Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

“So, what did you need to talk to me about? Yolanda didn’t mention anything,” Stephen asked.

  “Yolanda said you were pretty knowledgeable in mythology, specifically monsters and creatures.”

  “Knowledgeable? Yeah, I’d say so. I taught Myth at Ohio State for most of my life. Then those damn dragons came and made us all look like idiots.”

  “We’ve encountered something new,” I said. “You’ve probably heard about it on the Feed.”

  “Bah! I don’t touch all that new junk. It rots brains. Man can’t even get a newspaper anymore.” He pointed to the ones he’d thrown to the ground. “Those are fifty years old.”

  “What do you know about the phoenix?”

  Stephen’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re saying we don’t just have dragons anymore? You’ve seen a realdeal phoenix?”

  “We killed it once,” Afu said. “Well, it killed itself really. Then it came back out of its ashes.”

  I pulled out my holoreader and showed him a bit of the footage Brannigan had recorded.

  “Damn it all to hell!” Stephen kicked the stack of newspapers over with his foot.

  I thought most people in his field would have been overjoyed to learn the creatures they had devoted their lives to actually existed. Stephen was clearly not one of those people.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked. “It’s probably completely crap now there’s a real thing out there.”

  “Anything,” I said. “Everything.”

  Stephen sighed. “Okay. So you’ve seen it’s made of fire. Different records describe it like that while others say it was just a regular bird. But they all agree that a new incarnation rises from its ashes after it sets itself on fire.”

  “So, there’s no way to kill it?” Afu asked.

  Stephen shrugged. “Based on all the legends – and they come from all over: China, Japan, Russia, even the Native Americans had their version – it’ll just rise again after it’s killed. So, technically, yes, but you’ll just have to rinse and repeat.”

  “We saw the phoenix feed on dragons. Scalies we kill have been burning to yellow embers, even when the bird isn’t around. If it is around, the phoenix eats what’s left of them. Even the wraiths burn away if they get too close.”

  “There you go.” Stephen sulked. “Here I thought it was just furniture philosophy.”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked around at the dust-covered fixtures. His home needed furniture rehab, not just a new belief system.

  “Feng shui,” Stephen said. “Dragon is yang, phoenix is yin. One balances the other. Apparently, the Chinese meant it as more than advice on where to put your couch.”

  “So the phoenix balances the dragons?” Afu asked.

  “Seems like it.” Stephen spread his hands. “You all should be happy. The bird is doing your job for you.”

  “There’s a big problem with that, though,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “The bird got into one of our friends’ heads. Made her do things. Made her release its ashes. I’m starting to think these arsons going around the city are related, too.”

  “There’s been arsons?”

  I forgot: no Feed.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Point I’m making is, would the phoenix be able to–”

  “Possess people?” Stephen leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow.

  I felt stupid for even bringing it up, but nodded.

  “There’s nothing in the regular mythology about that at all.”

  I dropped my head. Shit.

  “But…” He stood at the books lining the walls and began throwing them down as he searched. “Ah! Here.”

  Returning to his chair, he opened a black book titled The Lesser Key of Solomon.

  “Is that, like, from the Bible?” Afu asked.

  Stephen sputtered his lips. “Nothing of the sort. Although King Solomon was mentioned in that bogus religious text.”

  As Stephen flipped through the pages, Afu leaned toward Renfro. “He doesn’t have to be so mad about it.”

  I would have loved to introduce Stephen Herjold to my parents. The fireworks would have been spectacular.

  “All right” Stephen raised his finger like some great orator. He must have been hell in the classroom. “‘Phenex, the thirty-seventh spirit, is a great Marquis of hell. It can only be evoked by more than one person. Any who conjure this demon must not listen to its song, and must bind it in human form’.”

  Renfro spit out his coffee.

  “Watch the carpet!” Stephen said.

  “Demons?” I said. I thought about how my daddy said it was Satanists behind the arsons. “No, that’s stupid. That makes even less sense than ghosts and dragons.”

  Stephen raised his hands defensively. “I’m only providing information. Like I said before, it’s probably all bullshit.”

  Patrice had acted like she was possessed, but I didn’t believe in any of that exorcist baloney. She’d been poisoned by the ashes.

  No. She’d been called. Sung to.

  “Look,” Stephen said. “A lot of myths have the tiniest bits of truth to them. Nanonuggets of fact. You ever play the telephone game? Or chinese whispers? Imagine what that would be like played over thousands of years. Whatever is going on, if this phoenix can affect people a certain way, there’s a scientific explanation. And I’m sure Yolanda can help you figure it out.”

  “That’s all you have?” asked Renfro.

  “Yep!” Stephen stood, brushing his hands together. “And I have a chess game with my next-door neighbor in five minutes. So, was there anything else you needed?”

  Afu stood. “Do you know anything about burrowing owls?”

  Stephen thinned his eyes and slowly shook his head. “No.”

  Back in the cannon truck, we all sat there stewing in what we’d just heard. It felt like we’d listened to a lot and learned nothing.

  “So,” Renfro said. “Now what do we do?”

  I held my helmet and stared at the shield hanging on the front. I rubbed a finger along the golden dragon head cresting the top. “If the phoenix is about balance, we’ll give it some. I aim to set the scales right, and for what it did to Patrice and those jolly vollies, we’re going to kill the motherfucker. Permanently.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Brannigan and I waited outside City Hall’s main chamber room, preparing to be yelled at by either the mayor, the family of the dead jolly vollies, or both. I always wondered why they called it a chamber. A chamber is what you stick a bullet in before blasting it into a monster’s head.

  But that’s just the way I’m wired.

  “Let me handle everything,” Brannigan said. “And what if you can’t?”

  Brannigan huffed like he’d already thought about it a thousand times. “Well, then Mayor Ghafoor can handle the rest.”

  Speaking of the devil, the mayor rushed into the building with a few of her aides, who closed the doors quickly to keep out news drones that bumped against the glass like giant wasps.

  “Whoo!” the mayor said, turning to face us. “Sorry I’m late. Robotic buzzards are faster than I give them credit for.”

  She unwrapped the scarf from her neck and didn’t show any sign of sweating. It was May for crying out loud.

  She shook Brannigan’s hand first, then mine. “The vampires at the Feed won’t leave me alone about these terrible arson fires. Those PC First goons keep trying to ruffle my feathers. And now I’m getting complaints about a traffic light at 3rd and Asher. Shall we?”

  “Do we have a minute to talk first?” Brannigan said. “I was hoping I could get an estimate on when we’ll begin reconstruction of Smoke Eater headquarters.”

  “Chief, I’d be happy to talk to you about that at another time, because right now we have to handle a more pressing issue that your department also caused.”

  Brannigan blinked, clearing his throat. “We didn’t cause this mess. You know this lawsuit is a joke as much as I do, so please drop the
cover-your-ass, runthe-bus-over-us mentality, because it’s not going to help this city or you, Tilda.”

  “I know the previous mayor may have been the type to do that, Cole, but I’m not him. I do care about our people and that means caring about those who protect them. But I’d advise you to speak to me with more respect. I’ve already called in the New US Army to begin patrolling the streets with this arsonist cult plaguing us. They’re just itching to be allowed to handle dragons and this new… thing that’s emerged.”

  I tensed, balling up my fists. “It’s a phoenix. You can say it. And there is no arsonist cult.”

  The police had a lot to ask me after Patrice brought the phoenix back to life. They skewed the questions to make it sound like Patrice had been involved in this apparent cult they thought was behind everything. Such bullshit. I told them Patrice would never have gone along with that kind of thing, but they kept digging, seeing if there was ever a time I might have seen her do anything strange, illegal.

  I admitted that I had seen her sacrifice a rat in the middle of the smoke eater shower room, surrounded by bloody pentagrams and upside-down crucifixes.

  I can’t believe I had to tell them I was kidding. Patrice was a normal, regular person. She had too much she was looking forward to, so much life left to live. A fucking sheep farm. She wouldn’t have sacrificed herself for some mythical pigeon.

  I don’t think anyone would, but the cops weren’t letting this thing go. I suggested they look into those whackos with PC First before they began chasing boogeymen.

  “The army can’t do what we do,” Brannigan told the mayor. “Bunch of dirty mercs without a single damn to give about anyone in this state.” He sighed and rubbed his face as if trying to wake up. “But I apologize. I know you’re trying. We’ve been through a lot recently.”

  Ghafoor playfully slapped Brannigan on the arm, which surprised him as much as me.

  “No worries, Chief. Let’s get in here and take some of that stressful wind out of your sails.”

  I didn’t think that was the best choice of words for that particular situation. Besides, it didn’t make any goddamn sense.

  We entered the chamber where chairs circled a long table. Some sad-looking white folks occupied one side. Brannigan nodded reassurance when I looked at him. I took the seat at the far end. Chief and the folks from City Hall took the rest.

  The lawyer representing the city came in last and closed the door before saying, “All right, everyone. We don’t have to drag this out.” He hit a button on the underside of the table. Hologram words floated in front of each seat. “You each have a document in front of you stating the law when it comes to wraiths, and while Parthenon City and its emissaries empathize with the families of the deceased, we claim neither fault nor are we going to hand over any wraiths captured by the smoke eaters.”

  “You’re pretty confident, Jim,” the other white man in a suit said from across the table, steepling his fingers in front of him.

  “It’s pretty cut and dry,” the city’s lawyer, Jim, said.

  “There is no precedent for this. The Wilkins and Harrison families are filing suit because we believe it’s wrong to hold family members just because they’ve unfortunately become undead. They belong to their next of kin. And we see their deaths as the direct result from Captain Williams’ negligence.”

  I couldn’t have made this shit up if you’d given me a fifth of whiskey and a holoreader to write on. And a bottle of booze would have been great to calm my quivering nerves. The image of Wilkins’ wraith inside my trap remote kept flashing across my mind.

  Jim walked over to stand behind me. He put his hands on the top of my chair. “Do you really think a judge will agree that these wraiths could be considered to be the same people your clients knew and loved?”

  “Absolutely,” the other lawyer said.

  Silence flooded the room as one side stared at the other. One of the family members was an older woman I pegged as Wilkins’ widow. She had the watered down blonde hair of someone who hadn’t kept up with the hair dye routine, but how could anybody care about that kind of thing when their husband had died. The others in the group were about my age: a man with a buzz cut and a beard, a woman who’d done her best to dress up in a pink polo with her hair tied deathly tight behind her head.

  I hadn’t wanted these people to suffer, and I certainly didn’t revel in it now. I’d done my due diligence over a week ago in Sandusky. I’d done everything I could.

  But you didn’t turn in that wraith.

  “We told them to stay back,” I said, breaking the quiet.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Mayor Ghafoor said. Her tense eyes told me that she really meant I shouldn’t say anything.

  I leaned forward in my seat. “I want to say something. We tried to save Mr Wilkins, but he refused to leave the house. When a leviathan emerged, it attacked him. After another one showed up and we captured it, Mr Harold and his crew showed up claiming to be smoke eater volunteers and demanding we hand over Wilkins’ wraith. We told them to get out of the area and get back to safety, but like their friend, they refused, and followed us. With respect to the deceased, this was extremely dangerous and ill-advised.”

  The family members squirmed in their seats. Seemed like what I said rang true with how the men had lived their lives.

  Jim held his hands out. “Well, there you go. They went against what the professionals told them and took their lives into their own hands.”

  Damn, Jim, that was blunt. He lacked a lot of tact. More than me or Brannigan, which was saying something.

  The other lawyer looked at his clients, and they looked back at him. He gathered them to the side, where they huddled with sharp whispers.

  When they broke and returned to the table, the families’ lawyer looked defeated. “We’re no longer attempting to hold the city responsible for these men’s deaths.”

  Jim smiled. “Great–”

  “But we are still going to sue for possession of Mr Wilkins’ wraith.”

  “Why in hell would you want to do that?” Brannigan snapped. “These aren’t like pets, and they sure as hell aren’t going to be the men you knew before. They’re going to rip you apart at the first opportunity.”

  I should tell them about the remote.

  No. It would just make things worse. Until a judge signed the order, I didn’t have to do shit.

  Brannigan stood and the family members shrank into their seats. “You might feed me some bullshit, saying you’ll just keep him in the wraith trap. Well, not only is that pointless as hell, I know for a fact that you can’t take government property, even if you miraculously win this stupid crusade. So if you really want this wraith back, we’ll gladly dump it in your front yard. And staying cooped up in your houses won’t save you, because dragons will be attracted by the shrieking banshee floating among your fake petunias. They will come. That’s a fact. They’ll burn you down and gobble you up. Do you want that?”

  Chief sat back down and winked at me, like he had everything under control. I stared at him with my mouth open. Another silence dropped onto the meeting, making the previous one seem like a rock concert.

  The family’s lawyer huffed. “I think we’re done here. See you in court, Jim.”

  With that, he escorted the family members out of the council chamber, and when the door shut, Mayor Ghafoor spun on Brannigan.

  “For crying out loud, Brannigan, what was that?”

  Chief shrugged. “I was just telling them the truth.”

  Lawyer Jim tried to be optimistic. “I really don’t see a judge granting what they want. We won today, even if it doesn’t quite feel like it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the mayor said. “This is going to take time and money the city doesn’t have. I’ve got much bigger fires to put out. And I mean that literally.”

  While Mayor Ghafoor and Jim hashed it out, Brannigan tapped me on the shoulder and thumbed toward the door. I nodded. Fuck yes, I wanted to get o
ut of there.

  In the hall, I was about to ask Brannigan about our next plan of attack on the phoenix – what we’d been doing wasn’t working and I wasn’t going to let another arson or phoenix-related catastrophe happen on my watch. But Brannigan’s holoreader rang and the strange siren tone put a concerned look on his face. A hologram head of a long-haired man floated from the holoreader. It was Ted Sevier, the man who ran the wraith enclosures.

  “Chief,” Ted said. He was out of breath and clearly in a fit.

  “What’s going on, Ted? One of the dragons catch a hernia pushing out an egg?”

  “Oh, I bet I look out of sorts,” said Ted. “You probably knew something was wrong just by looking at me. That’s the thing about these holoreaders–”

  “Ted!” Brannigan shouted. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the dragons, Chief. They’re… acting strangely.”

  “Define strangely,” Brannigan said.

  “Crazy. I don’t know what’s gotten into them, but they’re behaving more aggressively, less content. Like those loons walking downtown talking to themselves and swinging at shadows. And the dragons aren’t the only ones.”

  “Your staff acting funny, too?” Brannigan’s gray eyebrows mashed together like caterpillars as he thinned his eyes.

  “You’ll just have to come see for yourself,” Ted said. “I’m at the eastern enclosure, but my people tell me it’s also happening at the other three.”

  “I’m on my way,” Brannigan said, before hanging up. “What do you make of that, Williams?”

  “It’s something to do with the phoenix,” I said. “You should have seen what the leviathan was doing when that bird showed up. And we’ve had more dragons popping up outside of the enclosures, all where people have reported seeing the phoenix.

  Chief, I think it’s the reason Patrice might have lost her mind, too.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions about Patrice.” He looked at me with hope in his eyes. “You want to tag along to the enclosure?”

  “You bet your ass. If only to tell you I told you so.”

  Outside City Hall, I was about to hop into Brannigan’s truck when a chanting mob began marching around the street corner. I stood there with the passenger door splayed open.