Pacific Fire (16 page)

The view of LA was spectacular. The Pacific Ocean glimmered blue in the west, with a gray bank of clouds sitting on the horizon like a wall. Sam could make out the purple-gray silhouette of the Catalina Island ridgeline. It seemed enticingly close, as if they could just wade out to it. The rest of the LA basin was filled with houses and offices and strip malls and dark green tufts of treetops. The Hollywood sign stood out against an arrogant blue sky, and just right of it, the green copper domes of Griffith Observatory. If Daniel had claimed the Hierarchy, that would have been one of his palaces.

He looked for the site of the Magic Castle, where he'd been born, and where Daniel rescued him. He saw no sign of it. Daniel had set it aflame, and rains and mudslides took care of the wreckage.

For all the times Daniel told him spooky-boo stories of Los Angeles, Sam felt oddly as though he'd come home. He spread his arms and encompassed the city, just as the Hierarch might have done when standing on this very spot with his war machines.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, Sam turned to Em. “Just looking,” he said guiltily.

“Well, golden god, you can help me look for the cache.”

The Emmas had laid in a cache of bone near here, and if he and Em hoped to survive Los Angeles and do damage on Catalina, they'd need to arm themselves. But the cache had been here for going on a dozen years, and the chances of it going undisturbed this long weren't great.

Em took them into a field of asphalt broken by tufts of weeds. She stepped gingerly, as if walking through a garden and trying not to step on the flowers.

“What are we looking for?” Sam asked. “Some marking stone or sigil or something?”

She didn't answer, just kept picking through weeds and busted slabs of concrete.

“A big
X
, like on a pirate treasure map?” Sam ventured. “An informative frog?”

“I'll know it when I see it.… Oh! Here we are.”

At Em's feet, a spray-painted face on the concrete looked up at him. It was just an outline done in red, but he recognized the nose.

“You drew your own face to mark where you left your stuff? That's ingenious.”

“It's not my face. It's the Emma who buried the cache. To anyone else it just looks like graffiti, but to an Emma, it couldn't be more obvious.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “I'm sorry I made fun of you.”

“When did you make fun of me?”

“When I said ‘ingenious' I really meant ‘incomprehensibly stupid,' but now that you explained it, I guess it's not a bad system.”

They pried the slab away and started digging through dry, loose dirt and plant roots. Two feet down, Sam's shovel struck metal. Another minute of digging revealed a bread-loaf-sized ammo box.

Em brushed dirt away and unclipped the lid, and Sam joined her in staring into an empty box. He smelled only dirt and a tinge of rust.

“This is either the best sint holo invisibility essence I've ever not seen, or else it's an empty box,” he said.

Em slammed the box shut and kicked it into the hole. Sam backed away from her, because she looked like she was searching for other things to kick. He grasped for an encouraging word, or at least something mollifying.

“Maybe we can find the person who stole your magic and make them suffer,” he offered.

The
crack-pop
of gunfire rang out, and bits of concrete peppered their knees and shins. They dove into the dirt for cover, but instead of more gunshots, there was a shout.

“You leave my chickens alone!”

Sam lifted his head above the weeds. In the doorway of one of the bunkers, an ancient scarecrow of a man carried a rifle.

“We mean your chickens no harm,” Sam called out.

“What chickens?” Em whispered.

“Whatever chickens he's upset about,” Sam whispered back.

“Stand up so I can see you,” the man said in a timorous voice.

Em clamped her hand around Sam's arm. She had an extraordinarily strong grip. “I think he means stand up so he can shoot us.”

Another shot blast, and the sound of a bullet's ricochet.

“I can shoot you standing or I can shoot you snake-crawling. Your choice.”

Sam wrenched free from Em's clutch. “I choose standing.”

He cautiously lifted himself to his feet, hands in the air. Cursing, Em did the same.

The man's eyes were red rimmed and wild, and his hands shook so much it was hard to tell if he was aiming at Em and Sam or aiming at a cloud. Dangerous in any case.

From somewhere in the bunkers, a rooster crowed, and the man's legs began to tremble. He shifted from one foot to the other in a little dance of agitation.

“Seriously,” Sam said. “We're not after your chickens.”

The man squinted and leaned forward, and then his eyes popped wide and he fell to his knees. “Forgive me,” he wailed. “I am a plunderer and a glutton.” The more he shook, the more the bore of his rifle bobbed and jittered.

“Hey,” Sam said, “could you maybe put the gun away?”

The man gawked at his rifle as if he'd suddenly discovered a python in his hands. He tossed it before him. Sam and Em both flinched. Luckily, there was no accidental discharge.

Sobbing, the man buried his face in his hands. “I dreamed of this day. I prayed for it.”

Helplessly confused, Sam turned to Em. “Is this like an LA thing, or…?”

“I don't know. Every other time I've been here it's just been a lot of running around and shooting and explosions.”

The man wiped an arm across his sloppy nose. “The chickens are yours,” he blubbered. “It's all yours.” He spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture, uncomfortably like the one Em caught Sam giving the vista of Los Angeles.

His eyes shot skyward, and then he hastily rose to his feet. “Come on,” he said with a manic grin. “I'll hide you.” He disappeared into the shadows of his bunker.

“Hide us from what?”

“That,” Em said.

He followed her gaze. A helicopter, small in the distance, approached from the office towers of Century City. Maybe just a news chopper, or a rich person's transport. Or maybe it belonged to an osteomancer on the hunt.

The bunker started to look like a good idea. They followed the man inside.

Inside, a gas camping lantern cast a yellow glow over a shopping cart stuffed with what looked like random garbage, but were probably the man's life's possessions. Among newspaper pages and crumpled plastic bags were books and a trombone missing its slide and plastic water jugs. A radio was plugged into an extension cord that snaked off into the dark unknown. Chickens clucked in the shadows, and the stench of chicken shit hung everywhere.

The man held a finger to his lips as the hum of the helicopter resolved into the rhythmic chop of rotor blades. They huddled in the cramped space until the sounds passed overhead and faded.

“You're safe now,” the man said, smiling shyly at Sam.

“Who was that in the chopper?”

“Looters and lessers, sire, the whole lot of them. They buzz the sky like vultures, picking on the remains of your kingdom.”

Em gave Sam an
uh-oh
look, which matched the feeling in his belly.

“What do you mean,
my
kingdom?” he asked, though he knew damn well what the man meant.

The man giggled, like they were all in on a delightful secret.

“You don't have to hide from me, majesty. I'm your most loyal subject, always have been, and my daddy before me, and his daddy before him.”

Sam didn't quite know what to say, and Em was no help.

“Come on, I'll show you my chickens.”

He cantered into a deeper part of the bunker. Em began following, but Sam blocked her way.

“What are you doing? He thinks I'm the Hierarch.”

“Apparently. So?”

“So,” Sam sputtered, “I've spent my life trying to avoid situations just like this.”

“No, you've spent your life trying to avoid people who want to vivisect you. This guy is your number one fan. And we need the magic my sisters cached. If nothing else, I want to see these chickens.”

Exasperated, Sam went along with her. In a larger chamber, rails in the floor led to a pair of steel doors, probably for the deployment of a war engine. The device was nowhere in sight, and a carpet of weeds and dry plant bits indicated the doors hadn't been opened in a long time. The smell of chicken shit was stronger here, and clucks and shuffling sounds came from cages set up on sawhorses, partially covered by a plastic tarp. But when Sam's eyes adjusted to the dark, what drew his attention was a wall plastered with newspaper and magazine pages, and drawings and photos and postage stamps, and a small fortune in currency, all depicting the Hierarch's face: strong, grim, with eyes like two pinpoints of light in a coal shaft, ageless, but a chin and nose that unmistakably also belonged to Sam.

The man could barely contain his glee. “The pretenders said you were dead. They said Blackland ate your heart, and the rest of the osteomancers divided up your kingdom and squatted in your sacred places and ate your magic. But I never believed them. I don't know how anyone who ever saw you could believe them. But me, I
did
see you. You wouldn't remember me, I was just a boy, at your Blessing of the Animals ceremony. I gave you a chicken and you ate it live on the spot, right in front of me. You honored me, sire.
You
honored
me
.” He got blubbery again. “Oh, sire. The Hierarchy without you … We are excrement and gas. Where have you been, my liege?”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Wandering the desert? Yes. I have been wandering the desert.”

This answer seemed to please the man. He rubbed his hands together. “Gathering your malice and power. It is what I hoped.”

“Yes, exactly,” Sam said. “I have been wandering the desert, gathering my malice and power.”

“So, your chickens,” Em prompted.

The man drew himself up to all the haughty dignity he could muster. “Not my chickens. The Hierarch's chickens.”

He pulled the tarp away, scaring up a cloud of dust and disease vectors. The animals in the cages weren't chickens, but they used to be. Now, they were the size of beach balls. Their heads were featherless, more feline than avian. Vestigial rear legs grew from their hindquarters. They were covered in sand-colored fur.

“You fed them magic from the box,” Em said.

The man nodded, proudly at first, but then shrank once he realized he may have displeased Sam.

“They were always scratching there,” he said, defensive. “You know how chickens are.”

“Griffin magic in the cache?” Sam asked Em.

She nodded.

Sam did not relish eating the chickens in hopes of extracting traces of griffin.

Em gave the man a cross look. “Poaching the Hierarch's magic is a death sentence.”

Even Sam winced at her punishing tone.

“I am sorry, majesty.” Tears clung to the man's eyelashes.

And now Sam had to decide what to do. There was protocol in case someone ID'd him. The man didn't know he was the Hierarch's golem, but him thinking he was the actual Hierarch was maybe even worse. Daniel would have fogged the man's brain, but Sam didn't know how to summon lamassu magic. Would Daniel have killed him?

Yes, to protect Sam, certainly.

But there was another option. Sam could actually assume the Hierarchy.

He imagined the old Hierarch standing on this hilltop, commanding everything from the sea to the mountains and beyond.

“You have failed me by stealing my magic,” Sam said. The man peered up at him, as if to glimpse the ax coming for his neck. “But the Hierarch is merciful. And he rewards those loyal to him. So, I shall forgive you.”

“Oh, your most beneficent majesty—”

“And I do more than forgive. As I honored you before when I ate your chicken, so I shall again. I have a task for you.”

Shivering in unseemly ecstasy, the man bowed his head.

“You will be my herald. When my people hear word of my return, they will hear it from you. But not until the time is right.”

The man was sobbing uncontrollably now. “I am unworthy, your majesty. But I shall do your bidding. Only … how will I know? How will I know when it's time?”

Em gave Sam a “yeah, good question” look.

“You will know only when you hear it from my lips.”

On his way out, Sam stopped in the doorway of the bunker and looked at the wall and all the money pinned to it, with all the versions of his face. It was a sizable collection.

“One more thing.”

“Yes, your majesty?”

“Do you suppose you might spare your lord and liege some of this cash?”

*   *   *

Em rented a two-seater pedal boat and bought a couple of ice cream sandwiches. The ice cream would help them look like tourists, she explained. Sam was skeptical, but he wasn't going to turn down ice cream.

This was a peaceful place, with walking paths winding through green lawns and palm fronds gently swaying in the breeze. Vendors sold snow cones and papaya spears. Children chased soap bubbles and dogs chased butterflies, and couples and families in row boats meandered around Echo Park Lake, a blue pond reflecting white clouds. Sam saw nothing frightening here. None of the horrors Daniel talked about when he spun his tales of LA. At least not at first.

Sam and Em pedaled across the pond, past lazy flotillas of ducks and geese, out to a tiny, grassy island in the center of the pond. A half dozen stakes were planted in the grass, and upon each stake was mounted a severed head.

The island's only living inhabitant was a prematurely wrinkled man tanned like a horse saddle. He wore a straw boater, a blue pinstriped seersucker jacket, and white trousers. A shiny metal change dispenser was clipped to his belt.

Flashing bleached teeth, he called out his spiel: “Fifty shells a piece gets you a ten-minute visit and an oral history of the island and its denizens. Oh, excuse me a sec. Yaw!” He thrust a pole at a pigeon that had landed on one of the heads. The pigeon cooed and flapped away, but not before depositing a white blob.