A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2)

by Rebecca Chastain

  No, no. With you, I’m sure. Here, I’ve accessed the pooka entry for you.

  I turned to the page number he indicated, miffed. The book could laugh. I’d contemplate that later.

  POOKA. Pookas incubate underground for approximately 20 years in regions of massive population growth. Between 1966 and 1984, pookas were moderately common in the United States. In the last 30 years, they’ve become rare here but remain common in Nigeria, Pakistan, and India.

  A pooka is born with a perfect balance of atrum and lux lucis. When its birth nears, it imprints upon a being of its choosing. Once imprinted, a pooka is tethered to that being, and its development in life will depend upon the imprintee and the pooka’s experiences.

  Pookas are always born in November.* In some cultures, they are revered for their ability to bestow prophecies upon others regarding the next year’s events. Other cultures kill them outright.

  No picture accompanied the entry, but that was moot now. I read the small footnote at the bottom of the page.

  *This pooka’s birth in the last minute of the last day of the month is auspicious.

  I flipped back to the front. “Auspicious how?”

  It’s said the later a pooka rises, the more powerful it is.

  “Is that myth or fact?”

  Most don’t rise larger than a grizzly.

  Great. I could stack two bears atop each other and still not make a single mammoth. “‘Tethered’ means?”

  Roped. Chained. Fastened. Locked.

  “Never mind. What am I supposed to do with a mammoth? People are going to notice it following me around.”

  It will stabilize.

  The pooka’s moans wedged tension between my spinal joints. As long as it had a harpoon in it, nothing was going to be stable about the pain-filled animal. I’d figure out the specifics of being imprinted upon later. This poor creature had been incubating for twenty years, only to be attacked and wounded less than a minute after its birth.

  “Thanks for the info, Val. I promise I’ll get you cleaned up soon.”

  Thank you. A third word appeared faint, then came into focus, like ink soaking into the page from the other side. Maddy. May I call you Maddy?

  I hid my wince; I’d hated that nickname since childhood. “My best friend calls me ‘Dice.’ Would that be okay?”

  Dice? I like it . . . Dice.

  I grinned, the movement tight against cold cheeks, and gave the book a pat before sliding him back into his strap. “We need to help the pooka,” I said loudly.

  Gavin and Jacob looked up. Isabel stalked away, talking into her phone.

  “I’ve got my hands full. Jacob needs more attention than I can give him here,” Gavin said. I looked at Jacob. Pain glazed his eyes, not unlike the mammoth’s.

  Gavin dug into his doctor’s bag and pulled out a jar. He tossed it to me, and I surprised myself by catching it.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s an antiseptic powder. Normally I’d say use a small pinch, but in this case, dump whatever’s left in there in the wound after you remove the spear. It will help it coagulate. I’ve got to get Jacob to a hospital.”

  The jar fit easily in my grip, which meant it was ant size to the mammoth. I stared at the pooka. How was I supposed to get close enough to the wound to pull out the spear and pour this on it?

  “Madison.”

  I turned back to the ME. Gavin had pulled Jacob up on his good leg. Jacob leaned heavily against Gavin, but he kept a wary eye on the pooka behind me.

  “Be careful and try not to get hurt. If you do, Brad knows where to find me.”

  Together the enforcers hobbled across the garage and disappeared through the plastic. A stab of abandonment, illogical and unwanted, hollowed my gut. I could really use the support of another enforcer right about now.

  As if conjured by magic, Niko strode through the plastic, soul shining with strength. My relief was so profound that for once I was grateful I didn’t know the man better; if I had, I might have rushed into his arms and made a fool of myself.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “The pooka imprinted on Madison. It’s wounded, and we’re moving it to our region,” Mr. Pitt said. My warden didn’t seem surprised by Niko’s appearance—he must have called him.

  “Okay.”

  Okay? Okay! Just like that, he accepted Mr. Pitt’s incredulously simplistic recap?

  “Be ready to move in twenty minutes, Madison.” Mr. Pitt strode out of the garage.

  * * *

  “What now?” Niko asked.

  I pivoted to the injured mammoth. Lux lucis and atrum lapped on the floor around its massive body.

  “Now we take that horrible thing out of its butt and tend its wounds.” Somehow.

  “How do we get close enough to do that without getting hurt?”

  “Very carefully.”

  “You first.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at the optivus aegis.

  “It’s your pooka.”

  “Have you ever seen one before?”

  “Not in my region.”

  “Do you think it’s evil?”

  “Right now? Yes. Exactly half evil. Stop stalling.”

  The mammoth lay flat on its side, its long curving tusks crooking its head at an awkward angle. I tugged my sweater straight and tightened my ponytail. The pooka’s thickly lashed left eye tracked my movement across the garage as I came toward it. When I got close, it struggled to rise.

  Not it. He. It was hard to miss mammoth testicles.

  “It’s okay. I’m here to help.” I stopped walking. Up close, I got an unobstructed view of the massive ivory tusks, one coated dark gray with Jacob’s dried blood. The tusks were thick at the base and long enough to skewer ten or eleven enforcers and still have room left over.

  Think about something else. I shook my head to rid myself of the picture of me as a shish kebab.

  The mammoth lunged for me, surging to three of its feet and taking a few awkward steps. I bounced back out of range, heart racing. Even wounded, the pooka moved fast. Atrum and lux lucis sprinkled from his neck and tusks, and he trumpeted at me, glaring. He remained half standing, his left rear leg limp, his front knees bent.

  “Can he understand me?”

  Niko shrugged.

  I pulled Val free and jerked him open. “Val?”

  Pookas absorb the languages they’re exposed to while incubating. Also, please note my supple leather binding would not hold up well against a tusk. Books don’t make good shields.

  I thrust Val back into his strap and cleared my throat. “I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help. I can take the harpoon out and patch you up. Would you like that?”

  I felt like a dolt talking to the enormous creature as if he were a child. The mammoth shifted when I eased forward, angling his head to keep me directly in impaling line of sight.

  “I shouldn’t have let Jacob shoot you.” The pooka arched his trunk over his head and screamed at me, a deep bellow meant to strike fear into the hearts of saber-toothed tigers. My knees quaked. Little voices in the back of my mind clamored for me to run. This thing can crush you with one foot.

  I eyed the mammoth’s saucer feet and tree-trunk legs. I’d make a messy pancake.

  “I promise to never let anyone shoot you again.” I felt Isabel’s and Niko’s eyes on my back, felt the grit in my shoes, under my shirt, in my hair, felt my exhaustion and the bruises forming on my knees and arms, and most of all, felt the weight of the pooka judging me.

  “We’re linked together, you and me. I didn’t understand before. I still don’t, actually. But if you’re mine—”

  The pooka tossed his head, agitated.

  “And if I’m yours—”

  He blinked vortex eyes at me.

  “Then we need to trust each other.”

  I eased forward two steps. The mammoth remained tense. Two more put me within striking range. My heart migrated to my throat.

  “I want to take you s
omewhere safe. But first I need to tend to your wound.”

  The mammoth snorted and moved his head restlessly from side to side. I froze for half a heartbeat, then forced myself to keep moving. The tip of one long tusk brushed the air above my head. If he attacked, I’d never escape in time. I forced the thought aside.

  Faster than I could follow, the mammoth snaked out his trunk and wrapped the end around my arm, yanking me toward his mouth. I screamed. Behind me, Niko shouted my name. The mammoth pulled me under his tusks, then lowered them around me like a cage. He brought his head close to mine, until I stared into one large spiraling intelligent eye from less than two feet away.

  I held perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. The trunk flexed on my arm, circling me from wrist to elbow in a tight, warm vise. Coarse hairs along the trunk scraped against my wrist. In my peripheral vision, lux lucis and atrum spiraled down each tusk and back up, the energies never pausing, but the trunk remained pure lux lucis.

  I stared into the whirlpool eye and took a slow breath. The pooka’s earthy scent swirled through my fear, sweeping it aside, and I relaxed in his grip. An absurd vision of vaulting onto the pooka’s back and riding out into Roseville lifted the last of my fear.

  Untamed energy billowed within the confines of the pooka’s prehistoric body, the monochromatic clouds defined by the fluffy lines of the colossal pooka. I brushed my free hand across its leathery forehead where a large patch of lux lucis lay. “I don’t know why you look like an extinct creature, but I think you’re lovely.”

  “Madison? Talk to me.”

  The worry in Niko’s voice pulled me around. He shoved a cartridge into the enormous rifle Mr. Pitt had emptied and snapped it closed.

  “I’m a good shot. Just duck.”

  “No! It’s okay. I think we just bonded.”

  “Is it hurting you?”

  “No.”

  The mammoth released my arm. I patted his trunk, then turned back toward Niko. The pooka lifted his head so I could walk under the tusks.

  “Thank you,” I said to the pooka, but Niko nodded as if I spoke to him. “Okay. Let’s do this.” The mammoth flopped back on his side, raising a cloud of dust. He lifted his head to watch me walk to his flank. I tried not to think about what I was doing. Too much thinking would bring back fear.

  The harpoon pierced the middle of the mammoth’s left flank, too high up for me to reach even with the pooka lying down. I rubbed my palms down my pants.

  “I need to climb on you.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?” Niko asked.

  “I think it’s the only way.” I eyed the injured flank, which was larger than my bed, and the thick hair in which the harpoon was buried. The pooka craned his neck to get a better look at me. I swore I could read the pain in his eye, and I stopped procrastinating.

  “Stand back. I don’t know what he’s going to do when I yank this out.” Niko didn’t move, and he didn’t set the gun down. I frowned, but I didn’t have time to argue. Isabel watched from near the plastic, arms crossed and face pinched.

  “Okay, my beautiful pooka. Try to hold still.”

  I closed my throat around a bubble of hysterical laughter. I was about to climb atop an extinct animal composed purely and equally of lux lucis and atrum. My job had lost any trappings of normalcy.

  I adjusted Val to rest against my back. My pockets were too tight for the jar, so I tucked my sweater into the front of my jeans, then pulled the neck of it away from my body and dropped the jar inside. It rolled past my negligible cleavage to rest, hard and cold, against my stomach.

  “Don’t let the atrum touch me, please.” I patted the mammoth’s hair. My hand sank into thick wool, releasing a fresh earthy aroma. Okay. This is it.

  I sank my fingers into the hair at my shoulder height and placed a foot on the mammoth’s thigh, then checked to see if he looked upset. The pooka laid his massive head back on the ground. Trying to be gentle while using clumps of hair as grips and digging my feet into his leg and belly, I leveraged myself up the pooka’s body.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I yanked his hair. “Sorry,” I said when I planted my tennis shoe in his gut. “Sorry,” I said when I perched on top of its hip, my knees and feet digging into his muscle and flesh. The pooka remained quiet, and he kept a patch of lux lucis beneath me at all times. The rest of his body fluctuated with mixed energies.

  I’d never been more aware of how tiny and fragile my life was.

  Thick fur covered the harpoon’s tip, and blood matted the wound and oozed down his leg. It wasn’t human blood, or even mammoth blood. The pooka bled a liquid energy, an oil-like atrum and lux lucis mixture.

  I reached for the harpoon, then paused. Once I yanked the barbed tip free, I didn’t think the mammoth was going to hold still for me to apply the antiseptic. I dug into my shirt, pulling the jar free. It fell onto the mammoth’s fur, sinking until it disappeared. I snatched it up and unscrewed the cap. Inside was a fine powder, dull gray in Primordium with glints of white sparkles that could only be tiny shards of lux lucis. I eyed the atrum and lux lucis fluid seeping from the wound and hoped the pooka didn’t need atrum to heal.

  “This might sting a little.”

  The pooka rolled his trunk toward his forehead but otherwise didn’t respond.

  I grabbed the harpoon with my free hand as close to the base as I could without touching the mammoth’s blood. Aside from making my grip sticky, I wasn’t sure what atrum-tainted blood would do to me, and I didn’t want to find out while crouched atop a prehistoric beast. I yanked the harpoon.

  It came halfway out. The mammoth bugled and shifted, trying to rise. I held on to the harpoon and tried to grip the rounded flank with my thighs.

  “Hang in there,” I said, more to myself than the mammoth.

  I gave the harpoon another, rougher tug, and it sprang free with a dreadful sucking sound. The mammoth’s pain-filled trumpet deafened me. Tossing the harpoon to the ground, I smoothed aside tufts of thick wool and dumped the contents of the jar onto the fleshy, torn opening. The mammoth bugled and lurched to his feet.

  I squawked as my perch shifted from horizontal to vertical. I half slid, half fell down the mammoth’s side, trying to roll out of the ten-foot drop like I’d seen stunt people in movies do.

  I would have made a terrible stunt person. My ankle buckled under me, and I fell to the side. Sheer adrenaline and fear of being flattened beneath the mammoth’s massive round feet prompted the roll I’d been aiming for. Just for good measure, I rolled again before standing and darting across the garage to Niko.

  He caught me as I barreled into him.

  “Steady,” he said, righting me.

  I turned to face the mammoth. He was standing. He limped a few steps forward, then to the side, but he managed to put weight on the leg. If he hadn’t been right there in front of me, his tufts of wool still tangled around my fingers, I would have found it impossible to imagine a creature could be so large.

  I realized Niko still supported me and I took a hasty, embarrassed step away from him. My right ankle buckled, spearing pain through my foot and up my leg. I cried out and clutched Niko’s arm to steady myself.

  “I thought you might have hurt that.” He knelt before me and probed my ankle.

  “Ow!”

  “Yep. You’ve sprained it.”

  The perfect cap on a perfect day. Pain throbbed up my leg, collecting exhaustion along the way. I slumped.

  “Sit.”

  I sat, chilly gravel poking into my jeans. Rubbing my arms to create warmth, I watched Niko. He glanced around, then strode to Isabel. For him, she smiled. I doubted she’d ever smile at me again, let alone bring me Jamba Juice. I’d poached a pooka on her land, whatever that meant. My bigger crime was hurting Jacob, I thought; first letting him get skewered, then crippling his hand.

  Niko returned with Isabel’s scarf. He pulled off my shoe and peeled my dirty sock down until it covered only my toes; then he probed my ankle.
/>   “Enough with the torture!”

  “We need to know if it’s broken.”

  I flexed my toes and carefully circled my foot to prove I could still move everything. It hurt, but I tried to appear unaffected. “See. Not broken. Now stop poking.”

  “Fine.” He deftly began wrapping my ankle with the scarf. I thought about the fairy tales all girls are raised on, where the handsome prince fits the poverty-stricken woman with the crystal slipper, proving a woman’s foot size could determine true love. Here I was with the handsome prince of enforcers kneeling over my foot, but the rest was a typical Madison-and-men catastrophe. I was filthy. My foot was sweaty, grimy, and probably stank, but I couldn’t tell over the general mammoth aroma permeating my clothing. My ankle was already swollen enough to make me wince at the thought of sliding it back into my cushy tennis shoe. As far as fairy tales went, this one wouldn’t pass muster.

  Over Niko’s shoulder, I watched as the mammoth stopped testing his back leg and turned to examine his surroundings. After snuffling up a pillar to the beam above—and almost getting his tusks caught on the beam—the massive pooka pivoted to face me. He lifted his trunk and his mouth gaped open. I could have sworn he smiled.

  Screw fairy tales. My life was way more interesting.

  “Did you know the enforcer the other pooka you met imprinted on?” I asked.

  “It imprinted on a demon.”

  I gaped at the top of Niko’s shaved head. “What?”

  “They’re born half good, half evil. They have a choice who they imprint on. It’s not always an enforcer.”

  “What happened to the pooka?”

  “I helped kill it.”

  Niko tied off the ends of the scarf while I processed his words. The scarf wrapped my foot and ankle, leaving only my toes and heel exposed and making my sock redundant.

  “It looks like the prajurit leggings,” I said, more to force myself to think of something other than Niko having to kill a pooka.

  “You saw one?”

  “Four. No five. They helped with the vervet earlier.”

  “Where did they go?”

  I shrugged. “It was hectic. They left before the pooka rose.”

  Niko handed me my shoe and I wiggled it back into place. It fit snug, and it hurt to tighten the laces, but my chilled toes appreciated the coverage.