DRAGON FIRE

  PHAEDRA WELDON

  Caldwell Press

  Contents

  Copyright

  Theme Music

  Say It

  True Name

  Grey

  A New Spell

  The Bait

  Blood Rose Promise

  The Grimoire

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 by Phaedra Weldon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Caldwell Press

  Cover Template © 2014 by Lou Harper

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  Cover Image Copyright © Krivosheev Vitaly | Bigstock

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  Theme Music

  DETECTIVE CRWYS Holliard knelt beside the burned, tortured body as he pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves. This was the fifth victim in a week. He leaned in and closed his eyes so his sense of smell could track down what he feared would be there.

  "No need for that," Detective Levi Tulose, Crwys's partner, said as he stood over the body on the opposite side of Crwys. "I can smell it from here. It's getting bolder. No longer masking itself."

  This wasn't good news. Crwys pushed at what remained of the blackened head so he could view the neck. "It's managed to kill five women with no repercussions. No one's manning the gates anymore, bro. This thing’s not afraid."

  "Maybe we should have this conversation in a different place?" Levi shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, careful not to let his boots touch the melted flesh and bone sticking to the rain slicked asphalt.

  The air was thick and cloying. The third storm in forty-eight hours. It was early April and the stifling heat of New Orleans had just gotten underway. His t-shirt stuck to the muscled frame of his body and he could smell his deodorant working overtime. His half-shaved head provided a bit of cool relief in the muggy night, even if his captain wasn't that fond of his choice in style. Levi kept his own dark, curly hair shaved close to join with the thin jawline beard that accented his mocha skin.

  Crwys took in a few more details that matched the previous victims. "Still no muscle damage. Just the skin. I'm not sure what kind of fire he's using."

  "Not PP fire, bro. Physical fire doesn't do this kind of damage," Levi rubbed at the hair on his chin. "You think maybe it's a spell? They don't give him what he wants, so he just torches the flesh?"

  PP fire was their short hand for physical plane. Crwys cringed inwardly at the thought of anyone using magic to kill like this. His own ancient history stood as a testament to what destructive magic, when in the wrong hands, could do. "No. This kind of control says it's an innate power. Something the creature does because of what it is."

  Levi grunted. "But doesn't that make you a suspect? I mean…what other kind of creature 'cept you can control fire like this?"

  "Dijins."

  Levi muttered a few expletives under his breath. He kicked at a nearby rock as the attending uniforms looked on. They were there to remove the body. So far, there hadn't been a lot of curiosity in the commotion. But it was close to five o’clock in the morning. "Not one of them, Crwys. Those pieces of shit are so damn hard to find. Yeah, we can smell 'em like this, but how can we tell where they're hiding?"

  Crwys stood in a single fluid motion, still looking down at the body. "You're missing the bigger picture, Levi," he cast his gaze at his partner. "Dijins were banished to the peripheral. All Dijins and creatures like it that lived and thrived within the peripheral plane. This is a lot bigger than five dead women." The peripheral was a realm where the abandoned had gone a millennia ago. A place where thought and strength of will could manipulate the environment. A place where magic and imagination controlled destiny. This realm had no fealty to any of the other worlds, and that devil-may-care attitude is what brought it to its demise.

  Or so Crwys had always believed.

  He watched as the realization of the situation dawned on his partner. Levi's eyes darkened to a black that spread the length of his eyes. The detective's voice became the dual-tone voice of the creature that lived inside of him and the human host that provided it existence in the human world. The host's name was Levi. The creature was known as Ashur. "The seal is broken. Do you think Alfheim has risen from the ashes?"

  Crwys nodded as he motioned to the medical examiner (ME) and the uniformed officers. He and Levi stepped away from the scene as Crwys removed his gloves. He didn't toss them, but carefully put them in a plastic bag he pulled from his jacket. When they were at his car, a two door 1964 Mustang Fastback, he tossed the sealed bag in the back. "That storm the other night. The one with the falling stars."

  "You mean the one the scientists said were meteorites." Ashur remained in control of Levi's body, his eyes still black.

  "When I saw it I had a dark feeling, like dread. And ever since there's been weird stuff happening. Miracle cures in hospitals, strange deaths, sort of like these. I mean, there's always some report or rumor of weird crap happening, but I've been finding more reports on the web about demon possessions, and regular, ordinary people just disappearing. Some of them just started acting differently and walked away. Now I wonder if what we saw was a part of something bigger, like maybe the peripheral breaking."

  "Is there a way to tell? A way you can get intel? Find out if that world is still dead?"

  "Not without exposing myself," Crwys shook his head. "All sides believe I'm still little more than a legend. I don't want to rock that boat. Not yet."

  "Why?" Ashur/Levi braced himself against the passenger's side. "Since the day we found each other, I've wondered why you hide. Why are you pretending to be some detective in the south? Why are you so careful not to be seen?"

  "Have you ever betrayed my confidence, Ashur?" Crwys asked.

  "No."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because you'd ignite this body where it stood and I'd be left with no where to go. I can't possess you. You're not even sharing that body. If you abandoned it, the flesh would advance to its true age."

  This was the truth. Crwys wasn't like Ashur and his kind. Ashur was part of a family that possessed and lived within human hosts and called themselves Revenants. The creatures themselves were referred to as the First Born of the abysmal plane. Those who didn't understand the planar universe would call it hell, and Ashur and his kind, demons.

  I wonder what they would call me? Crwys thought the title of First Born was laughable. In truth, he and his sisters had been the first born from the joining of Planar beings. Three siblings, condemned to die by their mother's hands.

  But two survived. One eternally entombment and the other…

  I am condemned to be forever alone.

  "That's not the only reason, Crwys," Levi said, the First Born no longer visible in his eyes or face and in his voice. "You're a good friend. Your body was this host's best friend. Those feelings transfer."

  Crwys tried to smile. But feeling happy wasn't something he could afford. He believed a Dijin was loose in New Orleans, and if there was one here, there could be others loose in the world. He needed to know what had happened in the planar worlds.

  There were several ways to get this information. Expose himself for what he was, call upon the help of a Wiccé, or track down the creature and get the information directly from the source.

  He opted for the last one. "You think you can pick up the scent?"

  "I can if you can. You thinking we milk a little overtime?"

  "I'm thinking we need to find this thing and get some answers." Crwys unlocked the car and got in. Once the motor was cranked, Crwys dug his cell phone out of his back pocket and shoved it into its cradle. He maneuvered to his playlist and waited as it synced with the car.

  "Do we have to listen to this again?"

  Crwys's smile pulled sideways across his face. "Gotta hunt the bad guy with theme music, Levi."

  Levi let loose a long sigh. "No one would ever know what you really were. You're too…"

  "Immature?" Crwys found his tune and hit play. "Don't Fear The Reaper" from Blue Oyster Cult pumped through the upgraded speakers. He put the car in reverse, gunned the motor and swung it around to face the exit to the crime scene and watched as workers scattered. "Nah. Just…determined."

  Crwys then pulled out of the alley while obeying all the rules of the road except one.

  Volume.

  Say It

  CRWYS ZONED in on the music as he let his other senses track the stench of the Dijin. How long had it been since he'd seen such a creature? It was before his mother lost her mind, before he set a world on fire.

  He thought, believed, he had destroyed that w orld.

  Dijins had once been a race of powerful assassins, creatures bound to the power of their name. All it took was to learn a Dijin's name, the name they chose at birth, face the Dijin with the name and say the task to be made. That Dijin was honor bound to obey until the task was complete.

  They would die fulfilling that task.

  But they, like all creatures living within the peripheral, had been sealed inside and destroyed by the spell to end life. And so the myths of this world vanished. Disappeared overnight like the dinosaur.

  But if this was a Dijin—he wanted the creature to pay for the women's deaths, but he also wanted it to give him answers.

  The dawn was just breaking when the trail ended a few miles outside of New Orleans at an old, dilapidated roadside motel. Crwys had seen these types of places throughout his life in this world. L-shaped, single-occupancy petri dishes of sexually transmitted diseases—that's what his captain called them. He thought of them as guaranteed hovels of criminal activity.

  This place looked as if it never recovered from Katrina. Some of the windows were boarded up, while others were covered in masking tape to seal the cracks in the windows. Grass grew in the cracks of the asphalt.

  The motel's vacancy sign flickered, confusing drivers as to whether there really was an empty room or a shorted bulb. The office was locked up tight and a single, beat-to-hell Buick Electra 225 sat outside a single room. The only light in the building came from the edges of a curtain.

  Crwys cut the engine and coasted the Mustang into a parking space in front of the office, away from the room. He cut the lights too and brought the car to a stop. Levi checked the magazine in his glock and Crwys frowned at him.

  Levi loaded a bullet in the chamber. "The Dijin might be immune to bullets, but its host isn't."

  "We're not here to turn the host into peg board, bro. The host of a Dijin is usually a victim."

  "And if it isn't?"

  "Then we'll make that pegboard. But if you have to fire, shoot for non-lethal wounds." Crwys opened his door as Levi opened his own. They moved low and in the shadows of the motel. The human eye wouldn't be able to make out their progress but the senses of this peripheral creature could. And if they could smell him, Crwys was pretty sure he could smell them.

  Levi crouched down and moved to the other side of the targeted door and stood against the wall between the window and the frame. Crwys kept his back pressed against the outer wall as he ducked his head to look through the cracks made by the curtains. He saw movement, heard a woman laugh, and then the deep voice of a male human.

  He nodded to Levi before he turned back and ran around the office to the alley side of the motel. There weren't any exits out of the rooms; just the single doors in. With preternatural speed, he made it back to the window and the two decided on their next move.

  The door opens toward us, with you behind it. Ashur spoke directly to Crwys's mind.

  We're not going to open the door in the conventional way, Ashur.

  Oh. We're going to bust it down.

  Yeah.

  He felt the demon's chuckle as well as heard it. I like this part.

  Yeah…Ashur was made to be a cop in some capacity.

  The two of them moved to stand a few feet from the door. Levi held up his fingers to count down…three, two, one…

  The two detectives ran at the door, which collapsed inward like cardboard. The screams of women greeted them as bouncy asses and tits flailed about before heading to the bathroom.

  A buff looking man lay on the bed in the middle of coitus interruptus. He wore a sheet and little else.

  Levi and Crwys held their guns on the man who watched the two of them with narrowed eyes.

  "Ladies…" Levi said in an authoritative voice. "If you'll get dressed and leave quickly, we won't have to run you in for prostitution."

  "Prostitution!" one of them yelled back, but Crwys could hear them getting dressed in the bathroom. "We're not prostitutes!"

  "Then all the more reason to get the hell out!"

  Two minutes and the two women, half dressed, ran out of the room, taking their purses, shoes and dignity with them.

  "Do I know either of you? Maybe owe you money?" The nude man pointed at the two of them. He remained where he was. Relaxed. Even bent one leg up and propped his elbow at his knee. "’Cause you seem real familiar."

  "I see the physical shroud has dulled your senses, Dijin," Levi half smiled. "You're under arrest for the murder—let me rephrase that—burning to death of five innocent women."

  Crwys moved to the foot of the bed and faced the man. The scent of the Dijin was stifling. There was no question what it was and that it had possessed a human male. The human's body showed signs of degrading, which was common when inhabited by a Dijin. The gaunt cheeks, flaking skin, the rash along the man's forearms. He guessed the victim had two days left before the body would burn from the inside out.

  Not a lot of time to get the information he wanted. Not a lot of time to save the human's life. Or what there would be left of it.

  The Dijin was laughing. "You…you think you're going to arrest me?" He sat up and the host's chest muscles rippled under his skin. His rugged face darkened and his eyes glowed yellow. "I did my time. I served the Black Queen, asshole, and this body is my reward. You have no idea what you're talk'n to, pig."

  Pig. Crwys laughed. "Really? You've been in this world what…a week? And that's the slang you've picked up?"

  The Dijin hesitated. He looked at Crwys again with a more critical eye. He sniffed. "You ain't human."

  "No."

  Then the Dijin looked at Levi. "You ain't either."

  "No," Levi gave him a brilliant smile. "Seems the little peripheral trash's got some brains after all."

  The Dijin moved up on his knees then his feet as the sheet fell away. He was bare-assed as he stood on the bed and faced them down. "Well, I ain't human either."

  "We know that, dick head." Levi leaned his head to the right to crack his neck as Ashur came forward and Levi's eyes went black. The dual voice of the two revealed to the Dijin the demon was in control. "But what we really want to know, is how you got out of the peripheral? Because my friend and I know for a fact it was sealed and its contents burned."

  The Dijin growled as the room darkened. Crwys's ears popped as he realized they were no longer in the human world but somewhere between it and the peripheral. The Dijin had created a barrier to either keep them in, or others out. "Only those born of that time, of the planes, know of the horror the Destroyer condemned us to. Innocent creatures whose only crime had been abandoning the rule of the Seraphim."

  Crwys leaned his head to the side and allowed his own true self to show through his human facade. His eyes burned red as he fixed his gaze on the Dijin. "The Destroyer followed orders, as did all of the children of Gaia. It's not him you have a quarrel with, but with the Mother."

  "The Mother is dead!" The Dijin spat as he jumped and landed on Crwys's right. Levi kept his weapon trained on him. "The daughter is dead! And when I find the remaining children and all their kin, they will die too—" He'd moved closer to Crwys and held his finger up between them as if to make a point. But getting close to Crwys would reveal the heat emanating from Crwys's body, his aura, his true self.

  Moving that close could possibly reveal just a taste of what the Dijin was facing.

  This realization was obvious in the creature's expression as he stepped back. "You're not one of Lilith's children."

  Crwys slowly shook his head. "No. I am not. I am not a Revenant."

  The peripheral creature inside this human male host whined as it realized what it was up against. For all its bravado, it was still terrified of what Crwys was. He was also shocked. "You're dead…they said you died…"

  "Aw…and here you were, not ten seconds ago, spouting off about how you were going to kill me and my sister." He smiled as the naked man backed himself into a corner in front of the nightstand, sandwiched between the wall and the bed. "You know who I am."

  The Dijin nodded.

  "Say it."

  The Dijin shook his head.

  "Say it."

  "No…if I do I will see your true form!"

  "Say it!" Crwys's voice echoed around inside the barrier and shattered it. He felt the pressure ease as they were once again inside the human world. The remaining thunder of his will drilled its way deep inside of the Dijin, past the human to the vile creature inside of him.

 

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