an armful of fresh towels from the opposite side of the kitchen and hustled them over. The wound was long but not deep, scoring a four-inch gash along Nessa’s hip. The instant Hedy stopped patting at it with the towel, it welled up wet and crimson again. Behind her, Daniel rummaged in a utility closet, grabbing sacks and boxes and tossing them over his shoulder.

  “It’s a goddamn restaurant, they’ve got to have a—here.”

  He ran over, slapping a bright blue plastic case on the kitchen island. The first-aid kit was stocked to the brim. He quickly unwrapped a bandage, eyeing Nessa’s wound as he tugged at the adhesive strips.

  “Ought to disinfect it, and you probably need stitches, but considering Nyx and her buddies are going to burst in here any second—”

  “Good enough,” Nessa said. She patted the bandage into place, fabric already turning splotchy and damp over the cut, and pulled her top back down. Carolyn grabbed the first-aid kit, clutching it to her chest like a life preserver. Hedy pointed to the floor. The gunman was still alive, the remains of his face contorted in a rictus of agony as his breath whistled through the straw-thin tube of his glassy throat and out the fleshy half of his nose.

  “What about him?” Hedy asked.

  Nessa thought about it for a second. Then she raised her heel and brought it slamming down.

  They charged out the back door, through a desolate storage room where the loading dock doors hung open to the storm. Nessa’s nose twitched as she caught the mingled scents on the hot night wind: fresh water, ozone…and the distant hint of roses. The rain embraced her as she ran out into the darkness, sweeping around her and pulsing down. She was drenched to the bone, but she felt lighter than air.

  “Do you feel that?” Hedy asked beside her. She turned her face up to the jet-black sky and opened her mouth to taste the rain. Lightning rippled beyond the smoky clouds, brighter than the neon of the Vegas Strip.

  The water streamed down Nessa’s face, slipping under her glasses, reducing the world to blurry smears of light. Impulse made her raise her hand high, lifting the Cutting Knife like she was presenting it to the storm. Clytemnestra’s hazy image wavered within the wet metal of the blade, her arms up and her open hands curled in a gesture of ritual offering.

  “No ordinary storm,” Clytemnestra’s voice echoed from the steel. “The world is thinner here. We have aid, but just a bit of it, and it will not last long. Let us make passage.”

  They followed Daniel’s lead, splashing through steaming puddles, up a dead escalator, and across the sky-bridge that stretched over Las Vegas Boulevard. Traffic below was deadlocked, an endless sea of motionless trucks and taxi cabs, with a chorus of angry horns answering the thunder. Colored lights flashed in the distance, police cars and ambulances struggling to make their way through.

  The Monaco was just ahead. Cranes and earthmovers slumbered in the storm, half of the resort penned by tall wooden fencing. A five-story sheet of vinyl, plastered to the side of the bu
ilding like the bandage on Nessa’s hip, depicted happy stock-photo tourists beside a tropical pool.

  A knot of paths out front, winding between ornate fence-work and empty stone planters, led the way to the casino’s back steps. Hedy suddenly broke ahead of Daniel, racing to the knot of people clustered under a thin green awning.

  “We’re okay,” Gazelle said. She squinted, water in her eyes and her hair plastered to her neck. With Tony and Janine at her side, the rest of the coven gathered around her, they all looked like rats who had narrowly escaped drowning on a sinking ship. Gazelle looked at Carolyn. Then to the empty spot at her side.

  “He didn’t make it,” Hedy told her. Gazelle bit her bottom lip.

  Daniel glanced from the gathered survivors to the glass doors at the top of the storm-swept marble steps. He bounced from foot to foot, lips moving silently like he was doing mental algebra.

  “Okay,” he said. “Cops are going to be swarming this place any minute now. We’ve got to get off the street.”

  “You said you weren’t worried about the police,” Tony told him.

  “I said there are limits,” Daniel said, pointing into the storm. “Shooting up a goddamn casino doesn’t just cross the line, it obliterates it with a tactical nuke. Doesn’t matter that we weren’t the ones who shot it up. We were there. I need to make a lot of phone calls and cash in a lot of favors, and I need to do it now. Nessa, take your rescue team, whoever’s going with you to…wherever the hell you’re going. Everybody else is coming with me.”

  “Where?” Janine asked.

  “I got a place. It’s under construction, couple of blocks from here. It’s nothing but a drywall shell and a leaky roof, but that’s all we need until I sort this mess out.”