Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1)

by N. A. Grotepas

  That was a thing with this breed of demons—females were bigger by at least three sizes.

  I was fuming inside at Hank for going against my wishes. We were a partnership. And he was new here. And I didn’t do things the way they did in New York, which was starting to sound like a hellhole the more Hank revealed about the way their branch of the guild ran its operation.

  But, right now, I had to protect my partner.

  I took a breath, cleared my mind, visualized the spell, and flicked my hand out, sending a wind spell at the demon. The magic from my fingers flared up, like white mist, swirling into a spiral and then flowing toward her in a powerful gust. She tumbled away.

  Wow. I hadn’t expected it to work, since she was so much stronger by nature. But maybe she hadn’t expected it, otherwise she would have counter-spelled it.

  I was still rusty with my powers. They’d not been awake for very long, plus every time I used them, I was haunted by what had happened to Scott, my old partner.

  Hank’s runic Glock glowed gold in his hands. He aimed it at the demon who was recovering from being blown away by my spell. She scrambled to her cloven feet, raising her arms up like she was preparing a massive spell.

  “Oh crap.” My voice was little more than a whisper.

  OK. Regroup. Time to use the spell on Hank. He’d be pissed later, but no more pissed than I was that he’d decided, all on his own, to dispatch the little demon family.

  I could hear the cries of the young ones as the commotion between us adults increased. That stirred some feelings in me I wasn’t prepared for. I was suddenly enraged at Hank and myself for disturbing the family. They were kids. What the hell, Hank? Murder them?

  It was murder, even if it just sent them to the Netherworld.

  I took my irritation all out on Hank in my head, even though we’d done this together. I’m fair like that.

  Hank roared something unintelligible at me. I roared back.

  The mother demon roared at all of us in her demonic language. It sounded like Latin, kind of beautiful, and not at all what someone might expect—like some kind of guttural Slavic language. No offense to Slavic languages. Just not what I was expecting.

  “This is your fault, Hank!” I shouted.

  “Well, since you can’t face the facts, one of us has to!”

  “You need to learn how shit’s done here,” I cried. “It’s not a free for all. The Fabric—“

  I couldn’t finish that last part, because the demon summoned fire. She was, after all, a fire demon, just like her partner.

  The room erupted in a gout of flames that encircled us. It was a wall, designed to continuously shrink until we were being burned alive. I couldn’t blame the girl, her babies were in danger.

  I was still livid at Hank for changing the dynamic like he’d done.

  I concentrated, visualized, and flicked my hand out and cast a water spell. The flames diminished, but didn’t go out entirely. I could feel the mana running out in me—I wouldn’t be able to craft more spells without replenishing it with prana.

  “You’re going to get us killed, Hank,” I shouted. “Put the gun away! She’ll stop!”

  I didn’t know if that was true, but I had to assume, because that was all I had at the moment. I couldn’t cast more spells. I needed to save my mana. My quiver of spells was tiny, anyway, and I only had two others at my current disposal. I was still a complete rookie who had always relied on her wits and the gun to handle the supers.

  “What if she doesn’t?” he asked, sounding like he almost believed me.

  “Then I’ll cast a spell that prevents her from following us, and we’ll run for it.” I didn’t have a spell like that yet, but Hank didn’t know this. Something else would come up to fix things, I was sure. Still, I felt guilty for the lie.

  Whatever Hank did, he couldn’t shoot at her. Or anything, for that matter. If he did, I didn’t think we could withstand her fury. She was already furious, which was a bad state for her to be in while we were dealing with her.

  “What if you’re wrong, Dred?” Hank yelled.

  “Trust me for once, Hank!”

  “I’ve been trusting you.” All this time he’d been closing in on my back as the flames crept closer.

  “Yes, sometimes. And thanks, but what about this time?”

  I turned to look at him. He faced me at the same time. He’d removed his aviator shades, so I could see his brown eyes widen in shock in the glow of the flames. And just like that, his runic Glock was gone.

  The fires crackled around us. The sound of hissing as water droplets landed in it was even louder. The female demon was crouched in front of us, on the other side of the waist high wall of flames. Her upper body glistened from the rain. She was topless, and like her partner, packing heat. Her heat was her chest, of course—large breasts knocking together as she moved and gestured angrily.

  Her fangs were still bared as she looked from me to Hank, and back to me. One hand was raised and her black, long fingernails were held in a threatening gesture that made me think she was about to shred us to death. She fumed and hissed and spit, snarling at us.

  I made a placating gesture. The flames continued to die as the water splashed over them from the invisible rain cloud hovering over us.

  “Now what?” Hank whispered. “Doing it your way, Dred.”

  “Let’s walk through the flames, and leave.”

  “You’re seriously suggesting that we simply leave them here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re insane, Mildred. But I’m trusting you and your insanity.”

  “I’ll murder you for that.” I still hated it that Captain Fua had told Hank my real name. A surge of indignation swelled in me, but I tamped it down. I’d kill Hank later for that. But right now, I was saving us from slaughtering a family of demons, while also saving us from being slaughtered by a very powerful mother demon.

  And yes, I know how crazy it sounds that I was trying to allow a demon family to live.

  We backed up to the stairs. The whimpers and defensive hisses of the young demons echoed in my head as we moved, keeping our eyes on the female, watching for any sudden moves that could endanger us.

  I couldn’t help but think of the possible trauma we’d brought into their lives. There was a time I loathed demons, fae, and pixies. Hell, a lot of the time, I even detested angels (insufferable, smug prats).

  But things had changed. I couldn’t help but evolve.

  6

  The abandoned church known as Flameheart Fortress scared most people away with its derelict exterior, the haunted-looking stained glass windows, and the general aura of disrepair.

  Most of the time.

  Occasionally local kids on a dare skulked around the perimeter, screwing up the courage to cross a boundary and possibly even break into the church just to prove their bravery—they couldn’t see the cars, that cheerful part was also covered by the illusion of abandonment, so it always seemed empty.

  It wasn’t abandoned, but that was the cover the old girl kept. And she was haunted. So, if the daring kids ever got near her, they would definitely have their asses handed to them on a silver platter.

  The parking lot was still full of cars when we pulled up, because the hours we kept at the guild were, well, twenty-four. Someone was always on duty, waiting for statewide anomalies to pop up and then dispatch Flamehearts to investigate.

  Hank parked his Karmann Ghia on the west side of the fortress, beneath the shadows of towering trees and the vine-covered fence. Evening had taken over the day and the sounds of birds and rustling of rodents in the undergrowth accentuated the sense of things of the light coming to a close, while night was just getting started.

  The car was ridiculous, but Hank insisted on driving it, and sometimes I let him win that power struggle. Claimed my driving was reckless and bound to get us killed. The old VW was too small for him, too small, even, for me, at a mere 5’5’’.

  I slammed the door with a bit of gust
o, to vent the irritation over losing the male demon.

  “Watch the car, Dred,” he said, shutting his door ever-so-gently.

  I glared at him, then marched off toward the primary side entrance to the fortress.

  He rushed to catch up to me before I went in. “I can take it, Dred.”

  I paused before the door opened and looked at him. “Take what?”

  “You blame me for losing the male demon. That’s fine. It’s not true, but go right ahead and believe that.”

  “I don’t blame you for that.” I explained, backing away from the door so Lucy could open it for me.

  Hank crossed his arms. “All right, well, please do enlighten me.” Sweat dripped down the sides of his face as the desert heat pressed in on us. His eyes were unreadable due to the ever-present sunglasses.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it really gets to me that you’re trying to run the show here the way it was run in New York.” I didn’t see how he could take that the wrong way. It was what it was, but people are surprising enigmas and fall into the traps of emotion and defensiveness. I sort of expected him to take it that way, but felt a warning was fair.

  He scoffed, removed his sunglasses and began to use them to point at me. I cocked my head to the side, crossed my arms, and waited.

  “You think that demons—” he took a deep breath, and paused. “Fine. Yes, I did want to kill the demon. I’m used to killing bad creatures. They’re bad, Dred. Bad.”

  “They can behave badly. They can do bad. Like humans. Like giants. Like fae. Intrinsically, they’re born from sin and evil. Yes. But like the wind, like rain, like volcanoes, they’re a part of nature.”

  “I don’t need this lesson, Dred.”

  “Well,” I said, turning, “Apparently you do. Because we botched that case.”

  And it chapped my hide. A lot. As I headed into the fortress, the door opened automatically. Lucy was behind that—her presence filled the church. She was in every nook and cranny, watching us.

  “Thanks Lucy,” I said, remembering to mind my manners.

  “Of course, Dreddie,” she said. The faint words echoed through the halls, quiet, soft, like the little girl who whispered them. “Is Henry bothering you?”

  So far, it seemed that Lucy didn’t like Hank. We were her family and this new guy was upsetting the dynamic. I figured in a month or two, Lucy would change her song and welcome him in.

  But right now, she was eager to help us push him back onto the streets, rendering him homeless.

  Hank ignored the ghost and stuck with me, but I figured he wanted to sneak off somewhere and think over the case and work it out on his own. From the two months of working together, I’d learned that he required space to process our work, to process me, to sort through the things that happened. I needed that too, so I was happy to give it to him whenever he needed it.

  But first we needed to check in with Captain Fua.

  The halls through the church were narrow and the floors creaked. Thin carpet covered them, disguising warped sub flooring. Our footfalls were loud and sent creaking noises echoing against the walls. The odors of mildew and aging things prevailed and I felt instantly at home inside the old bones of the building. The place dated back to the time of the first settlers of the valley, built by Mormon pioneers, which was probably why it was haunted—they’d messed something up. But Lucy had never shared how she’d died and we knew not to ask.

  One look at the the main floor of the fortress and it was easy to guess how she’d met an untimely death.

  Desks and chairs covered the hardwood floor of the main office area of the fortress. In turn, paperwork and computer screens littered the surfaces, making it look like we actually did crap when we weren’t out in the field.

  Once upon a time, the space the desks took up would have been filled with pews for worshipers. And in fact, there were still pews up in the balcony of the room that no one had moved yet, because from the moment the church became the fortress, not a single soul had wanted to haul a bunch of heavy, wooden pews down the murderously narrow staircases on either side of the nave.

  We called the balcony the Cliffs of Insanity because we’d all grown up watching the Princess Bride far too much, and if you got too close to the edge up there, well, put it this way, the balustrade surrounding it wasn’t even knee height—the safety standards for building back in the 1800s must have sucked. Non-existent, probably. I’d nearly fallen over it myself once or twice.

  So, imagining a little girl like Lucy up there, falling from the balcony and breaking her neck on the pews wasn’t too hard to do. Macabre and dark, but it didn’t take a lot of thought. It’s what I saw any time I ventured up onto the balcony—an accident waiting to happen.

  As I walked into the main office of the spacious room with a cathedral ceiling, several agents looked up at me.

  The captain popped out of his office, which was built into the wall beneath the stained glass windows, and looked at me.

  I waved.

  He waved back, then gestured for me to go talk to him.

  Great.

  I pantomimed the question, should Hank come with?

  The captain said yes with a nod.

  “Hey there, Dred,” another agent said, spinning in his desk chair.

  I nodded. “Cristian.”

  “Dreddie!” Bianca said, looking up when she heard me. “Mexican, tonight, at Red Iguana 2. We’re all going. Come with?”

  “I don’t know, Bee,” I said, passing her desk. “Sounds perfect, but Fua’s probably going to punish me or something. Hang on a second. Is there a carbon monoxide leak in here? Why aren’t you guys out dealing with supernaturals?”

  “Slow day, so far. Except the one you just took care of,” Bianca said. “How’d that go?”

  “Let me fill the Captain in, first, then I’ll tell you.” I checked over my shoulder to see if Hank was following me. He was. I led the way across the floor, weaving between the chairs and desks and foosball table to get there.

  Captain Fua had gone back into his office. He had the best view on the floor and the bonus of stained glass windows letting light into his space. It was too nice for him, and I let him know that, regularly.

  Inside his office with the door closed, he spoke first.

  “Well, Dreddie, fill me in. What happened?”

  I clenched my jaw. I couldn’t just start in on a tear, though that’s what I wanted. I didn’t trust instincts like that, but even so, they often won and got me into trouble. My weakness—which I knew very well, but if anyone asked, I’d deny (probably another weakness)—was speaking before I could think.

  I took several deep breaths. “We lost track of the male demon. Might have been taken or killed, or it might have hidden from us.”

  Captain Fua frowned. “What makes you think it was taken? That’s an odd supposition to make.”

  “And I agree, and I wouldn’t make it without a reason. Maybe he wasn’t taken. But we went back to see if he’d returned to the nest, and there was no sign of him.”

  “You found a nest?” Fua sat down at his desk. He sipped something from a mug, tea or hot chocolate, because he didn’t drink coffee.

  I pulled a chair out and invited Hank, with my eyes, to sit down next to me. He sat down and crossed his legs in a way that suggested aloofness. At some point between the parking lot and taking that chair, he’d put his sunglasses back on.

  I filled Fua in and invited Hank to chime in when he felt like it, but he refused. I knew what he was doing—aside from being a martyr, he was blocking us off from him. Emotionally separating himself and staying safe—don’t get too attached so the minute you can leave this godforsaken place, you can leave without too much heartache.

  He didn’t want to be out here, out west in the boondocks, in fly-over country. It sounded like I was sulking when I said that. I wasn’t. As someone who lived in flyover country, I was well aware of the stereotype and the snootiness the residents of the massive coastal cities
felt toward us back-country people.

  And I didn’t take it personal.

  Although, it could be personal.

  “We couldn’t find a trace of the demon after that. Looked everywhere. Went back to the nest, not there, although the female was still there.” I sighed and rubbed my face.

  “If he’s really gone, you know what that means for the little family,” Fua said, putting his feet up on his desk. He cocked his large skull to one side. The man was like a football player. No one would dare mess with him. He was big all the time, but when he shifted into his bear form, holy hell, watch out. He tripled in size.

  Hank stirred. “I don’t get it. You’re literally worried about a family of demons. Evil demons. They hurt humans. They’re creatures of the Netherworld.”

  “Only once they die,” Fua said.

  Hank grinned and shook his head. “It’s in their name: demons. Means evil. Bad things come from demons. You guys protect vampires too?”

  “No. Well,” Fua swayed his head back and forth to indicate it being a gray area. “Depends on the vampire. Usually just kill on sight. But, we have known vamps that didn’t want to turn. Lately, most of what we’ve dealt with have truly been evil vampires.”

  Hank uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “You guys are astounding.”

  I wanted to say a smart ass comment to Hank, but I bit my lip to hold it back.

  “Captain, we don’t know for sure that the demon was hurt or taken by that paranormal who showed up, even though it was obvious that he could see him. But if that’s not what happened, I don’t know what else it could have been.”

  “You’ll need to go check on the family again, Dred. And I want you to place a protection spell on them, if the male isn’t back.”

  Hank nodded. He’d removed his sunglasses and I felt his dark eyes on my face, making judgments. So far I’d gathered that he didn’t respond emotionally in the same way I was prone to, which was good. We needed that balance to make a strong team.

  But it sure unsettled me to not know what he was thinking, with those dark sunglasses hiding his eyes all the time.