Nicolai looked at him, puzzled. “It is on.”
“What’s the matter, Slava?” Semyon’s moustache bristled with mirth. “You’re hardly halfway done on that bottle, and you’re hot already?”
“Hey, I got started at lunchtime.” Slava laughed uncomfortably, and got to his feet. He was flushed in the face and sweating profusely, sweat staining his collar. “Maybe my blood’s finally turned into vodka.”
“The only solution to that is more drink, my good friend.” Rod poured him another glass from the nearly-empty bottle on the table, and the rest of us followed suit. Diluted, I could tolerate the liquor for a single toast. “Fight fire with fire! Down the hatch!”
Slava caught up the glass, still standing, and drained it before slamming it back down. He shook his head with a short laugh, then sagged forward against the edge of the table.
“Woah, there. That’s the end of the night for you.” Vassily laughed as the other man nearly fell against his knees.
“Gotta go take a piss,” Slava mumbled. He staggered out around the end of the table, nearly colliding with Lev, who leaned back with a polite grimace. A smell strung my nostrils, weird and waxy, and the skin on the back of my neck crawled with a half-formed flash of insight quickly followed by horror.
“Slava! Wait!” I got up, nearly shoving Vassily aside. “Something’s fighting against the amulet—”
I’d barely got out from around him when Slava reeled on his feet, collapsed against the edge of the bar, and burst into flame.
Chapter 9
Vyacheslav did not explode so much as simply ignite. The fire roiled out from deep inside him while he slumped against the edge of the bar, stupefied. As I ran to him, he turned to face me. His mouth opened as if to speak in bewilderment. He vomited flame instead, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the heat and noise as the bartender, dancer and patrons screamed and shouted around us.
“Slava! What the fucking… SHIT!’ Rodion barreled toward us.
“Get the fire extinguisher!” Vassily’s voice pierced the cacophony.
Everyone was so loud that I couldn’t concentrate enough to try and fight what was happening, but even I had been able to work the Art, there was no helping him now. Eerily soundless, Slava folded in on himself, his body spurting gouts of yellow flame. His face contorted in agony as he first went to his knees, then his face, writhing and popping. The fire was contained to his torso, but it was so hot that the linoleum underneath him liquefied.
It was Nic who came up with the extinguisher, dousing Slava and the bar – also on fire – in a cloud of white foam. The bartender finally got her wits about her and got her own smaller extinguisher from behind the counter.
“What the fuck!?” Petro was hysterical, pacing around with his hands in his hair. “Alexi, why the fuck… what the FUCK, man?”
As we did our parts to fight the fire, Slava finally started screaming: five, maybe six seconds of helpless, raw, bloodcurdling agony. I backpedaled from the writhing pyre, closing my eyes and clamping my will into place as I felt out for the link to my tracer ward. I forced myself to filter the cacophony of the room, focusing on the colors and textures instead of the noise. It all throbbed into a strange background symphony against the threads of magic, burning white and taut in my imagination. I hooked into the flow of magic fueling his immolation, grasped onto the energy I’d woven into his ward, and hauled on it like an angler.
There was a moment of intense resistance, a deep black void of nothingness that fought back against me like a marlin on the line. My will won out, and I was suddenly swamped by the sensation of furious light and heat, the smell of molten metal, burned rubber, and dust. I heard something grinding, a deafening churning, mashing sound, and saw lines of cars tumbled against towering black mountains of debris, all of which disappeared in flame as a maw – part fire, part beast – roared at me and tore the link apart.
I stumbled back with a shout, flailing for something to ground me. My hands found the edge of the dance stage; I righted myself there, panting and enervated, sweat pouring down my chest. When I finally opened my eyes, I saw everyone milling around a smoldering pile of ash and embers. The only things left of Slava were his hands and feet, the ends of the bones charred black. Bizarrely, his shoes were intact, barely burned. Where he had stood, there was only a small round circle of melted slag… and the amulet I had made him.
Mo and Petro crossed themselves. Rodion was paralyzed with shock. Vassily and Lev had disappeared. The only one who seemed unaffected was Nicolai, who looked down at the burn site, then up at the spread of soot across the ceiling with raised eyebrows and a sloped mouth. The only sign of stress was his cigarette, quivering on his lip.
“Jesus and Mary,” he said. “Haven’t ever seen that happen before.”
“What the fuck was THAT, Alexi?” Rodion turned on me. “What the fuck is this shit? Why didn’t you stop this?”
“The magic circumvented the protective ward in the talisman,” I said, quickly. “It’s like… it’s like someone stuck a pistol under his bullet proof vest and shot him. The armor was there, but—”
“You were supposed to stop this!” Rodion roared. “He’s fucking dead!”
“I tried.” I strode over to the amulet. The linoleum was soft under my shoes as I bent down to pick it up. It was warm, but the bone and the magic had held up. “Look. You can see it survived.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t it work!?”
I sighed. “He predicted our move. Fighting another spook from a distance is like playing chess with a blindfold on.”
“Fuck!” Rodion paced like a tiger, and then roared and smashed his fist on the table. “That fucking piece of shit Maslak!”
“I have a trace on the source of the spell’s energy,” I said. I was already shaky, burned out from the rough disconnection. “It came from a junkyard, an auto wrecking site.”
“There’s a million of those!”
Thank you, Captain Obvious. “I can find it. And I’m going alone… if this spook can light people with their own body fat, I don’t want any blanks near the place. Let me handle the spook; get someone else for Maslak.”
“Hey! Boss!” Vassily called from the security entry across the room. “Lev’s got some clown on the phone that wants to speak to you.”
“All of you, come with me,” Rodion snapped. He stalked for the door. “Except you, Petro. Get your big boy pants on and call Vanya. We need a cleanup team. Tell him to… bring an urn or something.”
Nicolai and I followed Rodion to his office, tongues thick and still with tension. Lev was at Rodion’s desk, his face a stiff mask. He looked exhausted, green around the gills. He held out the receiver; Rodion snatched it from him, and took the seat as Lev stood up and moved aside. I tuned into the room, careful not to screw up the line, and felt – and smelled – the same weird, faint odor I’d smelled before. Burned wax or plastic. I drew a cross over myself, like the others had done before, but my cross was not an Orthodox crucifix. I used the Kabbalic Cross, symbolically touching and warding through multiple layers of reality.
Rodion banged the speaker button, broadcasting to the room. “Jacob, you sniveling piece of shit. The fuck do you think you’re playing with?”
The speaker squealed with a sound that went straight to my teeth, and then resolved into a whickering roar of white noise.
“My client demands you withdraw immediately,” a voice rasped out in English. Male, female, it was hard to tell. “To avoid a repeat of what occurred today.”
Vassily murmured aside to Lev and Semyon, translating for them. Their English was haphazard, at best.
“Your ‘client’ and you can hole up in a cell together and fuck each other inside out, big man,” Rodion said. “So check your attitude before we knock you and your whole fucking family.”