Running into Fire: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 3)

by DM Fike

  “I’m talking about all the secrecy regarding these fires. Like how you guys were certain that another, different vaettur would attack after the khalkotauroi. How you never addressed how strange the khalkotauroi acted in the first place, acting like it was high on drugs.”

  Guntram blew his top at this line of reasoning. “You run off in the middle of a banishment to go take a dip in the hot spring, and you have the audacity to wonder why you aren’t privy to confidential information?”

  “I didn’t run off,” I protested. “I was knocked out.”

  Whoops. I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned that little fact when Guntram’s face managed to grow darker. But the truth had already slipped out. I forged ahead. “That’s right. I met up with the fire demon and fried it with an electric banishment, but it knocked me out cold. A bunch of firefighters took me to the hospital. I got out as soon as I could, but I thought I’d taken care of our little friend until we met up again in the woods.” As the words came out of my mouth, a strange realization hit me.

  Guntram plowed ahead before I could verbalize it. “You exposed yourself to more people? Did they see you cast the banishment?”

  “No, they didn’t see anything. But Guntram,” I rounded on him, more scared than defiant now. “How did you do it?”

  He didn’t follow my broken train of thought. “What are you babbling about?”

  “The fire demon. You didn’t banish it. You sucked it dry.” I stared at him. “That’s not how we’re supposed to get rid of vaetturs.”

  I wanted him to respond with some sort of reassurance, that by performing those sigils, he and the others hadn’t broken a supposed sacred tenant that we’d honored ever since I became a shepherd.

  You banished vaetturs. That’s the only way to send them back to Letum. You never absorbed them.

  Rather than soothing my fears, Guntram became more flustered. “There are things you don’t understand out there, Ina.”

  My aches from the fire demon battles throbbed enough that I didn’t care anymore. I grabbed Guntram by the tunic collar. “Was that thing even a vaettur?”

  Guntram pushed me backward, and I fell to the ground. He’d always been a grumpy old man but now he rose above me as an angry sorcerer, someone not to be crossed.

  “You will not demand answers from me!” he yelled, his ravens taking off from the trees to create a flying circle above his head, cawing in agitation. “You are my eyas, and you will act like it, or so help me, I will bind you myself!”

  I cowered for the first time ever in his presence. I did not recognize this person, so full of vehemence and violence.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  I could only nod.

  Guntram visibly shrunk at my immediate acceptance. His eyebrows softened, making him appear more sad than angry. Then he flipped on his heels and stormed off, more ravens joining his disjointed flock as he made his way not toward the hot spring but the library.

  CHAPTER 16

  I HAD NO idea how to process Guntram’s anger. He’d been mad at me before but never like that. I hoped a good night’s rest might reset our moods. I even woke up only an hour after dawn to start my day. I hoped my luck had changed when the only symptom left from absorbing that creepy vaettur pith was a mild headache. But when I couldn’t find Guntram in the lodge, I checked the library, not wishing to find him there.

  But he was. And given his uncombed beard and bloodshot eyes, he hadn’t slept at all the night before. He had two leaning stacks of books on either side of him, and he looked committed to poring over each tome before giving up.

  I left him alone. I tried to get my mind off things by offering to help Sipho out. The homestead takes a ridiculous amount of upkeep, and even though Sipho has an incredible work ethic, she can’t get it all done by herself. During the course of the day, I harvested some kale (ugh) from the garden, mended a few crooked fenceposts, and even washed some of Sipho’s tools. By midday, Sipho thanked me for my time and replaced my broken defensive charm, but then insisted I take a break. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wanted to stay busy. She’d only ask me to explain why.

  On the way back to the lodge, I bumped into Azar heading out toward the woods. She had a pouch of food draped around her shoulder that indicated she didn’t intend to come back for a while.

  “Leaving already?” I asked.

  “Why, yes,” she replied. “Is that so surprising?”

  “What about the fire watch? Aren’t we supposed to patrol Siuslaw?”

  “Did Guntram not tell you? That task is finished. We anticipate no further fire threat.”

  If that was true, why was Guntram pouring over texts in the library as if our lives depended on it? But instead, I asked, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m called to Mt. Hood. I wish I could say more, but the matter is urgent, so I must regrettably bid you a hasty farewell.”

  Yet another mystery, I thought as the forest swallowed her up. Mt. Hood kept cropping up. On another day, I might have tried to grill the details out of her, but today, I just felt deflated.

  Deflation morphed into an intense depression when I caught sight of Tabitha and Darby not far away. Tabitha threw feathers in the air one at a time, yelling at Darby to use air pith to keep them aloft. Although Tabitha barked in her usual militaristic fashion, Darby seemed to enjoy the challenge, a bright smile plastered on her sweaty face. Tabitha slapped on a wry grin of her own and suddenly tossed a whole handful toward her eyas. When Darby deftly executed a rapid set of air sigils that sent them straight back at Tabitha, they both burst into peals of what could only be described as giggles.

  What kind of bizarro timeline had I stumbled upon where the Sassy Squad acted like besties and Jichan wanted absolutely nothing to do with me?

  I refused to mope around the homestead all day. I opted for a walk.

  Fechin caught me right outside the homestead’s border. He flew to a nearby Douglas fir and squawked at me, feathers ruffling around his neck.

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “I’m not getting into any trouble. Follow me around if you like. I have nothing to hide.”

  The bird did a little hopping dance on the branch that I interpreted as, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  I ignored my unwanted companion as I aimlessly meandered. I had no destination in particular, just the opportunity to move my body and soak in the natural pith of the forest. A breeze filled my air pith. Streams for water. I rubbed against boulders for earth. And once I’d collected a decent amount of all three, I combined them to form a spark of fire which I used to keep me warm under the shade of the old growth canopy.

  I purposely let my mind go blank, not allowing myself thoughts of others. Certainly not Guntram or Vincent. I pushed Rafe from my mind as well. I focused solely on myself, a child of Nasci. On the surface I didn’t come across like the meditative type, but honestly, being a shepherd did suit my personality. It gave me a purpose in life, disconnected from the useless garbage we hang onto in modern society: social media profiles, busy jobs without much output, accumulating wealth. I’d never cared for those things. I just wanted to make a real difference. Leave an impact. And it would be nice to belong too, but I knew from experience not to get too fixated on that.

  I focused my mind on the beauty of the wilderness around me. How each tree had started from a single small seed but now loomed above me. The imperfect path of a flittering butterfly. A hawk soaring past with prey in its talons. A music hummed, one that I could uniquely identify as a shepherd. A slithering of movement in taller brush. Tweets and chirps both near and far. Insects singing out for mates. It wasn’t pith, exactly, but still Nasci’s energy, one that relaxed me far more than any pill in a bottle could have. I don’t know when exactly, but somewhere in the middle of this mindless trek my headache disappeared.

  It would, of course, not last.

  I surprised myself by somehow ending up at Carol and Dennis’s highway rest stop. I didn’t aim for this destination. The forest
had simply taken me there. I must have walked many miles farther than I had anticipated.

  I hesitated, lingering in the trees as I spied the only customer vehicle in the parking lot slowly drive away. I didn’t really wish to break the tranquil mood I’d managed to find. But already the spell had been broken. A sense of foreboding filled my body as all my worries came rushing back—Guntram’s anger, Vincent’s betrayal, and Rafe’s proposal.

  Well, if I was going to brood, I might as well do it with a pop.

  Fechin cawed at me as my boots crunched gravel in the parking lot. “I’m going in for a drink.” I rolled my eyes at his objection. “You want to tell Guntram that, you go right ahead.” Then I pushed open the dirty glass door.

  This time, Carol hunkered down near the cash register on a stool. She wore polyester pants, a wrinkled blouse, and a short curly hairstyle that put her in the age category of “above middle-age, probably.”

  “Hey, Ina,” Carol called, not bothering to glance up from her dollar store puzzle book. How she could identify me with just her eyebrows, I’d never know. “Dennis said you wanted to buy batteries the other day. We still ain’t got any.”

  “Oh, that’s okay, I’m buying a pop today.” I made my way to a back wall of carbonation-filled goodness and picked out my favorite brand. Hello, my diabetic friend. I took it halfway up to the counter before I belatedly realized I didn’t have any cash. Groaning, I turned to put it back away.

  Carol glanced up at my muttering. “Something wrong?”

  “I forgot my wallet. I can’t buy this.”

  Carol surprised me by rummaging around behind the counter. “No problem. Someone else has you covered.”

  I halted in mid-stride. “What?”

  “Just bring the darn thing up here and I’ll explain.”

  I slowly shuffled up to the counter as she put a small brown paper bag and a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. She rang me up with the cash, handed me coins and bills as change, and said, “Some forest service guy was looking for you.”

  My mouth went dry. I swallowed to create some moisture. “Did he have a name?”

  She scratched her head. “Gerrick? Gonzales?”

  “Garcia?”

  “That’s it. Garcia.” She motioned toward the bag. “He left this for you.”

  I warily peered inside. There was a prepaid white cell phone and charger with a handwritten note scribbled on the back of a receipt.

  It read, “I’ll explain everything. Call me.” Signed V.G.

  “You guys have a falling out or something?” Carol asked as I threw the empty bag and note away in a nearby garbage can.

  “Or something,” I answered on my way out.

  “He seemed nice!” Carol offered before the door could shut behind me.

  “I’m sure he did,” I said as I stalked off into the forest. “They always do.”

  CHAPTER 17

  OF COURSE, VINCENT would leave me a package at Carol and Dennis’s. He not only knew the approximate location of the homestead since he’d visited there once, I’d also mentioned the store to him during our various text message exchanges. And knowing how hard it was for me to get cash, he’d decided to leave some money to sweeten the deal.

  I shouldn’t have accepted the peace offering, but I’m weak-willed when it comes to carbonated beverages. Vincent also guessed I wouldn’t be able to resist turning on the cell phone and checking the voicemail. As I stomped back through the forest, I listened to the recorded message I predicted would be there. I flinched as his familiar voice came out loud and clear over the phone.

  “Ina, I know what you think you saw. Let me explain things to you but not in a message. Please call me.”

  I powered the phone back down. I didn’t want to hear excuses. Vincent would figure out one way or another that I’d been given the phone, but even knowing the homestead’s location, he couldn’t really find me. Only followers of Nasci could see past the magical façade Sipho had created, making the entire property appear like another mountain in the Cascades. I could only imagine how frustrating that must have been for Vincent, locked outside a mountain with absolutely no way in.

  “Serves him right.” I shoved the phone in my hoodie pouch. My fingers smashed against something hard and I cursed.

  I withdrew the offending object, the cracked stone. I’d forgotten all about the weird object Rafe had given me at the hospital. Too many other things had taken up my headspace. I studied it for a second but had no idea what I was supposed to do with a rock.

  “What’s with guys giving me useless junk lately?” I bent my arm to fling the stone out into the woods. I needed an outlet to get rid of all this sentimental crud.

  Fechin’s screeching interrupted me. He swooped down and gave me a bird lecture.

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m going back to Sipho’s.” I returned the stone back to my pocket, heading out toward the nearest wisp channel. I supposed I should try to patch things up with Guntram.

  But once back at the homestead, I found my augur fast asleep. Not in the lodge like a sane person, but in the library, his arms draped over a table and head resting on a yellowed book. He snored loudly, a little string of spit falling from the corner of his mouth and pooling on the wood.

  My heart hurt for him. Whatever was happening out there with the weird not-vaetturs and messed-up breaches was obviously tearing him apart, but I didn’t understand why. He and I had been training together for weeks before this all went down, so he couldn’t have directly caused any of it. And he’d refused to tell me what he knew. I could only readjust his askew cloak around his shoulders so he wouldn’t waste extra fire pith to keep warm while he slept.

  The rest of the homestead also lay quiet as the sun went down, most of the occupants diurnal. The only active creature I ran into as the full moon rose was Kam, Sipho’s chocolate-colored mountain lion. She trotted across a field to shove her forehead into my palm, demanding affection as she purred. I was more than happy to oblige.

  “What should I do, Kam?” I asked her. “Call Vincent back or not?”

  Kam cajoled me into giving her a thorough belly rub and then plopped onto the grass, tucking her legs underneath her chest. A wide yawn exposed her sharp teeth, and she buried her face in her paws.

  “You’re right,” I said, straightening. “I probably should sleep on it too.”

  And despite a bit of tossing and turning in my lodge bedroom, I did eventually manage to do just that.

  * * *

  I found myself in the middle of a roaring blaze.

  Choking, I stumbled through the burning forest, no idea how to get out. I tried to create a continuous cycle of fire pith, absorbing and releasing it in a continuous flow, but the flames quickly overwhelmed me. I couldn’t get my fire aura started, and without it, I would succumb to the heat.

  A spine-tingling cry cut through the dull roar around me. Out of the flames, the fire demon formed, all limbs and hollow eyes. I figured I would die even as I raised my arms to protect my head from its stubby attack.

  Then it struck me and I fell, fell, fell…

  …onto the dirt floor of the lodge.

  I woke from my nightmare with a whimper, stray straw stuck to my cheeks. My entire body lay drenched in a thin layer of sweat, and my hoodie had managed to twist itself in an almost stranglehold. I had to tug and pull at the drawstrings to reposition it correctly on my torso.

  “Stupid dream,” I grumbled to myself on the final yank.

  Something hard slid from the kangaroo pouch and thudded on the floor. Rafe’s cracked stone. I grabbed it instinctively, not thinking much of it until my damp hands touched the surface.

  A flash of blue light suddenly lit the fissures of its surface.

  “Ah!” I yelped as I jerked away from it.

  The blue light faded as it hit the ground, and the stone returned to normal.

  I took a second to gather my bearings. Moonlight streaked in through the room’s glassless window. An owl hooted somewhere
deep in the forest. Everything appeared very normal, and the rock sat there pretty as you please, not glowing. Wiping my sweaty palms dry on my shorts, I poked it a couple more times.

  Still no more glowing lights.

  I almost dismissed the whole ordeal as an aftereffect of my dream. I don’t normally have them, but when I do, they were always full of messed up crap. But I’d never hallucinated before. And that soft blue light reminded me of something I’d seen before. I just couldn’t remember what.

  Besides, I was awake now. My stomach gurgled. The lodge had only slim, healthy pickings, but a few dried fruit slices would be better than trying to fall back asleep on adrenaline and an empty stomach. I grabbed the stone and trudged out into the hallway.

  Light from the ever-glowing fireplace danced on the walls and ceiling as I made my way into the open common area. Deep shadows formed around the kitchen, the chairs, and especially the shallow pool, which sent refractions of beams every which way as muted firelight hit its surface.

  I froze. I remembered now where I’d seen a weird blue glow from inside a rock. A kembar stone.

  Several weeks ago, when we’d fought the mishipeshu, we discovered that it’d traveled quickly between distant bodies of water using linked kembar stones. The stones acted a lot like wisp channels, except you needed to cast advanced water sigils to activate it. After defeating the mishipeshu, the shepherds had debated how the panther had created such sophisticated magical objects, since vaetturs are generally creatures of blunt force. The only two theories we came up with were either the panther had indeed made the stones itself, or perhaps the stones had been left by a shepherd so long ago that they had been forgotten.

  I found the latter explanation unlikely. Shepherds were notorious for passing down knowledge. With a penchant for archiving even some of the most useless information, I wondered how something as important as kembar stones between lakes in the Talol Wilds had been lost over time.

  And now I potentially held a kembar stone in my hand. But how to tell for sure?

  I shuffled to the edge of the pool. All the other stones we’d ever found had laid at the bottom of a lake. I tossed Rafe’s stone in.