Pacific Fire (3 page)

Otis leaned back in his chair. The corners of his mouth quirked in amusement. He'd delivered his patter. Now, for his inevitable trick. “Boys,” he called out to the air, “bring in the bone.”

It took two forklifts to bring the “bone” from the tunnel. It was a skull, sleek and streamlined and at least thirty feet long. A high, bony ridge bisected the brow like a sail. The eye sockets were caves big enough for Gabriel to shelter in. It lacked a lower jaw, but the teeth of the upper were fearsome scimitars, built for cutting through griffin hide.

Max put a hand on the back of Gabriel's chair to steady himself. His eyelids fluttered. From his reaction, Gabriel knew the skull was authentic, and richly, deeply osteomantic.

Sister Tooth's white cheeks flushed pink. “Is that … a Pacific firedrake?”

“Mm-hmm,” Otis purred.

The species had been identified by a single tooth said to exist in the Hierarch's Ossuary. The records that came with it indicated it was a spoil of war, taken from Northern California in the Conflict of 1934. Just one tooth, and the Hierarch's possession of it was the cause of the War of 1935.

Except for the lower jaw, Otis had a complete skull.

“Bribe or threat?” Gabriel asked.

“Neither,” Otis said, standing with a flourish. “A proposal. A project. A collaboration. One that will give us the strength we need to overcome any hint, any shadow, any whisper of a threat from Northern California or Mexico or South America or the United States or China or anyone else. A weapon. A tool. A power. All the power we need.”

Now it was Gabriel's turn to lean back in his chair, though not with Otis's affected humor. He was genuinely confused. “That's a very, very fine piece of bone, Otis. It's honestly the best I've ever seen. And I'd love it if someone could get Max some saltines, because it's clearly potent enough to make him queasy.”

“I'm fine,” Max said, his voice rough.

“But even with all the osteomancy packed in this skull, it's not equal to the power of the Northern Kingdom, not when combined with everyone else who might have a problem with us declaring ourselves the three-headed king of Southern California.”

Sister Tooth composed herself. “Lord Argent is right.”

And now Otis allowed a little of his real smile to break through. It was a cold smile, and, Gabriel had to admit, a very winning smile.

“It is, indeed, a very good bone. And it cost me dearly in treasure and blood. But it's not my only bone. I have in my stores the makings of a complete Pacific firedrake skeleton. As well as bits of tissue. Armor. Even hide. And what I don't have, I can make.”

“More confused now,” Gabriel said.

“I'll make it plain, then. I can make a living dragon.”

“Impossible,” Sister Tooth said.

But Gabriel didn't think so. Otis wasn't the kind of man who'd gather the realm's most powerful osteomancer and chief hydromancer in a room and unload an avalanche of bunk on them. He must believe he could make a living dragon.

His need for Sister Tooth was clear enough. She had skill, and she had alliances with other osteomancers, even ones outside Southern California. But what else would it take to build a patchwork dragon? What did Gabriel have that Otis would need?

The answer was, of course, prosaic.

“You need electricity.”

“A lot of it,” Otis affirmed. “Your wave generators can provide it.”

“Bone, magic, and power, and we make Los Angeles strong enough to control this part of the world. I like it. Audacious yet simple.”

“So,” Otis said, pleased. “We have an agreement.”

“The beginnings of one, maybe,” Gabriel allowed.

“And Sister Tooth?”

“How can I pass up the opportunity to work with such exquisite magic?”

Otis called for champagne to toast their new partnership. It arrived on a smart silver trolley that had been readied just outside the room. A white-suited henchman was there with a saber to slice off the top of the bottle. There had been very little risk that the bottle would have to be sent back, unopened, or that the henchman would never get to use his sword. There was no chance that the ice in the bucket might melt because the meeting took longer than Otis calculated. Otis knew what he was selling, and he knew his buyers.

The henchman struck the bottle with his blade and celebratory foam gushed out. Otis filled the glasses and raised his own.

“We have a lot of work to do, but before we get too ahead of ourselves, there's a critical resource we'll need.” He paused, and Gabriel counted out the beats. “To Daniel Blackland,” Otis said. “And the treasure he stole.”

 

TWO

Daniel pricked his finger with a copper needle and squeezed two fat drops of blood into the Salton Sea. He gazed across the water and waited for the feeble waves to carry his blood away. The water shimmered blue in the distance, all the way to the craggy desert hills on the far shore, but closer up, it was oily brown, like thinned gravy. It stank of chemical fertilizer and bacterial decay. This was not a pleasant place. Few people came here. Which made it perfect for Daniel and Sam.

His shoes crunched along the white-sand beach, which wasn't actually sand, but the pulverized skeletons of millions of dead fish. Once, this had been a resort for aristocracy, a Palm Springs with water, an oasis in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Marvelous palaces used to line the shores. Luxury barges plied the waters. Barons and baronesses sipped martinis while being fanned with palm fronds like pharaohs. Now, the sea was a slow-motion disaster.

The water splashed as the fish fed on his blood. When he arrived here a few weeks ago, the fish were just descendants of the tilapia and corvina tanked in for sport fishing, but over the course of days he'd fed them small bits of osteomancy and transformed them into grakes. The predatory fish had a taste for magic and provided a decent alarm system if anyone came across the sea for him. And if he stayed here long enough, someone surely would. There'd be bounty hunters and leeches and hounds and duelists and assassins and kidnap specialists. There'd been enough of them in the ten years since he'd fled Los Angeles that he considered them inevitable. Their corpses littered roadside ditches and parking lots all across the land. Much preferable to know they were coming and move on before they got too close.

He was just about to turn from the shore when the whine of a boat engine drifted across the water. He spotted a small craft several hundred yards out. Nothing unusual about that—morning anglers still set out from the trailer parks scattered along the shore. But this boat was surrounded by a glimmer of copper-amber sunlight winking off disturbed water and churning fish. The grakes smelled magic.

As the boat drew closer, Daniel made it out to be an open inflatable of the sort commandos used for amphibious assaults. The man steering it wore a blue windbreaker, and his single passenger wore a tan suit. Clearly, not out for tilapia.

Daniel decided to kill them before they reached shore. Blue sparks snapped beneath his fingernails.

The man in the tan suit stood in the boat and waved both arms over his head.

It was Gabriel Argent.

Daniel kept the kraken electricity in his hands.

As the boat approached, he noticed that Argent's hair had thinned a little over the last ten years, and the lines in his face deepened, but he looked healthy and prosperous. Power seemed to agree with him.

The man steering the boat was his hound.

Daniel allowed them to fetch up on the beach, and the hound, Max, tossed over a barbell weight to anchor the boat while Argent walked carefully along the hull and leaped to the beach, managing not to get his expensive loafers wet.

“It's been a while,” Argent said, offering a handshake.

“You don't want to do that with me,” Daniel said.

Gabriel looked to Max.

“He's charged with kraken storm,” said the hound.

Daniel let some tiny blue arcs of electricity dance between his fingers.

Gabriel pointed to his DWP lapel pin. “It's a bad idea to attack the director of the Department of Water and Power while he's standing next to seven and a half million acres of water. Besides, if I meant you harm, I wouldn't have dumped three ounces of hippogriff-infused tea in the water to warn your fish.”

“Let's not be the kind of people who talk to each other more than necessary, Gabriel. What do you want?”

“Where's the treasure?”

“Safe, and none of your business.”

Argent gazed up at the sky, uneasy. “Can we talk indoors? Some of the LA osteomancers have been working on crows for aerial surveillance.”

Daniel hadn't been aware of that. It was a disturbing but useful thing to know.

“Thanks for that,” Daniel said. “We can talk in my trailer.”

He took Argent and Max through the dead neighborhood of Bombay Beach. Other than the occasional rusted soda can or discarded television, the timber frames and crumbling foundations of destroyed homes were all that was left of the housing development. Grim faced, Argent took in one of his department's most conspicuous failures. The desert was never meant to have a permanent, inland sea, despite his predecessor's engineering and magic.

The raked earth around Daniel's trailer was undisturbed, as were Daniel's osteomantic wards. It had taken Daniel weeks of effort and pain to draw enough fire magic from his bones to craft them, but he'd done good work, and any sorcerer or magic-charged lackey who crossed a ward would die in a swirling inferno.

The trailer was a 250-square-foot box. The only furniture was a pair of camp chairs, inflatable mattresses, and sleeping bags. Duffel bags sat near the door for a quick escape.

Max took in quick, short sniffs, analyzing residue magic in the walls and fibers.

“Home sweet home,” Argent said.

“Just for the last few weeks.”

“That's a long time for you.”

“My truck broke down. The lady who runs the café down the road took me on as a cook and I stuck around long enough to rebuild the engine. I was about ready to head out again. Now it'll be sooner, since you found me and I don't want you knowing where I live.”

Argent looked a little sad. “I'm not your enemy, Daniel. My mother was an osteomancer, like your father. She was killed in the Hierarch's purge, like your father. Her magic and her body were consumed by the Hierarch, like your father's. I successfully acquired power, and so did you.”

“And you used yours to become one of the great dark powers of Los Angeles, and I take occasional work as a short-order cook. What do you want, Gabriel?”

Argent fingered the brocade curtain. He seemed nervous. He'd taken a risk coming here.

“I met with Otis a few weeks ago.”

“Was he alive at the end of the meeting?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Daniel sat in one of the camp chairs. “Then it wasn't a good meeting.”

“He's building a Pacific firedrake. A living one.”

Daniel laughed. “Shut up.”

“A living dragon out of patchwork pieces. I've seen the skull, and part of a wing he acquired from a dig in Siberia, and a sample of pyromantic essence. Max analyzed it and declared it authentic.”

“I don't care what Max smelled; you can't make a living creature out of old parts. It's called osteomantic revitalization. It's the highest expression of the art. The absolute pinnacle. But it's a dream. My dad spent years on it, and he didn't even make a dent.”

“Otis partnered with Sister Tooth,” Argent said, undiscouraged, “and a number of Northern California osteomancers, some defected, some abducted. I'm sure he also has some shadow partners I don't know about. I'm providing him with power for a facility on Catalina Island where they're building this thing.”

“That's sweet of you. What do you get out of it?”

“Ostensibly, I get to rule Southern California with Otis and Sister Tooth as one third of a new Hierarchy.”

“Then when you come up dead, Max will only have to narrow down the suspects to two.”

The hound, who had been busying himself by sniffing the perimeter of the carpet, seemed to find this funny. His grim visage broke into the beginnings of something that, with work, might be developed into a smile.

“You know I don't want to be the Hierarch,” Gabriel said. “The only reason I'm still in charge of Water and Power is because I haven't figured out a way to give it up that won't leave the kingdom dry, drowned, and dark.”

Daniel could have become the new Hierarch himself, if he'd wanted it. But like Argent, his ambitions didn't run that way.

“Then what
do
you get out of it?”

“I get inside position on the project. I get to help make sure Otis never gets possession of a weapon of mass destruction.”

Daniel stood up. “Well, that's a relief. Obviously, Otis shouldn't be running around with his own firedrake. Looks like you've got your work cut out for you.”

“Show him the papers,” Gabriel said.

Max handed Daniel a diplomatic pouch. He wouldn't have opened it, but it weighed more than papers should, and he liked to know what strange things had been brought into Sam's general vicinity. He unclasped the pouch and tried to cram his eyes back in their sockets. There were stacks of paper currency and rolls of gold and silver coins.

“A bribe?”

“Don't get hung up on the cash,” Argent said. “Have a look at the documents.”

“There's got to be at least twenty-five thousand bucks here, and you're telling me not to get hung up on the cash? Have you seen how I live? I'm not exactly bathing in doilies and caviar candles.”

As Daniel continued to mutter about the squalid state of his life, he leafed through the rest of the materials. “Plans, diagrams, sentry posts, schedules … You must have some very efficient spies.”