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

by Rebecca Chastain

  I tipped my head forward until water ran like a river of tears down my cheeks and off the point of my nose. The deafening alarm pounded my willpower. The turbonis wobbled toward me, atrum smearing beneath it. A tiny imp popped out the top and hopped around in a circle before latching on to me. I trickled lux lucis into it, then turned my head to check Mr. Pitt. His once-sturdy soul flickered alarmingly around the salamanders, black flames eating away his immense strength. Vervet clung to his legs, leaching more energy from him. He needed me to be a strong enforcer, and I didn’t have it in me. We needed Niko, and Niko wasn’t coming; he had a turbonis the size of a car to unravel.

  A turbonis the size of a car. My heart clenched. This one had been the size of a filing cabinet, and it’d sapped my strength. I should have gone with Niko. We should have stuck together, not divided our resources.

  I sagged over my knees. I needed Niko right now. Our office was under siege, and I couldn’t handle it by myself.

  “Finish it,” Mr. Pitt shouted between alarms.

  I shook my head. Couldn’t he see there was too much atrum? Couldn’t he see our souls? The tiny turbonis had almost done me in, and the salamanders surged against his weak cage. We needed to run.

  “Madison!” The deluge shadowed the air between us. “Prove them wrong.”

  I couldn’t fight it all. The salamanders would escape and set fire to the rest of the building, then the whole block. The whole city. The vervet would be loosed on innocent souls. The turbonis would unleash untold evil in our region. Mr. Pitt would look guilty and a rogue warden would escape and continue to spread evil.

  Mr. Pitt drew himself up, the sphere of his soul strengthening. He was a good person, a good warden. This should never have happened in his region.

  I held his fierce gaze. Despite the odds, he wasn’t wavering. Neither could I.

  Fatigue weighted my body, but I pushed through it. Straightening, I reached for the turbonis again. I wasn’t in this fight alone. I was teamed with my warden, and we had a job to do, one more important than cleansing our offices. We had a rogue warden to stop.

  More of my precious energy sucked into the vortex, pulled from my outstretched arm in a gossamer of shimmery lux lucis particulates. Dark spots edged out my vision, but I locked my hand over the pint-size turbonis. Twice more, I released a spiral of energy into the wrong spot and jerked free weaker. Finally, I found the loose end and hit it with my remaining strength.

  Lux lucis raced through the turbonis, then spiraled into the floor, clearing a small pad beneath the negated vortex.

  I wobbled on all fours, fighting the urge to lie down.

  Jamie peeked over the rim of Sharon’s desk. The sprinklers plastered his dark hair to his scalp, and his eyes were perfect round vortices. I smiled tremulously and staggered to the closed doors, collapsing in the lichtwand’s steady energy. Lux lucis soaked into my depleted soul with a kick more potent than an energy drink, and my awareness unfurled beyond the tunnel it had shrunk to. Keeping a foot in the lichtwand’s stream, I planted my hands in the fresh layer of atrum on the carpet. I rolled lux lucis from my fingertips, using the lichtwand as I had the tree in the park after the fire. Unlike the tree’s passive energy transfer, the lichtwand used me, turning me into conduit. Lux lucis burst through me and flooded out my fingertips in a solid, uncontrolled stream. It didn’t roll; it simply spread. Gleaming white energy ate through the atrum like water through tissue, racing from me in an all-consuming rush deeper into the office.

  Jamie yelped and ducked behind the desk. The wave of lux lucis blasted out of sight around the conference room wall. My teeth chattered; my bones vibrated. The room bounced. I closed myself to the lux lucis, but I couldn’t find an off switch. In desperation, I kicked out, using the closed door to shove myself free of the lichtwand, then collapsed to my side, panting. Slowly my vision refocused and my shuddering limbs stilled. I closed my mouth against the downpour and examined myself.

  Maybe that hadn’t been the brightest idea, but at least my soul glistened. I picked myself up and hobbled down the hall. Lux lucis blanketed the carpet all the way to Mr. Pitt’s feet, and his soul held steady again. I swiped vervet from his shoulders. Close to the salamanders, the air became muggy with steam.

  “What did you.” BEEP. “Do?” Mr. Pitt demanded, glaring from my shining soul to the lux lucis carpet.

  “Lichtwand!” I yelled.

  My boss’s eyes bulged. He opened his mouth, closed it, then, frowning, bellowed for yogurt. I ran to comply, my tennis shoes splashing through an inch of standing water in the break room. I pulled down the largest mugs from the cupboard, raided Mr. Pitt’s stash of yogurt in the fridge, and returned to my boss.

  “Give it here.” BEEP. “Help Sharon.”

  I followed the line of his finger. An orthopedic shoe stuck out from Mr. Pitt’s office doorway. Something black and thorny twisted around the receptionist’s motionless leg. Her gritty white soul was barely distinguishable from the gray carpet. Oh, crap!

  I shoved my supplies into Mr. Pitt’s outstretched hands. Backtracking around the pocket of water-resistant evil flames, I sprinted to the office.

  Sharon’s tiny body lay unconscious in a suspended spasm on her side in front of Mr. Pitt’s desk. She was lucky; if she’d fallen facedown or on her back, the deluge of water or the puddle collecting beneath her could have drowned her. My weak relief to find her breathing faded to horror. A broken pot spilled soil onto the carpet near her knees, as if it’d been thrown at her feet. Swelling from the mud, a matte-black vine snaked across the carpet and coiled around Sharon’s thighs and torso. Separate tendrils webbed her hands and throat, twisting into her flesh. Thorns longer than my fingers spiked the nefarious plant, piercing Sharon’s soul a hundred times over. Where the vine touched the floor, dark roots tunneled into the carpet.

  Sharon’s contorted position mirrored the murdered prajurit’s death pose, but a faint pulse of life throbbed through her soul. Fresh fury surged through me. Whoever did this was going to pay.

  I swiped a hand through the thorny plant, pulsing lux lucis into its stalk. A spike the size of an ice pick shot from the vine, piercing straight through my palm and my soul to protrude from the back side of my hand. I cried out in agony. Gravity bloomed beneath my palm, pulling me to the Earth’s surface. New sprouts burst from the stalk, twisting through the air to wrap around my wrist.

  I jerked back, falling onto my tailbone. The plant retreated, feigning dormancy. Lifting my hand, I stared at the thorny black weapon puncturing my soul. My fingers tingled, and when I flexed them, they responded sluggishly while pain sawed my palm. Frantic, I pushed lux lucis into the thorn. It melted from the ends inward, and I didn’t let up until I’d erased the last twinge of lethargy and the pain faded to a dull ache.

  I examined my palm, finding the flesh unblemished where I’d expected a giant bloody hole. I blinked to normal vision. Remarkably, my stinging hand remained wound-free.

  Emergency lights flashed in a frantic strobe, adding an instant ocular ache to the headache pounding in rhythm to the blasting alarm. The solid-feeling evil carnivorous plant was invisible. Sharon’s brown polyester skirt and coat clung to her, outlining stout thighs and biceps. Mud smeared the floor around her, making it appear as if her clothing had melted onto the thin carpet. Falling water distorted a fringe of red around the soil. Blood?

  I leaned close, and the unmistakable metallic odor of blood filled my nostrils. Dizzy from the strobe lighting, I blinked back to Primordium and ran my eyes over the small woman. Despite the thorns, no lux lucis leaked from her. In fact, black atrum slicked the floor where I thought I’d seen blood.

  I pulled out my pet wood, wishing I could open Val for advice. He was probably already waterlogged, but I couldn’t risk exposing him to the downpour. I didn’t know if a sentient book could drown, and I didn’t want to chance it. I jabbed the base of the soul-sucking plant with the tip of the pet wood. Lux lucis flared through the wand, building up without
releasing. Frustrated, I jammed the tip into the soil and lux lucis shot in a line across the atrum in the dirt. The pencil-thin neutral line slowly disappeared, and the thorny plant remained unaffected.

  With a jab, I collapsed the pet wood against the floor, then shoved it into my back pocket. A quick loop of lux lucis released from my palm cleared the puddle of atrum around the soil but did nothing to the sinister vine.

  I grabbed the knife, tearing a belt loop when the sap-coated blade stuck in the sheath again. Channeling lux lucis into the blade, I sliced through the main stalk. The vine resisted, then snapped in two. Sharon twitched. The base of the plant shriveled back to the soil and disappeared, but the rest of the vine pulsed with dark energy.

  Kneeling, I hacked through the roots anchoring Sharon’s legs. Each cut severed a piece of the vine, and it shrank away from the blade. The remaining plant squeezed tighter into Sharon, and her soul fluttered weakly. I sliced with frenzied haste.

  “Hang on, you weird little woman.”

  When I cut the last of the vine away from Sharon, the roots disappeared into an ooze of atrum. A final push of lux lucis cleared the carpet. Without assistance, Sharon’s soul strengthened, the pulse steadying to a dim, gritty white. I fell back on my heels, relieved.

  Wishing I could lie down with Sharon, I floundered back to Mr. Pitt’s side. His soul’s bubble held only a handful of salamanders, and yogurt smeared the floor around him. While I watched, he dolloped yogurt into a cup, held it out to fill it with water from the sprinklers, gave it a stir with his finger, then dashed it across the sea of squirming black bodies. The salamanders died by the handful. I crouched and rolled lux lucis through a patch of atrum fire near Mr. Pitt’s feet. Steam hissed as the sprinklers extinguished flames no longer fed by evil, unquenchable energy. With a final toss of lux lucis water to kill the last of the salamanders, Mr. Pitt’s bubble guttered and winked out. He wobbled, then slid down the glass wall. His soul had lost its regional dimensions, and he looked like a normal person, or at least a normal enforcer who’d been overworked.

  I dropped to the soaked floor beside him. The remaining unnatural flames continued to burn despite the deluge, and air thick with smoke and steam clung to my lungs. Blinking water out of my eyes, I rolled another handful of lux lucis through atrum flames. Mr. Pitt slouched forward, and a feeble wave of lux lucis trickled from his fingers across the closest black flames, extinguishing a few square inches. He’d told me he’d been an enforcer once, but I hadn’t quite believed him until now.

  Jamie knelt beside me, and lux lucis burst from the pooka through the remaining atrum. Mr. Pitt listed against the wall. I patted Jamie’s knee, my gratitude too immense to express between alarm bursts.

  The sprinklers extinguished the last of the flames and turned off. The alarm squawked to silence, though my ears filled the void with a high-pitched ringing. I braced a filthy hand against the floor. We’d done it. We’d saved the office. Joy’s desk crashed to the floor, bringing down Will’s and Rose’s in a cacophony, spraying gritty water into our faces. I swiped my face with a filthy coat sleeve and looked around. Across the walkway, my cubicle and the spare Niko sometimes used were both scorched through. Soggy papers wilted in puddles beneath the desks, and drywall bulged and bubbled from water damage. Blackened concrete circled by charred carpet and coated with slimy yogurt spread around us, and smoke hung heavy against the ceiling. I amended my thought. We’d saved the city from destruction. The office hadn’t survived.

  “I found the one I want to bring home,” Jamie said. He raised his atrum-black cupped hands to reveal a salamander trapped between his fingers.

  Oh no. I scrambled to my feet. “Put it down, Jamie.” We were both yelling, our eardrums shot. “We can’t keep a salamander.”

  “Why not? You have a pet. I should have a pet.”

  “My pet doesn’t set things on fire.”

  “I’m sure we could ask him not to.” Jamie leaned close to the squirming lizardlike creature. “Will you promise not to spit fire in the apartment?” The salamander opened its tiny mouth. A gout of flame speared through Jamie’s fingers. “Taffy turds!” he squealed, dropping the salamander.

  In his pain, Jamie’s fluctuating soul expanded. The salamander fell through a bubble of pure atrum and landed the size of a Komodo dragon.

  I grabbed a carton of yogurt, ripped off the top, and dumped it over the salamander. Swiping my hand through the standing water, I sent a spray over the dairy-coated salamander. It shrank out of existence.

  “Quick. Thinking.” Mr. Pitt closed his eyes and passed out.

  Jamie sucked on singed fingers, expression contrite. I swallowed my reprimand. But taffy turds? As of tomorrow, I was teaching the pooka how to cuss properly.

  24

  Never Go to Bed Angry; Stay Up and Plot Revenge

  We exited into chaos. I carted out Sharon, who’d miraculously recovered enough to walk with support. The receptionist’s dowdy outfit must have absorbed fifty pounds of water: It was the only explanation for the tiny woman’s disproportional weight. Jamie carried Mr. Pitt, who lapsed in and out of consciousness, and Lestari flew near his shoulder. Everyone except the prajurit queen looked like a drowned kitten, drenched clothing plastered to our bodies, hair in sticky straggles around our faces. Mr. Pitt’s white shirt had become transparent, and I averted my eyes from his nipples puckering beneath the thin material. A few vervet bounded out with us, but even if my hands had been free, I wouldn’t have had the energy to chase them.

  Firefighters intercepted us near the back door and hustled us to waiting paramedics. Between the turbonis, the soul-eating vine, and the salamanders, the battle in our office had felt like it’d lasted a lifetime, but hardly enough time had lapsed for the emergency crews to arrive. In the strobing lights of the fire trucks, the parking lot looked like a kicked ant hill: Firefighters swarmed from gigantic red trucks, some rushing into the building, others herding the milling, confused people expelled from neighboring offices. The scene washed over me, my eyes refusing to focus on any one thing, the world muffled behind deafened ears. A paramedic took Sharon from me and laid her on a stretcher. She looked like an ill-dressed child on the long bed.

  My teeth chattered. For all the protection my drenched clothing provided from the winter wind, I might as well have been naked. I squeezed water out of my ponytail, then shoved numb fingers into wet armpits. A paramedic draped a thick blanket over my shoulders and I burrowed into it. Warmth woke up my sluggish thoughts, and I looked around for Jamie.

  The pooka sat on the tailgate of an ambulance, looking lost. He’d gotten a blanket of his own, and a paramedic dabbed ointment on his burned fingers. She tried to get Jamie to talk, but he didn’t seem to hear her. When I approached, he jerked to his feet, startling the small woman, and rushed to my side. I smiled to reassure her, then enfolded the pooka in my blanket. She must have thought us lovers, or maybe siblings, with the way Jamie fused to me, cradling his hurt hands to his chest. It would have been more accurate to view us as mother and son.

  Nope. That’s too weird.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Are you?”

  I hugged him tighter. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Me too.”

  Mr. Pitt lay on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over his face. His soul flickered too weak, but he refused to let the paramedic load him into the ambulance and gestured me closer, yanking the mask free with his other hand.

  “I’m fine. I need to talk with my employee.” The paramedic stepped back, his face set in disapproving lines.

  “You should let him take care of you, Mr. Pitt.”

  He waved aside my good advice. “You just saved my Abba-Zaba, Madison—call me Brad.”

  His Abba-Zaba? Best not to ask for clarification. “Where’s everyone else . . . Brad?” His name felt strange on my tongue.

  “Rose is at Margaret’s office. The Illuminea are at the hotel. I couldn’t chance them once I realized our region was sabotaged.” />
  Knees weak with relief, I sagged into Jamie. Everyone was safe.

  “Why not send Sharon away, too?”

  Mr. Pitt—Brad—glanced toward the prone woman and snorted. “I’d sooner argue with a rock. What did you find today?”

  I glanced at the paramedic, unsure if it was okay to speak in front of him. Gray and a few blotches of black marred his soul, proving he wasn’t CIA. I chose my words carefully. “A salamander nest, though with fewer eggs than you were holding back. And a poisoned titan arum.”

  Brad tried to whistle and coughed instead. The paramedic forced the oxygen mask back over his mouth. My boss shoved it aside after a few breaths. “That explains Lestari.”

  “This wasn’t Jacob, Mr., ah, Brad.” Using his first name was going to take some getting used to. “We don’t have a rogue enforcer in our midst. We have a rogue warden.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Who do you think planted all that atrum in our office?”

  “Excuse me. Hey, Jim. I’ll take over.” Gavin barreled up to Brad’s side, black doctor’s bag in hand. Kathleen, Margaret, Isabel, and Liam trailed in his wake. Well, wasn’t their arrival a shocking coincidence. Not. I rested a hand on Brad’s stretcher and watched the wardens warily.

  The paramedic, Jim, spoke medical jargon to Gavin. The two men obviously knew each other. How often had Gavin taken over a scene involving a CIA employee? From his confidence and Jim’s reaction, this wasn’t the first time, which perversely pleased me, since it meant I wasn’t the only person who messed up on the job and got hurt. From the way everyone had talked about my incompetence, it’d seemed as if other enforcers mastered every problem without a hitch.

  Brad waved away Gavin as he had Jim, but the medical enforcer ignored him. He gave my boss a mundane check, then probed him in several places with lux lucis and set Brad up with an IV and butterfly bandages for the cuts Lestari had inflicted on his neck. The other wardens ringed the stretcher, and I made sure none stood behind me. Jamie pressed tight to my side.