Pacific Fire
Authors: Greg Van Eekhout
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To Sarah Prineas and her vicious goat, Nutcracker
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CONTENTS
Other books by Greg van Eekhout
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The golem sat on the motel bed, watching TV with the sound turned off. It was a commercial from Los Angeles, and a man in a cowboy hat was selling used boats. Even without sound, the golem could tell he was shouting. That was his memory of Los Angeles: a lot of shouting and earthquakes and landslides and things burning all around him.
When the TV went back to a news show, he picked up one of the books he'd arranged in a protective circle around him. The wizard had bought it from a thrift shop once the golem told him he knew how to read.
The wizard stood at the window, now, peering out through a crack in the avocado-green curtains. His name was Daniel Blackland, and he was always afraid. Afraid of being followed, afraid of people sneaking up. Afraid of people stealing the golem. Afraid of things he wouldn't talk about.
Outside were a bean-shaped hotel swimming pool, the parking lot, the highway, and the endless black-night desert. The parking lot only had three cars in it, including the wizard's. Not much traffic came down the road. Still, the wizard said it was too crowded here.
The pool glowed turquoise with lights hidden beneath the water.
“Can I go swimming?” the golem asked. He'd never gone swimming, though he felt at home in water. Most of the motels since they'd fled Los Angeles a week ago didn't have tubs, just showers. But the place where they'd stayed last night did, and he filled it all the way up to the overflow drain and pushed his hands against the sides to keep himself below the surface. He'd been born in a tank of osteomantic fluid, just a few days before leaving LA, and he missed the way sounds seemed distant and the earth's weight, less harsh.
This was the first motel they'd stayed at that had a pool.
Daniel turned away from the window.
“It's nighttime,” he said. “Kids can't swim in motel pools at night.”
“Why not?”
“Because the world is arbitrary and capricious. It's a rule.”
Daniel had a lot of rules:
Eat when you can.
Use the bathroom when you can.
Sleep when you can.
If someone tries to take you, scream and stab them with your little pocketknife.
And now, no swimming at night.
The golem didn't like the rules, but he liked Daniel. Daniel had saved his life, and he'd also bought him books and drawing paper and markers. And he was teaching him magic.
Daniel took another glance out the window before letting the curtain go. “Let's try an animal,” he said.
The golem put down his book.
Daniel removed a scarred leather wallet from his duffel bagâhis osteomancer's kit. He took out a copper lighter, a small bowl made of bone, and a long, glinting needle.
“Ready?” Daniel asked.
The golem nodded.
Daniel stuck the needle deep into the tip of his own right thumb. His face didn't change, but it must have hurt, because he took a small, quick breath. Five red drops splashed in the white bowl.
“What do you smell?” he asked.
The golem closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He smelled stale cigarette smoke and disinfectant and mildew from the bathroom. He smelled diesel fumes from the highway and chlorine from the pool and the metallic tinge of Daniel's blood. Wizards like Daniel gained magic by consuming the remains of magical creatures, and the golem knew Daniel had eaten kraken and sint holo and griffin and Colombian dragon and the essences of dozens of other creatures. He was brimming with their osteomantic power.
But the golem was full of even more power. That's what Daniel told him, anyway. He'd been grown from the cells of the most powerful wizard in California, the century-old Hierarch, who'd eaten entire banquets of magic. Except the golem didn't feel that power in himself. Daniel said he had to learn to find it first. He had to learn what magic smelled like, what it felt like, so he'd come to recognize it in his own blood and bones and marrow.
Daniel worked some of the dials on the lighter. They sold cigarette lighters in the gas stations, but Daniel's was more complicated than those, with all sorts of little controls. The flame changed color from orange, to red, to green, and then the light faded, even though the heat was still strong enough to warm the golem's face. In the bowl, Daniel's blood thickened and turned black as tar.
The golem shut his eyes and tried to smell magic, and when he could no longer bear to concentrate on what he smelled, he began to pay attention to the slick texture of the blanket, the hum of the alarm clock on the bedside table, the way his ear itched. All the things he was supposed to ignore.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “What's in the crucible?”
“I don't know.”
Daniel didn't seem upset. He seemed a little bit relieved. “You can't expect to learn this stuff overnight. We'll try again tomorrow.”
The golem was relieved, too. Maybe the magic inside him should stay inside.
The golem uncapped his black marker and started working on a drawing. He made an eagle's head attached to a lion's body. He gave it wings and he somehow knew this creature was called a griffin. He wasn't sure exactly what a griffin was, but he understood its essence was speed and flight and rending with beak and claw. He wondered if Daniel had bled griffin osteomancy in the bowl, or if he'd drawn a griffin because there was griffin in his own body. For some reason, he didn't want to tell Daniel about it.
“Can I go swimming tomorrow?”
Daniel went back to the window. “Sorry, buddy. We're getting an early start. I want to be in the Sierras by sundown. But we might end up camping near a lake, so maybe there'll be some splashing. No promises.”
There was only one thing Daniel had promised him, when they were heading away from the city. He promised the golem he'd protect him to his last breath.
That's what the magic lessons were about. Daniel was a thief, and he'd stolen the golem, and people from Los Angeles would come for him, to take him back. They might not take him back alive, but instead they'd cut him into pieces and press his body to get all the osteomantic oils out and remove his bones and grind them to powder. Daniel promised to protect him, but in case he couldn't, the golem had to learn how to protect himself.
“Do you want to see my drawing?” He got up to show Daniel.
“No,” Daniel said. He didn't shout, but his tone was sharp, and the golem felt as if he'd been shoved back into the pillows. “Stay away from the windows. Lock yourself in the bathroom. Don't come out unless I tell you to.”
“Why?”
“Visitors,” Daniel said.
The golem backed toward the bathroom, and Daniel went out to meet whoever was there.
As soon as the flimsy door shut, the little motel room closed in on him like a jail cell.
The golem went to the window.
A single lamp from the motel office cast a yellow glow over the parking lot. At the edge of the light, three men came charging out of the back of a white van. The driver remained behind the wheel with the motor idling.
There wasn't anything remarkable about the way the men looked. One was maybe a little bit tall. Another, a little bit fat. But the way they sped across the parking lot wasn't human. They took long, bounding strides, and they curled their fingers into claws, and their scents pushed through the thin windows. The golem smelled things that reminded him of his drawing. He smelled their speed and their ability to rip flesh with their fingernails. He smelled cold air rushing past sleek fur in flight.
Daniel headed them off before they reached the door.
The golem knew he should do what Daniel told him. He should run into the bathroom, lock the door, hide. But his feet were glued to the floor, and he couldn't remove his hand from the curtain. He didn't want to take his eyes off Daniel, because he was afraid for him, and he was afraid to be without him.
That was only part of the reason.
He also wanted to see wizards fight.
New and more powerful smells washed away the griffin scents as if they were just a few drops of milk in the ocean. There was a deep, muddy, rotten odor of the sea floor. The smell of darkness and crushing pressure. The smell of lightning lacerating the sky. The golem recognized the smells. They were kraken.
Daniel extended his hand. Blinding forks of electricity shot out and struck the three men in their hearts. The men collapsed, twists of smoke rising from charred and bloody flesh.
Another smell blended into the others, but this one wasn't osteomantic. It was just burning meat.
With a squeal of rubber, the van backed onto the highway. Daniel ran after it, but by the time he reached the edge of the parking lot, it was too late, and the van was too far gone. He spent a long time staring after it.
He returned to the dead men and bent over them, smelling them and nudging their pockets with the toe of his boot.
The golem came out to see.
Daniel turned on him. “I told you to hide.” From the window, he'd seemed calm, even with lightning crackling over his body. But his face was red and shiny with sweat. His chest heaved.
“I wanted to see,” the golem said. It was an honest answer.
Daniel rubbed his face and pushed damp hair off his forehead. Scanning the road, he regained control of his breathing.
“I guess it's for the best,” he said after a while. “You should know what you're facing.”
The men still smelled of griffin, and the golem had a thought. “Are you going to eat them?” he asked Daniel.
Daniel didn't answer. He knelt before the golem and stared into his eyes, searching for something.
“Do you want to eat them?”
“Yes,” the golem said.
“How old are you?”
“I don't know.”
He'd become alive inside a tank in the attic of a sprawling house on the side of a hill. He didn't know how long he'd spent in that tank. He didn't know how long it had taken to become him.
“Seven or eight, I'd guess,” Daniel said. “I don't know. I'm not really experienced with kids. But you're old enough to hear this.” He paused, as if he were about to leap and wasn't sure about the landing. “You're the creation of the worst man I ever met. Maybe one of the worst people who ever was. The Hierarch was powerful, and he got that way by consuming power. He ate the remains of more osteomantic creatures than anyone I've ever heard of. He ate mammoths and dragons and griffins and eocorns. He ate basilisks and seps serpents and hydras. And he ate people. He ate other sorcerers. He ate my own father.”
