Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1)

by N. A. Grotepas

  A ride operator with a big swoop of blond hair, feathered in a style reminiscent of 80s movies, stopped beside us on the platform. He cursed and began to shout at the portly older kid running the ride at the control panel. Guests screamed over the flames engulfing the dome, the noise reaching a fever pitch. A stampede for the exit began.

  “Get everyone out of here,” Hank said to the 80s-hair teenager, flashing his badge. The boy nodded at the instructions. “Have them turn around and follow the line back out onto the Midway, and get the fire department here.”

  “And Hank, tell him to shut down the ride,” I said, absently.

  “Of course, Dred, that’s what I was about to do.”

  “I’m going to follow him out onto the ride.” What else could I do? The demon wanted me to go after him.

  “Hell no! It’s on fire.” Hank sidled up close to me, his aviators focused on me, not the ride. “And since you insist on us not killing the demon, what’s the point? We’re just damage control right now.”

  Ignoring the panic and shrieks around me, I pushed through the chaos of normals crowding toward an exit, any exit, and walked down to the edge of the loading platform to watch the demon, debating going after him.

  “He’s putting on a good show. A really great show, in the middle of the day,” I mused aloud.

  I felt Hank come to stand beside me, his arm bumping into mine. A breeze blew across us. It fanned the flames on the Roller Coaster. I didn’t want the park—the park which I pretty much hated, but still—to lose its oldest attraction. It was a classic roller coaster, the kind you’d see on a postcard of a beach in California from the fifties or sixties. It was vintage.

  Sirens wailed to a start in the distance. The Farmington city fire department wasn’t too far away. I assumed Lagoon had its own fire brigade as well, and figured they’d be here taking action soon.

  That was when I noticed someone nearby behaving unexpectedly. Someone watching the demon dance. I turned. It was a man. Even more telling: a normal.

  Or so he seemed, which was what I assumed everyone was until they proved me wrong. There were no outward signs of being a paranormal human, generally speaking.

  He stood in the line near me, his hands balanced on top of the red railing. The crowd bustled around him as people struggled to get away. But he was motionless, a point of calm in the wild tide of people.

  It was like he could see the demon.

  I drew a breath, then felt certain.

  He can see the demon.

  I was sure of it. He wasn’t just staring at the flames. His gaze was intent. He face swung toward me for a moment, and I caught a thoughtful malevolence in them that sent chills rippling across my body. Something in his gaze when our eyes collided seemed to say, “You can see the demon too?”

  He wore frameless glasses and a Hawaiian shirt with khaki shorts. Something about his attire clashed with the expression on his face, and the style of glasses he wore. He was also sporting a Panama hat. Like he’d just gotten in from a Florida Keys vacation.

  I waited for something to happen between us, a nod of acknowledgment, a smile, anything. But he turned away and continued to watch the spectacle. For all I really knew—my intuition and instincts aside—he was only seeing the flames. Not the demon.

  I jabbed Hank with my elbow.

  “Hey—” he began, indignant, rubbing his hand across his side like I’d hurt him.

  “That guy’s dressed for the weather. You should take a page out of his book.”

  My partner glanced where I was looking.

  “His glasses aren’t as cool… wait a minute, can he? He can. He can see the demon,” Hank’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Not a normal. A paranormal human.”

  I let out a deep breath—things were adding up. Maybe.

  Everything about the early afternoon at the smelly amusement park began to make sense. I knew why the demon was dancing in the broad daylight, why it wasn’t hiding out till dark, like most demons.

  Most demons that weren’t on a mission. That was the clincher.

  Everything clicked and I turned toward Hank, eager to test my hypothesis. “I think I know where to go next.”

  4

  We left the aging, burning roller coaster behind and, along with it, the scream of sirens and the rumble of the crowd as onlookers swarmed to watch what was happening.

  We aimed in the direction of the mountains that shot up off to one side of the park in the distance. Walking that way would take us to the furthest eastern point in the park.

  I had a hunch and it was time to test it.

  What was I doing to the demon, leaving it behind like that, with the gaze of that chill-inducing human on it?

  I wasn’t sure but I couldn’t babysit it at the moment. It was a demon. They weren’t exactly intrinsically good. They were rather like a force of nature. They were. Like gods.

  Most people didn’t have to worry about them, or wonder about the place of demons in the entire scheme of things. Neither did they have to adjust their mental paradigm to grasp how something that seemed just downright evil was allowed to live and breathe and function in the same world that they called home.

  Still, I wasn’t just into killing for the sake of it. Except vampires. And usually demons. Generally speaking, I was down with killing bloodsuckers on sight.

  But something awoke in me when my sorceress powers turned on. That moment when I’d done something to the Fabric that I couldn’t undo, I was forced to rethink my process of just killing. Or at least, later on I thought about it and what everything meant that I’d previously taken for granted.

  Now I tried to understand as best as I could and figure out the balance, then make a decision.

  Except with vampires.

  Any minute, the firefighters would show up and usher that suspicious human out of the ride loading zone, if the park security didn’t do that sooner, and the demon would run off again.

  Mine and Hank’s job wasn’t solving mysteries in some Hardy Boys style narrative, or like Nancy Drew out on the prowl, or whoever did that kind of crap.

  Well, we kind of did that. But we also maintained the integrity of the Veil between the normals and the supernaturals. And we protected the normals, who were as weak as newborn babies when it came to supers.

  And right now, this demon wasn’t hurting normals. He was behaving erratically, almost like he was protecting something.

  Hank and I burst through clouds of greasy cooking odors and slid between crowds of families pushing strollers, wearing beach attire where they exited the water park portion of the park. Passengers laughed and screamed in delight on rides arching above the sycamore trees lining the pathways until we finally came to a place nearly devoid of park guests.

  I knew the park inside and out from years of working behind the scenes as a teenager. I’d grown up only two city blocks east of it, on the foothills of the eastern mountain range. In essence, the park was like my backyard. Being in it again reminded me of my childhood a bit too much—there were things a person wanted to run from and never look back at. I didn’t have many, but Lagoon was one of them.

  A tall iron fence separated this section from the rest it. There was a tall gate for trucks to get through. On the other side, sunlight glinted off the roofs of greenhouses. I assumed that inside the greenhouses, there were plants and flowers growing. But that was just an assumption.

  “That’s creepy. What’s happening in there? Are they growing plants that will eat humans alive?” Hank speculated, staring through the gaps in the iron gate.

  “Probably. We’re going in. Let’s find out.”

  “Wait, you want me to go in there? No way.” Hank turned to walk away.

  I grabbed his arm. The canvas of his jacket was hot under my hand. “How’s that sauna suit treating you?”

  “Sweaty.”

  “Come on. I think this is why the demon is being so weird.”

  “I refuse to be lunch for a giant Venus flytrap.”

/>   “I’m sure that’s not what’s happening in there,” I said, glancing back at the greenhouse. “Probably. More likely it’s living poison ivy vines that will wrap around you and smother you by shoving leaves down your gullet and up your nose.”

  “Wonderful imagery, Dred. But that settles it,” he shook my hand away and cleared his throat. He actually looked unsettled. “I’m for sure not going in there.”

  “Fine. Stay out here.”

  I searched along the fence line for a way over till I found a tree that I could use. I ran toward it, vaulted against the trunk, and grabbed the top horizontal bar of the fence. From there I swung my leg over and used it to pull the rest of my body up and over.

  I landed on the other side, sharp pains shooting through my legs.

  Hank watched, staring at me through the fence, his expression grim.

  “Stay over there, by all means. I’ll do the dirty work.”

  He barked at me. No words. Just a barking noise like he was irritated. I began walking toward the greenhouses, not sure what I’d find beyond lawn tools and trays of pansies they’d bring out in the autumn.

  After a few minutes, a huffing noise approaching me told me that Hank had made it over the fence and was catching up to me. We approached the next phase together, with only a little trepidation welling up in me.

  The greenhouses weren’t locked, so we went inside the first one. The air was heavy like I’d expected. Hank made a soft noise.

  “I’ve missed that feeling,” he said.

  “That stifling heat of New York City in the summer?” I asked.

  “Water in the air. It’s comforting.”

  “I can’t stand it,” I said.

  “I guess you prefer to be desiccated by having all your natural moisture sucked out of you, is that it?”

  “Yes. I want to be mummified when I’m dead.”

  “You’re halfway there. I’ll see to the rest of it,” he smirked, but a smile curled his lips.

  There was nothing off or unusual enough to catch my attention in the first greenhouse. So we checked the others.

  By the time we were entering the third, Hank paused just outside it. I turned to study him and absorbed a penetrating look that made me squirm beneath it.

  “What?” I asked, feeling defensive that the greenhouses had so far turned up nothing.

  “Dred, what are we looking for? This is a waste of time. We should be going after the demon we left behind.”

  “We’ll never catch him, and killing him isn’t the right move. I know that. So, we’re searching for something it would be protecting.”

  “Whatever we want, it’s not here.”

  “There’s two more. You ready to give up?”

  “I’m ready to do something productive. Like kill the demon.”

  “So bloodthirsty,” I remarked, shaking my head and turning to enter the third greenhouse.

  “You mean thorough. I get the job done that no one else wants to do, which in this case, Dred, looks like you.”

  “Let’s check in here. If there’s nothing, and nothing in the fourth, then we can reassess and maybe do it your way.”

  Inside, the greenhouse was the same as the others. Flowers grew in trays on shelves. Rows of shrubs and small, ornamental trees lined the walls. There were stacks of gardening implements and the heavy fragrance of perfumes from the flowers, plus that oppressive sense of high humidity.

  Hank exchanged a look with me that said, “Let’s go, Dred. Time to get out of here.”

  I figured he knew I was hesitant to kill the demon.

  “We’re not detectives, Dred,” he continued. “We’re just agents, Flamehearts. We’re the shields and hammers. Let’s go take care of the demon.”

  “Not that I’m going to argue your point, Hank, but even if you’re right, we still have one more building to check—the fourth.”

  That was when I saw it—a grate in the concrete floor. Large enough for a human to fit into.

  I hadn’t noticed one in the other greenhouses, but for all I knew, they’d had them too. Hank caught where my gaze had landed and immediately began to backpedal.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no. Dred, we’re not going down there.”

  “We have to. The mystery’s going to kill me.”

  “Better die with an unsolved mystery in your craw than die being shredded to death by whatever’s down there.”

  “So you admit there’s something down there?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Where angels fear to tread, Hank. That’s our motto.”

  “Not my motto. My motto is shoot first, ask questions later.”

  “Which is why you’re out here, I’m sure, in this wasteland you hate, and not back in your grouchy New York City.”

  “That place speaks to me. It just gets me.” His hand was on the door to the outside.

  “I know.” I was already removing the grate and shining a flashlight I always carried with me down into the hole. It was definitely a hole. With, oddly, stairs.

  “Hank, there’s stairs.”

  “Oh, damn,” he groaned. “I mean, yay, stairs.”

  “You’ll love this place. It’s cozy. Homey.”

  He snorted. “You go first.”

  “Your chivalry warms my heart.”

  “I have your back, that’s my job.” He crouched beside me. “Even if I tried, Dred, you wouldn’t let me go first. Two months as your partner has taught me that.”

  “If there’s body-snatchers down there, you’d have been wrong. I’d have wanted you to go first.”

  We teased, but I kind of knew Hank had my back. I’d grown on him. I could tell. The cuddly interior of the gruff ex-NYC Flameheart had begun to show. Who could resist my charm?

  I pulled out my Colt 1911 and kept the light shining down into the hole with the other hand as I descended the stairs. They were wet, like water run-off from the greenhouse drained there. The already heavy air thickened as I went down. Hank’s feet scuffed against the steps as he followed me.

  At the bottom of the stairs, my light led the way around a corner that opened up into a room full of more supplies.

  “Does this park have enough implements?” Hank asked in wonderment. “They’re like an implement haven.”

  There were bags labeled ‘cement’ stacked in one corner, cinderblocks in another, and a wheelbarrow propped against the wall. I didn’t even want to know how they’d gotten a wheelbarrow down those narrow steps.

  I was a bit disappointed, honestly, that we hadn’t found something more meaningful.

  Hank sighed in relief. I sighed in regret and turned to go back up the stairs, when my flashlight fell on an opening that went under the stairs.

  “Wait, what’s that?” Hope fizzed in my chest. It was one of those moments when I realized how crazy I might be—hopeful to find something truly creepy? Yes. That was me.

  A groan escaped Hank. I smiled. Why did it delight me that he hated some of this? Maybe I just loved anything that ruffled his feathers.

  I crept toward the opening. My feet scraped over the dirty cement floor. I crouched and shined my light into the opening and nearly jumped out of my skin.

  I’d been expecting something—or at least hoping for that—but still, it shocked the hell out of me to see the red faces of several small demons staring up at me, huddled together, frightened.

  An adult demon pushed her face into the cone of my light and bared her sharp white teeth at me. I backed away and fell on my ass. Hank caught me by the arm and pulled me up.

  “A nest,” he said.

  “It’s OK,” I said, showing the demon my hands. Then I realized my 1911 was still in one hand. I shoved it into the holster in the small of my back and spread my fingers wide. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

  Demon babies aren’t cute, not in the standard, “Oh what a cute baby” kind of way. But still, an instinct flowered in me as I saw them and put everything together.

  “That’s what he’s p
rotecting.”

  “Who was he drawing away from them?” Hank speculated. He was beginning to prepare something, his motions smooth and quick in a half circle around him, and then I noticed his stylus in one hand and the trailing golden light streaming off it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Summoning my runic Glock,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “I know. But for what?”

  He nodded toward the nest, his face macabre in the dim light from my flashlight, which I kept focused on the ceiling.

  “Nope. We’re not doing that. I was sure we were on the same page, Hank. This little family’s not doing anything.”

  “It’ll just send them down to the Netherworld. And then we don’t have to worry about them, ever again.”

  “We don’t ever have to worry about them, anyway. I’ve been doing this job for seven years and have never had a run-in with this brood. Something is making them act out now.” I remembered creepy Hawaiian shirt guy. Was it him?

  He gestured toward the nest. “One of them is out there, now, screwing up the world for the normals.”

  “Ok, look, hurting them will only damage the Fabric right now. I think we’re in preservation mode. We don’t know what repercussions killing five demons will have.”

  “You don’t even know if the Fabric is real,” Hank cried.

  “I’ve seen it,” I said. “It’s real.”

  He hadn’t stopped making his runes. Patterns hung in the air around him. The gun began to materialize in his hands.

  He was right—the runic gun sent creatures like demons to another realm. It wasn’t like killing them forever.

  But I didn’t want to barge into this family’s nest and crap all over their life. There was something going down, and I wanted to figure it out.

  5

  The demon mother seemed to have different expectations about me figuring things out. Just a hunch.

  She was suddenly in front of Hank, looming large. Much larger than the demon we’d left out on the Roller Coaster.