Swarm of Fire

by John P. Logsdon

  Nobody said a word. We just kept pace through the streets, hugging the shadows wherever possible. I couldn’t see the little prick anymore, but Serena was tracking him without a problem.

  “Stop,” Warren yelped aloud and then quickly covered his mouth.

  We did and I shot him a look, nearly ready to stick my foot up his ass.

  “Oh, shit,” Rachel groaned. She’d said it out loud, too.

  So much for keeping to the connector.

  My wizard and two mages started frantically studying the area. Finally, they looked up at each other and then at me.

  “What?” I implored.

  “Notification rune,” Warren squeaked.

  “Uh…”

  “He’s coming back,” Serena breathed, pointing at the tracker she was holding. “What do we do?”

  I cracked my neck, took out Boomy, stuck in a fresh magazine, and then looked up into the night sky.

  “We do what we’re best at,” I said without inflection. “We’re going to kick his fucking ass.”

  Chapter 18

  The uber pixie flew into view and looked down at us. Felicia didn’t bother to hold back this time. She pointed and fired her Eagle. It deflected off a shield. The pixie did bounce away, but he flew right back, unaffected.

  “You were right,” she said, grunting. “I hate those fucking shields.”

  Jasmine and Rachel lit up their hands and cast spells at the little dude, but he just moved out of the way, expertly dodging each of their volleys like it was nothing.

  He cackled at us and then turned and zipped down the street so fast that my eyes couldn’t process the speed. Honestly, at the rate he was moving he could have burst right through any one of us like a bullet. That was a scary thought.

  “He’s quick,” choked Turbo.

  “Can you move like that?” I asked, reminding myself that his name was Turbo!

  “No,” he replied. “I’ve never seen any pixie move that fast, but I can say that when we turn on the jets, it tires us out quickly. He can’t possibly maintain that for long.”

  “Don’t forget he’s an uber, though,” Rachel noted. Then she put up a finger. “He’s got a shield, but what if we set a net for him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I cast a spell on the one side,” she explained, “Jasmine hits the other, and we close in on him while you guys shoot at him, bouncing him around until he’s sealed in tight.”

  I gave her a look. “You just noted how fast he was moving, right?”

  “Yes, but Turbo also pointed out that he may not be able to do that forever.” She held up a hand at me. “I know that he’s an uber, but even Reese had to use demons to keep his power flowing at full. Logic dictates that this guy won’t have an unlimited supply of mojo either.” She turned and looked at the pixie off in the distance. “If we wear him down, he’ll be trapped.”

  “What’s he doing?” asked Felicia, stepping up.

  “I was just wondering the same thing,” Rachel said, continuing her stare at him. “If I were to guess, I’d say he’s dumping a fair amount of pixie dust.”

  Serena held up the tracker. It was glowing like a goddamn Christmas tree.

  I nodded at the device. “I’m guessing that’s not good?”

  “Your guess would be correct,” she replied. “He’s creating something.”

  “Then let’s get the hell down there and stop him,” I said, taking off at a full run. “Get your hands glowing, ladies. And, Warren, I don’t care how out of breath you are when we get there, you’d better have your spell at the ready or we might end up killing humans again.”

  “I’ll be ready, Chief,” he replied stoically, though his breathing was already labored. “Just need to get close enough to cast the spell.”

  I direct-connected to him as we continued our run. “Look, Warren, I don’t want to seem insensitive to the fact that you’re a wizard and wizards are notorious for not doing much but sitting around and studying. However, if you’re going to be in the field with us, you’ve got to be in better shape than this.”

  “You’re right, Chief,” he replied. The nice thing about using the connector instead of yelling back and forth was that you couldn’t hear someone gasping with each word when they were exhausted. “I think I’ll create an elixir of stamina that I can bring along.”

  “Good idea.” We often had elixirs with us whenever we could prepare ahead of time. Some of the mages kept them on hand anyway. “Remember that Serena is well-versed in creating all sorts of elixirs.”

  Finally, we got near enough to the area to see that there was a small army of vampires waiting for us. I fired shot after shot at the uber pixie, bouncing him around until he finally gave me the finger and took off, leaving us to face our new foe.

  There were only seven of them, but that would be enough to wreak havoc if we didn’t act quickly.

  “No screwing around this time,” I yelled. “Burn their legs and we’ll work our way up.”

  Rachel and Jasmine shot flames at their feet, but the vampires merely looked down at the flames, glanced back up, and smiled. I knew the damn things were made of dust, but they looked incredibly real.

  I gulped. “Uh…what just happened?”

  “The flames didn’t work,” said Turbo.

  I frowned at him.

  “Are you sure?” My voice was laced with sarcasm, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Serena, any idea what we do now?”

  “Run?”

  We’d already employed that strategy once tonight. But it was still pretty high on my list at the moment. I didn’t want another of my officers to get stuck in the hospital, after all.

  That thought made me think of Griff.

  I had to put that behind me, though. We needed to focus on the problem at hand.

  “Try ice,” I said.

  Rachel launched a volley.

  Nothing.

  The vampires began laughing in the way vampires do. Arrogantly. There was some serious authenticity in that uber pixie’s spell-casting.

  Felicia took a step forward and shot one of them. This time it didn’t even penetrate. It just ricocheted into the night.

  “I’m really starting to hate this guy,” I hissed. “Warren, are there normals in there or not?”

  “Oh, damn,” he said, shaking himself back to life. “I’m...damn. Sorry.”

  He quickly cast his spell and the vampires stared up at the fog as it descended on them. They didn’t seem concerned. I couldn’t say I would be either after having fireballs, ice barrages, and bullets essentially bounce away like they were nothing.

  “No,” he said, “but wait…”

  He walked forward, moving closer and closer to the vampires like someone trying to see if there really was a spider in the corner or if it was just a piece of lint.

  “Warren?” I said in warning.

  He kept moving.

  “Warren?” I singsonged it this time.

  He still kept moving.

  “Damn it, Warren,” I yelled straight out, “those things are going to fucking kill you!”

  He froze and turned back to us with an “Eureka!” expression lighting up his face.

  “Energy pulses,” he bellowed as the closest one reached out toward him. “Now!”

  Chapter 19

  Warren hit the ground as Rachel and Jasmine shot energy through the air, swamping the pixie vampires in a bath of sparks. The world hummed as if we were standing next to a massive generator.

  The vampires froze.

  Their eyes began to glow blue as a white sheen covered their bodies.

  “Get the hell out of there, Warren!” Rachel yelled.

  Warren crawled as quickly as he could until he was just out of the electrical field. Then he got up and ran. If he did this kind of thing a few times a week, I daresay he may end up being in decent enough shape not to cough up a lung every time he exerted himself.

  That said, it was evident that Rachel and Jasmine were starting
to tire. The electricity flowing from their hands was losing its fervor slightly.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We need to get more energy into them,” Jasmine said. “We need Griff.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Any other ideas?”

  They both shook their heads.

  It was a shame we weren’t allowed to carry Empirics with us. A powerful little electrical grenade would be quite useful at the moment.

  “Warren,” I said, “can you help them?”

  “Uh…huh?” He looked distraught. “Oh, uh, I can lend them my power.” Then he paused. “But if I do it’ll wipe me out.”

  “So will those vampires, if they survive,” I noted while pointing at The Seven Glowing Fanged Ones. That would be a decent band name, if I did say so myself. “Do it, Warren.”

  He stepped over and put his hands on the PPD mage’s shoulders and began his hilarious pygmy chant. I kept my mirth under control. Within a few seconds, the flow of light increased, rising above what Jasmine and Rachel had originally been outputting.

  The vampire closest to us exploded, which was perfect because his energy smacked into the ones right behind him. That caused them to overload. They blew up too. This then cascaded back until all of the vampires blew up.

  Warren collapsed. Rachel and Jasmine merely sat down, looking haggard and worn.

  We were dead in the water.

  So of course that’s when the uber pixie decided to fly back around to check in on us.

  Felicia and I took out our weapons and leveled them at the little dude. We weren’t exactly in a position to do much, especially with my mages being drained and my wizard being asleep. If only our bullets could have gotten through the shield he had up, that would…

  “Turbo,” I said through the connector, “I don’t suppose you could set our bullets to the same resonant frequency as his shield or something, could you?”

  Turbo gave me a funny look. “What the heck are you talking about, Chief?”

  “You know, like they do in all those space shows. Match the shield frequency of the other ship and you can shoot torpedoes and such straight through them. You’ve never heard of that?”

  “No,” he admitted, “but it’s an interesting idea. The only problem is that we’re in the middle of the field here. I have no tools or anything. Besides, something like that would take about—”

  “Three weeks, I know.” I sighed. “Any suggestions, then? And don’t say, ‘Run.’”

  He began scratching his head as the uber pixie continued to study us.

  “You there,” he called down, pointing at Turbo, “you’re a fucking pixie.”

  Turbo puffed out his chest. “Well, aren’t you astute. Anything else you’d like to point out that’s obvious, assnugget?”

  I jolted at that. Since when did Turbo use language like that? He was one of only a few pixies I’d ever met that did not have a potty-mouth.

  “Did you just call him an assnugget?” I asked in disbelief.

  “It’s our default language,” Turbo replied, turning a bit pink.

  That did seem to be true.

  “Why are you with these assholes?” asked the uber pixie, seemingly not offended by Turbo’s name-calling. “They’re inferior to us. Even a dipshit like you has to know that.”

  “Of course I know that, turd tooth.” He then grunted. “I’m their leader!”

  “You’re our what?” I said, blinking.

  “Roll with it, Chief.”

  The uber zipped down quickly, looked over Turbo, and then zipped away again. It was so fast that it took me a moment to register the event.

  “You’re a lying sack of cocks,” the uber said. He then pointed at me. “Officer Eaten Dix is the leader.”

  “Excuse me,” I scoffed, feeling as though I’d been slapped. “My name is not Eaten Dix. It’s Ian Dex, thank you very much.”

  “Oh, sorry,” the uber said dramatically. “My information must have been incorrect.” He held up a little scroll that he’d clearly just created from dust. “Oh, I see. It says that you just spend a lot of time eating dicks. I had that wrong.”

  I knew the little creep was trying to rile me up, so I just ignored his words. At least until I noticed that Rachel was giggling a little.

  She stopped when I frowned at her.

  Nice.

  “See?” the uber said, pointing at Rachel. “Even she knows about your proclivity to chew the pipe, Officer Dix…sorry, Dex.”

  “Enough of you, worm fart,” Turbo bellowed. “You are under arrest.”

  “Did you just call him a worm fart?” I asked aloud, thinking that wasn’t even remotely worthwhile from the perspective of pixie language usage.

  “I’m a little out of practice, Chief,” he explained with a shrug.

  The uber laughed at that.

  “You can’t defeat me,” he said while continuing to chuckle. “Your mages are out of juice and that dong tugger of a wizard lying beside them is clearly spent. The only thing you’ve got going for you is that Officer Felacio Blowguys and you have guns, and those can’t even penetrate my shields.” The uber zoomed down again and poked Turbo on the chest, staring daggers at him. “Unless you are going to fight me, Turdblow?”

  Obviously this guy, just like the other ubers we’d faced over the last months, had dug up information on my entire crew. Typical bad guys didn’t do this sort of thing. Over time, they got to know who you were, sure, but we’d never met any of these ubers, which meant they’d have to have done their research.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, hoping he’d stay close so I could reach out and snap him from the air. “Wad or Rash or Boil or something?”

  He glared at me. “Rot.”

  “Twat?”

  “No!” His eyes let out a little smoke. So he didn’t like to be teased about his name. Weird, but okay. “I said my name is Rot.”

  “Ah, sorry.” I took a casual step toward him. “So, let me ask you something, Crotch.”

  “It’s Rot, fuckface,” he hissed as he flew over and poked me on the nose.

  I grabbed him.

  Chapter 20

  Now that should have been that, but if you could try to imagine what it may feel like to grab hold of twenty wasps who were all incredibly pissed off and who truly enjoyed stinging the shit out of anything and everything, you’d get the basic gist of how I was feeling at the moment.

  “Don’t let him go,” Rachel cried as I wailed like a five-year-old who’d lost his Game Boy privileges for the night. “We can use his energy.”

  She grabbed my arm and reached out to Jasmine, who reached out and grabbed Warren’s leg.

  Just when I thought the searing pain in my hand couldn’t be any worse, I got to experience the joy of becoming a fucking mage charger.

  It felt like I’d stuck my finger in an outlet that was connected directly to the electric company’s Big Mama generator.

  “It’s working,” exclaimed Rachel. “I’m already feeling much better.”

  “Me too,” agreed Jasmine, “and Warren is waking up.”

  “Swell,” I squeaked, holding on to Rot for dear life. Actually, it sounded more like, “Szzwwzzzzeezzzlllzzzllll.”

  My hand was starting to shine like I was about to cast a spell. I don’t tend to cast spells, though, and that told me that I was about to feel a lot of pain. Soon.

  “Rachel,” I whimpered, nodding at my hand, “can I let go now? Pleassssse?”

  Her eyes went wide, but she shook her head quickly.

  “Don’t just let him go. Throw him!”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. I pulled away from her and launched that little fucker as hard as I could toward the closest building. I could only hope the collision would knock him out completely before he unleashed whatever the hell he’d been brewing while in my hand.

  Unfortunately, he launched the spell just as he got within a few inches of the building.

  A light show ensued that included a s
hockwave powerful enough to blow me back a few feet, like a strong wind in a crazy storm. I was still on my feet, but only barely.

  Bricks shattered, taking off a chunk from the top of the building. We didn’t have to worry about the fallout from those since we were far enough back, but the power of that explosion was something to behold.

  “Ouch,” I said at the realization that I’d just avoided the fate that poor building had suffered. “That’s one powerful little dude.”

  Then I looked down and saw that my hand was badly charred.

  Serena stepped over and started sending healing waves through my body.

  “Hey, man,” said The Admiral, “I know this isn’t the best time to bring this up, but that’s the hand I tend to spend a lot of time with. Do you think that maybe—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Right.”

  As Serena worked her healing magic, Turbo pointed at Rot, who was flying haphazardly away from us. He wasn’t moving all that fast, either.

  “Serena,” I said, taking my hand from hers, “you need to track Rot. I’ll heal on my own in time.”

  “Right.”

  She refocused on her tracking device and I turned to the mages and Warren.

  “You all okay?”

  “I’m nearly at full,” Rachel said.

  “Same here,” agreed Jasmine.

  Warren was obviously not back to full power, but he was conscious enough to say that he was fine. Honestly, we weren’t likely to need much from him in the way of magic anyway. At least not offensive magic.

  “Do you have enough power to tell us if normals are encased or not?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Good enough. Let’s get moving.”

  “Ian, honey,” Lydia said through the connector while Serena led the way after Rot, “I just got word that Officer Benchley has been stabilized and is going into surgery.”

  “Prognosis?”

  “They’re expecting him to pull through, but he’ll be pretty weak, puddin’.”