Swarm of Fire

by John P. Logsdon

  I knew it was all pixie dust, but the pixie responsible for this was pretty damn talented. He or she would be looking at spending time in prison for these little transgressions, which was kind of a shame, honestly.

  The dinosaurs didn’t have a chance against my crew now that we knew how to stop the pixie dust, but my mages were being careful not to stop the show too quickly. I was really rather impressed with their restraint. Our normal motto was to go in and destroy everything within seconds of arriving. It made cleanup a little tougher on The Spin and on Portman, our resident morgue chief, but it also nipped naughtiness in the bud. Ultimately, that was our job.

  With a bit of effort, I got back up and wobbled over to resume my place in the battle.

  One of the dinosaurs snapped at me, but I moved away, brought up Boomy, and blew a nice hole in his head.

  He shrieked and jumped back as the next one took his place.

  Chuck and Jasmine were going full out with acrobatics. They were diving and firing, leaping through the air, kicking off the walls, and doing every other Cirque du Soleil move they could manage. I’d have to say that they were making me look like a wuss in comparison.

  Obviously, I couldn’t let that happen.

  So I did something incredibly stupid.

  Right as one of the dinosaurs opened its maw and prepared to chomp down on my head, I dived forward while spinning, landing directly under it and firing straight up and into its nethers. The beast wasn’t anatomically correct, but it was the principle of the thing.

  The crowd gasped.

  The dino yelped.

  A literal buttload of pixie dust dumped out of its ass-region all over my head.

  No, it wasn’t shit, but the crowd sure bellowed in laughter as if it had been.

  I rolled away as fast as I could, sensing that my lower half was in jeopardy. It was. Pain seared through my body as the monster bit into my buttocks like I was a perfectly cooked piece of filet mignon.

  “Fuck,” I screeched, firing Boomy up at the damn dino like a man possessed.

  Chuck pulled me away and Serena put her hands on my ass in an effort to help me heal faster than normal. It felt horrible, yet good, if that makes any sense.

  “Perv,” Rachel said in a direct connection to me.

  I winced-smiled.

  Serena’s skills were miraculous and I was back up and ready to battle again. This time, though, I was going to be a little smarter about it.

  “Thanks, Serena.”

  “Don’t be so careless,” she answered back, looking a little worn out from healing me.

  “Right,” I said, thinking it was about time for this show to end. “Gang, let’s knock these things out now.”

  The dinosaurs backed off and gathered together, looking like they may have had a plan. Too bad they didn’t have mages like I did.

  Fireballs and streams of heat flew from Griff, Jasmine, and Rachel, eliciting blood-curdling roars from the beasts as they were systematically fused into glass.

  Once they were nothing more than sculptures, I stepped out and turned to the crowd.

  “How about a round of applause for these mages?” I yelled.

  Claps and whistles filled the air until I held up my hands to silence everyone.

  The power was sweet.

  “You’re such an idiot,” said Rachel with a laugh.

  “I know,” I replied before raising my voice dramatically. “And now, the best gunslingers in all of Vegas will show you what happens when you mess with the Vegas Strip.”

  As one, Chuck, Felicia, and I spun back toward the glass dinosaurs. We whipped forth our Desert Eagles, spun them around expertly, and unleashed fury.

  Glass blew out in chunks, hitting the side of Circus Circus, smashing on the ground, or going straight up at such a height that we could blow them right out of the air.

  But then a flash of smoke erupted, taking us all by surprise.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  There was no answer, until the fog began to clear.

  That’s when we noticed that there were five bodies lying on the ground where the dinosaurs had been. There was blood pooling all around them.

  The crowd went insane, thinking that this was part of the show.

  It wasn’t.

  “Those are normals,” Jasmine said. “Very dead normals.”

  “We just killed them,” whispered Chuck.

  I just stared in disbelief.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 10

  We stood staring at the fallen normals as the sound of the world faded into the background. It was one thing to have a normal die as collateral damage, and technically this was exactly what had happened, but the bullets that had ripped through these five innocents belonged to the PPD.

  My officers and I killed them.

  The crowd was clamoring for autographs, asking when the next show was going to be held, and generally cheering. They had no idea what had really just happened.

  “What have we done?” whispered Jasmine as her mouth hung open.

  I put my hand on her shoulder, knowing she was quite sensitive about these kinds of things. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it myself. These people didn’t deserve their fate.

  “It wasn’t our fault,” I said, trying to console my entire team. “There was no way we could have known there were normals inside of those damn things.”

  Paula had Murphy shut down production. They looked to be in as much shock as us. There was no clean way to spin this. “Five normals were killed today by the Paranormal Police Department in downtown Vegas. They had been locked up inside of purple dinosaurs that were made out of pixie dust.” That was a front page news story, not a spin.

  “I’ll deal with Paula and Murphy,” I said heavily.

  “No,” Rachel stated, grabbing me by the arm. “Let me do it.”

  I gave her a firm look, but I sensed that she really wanted to do this.

  With a nod, I moved out of the way.

  “Lydia,” I called through the connector, “we’re going to need Portman down here. There are a few normals who died and I don’t want them picked up by a regular ambulance.”

  “Are you okay, sugar?” she asked, sounding worried.

  “We’re all a bit shaken up, but none of us were injured badly.”

  “Good.”

  I walked over and knelt down to look at each of the faces. They appeared to be about college age. Three young men and two young women, all in the prime of their lives.

  “Damn it,” I raged as quietly as I could manage. “This is definitely the work of a fucking uber.”

  “Agreed,” stated Griff.

  “We should have seen this coming, instead of letting the limelight get to us.” I paused and glanced up at my team. “I should have known better.”

  “You can’t take this all on yourself, Chief,” Chuck said with a look of concern. “We were all just as willing to play this game as anyone.”

  “He’s right,” agreed Felicia. “This isn’t on you, Chief.”

  I stood back up and wiped the dust off my hands. They were a good team. Unfortunately, they were off base on this one.

  “I appreciate your positions, but I’m in charge and therefore this is my responsibility.”

  “We’re not children,” Jasmine admonished. “You can no more force us to do anything than you can stop us if we really want to do something. We’re in this together, Ian.”

  They were all nodding in agreement.

  Technically, they were correct in what they were saying, but if I had spoken up earlier, they would have followed my lead. This could have been stopped right away, but we let the limelight affect our judgment. Any one of us had to know that this couldn’t end well in the long run. That was abundantly clear the moment the abominable snowman launched that college kid with a backhand. Promotional stunts don’t go out of their way to injure people. But there was no point in debating with my crew at the moment. Their sentiment was enough to demonstrate ho
w they felt over what had happened. Regardless, the responsibility was mine.

  “We obviously have a pixie on the loose,” I stressed, “and the damn thing has to be stopped.”

  These were words you never expected to say as it related to pixies. Their kind was mostly just loudmouthed, vulgar, and irritating. They could fight, of course, but it didn’t happen very often. And terrorizing a town? Never.

  Serena touched my arm as she walked past to study the area where the bodies were. I felt a jolt of healing energy from her. She was trying to lift my emotions.

  It helped a little.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked the rest of the team.

  “A pixie with incredibly powerful skill,” mused Griff.

  “Obviously,” Jasmine spat and then frantically shook her hands. “I’m sorry, Griff. I’m just…” She looked away.

  He didn’t seem to take offense.

  “In all of my years,” Griff continued, “I have never heard of a pixie who was capable of encasing a normal in such fashion.” He was wringing his fingers together as he watched Serena checking the area. “Not movable encasements, I mean. They could certainly imprison a person in something static, such as a wall. But these manifested creatures were mobile.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Felicia.

  “I’m saying that we have something new here,” he answered as if that were abundantly clear.

  It was.

  “It’s worse than you guys think,” announced Jasmine as Rachel returned. “They weren’t merely encased. They were the creatures.”

  Rachel spoke up first. “What?”

  “The damage to their skin,” Serena explained while tilting one of the girls’ head to the side, “the burning of their flesh, and the fact that there is dust literally pouring from their ears, eyes, mouths, and…well, likely everywhere, tells me that these people were completely engulfed by the pixie dust.”

  That was sobering.

  “This should not be possible,” Griff remarked in a hoarse voice. “The level of magic to infuse a normal is quite literally off the charts. But to convert one into a creature of that size and then control it?”

  He didn’t bother to answer his own question.

  “We definitely have an uber pixie here, then,” I breathed, trying to keep my anger under control. “I need to get back to base.”

  “Why?” asked Rachel.

  “Because my last meeting with the Directors told me that they know more about these ubers than they’re letting on.”

  Portman’s white vans pulled up a moment later.

  “Work with Portman and get this cleaned up, please,” I instructed Griff and Chuck before I stormed off toward my car with Rachel in tow. “I’m going to try and get us some goddamn information!”

  Chapter 11

  I was not in the mood to play around today. The Directors, who were my bosses, knew what was going on with these ubers and it was time I was let in on it. They sat in various places around the country, connecting in through some magic portal. It was like video conferencing but without monitors.

  O was the head of the Vegas Crimson Focus Mages, Zack led up the Vegas Wolfpack, Silver ran the Vegas Vampire Coalition, and EQK was in charge of the Vegas Pixies. Typically these meetings were based around me watching them bicker with each other, but things had grown slightly more serious as of late.

  “Mr. Dex,” started O, “we are very sorry—”

  “Are you?” I interrupted. “Seriously? Because it’s sure as hell hard to tell.”

  I was fuming and they were silent. Usually they gave me a fair bit of backlash when I raised my voice at them. Tonight, I honestly didn’t care.

  “I’ve got five dead normals out there because of some uber fucking pixie who has somehow figured out a way to morph people into monsters.”

  “What?” asked EQK.

  “You heard me,” I replied, looking in his direction. “One of your fellow pixies has learned how to turn normals into beasts. We just killed five of them.”

  “Fuck,” he replied with a hiss.

  “So your pixies aren’t the upstanding citizens you always claim them to be, eh EQK?” Silver said, pushing buttons. “And here I thought they were above reproach.”

  I saw a wisp of EQK as he jumped up on the table and yelled, “Shove it up your ass, fang boy.”

  “Okay, okay,” Zack chimed in, always the peacemaker. “There is no point in our fighting amongst ourselves. We clearly have a very important issue to get a handle on here.”

  “Yes,” I agreed emphatically, “you do. And you can start by telling me what the hell you know about these ubers who have been turning up lately.”

  They were silent.

  “Hello?” I pressed. “Don’t go quiet on me now, guys. I have a crew out there that is beside themselves over what just happened. My job is to give them the information they need to be effective cops. Your job is to do the same for me.”

  “Mr. Dex,” said O in a calm voice that made me want to leap through the mist and punch his lights out, “we are not always at liberty to provide you with information. Some things are classified for a reason.”

  “Classified, eh?” I mused, staring in his direction. I couldn’t actually see him, but I knew where he was seated. “At least now I’m certain that you do know about these things.”

  There was no answer.

  In all my years in dealing with the Directors, it was typically me sitting there while listening to them gripe at each other and act like a bunch of school children. Now that I needed something heavy, I was the primary one doing the talking.

  But yelling at them wasn’t going to solve anything.

  “Look,” I said, trying like mad to maintain my composure, “I don’t know if any of you have ever walked the beat or not, but it’s not easy out there. We’re always under attack, we never know when trouble is coming, and we’re almost always given far too little information to effectively do our jobs.” I let that sink in before continuing. “People are dying out there, and this time it was by our hands. That includes you four.”

  “Fuck that, dick vein,” EQK blurted in response. “We weren’t anywhere near the incident when you assholes started blowing holes in shit. I swear to the great pixie that you idiots will kill just about anything.”

  “Don’t forget that it was a pixie causing all of this mayhem, my tiny friend,” Silver mocked.

  “I’ll kick your bloodless ass, if you don’t shut your trap, Silver.”

  “Enough!” This time it was me yelling. Surprisingly, they quieted and nobody reprimanded me.

  I counted slowly down from ten.

  “The bottom line, gentlemen,” I replied in a very slow, methodical voice, “is that I require more information than you’re providing me. I cannot continue putting my crew in situations without knowing what I’m dealing with. It is unfair to them, to me, and to the people we are sworn to protect.”

  O leaned forward, giving me just enough of a glimpse of his face to try and commit it to memory. No luck. The visual dissipated like smoke in front of a high-speed fan. It was so aggravating.

  “Ian,” he said, going completely informal, “there are many things that we cannot tell you, and I know that’s difficult for you to deal with, but you must understand that we have our reasons.”

  “O is right,” Zack stated. “We can no more share every nuance with you than you can run out to the normal community and let them in on the fact that supernaturals exist.”

  “Agreed,” Silver said a moment later.

  I wanted to jump up and yell at them. I wanted to call them all a bunch of bastards. But what would that accomplish? I’d feel better for a few minutes, sure, but it wouldn’t get them on my side any more than they already were. They weren’t going to spill the beans, that was for certain.

  So I put up my hands, stood up, and walked out, not saying a word as I left them there to stew in their silence.

  As soon as I entered my office I found Rache
l sitting on the opposite side of my desk, waiting for me.

  I plopped down in my chair, feeling defeated.

  What was the point of the Directors anyway? It didn’t seem like they did much to help me. They were great at grilling me for information and acting all uppity and powerful, but where the hell were they when I needed them? Hiding behind their secrets, that’s where.

  I glanced up at Rachel, and that’s when I noticed a mug of something on my desk.

  There was steam coming off the top.

  “What’s that?” I asked, confused.

  She shifted slightly. “Tea.”

  “Tea?”

  She nodded.

  I leaned forward and looked inside the cup. Sure enough, it was tea.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m actually quite a fan of tea, especially when my stress level was through the roof, much like it was right now. But Rachel had never brought me…

  I looked up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked dubiously.

  “She’s serving us, you dope,” noted The Admiral. “Nice, right?”

  “Honestly, shut up.”

  “Nothing,” she said, standing up and walking around.

  “Rachel,” I whispered the moment she started straightening up my desk, “have you been drinking?”

  She stopped. “What?”

  “You’ve brought me tea and you’re cleaning my desk.” My eyes went wide and my heart nearly stopped. “Oh shit, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No!” Her yell started my heart beating again. “What the hell, Ian?”

  “I’m just…” I squinted. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m trying to be more supportive,” she said in a huff. “Is that okay or are you going to yell at me about that, too?”

  “Oh,” I said, staring down at the tea. “I…wow.” I glanced up. “Thanks, babe.”

  She softened at that.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I took a sip. It was good. Chamomile. Relaxing.

  “I don’t suppose the Directors were any help?” she asked, resuming her seat.

  “Are they ever?”