I turned into the wind and tuned into the great radio silence that hung in the air, filtering the taste and smell of the air. I didn’t really know what I sensed, exactly... something like a tug out from my tongue and my eyes. As I immersed in the invisible flow of energy, the raucous call of ravens from the north-west and swiveled toward the sound, eyes still closed. When I opened them, I saw birds lift from the roof of the shredder, wheeling around in agitation. Lot number one it was then.
The gate was open. When Big K and his kids closed for the day, they took all the cash and locked up all the non-ferrous metal, the really valuable stuff. I kept an eye out for junkyard dogs and security as I jogged into the dusty yard, pistol drawn. I found the dog around the first towering pile of scrap. It was burned black, skin split from heat, its lips pulled back over its half-bare skull. The smell of cooked meat was fresh, and when I crouched to hold a hand over it, warmth radiated through the leather of my glove.
As I stood, something occurred to me... a vague, unformed theory on how the other mage had worked such an energetically intense spell from a distance. Animal sacrifice. Death was a potent fuel for magic. Revelation, birth and death... three of the most powerful events in existence, when it came to curses and wards.
I set off for the shredder, warier and quieter now that I was on the approach. The huge machine was an awkward tower with several jutting conveyor belts and a central crane-like ‘office’ where the overseer could monitor the procession of hulks that were pulled up the largest belt, fed into the shredder, and then sorted along different belts that ran out from underneath the tower. There was a huge engine shed underneath. The door was ajar, the padlock and chain hanging loose from the rusted iron handle.
My sense of unease only grew. The first thing I did was look up: when you were dealing with animals or the supernatural, ‘up’ was always a potential site of ambush. When I was satisfied that there were no pyromaniac demons hanging from the rafters, I drew up to the side of the door, the pistol cupped and ready to fire, and tuned into my full range of senses. The shredder was turned off, and would have been turned off since four thirty in the afternoon, but the air billowing from the entry to the engine room complex was distinctly warmer than the outside. There was no sound. I drew a deep breath, then spun around the doorway gun-first, staring down the sight.
My boot crunched down on something gritty and hot.
I paused, breaking the trance of trigger discipline to look down. A triangle-within-a-circle of iron filings twisted apart under my sole. I frowned for a moment before the shock of adrenaline hit me, and rapidly backpedaled out of the engine room, turning quickly as the nearest pile of shredded steel ignited with a loud phwoompf, the sound of a gas pilot lighting a heating element, but larger. Much larger.
Fire caught the thin flakes of steel alight with weird, eerie blue flames. As I watched, the scrap flashed orange and white as it rapidly ignited, liquefied, and flowed together into a vaguely humanoid shape. It was lean and angular, the metal cracking and setting into brittle blades in the places where it wasn’t under pressure from the intense, hot magic. Its joints spurted flame, flowing with molten metal.
As I fumbled to bring the extinguisher around - a tool that suddenly felt a lot less useful than I’d imagined - the fire elemental rushed me in a cloud of boiling heat.
Chapter 11
I blasted a cloud of frosty white gas into the face of the thing before it got within ten feet. It screeched like broken metal rubbing against itself as its charge slowed, but then a gout of flame lashed past me like a whip. It took the sleeve of my t-shirt off in a cloud of fibers and ash, scalding the skin beneath.
I didn’t bother to check what had happened to it: I turned tail and ran, dodging broken strollers and aluminum siding and car doors, fleeing heedlessly toward open ground and away from the combustible piles of shred.
Who the hell had Maslak hired that was capable of summoning an elemental? No names came to mind as fire tore over my head and splashed to the ground, roaring across the dirt gravel before extinguishing. I dodged from side to side, ducking and covering as we careened toward a dark complex of open sheds. Crushed cars were stacked up in huge piles, while others waited on suspension platforms waiting to be drained and compacted. I pelted into the darkness of the nearest shed and turned a corner, heaving for breath, and used the moment of reprieve to furiously sketch a ward against spirits on the blank sketchpad I’d bought. I got the design down, but not the charge. I heard a deep-bodied rumble from somewhere outside, and the elemental roared on the other side of the wall, too close for comfort. I needed to start running again.
My hope was on the other side of the junkyard. There was a canal next to the rail line, and if I could get there and over the fence, I could probably lose it at the stream. Spirits didn’t like moving water, and the canal – while sluggish – would be moving.
I kept my pistol in one hand, the extinguisher cable and pump in the other, got down low, and began to crab crawl through the shadows behind the suspended cars. The elemental was in the main open area of the shed, and I could hear its joints screeching as it twisted one way, then the other, searching for me with what passed for its eyes. My personal wards were confusing the spirit: it knew I was in here, but it apparently needed line of sight to find me. I slunk between a row of cars, keeping the under the height of the windows and away from the beating hot light that radiated out from the elemental’s mass. When I was at the end of the line, I broke for it, expecting it to pursue as it had before. Instead, it whirled in place and threw its next fireball straight at the car at the end of the row. That wasn’t fair. It was smart.
The car exploded in a shower of unsiphoned gas, glass and metal, a huge smoking conflagration that threw me off my feet and set off every fire alarm in the building. Regularly, the sound would have deafened me. Fortunately-unfortunately, only one ear drum ruptured as I hit the ground and tumbled inelegantly across the dirt, coming to a stop on my side. Scraped up and bleeding, I pushed myself to hands and knees. My head was ringing, and my back hurt more than was normal. Worse, I’d lost the gun: it lay in the spreading cloud of dust that billowed out of the now-burning building.
“Dammit!” I scrambled up to my feet as the elemental, glutted on its native substance, walked out of the conflagration a foot taller than it had been before. I still had the extinguisher, and blasted it full in the face as it wound up to fling another fireball.
The cloud of halon and CO2 engulfed the figure as it bore down on me, causing its body to slow and screech. I grit my teeth against the pain and kept the hose trained on it. The extinguisher didn’t stop it, but it was slowing it down. Not enough. The nozzle began to sputter, and the elemental was still on its feet.
There was a massive, throaty roar from the siphoning shed, which was now beginning to billow with flame. I stumbled back as the fire elemental surged forward. A poorly aimed fireball careened and splattered at my feet, showering me in a rain of red burning sparks, as a bulldozer burst through the smoke and dumped a metal trough full of water over the elemental’s head.
Coughing, I scraped flecks of hot metal and rock from my arms and cheeks. The elemental’s high whistling scream rang through the scrapyard. I pulled out the paper I’d written the seal on, slapped it against my bleeding arm, and barreled straight at the trapped spirit. Even with the steam still billowing from its skin, it was fighting against its brittle metal prison, gouting jets of flame through the open joints. I slapped the paper on it and barked the incantation aloud. “SATOR! Omeliel! Anachiel! Araochiah! Anazachia!”
With each name, the steam kettle shriek intensified, but the seal – powered by blood and terror – burned into the metal as the paper ashed, crackling with strange, lurid black fire for a moment before it settled into a crude engraving on the surface.
Peevishly, I looked up to the bulldozer as Vassily hopped out, brushing white dust off his tracksuit and t-shirt, then taking his peaked cap off and dusting it against his thigh.
>
“Hang back,” I said, unhappily. I pulled the bag of salt, and chewed a corner off of it so that it began to pour out in a thin stream. The elemental wailed, rattling against its charred metal shell.
“Just as well they left the keys in this thing,” Vassily said. “And that I don’t listen to you.”
I began to walk a circle around the struggling elemental. It was trying to find leverage against the Third Seal of Saturn, but old King Solomon knew his stuff. “Coming here was stupid, Vassily.”
“Your face is stupid. And what the hell is this thing?” He did, at least, hang back while I closed the circle and went to my knees in front of it, holding my hands out in a gesture of invocation. “I saw it on fire and you on fire, and everything on fire, and there was water, so-”
“Probably the smartest thing you could have done. Be quiet.” I closed my eyes and concentrated.
Quite suddenly, I felt something rush up from deep inside of me: a hidden leviathan, a formless shadow coasting beneath the surface of my mind, unseen. A ripple of energy, stronger than anything I’d ever felt before, thrilled up and down my spine and out through my fingers. I shuddered; my jaws snapped together, teeth clacking. It felt like a release, like a catch coming undone. Suddenly, I felt the circle seize and hold.
When I looked up, Vassily was watching me strangely. He’d lit a cigarette, smoking with it pinched between thumb and forefinger, and his consternation was visible through the smoke. “What was that?”
“Sealing the circle and the ward on this thing,” I said. “It’s a fire elemental.”
“Huh.” Vassily frowned. “Well… alrighty then.”
The creature was weakening inside its cocoon. There was no fuel for it, and only the will of the spirit was keeping it kindled. I sighed, slumping on my knees. “I need to work with this alone, Vassily… I…”
“This is the point you say: ‘Thanks for saving my ass, Vivi.’”
I looked up at him. “Thank you. For not listening to me, this one time.”
“Good enough.” He flashed a broad, sly grin.
“But it was still stupid. I can’t defend two people from this kind of magical firepower.” I motioned him off irritably, two-thirds focused on magic and the push of the elemental as it struggled itself to extinction.
Vassily held his hands up in a posture of surrender as he wheeled around and swaggered off, leaving me to my work. I reached out to the spirit, and narrowed my eyes.
“Who bound you here, salamander?” I said, protecting command into my voice. “Who cursed you to remain in this place?”
Elementals were, by their nature, neutral entities. As I understood it, they were essentially thoughtforms, imbued by the collective imagination of the billions of humans who had lived, died and worshiped since prehistoric times. It had no allegiance to the man who summoned it, or specific enmity toward me: this creature of fire was as much a victim of the spook as Slava was.
“Kovacssss.” The voice was not spoken aloud. I heard its crackling, hissing whisper in my mind, as clear as a radio picking up a signal. “Eric Kovacsss.”
It was using my own patterns of speech. I kept my focus on it, and watched the flames briefly flare in response to my own energy. “Where is Eric Kovacs in the present moment?”
Images flashed through my mind: the back of a limousine, a nightclub, a meeting room, then a modern block of condos. The building squatted like a glass cube between a line of old Brooklyn factories on one side, and a triad of distinctive, flower-shaped projects on the other. I could smell dirty water, and – most tellingly – see the shadows cast by the Brooklyn bridge over the building. The vision flickered into the interior of his apartment… it faced the street, with big windows and a big porch behind glazed glass doors.
“DUMBO,” I said. “He is in the district of New York City known as DUMBO?”
Its reply was a feeling of desperate affirmation.
“Are you still under his compulsion?”
“No compulsion,” the elemental hissed. “We failed our imperative. The geas is spent.”
“Then I release you on two conditions, salamander: that you withdraw to your realm of habitation without delay, and that you never harm me or my sworn or blood kin, including every member of the Yaroschenko Organizatsiya.” I had to be as careful as a lawyer with my wording. Any gap in the conditions could or would be exploited by a clever magician. “You will accept no geas or offer which would result in harm to the Yaroshenko Organizatsiya. Am I understood?”
The spirit was in no way chastened by my demands. It was emotionless and efficient. “We abide by your terms, magus.”
I broke the circle of salt with my toe, and then reached out with the marker to cross out the seal. The impure steel cracked like an egg, shattering and pattering to the ground in a shower of sparks and red-hot shards, and then the elemental – now a ball of fire the size of a basketball – shrunk in on itself and vanished.
Chapter 12
On a Friday night, Sirens was bustling. The main room of the security office was busy, with most of the bouncers clustered around the table with Nicolai for muster. Vassily and I both stalked inside and found ourselves walled off by a row of broad backs and black t-shirts. Nic was at the front of the room in what passed for his uniform - a blue and white striped tank and black cargoes instead of the usual camo print. My father lounged indolently on a chair beside him, and looked up at us with flat, white eyes.
“Alright. Any questions? No? Good. Get out there and report any weird shit straight back here,” Nic said. He waved his hand, and the small black t-shirt-and-slacks army rose and filtered out past us, some of them glancing at my seared and ragged clothing. We smelled like sulphur and rusted iron.
“How’d you go?” Nic asked, once everyone had left.
“We have reduced the threat at least. Where’s Rodya?” I focused on Nic, refusing to look at Grigori.
“Out,” Nic grunted by way of reply. He took out a pouch and filters, and began to deftly assemble a cigarette. “What happened?
“There was a trap set for us at K&S.” I wanted to sit, but didn’t dare to. Adrenaline was all that was keeping me on my feet. “A fire elemental. It was probably what was used to cause Vyacheslav to self-combust… it’s dead now.”
“So that’s it? All clear?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “We still have to find the spook who summoned it, but-”
“So you’ve come back after doing half the fucking job?” Grisha spoke up from the back. “What do you want? A pat on the head?”
Finally, I settled on him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“You’re fucking talking to me now, you little shit. I’m a starred Commander in this organization, and you’ll talk to me if I fucking tell you to.” Grisha sat forward, resting his hands on his knees. “So the spook is still running around. You killed the puppet, not the puppeteer.”
“The elemental gave me his address,” I said acidly. “If you’d shut up for five minutes and let me finish my report to Nicolai.”
Grigori got to his feet. He could still tower over me. “Nic is part of MY crew. MINE. Don’t you ever speak to your Kommandant like that again.”
“I’ll show my Kommandant – and my father – respect when he gives it.”
His eyes paled, pupils contracting into tiny black points in a sea of gray-white. I knew that expression well. My eyes did the same thing when I was furious. I felt a thrill of… fear? shoot through me as my father balled his fists and advanced a step toward us. But it wasn’t the kind of cowering, nauseous fear I usually felt when I faced him. I had a knife, loose in its sheath on my hip. If he got on top of me, I could stab him. I WOULD stab him.
“Grisha, come on…” Nicolai reached out to steady him the way he had the other day, but my father brushed him off and threw his chair aside as he bulldozed his way across the room. A took a single step back, but before I even thought it through, the knife was in my hand.
Grigori’s forward charge
halted for a moment, breaking stride as his face flickered with some emotion I couldn’t read. And then he continued, snorting like a bull. I braced to weave for the punch, but he didn’t strike - instead, he feinted, and then his other hand shot out and grabbed my knife hand wrist. He squeezed and pulled me forward, putting the point of the blade against the side of his throat.
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” He said, grinning. “You want to kill me?”
My eyes narrowed. This close, I could smell the sour ghosts of alcohol and cheap tobacco on his breath.
He laughed in my face. “Go on then, pussy. Go on, stick it in.”
Strong as I was, I still had nothing on my father. I bared my teeth, clamping my tingling fingers down to keep my hold on the hilt, and stared him in the eye as I pushed forward against his grip. His fingers tightened, but not enough to stop me.
“Do it,” he hissed. I saw his skin dimple beneath the point of the blade; his eyes were wild and thrilled.
“Alexi! Jesus Christ, man!” Vassily’s hands were on my shoulders, pulling me away. Nicolai was doing the same thing on the other side, hauling Grisha back. I’d never drawn a weapon on him before. Nicolai was pale, spooked. Vassily tried to put himself in front of me, and he was similarly shaken. My father wasn’t shaken: he was laughing, his face flushed dark. A thin line of blood tracked down the front of his throat.
“Jesus, Alexi, relax. I was just messing with you,” he said. “I’m gonna have words about this with Rodya tonight, kid. We can’t have you messing up the chain of command.”
“Tell him whatever the fuck you want, and tell him I said that I’ll kill your fat fucking ass, too!” My temper, already frayed, broke down completely. I tried to lunge around Vassily, hand white-knuckled around the knife, while Grigori laughed loud enough to almost drown me out. “I’ll kill you, you disgusting piece of shit!”
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