Into the Fire

by Patrick Hester

As if I hadn’t spoken, Mayfair continued, “And they will kill you.”

  Chapter Four

  The back door burst open, and I just about came out of my skin. A large woman stumbled to a stop. We sized each other up. Shorter than me by a hair, she easily outweighed me by a couple hundred pounds. Jet-black hair in a pixie cut framed her heart-shaped face. Big, dark eyes were set above a tiny nose with a silver stud in it that could have been a diamond. Her pouty lips were covered in black lipstick matching the black eye shadow, nail polish, black blouse and long skirt she wore. Over the blouse she had on a dozen gold and silver necklaces of varying lengths and design, some hanging down nearly to her waist while others circled just above the half-moon curve at her neck revealing a bit of cleavage. Each ear held multiple earrings, and another tiny stud peeked out above her left eyebrow.

  Everything about her screamed Goth to me and brought back memories of the kids who hung out by the bleachers in high school smoking clove cigarettes.

  “I’m about to make fresh coffee and wondered if you wanted a cup,” she said, looking from me to Mayfair and then back again.

  “Thank you,” Mayfair smiled. “Kylie Dannon, I’d like you to meet Sam Kane. She’s going to be with us for a while, so I’d like you to make her feel at home.”

  “Can do,” Kylie smiled back at him. “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Please,” I replied. The thought of coffee sounded like a dream despite everything my body had just gone through. My eyes were scratchy and dry; my now-empty stomach had turned sour. But coffee!

  “Cookies too,” Mayfair said. “If we have some?”

  Kylie nodded and disappeared back inside.

  I turned to him. “They’ll kill me?”

  “Too melodramatic?” he asked. Moving over to the porch rail, he lit a cigarette.

  I waited upwind.

  “We have rules, Sam,” he said after a few draws on his cancer stick. “They have been in place, well, to say ‘a long time’ is like saying the Earth is old. Doesn’t really do it justice. Our rules are there to protect everyone. You, me, the kids playing in the park down the street. The people who make these rules take them very seriously, and they don’t like anything that doesn’t fit. You don’t fit, Sam.”

  I started to say something, then remembered what he’d been saying not too long ago—something about the supernatural world. “As adults, we see the world around us as very cut-and-dry. We try to force things that don’t make sense into neat little columns,” I quoted him as best I could.

  He turned to stare at me. “You’re clever,” he said softly.

  “Why don’t I fit?” I asked.

  “You’re too old, for one. It’s unheard of for someone to grow up without someone finding them, training them, teaching them the rules. It doesn’t happen. You would have started instinctually using magic at a very young age, perhaps three or four years old. Your parents would have seen it, perhaps tried to dismiss or rationalize it. They may have gone to someone for help, which would have raised flags. Someone like me would have been contacted. It’s how the whole system works. No one is left on their own to fend for themselves anymore. Too many bad things happened—way too many people died.”

  “I don’t remember anything like that,” I said. “I never used magic before. I’m still not even totally sure I used it now. But having my parents freaking out, someone coming to my house to train me to use magic? I think that’s something I would remember quite clearly. I never had anything weird happen to me until yesterday. I swear it.”

  “How can I know?” he asked. “For sure. Try to see it from my perspective. A woman appears out of nowhere and manifests magical talent for the first time in her life decades after it happens to every other magic user ever born? And she uses said magic to murder a Werewolf and burn down an apartment building on her first try? I deal with crazy and impossible every day of my life, but even I am having a hard time with this.”

  “Murder? Wait—”

  “Murder. Yes. In self-defense, maybe, but it’s still murder.”

  “Maybe self-defense? That thing was killing my partner! It was eating him! How the hell does that translate to murder?”

  “I know.”

  “What?” I blinked. “You know?”

  “You want to know why you’re really here, Sam? Because I believe you. Despite every instinct telling me not to trust you, I do. I believe, however impossible it may sound, you have no idea what you did or how you did it.” He finished his cigarette, stubbing it out on the railing before shredding the butt between his fingers and casting the remnants into the yard behind him. “That doesn’t mean anyone else will believe it, which puts you in a hell of a lot of danger.”

  Kylie returned, carrying a tray weighed down by a coffee pot, three mugs, sugar, cream, and some cookies, delaying any other conversation until we got our caffeine on. She set the tray on a low table I hadn’t noticed before and started pouring. The coffee smelled like a dream, so I may have been a little too eager to get my cup. As good as any offered in one of those corner shops, and I blessed her for it. The cookies were peanut butter and not half-bad.

  “Ronan dropped some papers off for you. They’re on your desk,” Kylie said to Mayfair.

  “Shit, I missed our meeting.” He winced. “He’ll make me listen to one of his war stories as punishment.”

  “He might take pity on you.” She smiled.

  “And Nevil?”

  “Gone to meet the courier at DIA. Something about a new book or something?”

  “Just what we need. More books. I hope he comes back tonight. We need to discuss what we’re going to do about Detective Kane.”

  “Do about me?” I asked around a mouthful of cookie. Okay, they were homemade and divine. Sue me.

  “You know I don’t mean it that way,” Mayfair said. “But everyone needs to be onboard with my plan.”

  A bell chimed, and Kylie turned. “The gate, right?” she asked.

  Mayfair nodded.

  “I’ll check it,” she said, vanishing through the door again.

  “Plan?” I asked.

  “Never do anything without a plan, Sam.” He winked. Then, more serious he said, “We have to figure you out. We need to know where your power comes from, and we have to train you to control it. We can’t do that if people are out there hunting for you, so we have to come up with a plan—one that gives us the time we need. Part one, transferring you here, as unorthodox as it was.”

  Kylie returned, flushed and breathing heavy as if she’d just run a marathon. She motioned Mayfair over and started a furious whispered conversation I tried really, really hard to hear, but they were too good, and nothing they said reached my ears. When the conversation stopped, both turned to stare at me.

  Kylie clicked her tongue. “She needs new clothes.”

  “We won’t have anything to fit her.”

  “There might be a blouse, at least, in the attic. I can check.”

  He nodded. “Okay, do that.”

  Kylie went inside again.

  “What’s up?” I asked, rocking on my toes.

  “Trouble,” he replied. “Tell me, Sam, what do you know about Vampires?”

  “Edward, Angel, Barnabas, or Dracula?”

  I swear to God, people need to have a sense of humor. Also, in a sane world full of sane people doing sane things, no one should ever ask you your take on Vampires and be absolutely dead serious about it. I mean, who has a rational conversation about Vampires the way a normal person would discuss the weather or if the Bears will go to the Super Bowl or not? (They totally will. Go Bears!)

  Jack Mayfair, that’s who. Jack Mayfair discusses Vampires and is deadly serious about it. Also, he doesn’t appreciate it when you snort and laugh, interrupting him.

  “Pay attention!” he snapped at me. “Life and death here, Sam. Vampires are real. The stories written about them all have little bits of truth sprinkled in, so if you look at the collection as a whole, you can pick out the true thi
ngs.”

  “Right,” I said, not really believing it.

  “Vampires are half-life creatures—half in this world, half in another. They are sensitive to light, but it won’t kill them the way it’s depicted in books and movies. It only acts to make them weaker, slower. Remember that. They are weakest at midday, when the sun is high and bright. Conversely, they are at their strongest when night and day are in flux, at dusk and dawn. Worse on a dark, moonless night.”

  “Wait—why dusk and dawn?” Sure, Sam. Focus on that, not the “another world” bit.

  “I said they are half-life creatures, half in this world, half in their own. At dusk and dawn, we are half in day, half in night, and that does something for them. I can’t explain it any better because we don’t really understand it. We know they are shadows in our world, pale reflections of their true selves. Coming here is very hard, and they can only do it through cracks in what we call the Veil, an in-between place we can’t see but where they would normally spend their entire lives. It exists between realities. The cracks run through it and blaze like fire, drawing them in, allowing them to cross over into our world. But they can’t live here, not on their own. So they take humans and they hide in their skins, hollowing out what was there and filling it back up with their essence. The flesh shelters them, protects them, so they have to keep it from putrefying. They have to feed. Often.”

  “On blood,” I said.

  He nodded.

  Kylie returned with a few shirts under her arm. Mayfair went through them, holding them up to me, measuring with his eye.

  “Wait, they hollow out everything?” I asked. “What about the bones? Muscle?”

  “All gone,” he said, distracted. He held a sky-blue top up, then a pale purple one, and switched them back and forth.

  “I like the purple,” offered Kylie.

  I nodded agreement, and Mayfair handed it to me.

  “Why the shirt?” I asked.

  “You are covered in blood, Sam. You can’t meet a Vampire covered in blood.”

  I remembered Jorge’s blood covered me from head to toe. It made sense I wouldn’t want—“Hold on,” I said. “Meet a Vampire?”

  Mayfair nodded, taking me by the shoulders and turning me towards the door. “Come on,” he said. Pushing me inside, he led me to a door on the right and pushed it open. “You need to clean up. Get as much blood out of your hair as you can. Face and hands too. Then change shirts. I wish we had pants for you, but we’ll have to make do.” He shut the door.

  “Jack!” I shouted.

  “I’m right here.” His muffled voice came through the door. “I’ll tell you what I can, but you need to get cleaned up.”

  “Fine,” I replied, turning the hot water on and waiting for it to heat up. Not the largest bathroom I’d ever seen; really more of a closet with a toilet and a sink squeezed in. Didn’t fit with the whole mansion motif going on, but I figured that when the place was built, indoor plumbing probably didn’t exist yet.

  I took a long, hard look at myself in the little oval mirror above the sink. I looked like shit warmed up a couple dozen times, thrown away, and then warmed up again. Thanks to the extra effort of puking my guts out, my skin had gone a little gray, and my lips were cracked and dry despite the water and coffee and cookies. Really, caffeine will dehydrate you faster, so I probably should’ve passed on that and had another glass of water instead.

  Then laughter bubbled forth from my lips. Like I would turn down coffee. Okay, I probably really, really needed sleep now.

  “You were telling me about Vampires?” I said over my shoulder after taking my shirt off. I normally wore my hair pulled back in a ponytail; the easiest thing to do and the easiest way to manage it. I like easy. My reflection showed a tangled and disheveled mass of frizzy red hair. Well, that was putting a nice spin on it.

  “His name is Vladymir Yurevich Tupolev,” Mayfair’s voice came through the door.

  I tested the water—still tepid. I cupped some in my hand and swished it around my mouth, scowling at the coppery taste before spitting it out and repeating.

  “Originally born in Russia in the 1600s. We’re not sure when exactly he became a Vampire, but estimates are around his fiftieth birthday, give or take a decade. A distant cousin to the Tsar, his family held lands, which he inherited. He ruled for centuries, first publicly and then privately through figureheads. He fled to the west when the Bolshevik Revolution spread across Russia, eventually settling in the Americas.”

  I nodded to the mirror, searching around for something to wash my face with. Beneath the sink, I found a roll of paper towels. Anything in a pinch. I pulled a few off, soaked them, and began scrubbing my face, hands, and arms. “Okay, why is he here?” I asked.

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  Water dripping down my chin, I stood up and said, “Why is he here?” I pulled more towels off the roll and set them on the edge of the sink, then tried to finger wash my hair. The water still hadn’t gotten hot; I had goose bumps.

  “Oh. Well, the apartment building you burned down?”

  “Yeah?” I said. I took up the towels and started scrubbing my hair dry. They quickly tore and became a mess, so I leaned over and wrung my hair out instead. This worked slightly better, but cold water kept going down my back. I took a couple more towels and blotted some more water out of my hair, then wiped my neck, back, and chest. A bloodstain or two on my bra, dammit, but I wasn’t about to take it off. If the Vampire could smell the blood on my bra, so be it. I wasn’t going to run around commando.

  “He owns it. Well, owned it,” Mayfair corrected himself.

  Great. A Vampire owned the building I burned down.

  I couldn’t believe I’d just put those words together into a sentence and meant them. I put the purple shirt on, tucked it into my jeans, then dug a rubber band out of my pocket and used it to secure my hair in a ponytail.

  The reflection in the mirror still looked like shit, but not quite as bad as I had a moment before. A little more like me and less like a zombie, which probably existed somewhere and would take great offense at my thinking such a thing and would want to come kill me like everyone else in the supernatural world. My eyes were still bloodshot, swollen, and puffy, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I stared. Had my eyes gotten darker? No, it had to be a trick of the light. I shook my head, gave my ponytail a tug to make sure it was secure, then opened the door.

  Mayfair stood there with a smallish blue blazer in his hand. “Try this,” he said.

  I did, slipping my arms into the sleeves and checking it in the mirror. It fit okay.

  “Good as it’s gonna get,” he commented.

  I gave him a “fuck you” glare. “So he owned the building. Why is he coming here?”

  “Well, he’s going to want recompense for his loss,” Mayfair said, looking me over again.

  “What sort of recompense?” I asked, crossing my arms in a classic “stop staring at me, you perv” stance.

  “Probably your head on a pike,” he replied with a smile.

  Chapter Five

  My nose crinkled up as Jack Mayfair shoved my arms into one of his trench coats and the smell of old cigarette smoke assaulted me.

  “Part of the uniform,” he said with a wink as he put his own coat on, followed by his hat.

  “What uniform?” I asked. On me, this thing fit more like a tent. It fell past my knees and just to the tops of my ankles. On him, midthigh.

  “A Wizard’s, of course,” he said, cinching my belt tight and handing me an umbrella. “What did you expect, robes and a weathered staff?”

  “I am not a Wizard,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Not yet, anyway.” He started searching through the walking sticks resting under the coat rack. “But he doesn’t know that. Kylie?! Kylie, where’s—”

  “Here.” She handed him a walking stick with a silver skull on the end. What do you call that? The knob? The handle? Whatever you call it, it was a c
reepy little silver skull complete with ruby-red eyes.

  “Good luck,” she said, and smiled.

  He put his hat on and stepped out onto the front porch. After a second, I followed him. Sometime between leaving the back porch and stepping out onto the front, the sky had turned gray and a light rain had begun. You gotta love Denver—all the seasons and sometimes all in the same day. This storm would probably blow through in less than an hour, and then we’d see a gorgeous sunrise with a crystal-clear view of the mountains to the west come morning.

  “Vladymir is the oldest Vampire in Colorado,” Mayfair said in a hushed tone. “Maybe in all of the western states. As such, all the other Vampires defer to him. He’ll most likely have an entourage. He is used to getting his way, and he doesn’t like me very much because I don’t kowtow to him.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I am not the oldest Wizard in Colorado, nor in the western states, but I am the one in charge. All the rest defer to me, which is why Vladymir is here. No matter what I say or do, your job today is to show him I have you firmly in hand and am in charge. Show no emotion. Don’t react to anything even if they try to goad you. Got it?”

  I stared at him, mouth half open.

  “You don’t have to understand, Sam,” he said before I could say anything. “You just have to do it. We’ll have time later for explanations. For now, I need you to do as I say when I say it, no question, no argument. Can you do that?”

  I thought about it for a minute before nodding. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have to.

  “Good.” He smiled. “Now, hold the umbrella and keep us from getting wet. Let me do the talking, and try not to look any of them in the eye if you can.”

  Grumbling to myself about chivalry, I pushed the umbrella open and held it high enough for both of us to get some measure of shelter from it. I noticed Mayfair’s demeanor shifted instantly; he kept his eyes forward from the moment we took the steps down from the porch and walked past the stone lions. His feet found a twisty path through the trees, and we followed it for maybe five minutes before the trees gave way and the fence line opened up before us. A wide gate stood open, not quite wide enough for a car but easily wide enough for two people to walk in side by side. Mayfair’s eyes locked on the gate and on the group standing just on the other side.