Swarm of Fire

by John P. Logsdon

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Want an autograph?”

  “No,” Paula answered seriously, “but I would like to meet with your team at our offices to discuss this.” She glanced around the area. “I’ll have one of my crew come out and put a spin on this using the show angle.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a mixture of confusion and excitement as Paula walked away. “Guys,” I said through the connector, “The Spin wants us to meet them at their offices.”

  “For what?” asked Rachel.

  “I think we may be taking this little kill-the-pixie-dust-creatures show on the road.”

  Chapter 6

  I’d been to The Spin a number of times back when I was still dating Paula, but it had been upgraded since then. They used to only have one floor with a few offices. Now they had three floors completely booked out. This was due to the little enterprises that were developed every time Paula picked up a new idea. Those usually came from me. In fact, I’d argue that the “spinning of supernatural events part” of The Spin was now just a little piece of what had originally launched this place.

  “Hello, Chief Dex,” said Murphy Stone, Paula’s producer and right-hand woman as she pushed her purplish-red hair out of her eyes. “It’s good to see you again. You’re still looking as dapper as ever.”

  She probably wouldn’t have made such a comment had I kept on the jacket that had been ripped by that infernal Bigfoot. Fortunately, I’d learned that it was wise to carry around multiple suits and shoes when working in this business.

  “Hi, Murphy,” Rachel interjected. “Remember me? Rachel Cress? Ian’s significant other?” She then got really condescending and added, “Anyhoo, we were told to come here to meet with your boss, so how about we get to that, hmmm?”

  Rachel had a bit of a jealous streak.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  It was more of a that’s-my-property thingy. It was one of the issues we’d dealt with the last time we were dating. Funny how you get amnesia toward certain things like this.

  “I remember it,” The Admiral chimed in. “Of course I always thought it was kind of hot when she got all jealous.”

  “You would.”

  Murphy raised a baffled eyebrow at Rachel and then waved us to follow her.

  “You don’t have to do that, Rachel,” I said in a direct connection to her.

  “Do what?”

  “Yell at every woman who comes on to me.”

  “Including Murphy,” she argued while counting on her fingers, “that makes one.”

  “You’re forgetting your comment to Paula back at Harrah’s.”

  “She was hitting on you?”

  “Well, no…” She hadn’t been. In fact, that was one of the few times Rachel had ever stuck up for me. It was kind of nice, truth be told. “Okay, sorry. But I remember that you used to do this all the time.”

  “It’s not my fault that women hit on you incessantly.”

  “Nor is it mine,” I argued as we entered the conference room and took our chairs.

  “You could dress less attractively.”

  “Wow,” I said, giving her a look. Nobody else could hear us, but our body language had to have been giving away the fact that we were fighting. “Listen, I get hit on a lot. It happens. I have a reputation. You know firsthand why I have a reputation. But you also know that I don’t cheat.”

  She shuffled in her chair as her eyes tightened.

  “Fine. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.”

  Paula walked into the room after a couple seconds and headed to the front of the table. She looked like a woman in control. I liked that, but I had to keep a disinterested face on or Rachel would know what was on my mind.

  “Freak,” she said.

  Damn it. How could she always tell?

  “Thank you for coming,” Paula said as she placed her hands on the large conference table. “Obviously you all know why you’re here. We saw your little act at Harrah’s and I think that we could turn this into a profitable little side business.” She stood up and began pointing around the room. “All of you are cops and not actors, but I believe that it would be in our best interest to utilize your rawness as much as we can.”

  Griff leaned forward and cleared his throat.

  “Pardon me,” he said in his posh voice, “but while all of this is rather enticing, we can’t easily be beholden to a particular schedule. Crime doesn’t always present itself at our convenience.”

  Paula nodded in agreement.

  “Well put, Officer Benchley,” she agreed. “The good news is that we can simply tell casinos that there will be a window of time when the events can occur. We can even have that window span days, if necessary.” She smiled. “In other words, we arrive when we arrive.”

  “They’ll go for that?” asked Felicia.

  “Assuming the show is like you did tonight, yes.” She was rubbing her hands together. “They’ll beg to be on the list no matter how long it takes.”

  It sounded great to me, and my officers did seem to be pretty interested, but I also knew that this couldn’t last forever. Eventually, we’d get bored or there’d be too much going on with work for us to even get one show in a week. Hell, we did get trapped in the Badlands at one point. That alone proved we couldn’t always keep to a plan, even at a week’s notice.

  “I think we can start down a path with you, Paula,” I spoke up, “but in the long run you’ll have to find supers to act in these roles. We can mentor them and such, of course, but I can’t commit the PPD force to a long-running show.”

  She looked a little disappointed, which seemed to make Rachel look a little happier.

  “Well, we’ll take what we can get,” Paula said finally. “This may only have a few months of life anyway, unless we run it sparingly.”

  “Honey pie,” Lydia suddenly said through the connector, “we have another disturbance down at Circus Circus.”

  “I mean, if we—” Paula started, clearly unable to hear Lydia’s call.

  I held up a finger to interrupt her.

  “Got a call coming in from dispatch,” I said. “Sorry, Lydia, what’s the deal?”

  “Eight foot tall, purple dinosaurs,” she replied.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  I smiled devilishly at this.

  “What is it?” asked Paula.

  “Get your cameras ready,” I instructed as my crew stood up. “There are purple dinosaurs down at Circus Circus.”

  Dollar signs formed on her irises. “You’re shitting me.”

  “I’m really not.”

  Chapter 7

  As we drove to Circus Circus, I decided it was time for Rachel and I to have the talk.

  I didn’t want to do it, but if I didn’t we’d end up breaking up again. Of course that would mean that everything could go back to the way it was before.

  “We need to talk,” I said after we shut the doors and I started the car. “What happened in there between you and Murphy can’t happen again.”

  “Well, if she wasn’t all up in your face—”

  “That doesn’t matter, Rachel,” I interrupted. “The fact is that everything is coming back to me now.” This had to be the worst part of being involved with someone. “There were always issues on both sides of our relationship, but you getting a major attitude whenever you’re dating someone just sucks.”

  “I don’t get a major attitude.”

  “You guys should break up. Then we could go see Dr. Vernon again. Oooh, and the valkyries, too. I counted seventy-three breasts when we were down there, you know?”

  “Seventy-three?”

  “One of them was partially in the shadows.”

  “Rachel, you totally do, and not just with me either. Even when you were going out with that nerd Barry back when I’d just joined the force, you were like that with him, too.”

  “He wasn’t a nerd,” she mumbled.

  Yes, he was. He was proud to be a nerd, too.
He’d worked at Nerds’R’Us or something like that. I don’t know. They fixed computers and such, and he was the manager, which meant his name-badge read, “King Nerd.”

  “The point is that it ruins the fun, Rachel,” I said, leaving the Barry discussion out of it. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. Straight up, word on the street is that you’re becoming pretty unlikeable.”

  “Who the hell said that?”

  I wasn’t a squealer. “Just some people I know.”

  “Yeah?” She slammed back into her seat. “Well, fuck them.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” I said with a grin. “Some of them may be pretty—”

  Her head snapped toward me and her eyes threatened to glow.

  “See?” I pointed at her before finishing my little tease. “That’s what I’m talking about. If we weren’t dating, you’d just say ‘ugh’ or call me a ‘tool’ or something and we’d have a laugh. But with us dating, you take everything too seriously.”

  She rolled her eyes and put her eyes back on the road.

  “Okay, okay,” she said with a heavy breath. “I admit that I do get a little riled up when I see someone moving in on my territory. I just can’t help it.”

  “Don’t worry about it, baby. It’s hot.”

  “Seriously, shut the living shit up, will you?”

  “I know,” I replied after a few moments. “Honestly, I appreciated it when you stepped up to Paula and defended me, though it was probably a little too threatening.”

  “Agreed. I felt kind of bad about that. But I have to hand it to her, she was seconds from being toothless and she didn’t budge an inch.”

  We drove along in silence for a bit as we both thought things through. Obviously we had to work on things together to have a successful relationship. That was just common sense. But we also had to be open and honest. Last time we dated, I held stuff inside. This time I wasn’t going to do that.

  “Are you thinking about make-up sex too, or is that just me?”

  I didn’t respond to myself this time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding like it took some effort to get that out. “I guess I’m not very good at girlfriending.”

  “She’s right. We should break up and head on back to see the good doc—“

  “Just be the same Rachel you are when we’re not dating,” I reassured. “That’s the person I love hanging out with.”

  “But I’m always making fun of you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You like that?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “What I like, Rachel, is your sarcasm and directness.” I turned into the parking lot of Circus Circus. “Your snark is funny, even when it’s directed at me. I also like that you’re tough, opinionated, and you’re one hell of a mage.” I parked and shut off the car. “Plus, you’re fantastic in the sack.”

  “Ugh,” she said after a pause. “Tool.”

  I laughed at that, but the best part was that she did too.

  “Oh,” I continued, “it’s also great that you don’t worry about weird shit like flowers and fancy necklaces.”

  “I like fancy necklaces,” she confessed with a fake pout.

  The rest of the officers were already running up to where all the action was going on. Paula and her camera crew were right behind them. It was time for another show.

  “Are we good?” I asked just as Rachel was about to get out of the car. “We can always talk more later, if you want.”

  She sniffed and winked at me. “You’re such a girl.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “Nice.”

  Chapter 8

  When we got up to the front there were definitely five very purple, very kids-TV-show-looking dinosaurs standing there. Honestly, it was as if a handful of Barney the dinosaurs had started going to Gold’s Gym, except for their puny forelimbs.

  “I’ll be right back,” Rachel said.

  I nodded and headed over to my crew.

  “What do we know?” I asked.

  “There are two more of these than there were of those gigantic apes,” stated Griff.

  “Yeah, and these look like that dinosaur from that TV show back in the nineties,” said Chuck. “Always wanted to shoot that damn thing.”

  “You and about ten million—”

  “I have a feeling those teeth are going to be able to shred us pretty easily,” Felicia interrupted. She was all business. “I don’t care if they’re made from pixie dust or not, those things have razors in their mouths.”

  Serena nodded. “The other worry is that the pixie responsible for these manifestations may be doing his or her best to make this increasingly difficult on us.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, this is the second set of dust-built creatures we’ve seen already,” she pointed out. “Think about the last months, Ian. We’ve had an uber mage, an uber necromancer, an uber dragon, and you just got back from dealing with an uber wolf.”

  “What’s your point?”

  She tilted her head at me as if judging my intellect. I used to get offended whenever someone did this. These days I didn’t really care.

  “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t merely assume that these dinosaurs are going to be as easy to defeat as the apes were.”

  “You thought they were easy?” I scoffed.

  “That’s not my point.”

  “She’s right,” remarked Jasmine with a slow nod. “It’s almost like each time we face one of these uber things, they’re testing the waters with us and improving the bad guys based upon what we do.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Shitfaced Fred was the king of that.”

  And he was. I still recalled dealing with each wave of zombies that old turd had put after us. There’d been one misstep on his part, but that only proved that Serena and Jasmine were correct. These ubers were using trial and error to feel out our strengths and weaknesses.

  “So, what do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know,” Serena admitted. “Be careful, I guess.”

  I sighed at that as I glanced over to see that Rachel was talking with Paula and Murphy, and they were all smiling. That was rather unusual, especially after the confrontations that happened earlier.

  Had Rachel apologized?

  That’d be new.

  “What’s going on over there?” asked Jasmine, clearly finding things as interesting as I had.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I answered, feeling like I should be concerned. “I don’t even—”

  “Huh,” Felicia grunted, stepping up. “There aren’t any fists flying. That’s a good sign.”

  “It would be a grand gesture on her part to bury the proverbial hatchet,” stated Griff.

  Chuck laughed at that. “I’m surprised she hasn’t buried a literal hatchet, if I’m being honest.”

  We all glanced away as Rachel turned to come back toward us. We knew better than to openly say the things we were saying directly to her. She had a way of making your life hurt when you did that.

  Regardless, it sure was nice to see her with a little bounce in her step.

  “Okay,” Rachel announced when she got close in, “they’re rolling.”

  “Everything all right?” I said through a direct connection. “You seemed to be…having fun.”

  She looked at the dinosaurs and replied, “Don’t dig into it, Ian. I apologized and everything is fine now.”

  “Wow. I’m—”

  “Don’t dig into it,” she repeated, giving me the stink-eye.

  “Right.” I coughed and then gave my crew a quick glance. “Everyone ready to battle Barney and his friends?” I asked aloud.

  They all nodded. Chuck’s enthusiasm was such that I thought his hat might well fall off.

  I took inventory of the crowd that had gathered. My guess was just over fifty people stood there. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to get the word spreading through the Strip, especially when combined with what had happened wi
th the apes. A few more of these events and people would be jumping in their cars or running the streets to catch an impromptu show.

  It was about time to knock their socks off.

  This was actually fun.

  At least it was until the dinosaurs began to sing.

  My crew, along with the crowd, stood transfixed as their booming voices literally harmonized.

  We’ll eat you

  You will die

  We like the taste of human pie

  With a big chomp chomp

  We’ll enjoy your screams and cries

  Then we’ll consume your flesh

  as you die, die, die!

  “That sounds wrong,” noted Jasmine.

  “On many levels,” agreed Felicia.

  “Great voices, though,” I said dully as they repeated that same verse from their little dinosaur death song. “Just great.”

  Chapter 9

  I cracked my neck from side to side and then stepped powerfully out in front of the dinosaurs.

  “Enough of this,” I yelled somewhat theatrically. “You are not welcome in this area. If you leave of your own volition, we shall not destroy you. Choose unwisely, though, and wrath will rein free this night!”

  “Dork,” said Rachel through the connector.

  The entire PPD crew laughed.

  In response to my announcement, though, the five dinosaurs turned their attention directly at me as their singing stopped. The stuffed-animal-style faces somehow contorted into menacing visages of rage. Obviously, they weren’t fond of being interrupted.

  “Uh oh,” I squeaked a split-second before the one closest to me bashed its head against mine.

  It rang my bell so hard that I didn’t even realize I’d been thrown a good distance, nearly smacking into the crowd. The damn thing had apparently knocked me out.

  The fans loved it.

  I sat up and tried to shake away the cobwebs.

  Iceballs and ice storms smacked the dinosaurs like a cacophony of dissonant chords. Chuck and Felicia had their Eagles out and they were blasting holes in those damn stuffed beasts like there was no tomorrow.