The Fire God

Chapter Three

The moon was a crescent in the sky. I bothered to follow the man who'd been spying on us, tracked him to a hotel a few kilometers from our camp. I hung in the lobby while he went to the dining hall. He was on his cell phone, talking to his employer. Not one of Asperia's men.

"Yes, I'm sure. He's been called Mricul a hundred times... Yeah, that one... I think he's a lot more important than some flunky Asperia was infatuated with... They're catering to him... They need him for something... I don't know. He doesn't speak English... He said 'Fuck you' to Fumi once, but every other time, he's spoken a foreign language... I don't recognize it. He's Asian, right? Probably Asian. But they all speak it, all but Fumi. Maybe it's—what did Dirk call the place where they're from? Arcadia? Maybe it's Arcadian. They take more care to speak it when Mricul is present. I think it's his native language... Fumi speaks Igbo and Latin. Mu speaks English and Arcadian. Asperia speaks English, Latin and Arcadian. She has said in English that Latin is not to be spoken in Mricul's presence. Something about it being rude and trying to appease him."

I'd figured that out. My laughter was a slow boil.

"Yeah, they're all multilingual except Mricul. Didn't you say he was Mongolian? Maybe he speaks whatever language the Mongols speak."

A silence followed. I selected one of the cushioned chairs, sank into it. A newspaper was discarded on the coffee table.

"Mricul is special... I don't know how... Besides being immortal and psychotic, the others haven't shown any gifts. With them speaking several languages, basically, all I'm doing is recording them. Fumi calls Mricul a eunuch frequently. They've trade epithets more than once. But the others have clearly stated that they need Mricul and asked Fumi to be polite... Mricul doesn't scare me... Hard to believe that... He doesn't stay at the camp. I tried to follow him once, but he dodged me... He knows I'm watching them... The others don't seem to... Like I said, he doesn't scare me. Fumi scares me. He and the African immortal with him were joking about kidnapping a baby... I looked it up. Nwa, baby. They talked about creating fresh terror and stirring up the stupid mortals... I used a translator app... Yeah, they literally were talking about being able to break into houses and cause a panic in Yukon. Fumi laughed about eating it and said that it tasted like chicken... Fumi eats babies!"

That fast, I was on fire.

"Oh god, I..." the detective murmured.

I reined in my temper, snatched up the newspaper. Sure enough, the headlining story was about a missing baby. A sobbing couple were featured on the front page. I smashed the paper in my hand, spiked it onto the table.

I darted out of the hotel. I didn't care what this private detective continued on about and I didn't care who was on the other end of his cell. I charged up the mountainside, found our camp. Fumi's scent was more rancid. Death clung to him. Fumi liked the ritual of dying and being resurrected. It took more of his soul each time the act was performed. My friend didn't exist in his eyes anymore.

First, I found the tent where the bones had been harvested by the archeologists. Those I incinerated. Then I went down into the mine shaft, shot flames down the tunnels, at the walls, made the cavern an inferno. Obsidian shattered around me. It took me most of the night, but I made sure every last dragon bone was useless ash. Poor Mu.

I climbed up the shaft. The makeshift elevator was still in place. And dynamite. I could heat the metal frame of the cage to a pile of molten steel, but it was getting light and the archeologists were emerging from their tents. Squeals and whispers as I stood there.

It attracted Asperia and the others.

I pinched my fingers over a stick of dynamite, lit it, tossed it at the elevator cage and pushed it down the shaft.