Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1)

by N. A. Grotepas

  That wasn’t too much to ask.

  But yet it appeared to be so easy to fail at.

  She was gone. And I knew that something terrible had happened—call it a hunch. It wasn’t like she just took off on the moped and had planned on never coming back. She’d been abducted. And I knew because I felt it, but also because the tracking device I’d put on the moped had been turned off. Exactly like someone had known it was there and destroyed it so that I couldn’t find her.

  Thinking about it was beginning to make me feel sick, but there was no other way to deal—if I didn’t think about it, the only other option at the moment was to just let her go and wash my hands of it.

  The supernatural world wasn’t like the normal world. I couldn’t just become Liam Neeson in Taken and threaten people over the phone while my minions helped me track the kid through the seedy underbelly of the city.

  I had to network, and I had to have patience.

  I laid down on my sofa and stared up at the ceiling. Shadows played across it as lights from passing cars out on the street pushed the shapes into a dance of unknown objects.

  I had to get her back. But I had to finish unraveling the situation before that was possible.

  My cell phone buzzed and I looked at it. I rolled off the couch, annoyed that I couldn’t just lay there, useless, all night long, contemplating death and the futility of existence. The notification was a reminder: I had a session with Orrin soon.

  I wasn’t in the mood, at all, but brooding on the topic of Vivian vanishing wasn’t going to bring her back or make headway into the matter at all.

  Maybe… maybe I could convince that stuffy old prat Orrin to teach me a useful spell.

  “There are no cancellations or postponements when it comes to my mentoring, Mildred.”

  If I punched him for that, would he send a new mentor? Like Emma, that one we’d discussed before Vivian vanished?

  Punching a ghost, or, as he’d indicated once, a projection from another dimension, was impossible. So even considering it was a waste of time.

  Apparently I had to focus on the lesson, though every part of my mind warred with that.

  “So, Pupil, shall we discuss your lesson?”

  He floated back and forth with his arms crossed behind his back like Yosemite Sam when he was roaring “tarnation” and “dagnabbit” at Bugs.

  Yosemite was the best character. In some ways, Orrin reminded me of the little fella. They were both trying to compensate for being small with their tempers and urge to exert control over a situation.

  “Do you happen to know, Orrin, of a spell called Spear of Light? It’s very old.”

  He stopped pacing and at looked at me. The only sound—beyond the roar of the city—was that of water flowing down the fountain at the edge of the patio.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Why do you want to know?”

  “Are you serious? Why do I want to know? I’m a sorcerer. Magic and spells are my work.”

  “But why now, Mildred?”

  “That kid, the one you met the other day, she’s gone missing.” I sighed loudly.

  “The one with fire and phoenix power?”

  I laughed. “How—are you serious? Fire and phoenix power?”

  He didn’t even acknowledge me. He simply kept pacing in his floaty ghost way.

  “When she finally comes into her power, that will be what it is. I saw it, dormant in her bones.”

  “She’s a sorcerer then?”

  “Yes, like us.”

  I frowned, feeling both elated for the powers she would someday exhibit and sad at the same time. “But why would someone kidnap her.”

  “The girl was kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but that’s the hunch I have. Taken. But why?”

  “I do not know,” Orrin answered in a sincere voice.

  “No, I wasn’t asking. I’m just thinking out loud. We were attacked last night by a large mob of vampires and void demons. I think they came for her. The question is, why?”

  “I still do not know.”

  I really was going to try punching him. Conversing with him whether I wanted answers or not was an exercise in Zen if I let it be. But when I didn’t? I’d take whatever punishment punching him would bring down on me. It’d be worth it.

  “Now, then, your lesson. Are you ready for it?” He squared off and faced me.

  “I’m not sure. I’m very preoccupied with this. She’s a kid and she’s in danger.”

  “Perhaps a spell or two that could help you, then?”

  “Like the Spear of Light?”

  “I’m afraid that is a spell I do not know, Pupil.”

  “Orrin,” I said, suddenly thinking of something. “What kind of magic is older than ours?”

  “There are many kinds. The magic of druids. The magic of pagans. Even the various strains of witches have some that date back to ancient times.”

  “Can I learn the spells of any of those?”

  “There is cross over, but the way the magic is summoned varies.”

  “Do you know how to fight a void demon?”

  I could see his face change as my questions went on. He was getting annoyed. With the void demon question, he exploded.

  “Who is the teacher? Who is the student? You will hold your tongue and learn the lessons I have deemed you ready to learn.”

  I’d had just about enough—losing the kid, being disappointed with Dorothy keeping an eye on her, fighting vampires and demons, Hank keeping secrets from me.

  I summoned ice and wind, one in each hand—I hadn’t even known I could do that—and threw both of them at him. Before he could respond, I was drawing on things I didn’t even know I knew—I was creating spirals of lighting in my hands and unleashing them at the apparition.

  He stared at me, untouched by everything I hurled at him. His face looked amused, which made me madder. I roared and pulled a thunderstorm from the thin air above me. The water from my fountain rushed up to meet the clouds I was conjuring and then I pulled it down all at once like a tsunami falling from the sky and hurled it directly at the smirking face of the obnoxious ghost I hated having as a mentor.

  Magic coursed through me like shockwaves, ripples of glaciers and electricity. It was almost orgasmic I drew in so much and then I unleashed it all at once.

  And then I was depleted.

  My knees buckled. Before I knew what was happening, I was laying on my back on the patio, staring up at the sky through the boughs of the Japanese maple.

  A window slid open somewhere and I heard a neighbor shouting to another neighbor about the commotion.

  Orrin peered down at me as he floated up to my side.

  “One week’s detention. No lessons. Insubordination like this must be punished.”

  I groaned. “Not even a ‘you’re more powerful than I thought.’ Or an ‘impressive’?”

  “Rebellion is not to be tolerated.”

  “You’re the worst.” But he was already gone and I was alone, empty of mana, broken hearted, and for once, feeling tiny and inadequate against the big bad world.

  But in the silence of his absence, the words of Orrin echoed through my head.

  She’s fire. Flames. A phoenix.

  Fire. Flames. Phoenix.

  A fire elemental demon. A fire dragon. A fire human, who didn’t even know she was fire.

  All taken. All three.

  Three.

  Everything hit me at once.

  I knew why she’d been taken.

  39

  Earlier, I’d thought the night would drag on forever, that I’d be tossing and turning in bed endlessly, certain something terrible was happening to Vivian somewhere.

  And I would have been right. The moment I realized what was happening, was also the moment I realized I’d been an utter fool to deplete my mana by throwing spells uselessly at a ghost.

  I dragged myself to my feet, stumbling into the house. The neighbor’s cat, Vito, was suddenly running between my
legs like it intended to trip me. I swore, but Vito just meowed and kept running with me like we were old pals.

  We probably had been, in a previous life, what did I really know, after all?

  Getting into the house was a process because Vito wanted to come too.

  “Nope, stay out,” I muttered, gently pushing him away with my foot.

  I closed the door and headed into the kitchen to find a salad or something.

  It was frustrating that Bianca and other witches could just buy ink and replenish their mana stores, while I had to eat health food to restore mine through prana, things with a lifeforce that I absorbed to power my magic.

  I could eat meat, if I wanted to, but it meant an eventual cleanse of the taint that came from absorbing another higher life force. Almost like the Universe was punishing people for enjoying a steak every now and then.

  There was no salad in my fridge. The best I could do was a bowl of Cheerios. So, grains. Grains would work. Highly processed, but in a pinch, yes, they could work.

  I needed to eat fast. I quickly polished off the bowl of cereal and went to my closet in my bedroom and put on my fighting clothes.

  Fighting clothes—that’s what I called my jeans, sports bra, and tank, plus Doc Martens boots. I reloaded my Colt magazines, inserted one into the grip, and racked the slide.

  I’d discovered tonight that I could do two different spells at once—double-fisting it. Was the gun now a pointless accoutrement?

  I guffawed, turning the perfect gun back and forth in my hand, admiring the metal, the heft of it, the simpleness of the machine.

  As if a gun could ever be a pointless accoutrement.

  Taking my time was killing me, but I needed to be methodical. Inside some part of my mind was running around like a chicken with its head cut off—one of my favorite childhood expressions. Very classy. Very macabre.

  I kept that panicking part suppressed by focusing on what needed to be done, rather than giving in to the hysteria, which threatened to overwhelm me.

  What if I wasn’t fast enough? What if it was too late already and I’d just be doing clean up, knowing how massively I’d failed?

  I put my earbuds in and got Fua on the phone as I was nearing being battle ready.

  “Dred? Everything alright?” Fua’s voice came over the line when he answered.

  “Captain. That blip you saw on the Mormon temple earlier today? Still there?” I holstered the Colt and went into the bathroom to adjust my hair. In the mirror I saw how tired I looked. Made sense, since that was precisely how tired I felt.

  “I’m not at the fortress Dred. Let me check on the iPad,” he said. “What’s going on? Are you worried?”

  “I think I know where Vivian is.”

  “Are you telling me that you think the little girl is on the temple?”

  “Not because she wants to be.”

  “One second.” There was a pause. “All right, the blip is still there, Dred.”

  “That’s them, then. Something’s happening on the temple, with Vivian.”

  “You’re going in to check it? You’ll need backup. You could do this alone, but I sure as hell prefer that you don’t. We’ve already lost one good agent this year.”

  I closed my eyes and inhaled. “I’ll take Hank.”

  “I’m notifying Bianca and Cristian. I’ll have them on standby. Keep me close in case you need more back up, Dred. You think this is related to the vampire attack, then?”

  “I guarantee it.”

  Hank pulled into my driveway and I jumped into his Karmann Ghia.

  “Driver, make haste to downtown. Temple square.”

  “Real funny, Dred. I question your judgment about making jokes when things are so serious.” The car jerked as Hank shifted gears and I fell back into the seat. I grabbed the door handle to brace myself as he screeched around a corner.

  “That’s the best time to make them. Those are the intersections I’m looking for. Dire moments? Boom, funniest jokes. Oh, before we get too far, stop at that smoothie joint on 4th and 9th. I need more prana.”

  “You want to tell me what happened to your prana or am I going to guess?”

  “I’d love to hear your guess.”

  “First, tell me what the hell is going on.”

  I filled him in on my suspicions, including the way I’d figured it out based on Orrin’s insight of Vivian’s dormant magic.

  He groaned. “You sure you need to stop? This is a really bad time for errands.”

  “It’s on the way, and you’re almost there, and if I don’t get something in my blood faster than the Cheerios, I’ll have absolutely no magic to fight this guy.”

  He let out an audible sigh to express his displeasure and then stopped at the smoothie place. I ran in, grabbed a spinach and fruit smoothie, and ran back out and hopped into the car.

  “Neither of us will regret this,” I reassured him. As long as Vivian isn’t dead yet, which I didn’t say. We both knew it, anyway.

  As he screamed down 4th South and turned toward the Avenues to get onto 2nd South, I told him about the confrontation with Orrin, and what I’d learned about how I could conjure two spells with each hand. I listened to myself, hearing at that point how immature my confrontation was with the ghost. Lashing out at Orrin was incredibly childish of me.

  But I also realized that I didn’t care—my mentor was a stuffy suit from 1859, who followed the mores of that time period. He had no sympathy for me, at all, and treated me like trash. There was zero connection between us, and therefore zero trust and he didn’t seem to care to build trust.

  Aside from all that, of course I could be immature. Of course I could lose my shit when it seemed everything was stacked against me. Of course I felt personally responsible for losing Vivian.

  Hank didn’t bother parking. He just pulled the Karmann Ghia right up onto the sidewalk between the Joseph Smith Memorial building and Temple Square. Crowds of pedestrians screamed and stared at us as we leapt out of the tiny car and ran across the sidewalk, dodging foot traffic and weaving through the massive planter containers with vines and flowers spilling over the edges.

  I looked up at the top of the Temple when it came into view. Flashes of light danced up there.

  Damn.

  The scaffolding I’d climbed to get closer to Blue a few days earlier was still there.

  “Should we climb it?” Hank asked. “I didn’t get to, last time.”

  “I’d rather climb it than try to go through the inside to get to the roof. Seems better to start there than decide to head directly into the building and attempt to get access that way.”

  “Why?” Hank asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Wouldn’t it just be a matter of finding the stairs and climbing up?”

  “If only. No, the inside of that building is off limits to people who don’t qualify,” I said, wondering if he was seriously asking me or just giving me a hard time.

  “Really? Why?”

  “Come on, are you teasing me? Have you really never heard of the way Mormons run their show?” I asked, feeling exasperated.

  “I’m new in town, remember? I really don’t know much about it.”

  Now I felt like a jerk for being impatient. “It’s just how that religion deals with its organization—you have to follow a lot of rules plus some extra ones to get inside.”’

  “I get it now. So we don’t qualify?”

  “Bingo. So let’s just hike up the scaffolding again and skirt the country club entrance exam.”

  “I like the way you think, Dred.”

  “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  “Not even remotely.”

  We vaulted the fence that separated the inner grounds from the rest of the property and then raced toward the scaffolding.

  A hundred possible scenarios played out in my head as Hank and I climbed the metal structure. Security officers were soon on our tail, shouting at us to get down, flashing their badges and threatening to call the cops.


  “Call them!” I shouted down at them. Wouldn’t that be hilarious—Hank and I getting to the top, fighting some magical creatures as the cops show up and then we have to save their asses too?

  “They love their security around here. Too bad it’s ineffective,” Hank said.

  We were both out of breath as we reached the top and climbed over the crenellation that marked the boundary of the roof, saddled between the spire groupings of the towers. There were three spires on each side.

  I steadied myself and stared at the scene that unfolded before us.

  It was not a promising sight in the least.

  40

  Summoning circles containing ancient symbols and lit up with the power of their magic pulsed on roof. Each smoldered with orange and red light, alive like flames.

  The demon from Lagoon was tied up in one circle—or rather, he was bound by magic. The white adolescent fire dragon was in another, and Vivian was in the center of the one closest to the perpetrator of this dark magic: the man in the Hawaiian shirt.

  Vivian screamed when she looked up and saw me. She was gagged. So whatever she said was unintelligible. I could imagine quite well what she might be saying.

  I expelled a massive breath. At least she was still alive. A pang went through me wondering what abuses she’d suffered so far.

  I took a step toward Hawaiian Shirt, drew my Colt and aimed it at his face with its wire frame glasses and—no surprises here—annoying smirk.

  “What a shocker. A moron doing dangerous magic on the roof of a sacred building. It’s so nice to finally meet you,” I said. Starting the mind games early sounded good to me. No sense in waiting. “Oh by the way, I’ve heard you cheat at card games and all your friends say you don’t pay your library fines.” That was probably too much, but I felt he deserved it after all the running around he’d made me do and for whatever vile thing he was about to do on the roof of a building that a sizable number of people thought was kind of special.

  I was no longer part of the religion that believed in the holiness of the building, but that didn’t eliminate the fact that Hawaiian Shirt was using it for his gain in some kind of weird ritual.