Fire Season Read online

  Raves for Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novels:

  “For a book all about dead things, this novel is alive with great characters and a twisty, scary-funny story that teaches you not to tango with too much necromancy. My favorite book this year, bar none.”

  —Chuck Wendig, author of the Miriam Black series

  “Blackmoore employs Chandleresque prose to smoothly incorporate a hard-boiled sense of urban despair into a paranormal plot, with occasional leavening provided by smart-aleck humor. Urban fantasy readers will appreciate the polished, assured writing and hope for a bevy of sequels.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Not only met, but exceeded, my expectations. . . . Plenty of action and magic-slinging rounds out this excellent second novel from one of my favorite authors.”

  —My Bookish Ways

  “In Dead Things, Stephen Blackmoore expands upon the Los Angeles supernatural world he first conjured in City of the Lost. Blackmoore is going places in urban fantasy, and readers fond of dark tales should keep their eyes on him. Highly recommended.”

  —SFRevu

  “Blackmoore can’t write these books fast enough to suit me. Broken Souls is hyper-caffeinated, turbo-bloody, face-stomping fun. This is the L.A.-noir urban fantasy you’ve been looking for.”

  —Kevin Hearne, author of The Iron Druid Chronicles

  “Eric Carter’s adventures are bleak, witty, and as twisty as a fire-blasted madrone, told in prose as sharp as a razor. Blackmoore is the rising star of pitch-black paranormal noir. A must-read series.”

  —Kat Richardson, author of the Greywalker series

  “Fans will find plenty to enjoy in the long-awaited third outing of necromancer Eric Carter. Blackmoore infuses his increasingly detailed and dangerous urban fantasy landscape with grim yet fascinating characters, and ensures that every step of Carter’s epic journey is a perilously fascinating one.”

  —RT Reviews

  Novels by Stephen Blackmoore available from DAW Books:

  CITY OF THE LOST

  DEAD THINGS

  BROKEN SOULS

  HUNGRY GHOSTS

  FIRE SEASON

  GHOST MONEY*

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  Copyright © 2019 by Stephen Blackmoore.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Chris McGrath.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1821.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  Ebook ISBN 9780756412951

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Stephen Blackmoore

  Also by Stephen Blackmoore

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I set out to write a jaunty little list humorously talking about and thanking all the wonderful people who helped me get this book into your hands.

  And then California burned.

  In and of itself that’s not new. California burns every year. The whole U.S. West burns every year. But this year. Jesus. This year.

  As I’m writing this California is recovering from the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire it has ever seen. Not one of the deadliest. Not in the top 10. THE DEADLIEST. It’s the worst the entire nation has seen since 1918. Eighty-six people dead. Almost 19,000 structures destroyed, more than half of them single family homes. Over 150,000 blackened acres. The entire town of Paradise wiped from the face of the planet.

  The previous California record holder was here in Los Angeles in 1933 in Griffith Park. Only 29 people dead. Only. As if any number could be acceptable.

  Every year we lose people, pets, homes, money. The sky fills with smoke, the flames race down the hills, and it always, ALWAYS, comes closer than you think it will. Even in this cement jungle surrounded by bonfire material it’s disconcerting. I’m always thankful that concrete doesn’t burn. Usually.

  But you drive out a couple days later and you wonder. The sidewalks are black. The hills are naked of anything that isn’t stone. Abandoned cars are nothing but fire-mottled steel and molten lead. Glass has liquefied, run over the sides, pooled on the ground. There are no tires. They exploded in the heat and the treads burnt to nothing. You can see the places the fire jumped the freeway.

  People ask me where I get my ideas. Well, now you know.

  So first and foremost, I’d like to thank all of the men and women who risk their lives in the face of these wildfires. The first responders, the paramedics, doctors and nurses, dispatchers, pilots, ambulance drivers, search and rescue teams, animal rescue, evacuation coordinators. Hell, even the guys who mix the Phos-Check that gets dumped onto the flames and turns everything bright pink.

  Thank you.

  As to the book, well, there aren’t maybe quite so many who’ve helped make this a reality, but it feels like it sometimes.

  My wife, Kari, who might be the only person on the planet willing to put up with all most some of my bullshit. My agent Al Guthrie. My editor Betsy Wollheim, Josh Starr, and the outstanding staff at DAW. The incredible cover artist Chris McGrath who brings Er
ic alive to me more than any of my words could. Thanks for helping make this the best book it could be.

  And then there are friends whose support I cherish, like Chuck Wendig, Richard Kadrey, K.C. Alexander, Jaye Wells, Jaclyn Taylor, Delilah Dawson, Lilith Saintcrow, Kat Richardson, Brian McClellan, Kristin Sullivan, Jeff Macfee, Brian White, Lela Gwen, Cassandra Khaw, Madeline Ashby, Margaret Dunlap, Jaime Lee Moyer, Andrea Phillips, Robert Brockway and holy fucknuggets so, so many more.

  Not to mention all of the wonderfully sick people who talk to me on Twitter. Especially the Russian porn bots.

  And finally, to my wonderful friend Kevin Hearne, he of the Iron Druid Chronicles (which you should totally read if you haven’t), beard aficionado extraordinaire, imbiber of impossibly large beverages. Because you see, Kevin killed me in one of his stories. Tore me apart piece by piece. Painfully. Horribly. On a whim!

  Ball’s in your court, motherfucker.

  Chapter 1

  Necromancy 101: You’re too late.

  Whether it’s watching empty Echoes playing their last moments over and over again, or talking to Haunts and Wanderers with their fading memories and draining personalities, they have one glaring thing in common; they’re all dead.

  See, necromancers are like really bad ambulance drivers. We don’t get there until way after the body’s cooling in the middle of the road.

  Ghosts aren’t really people. They’re tattered bits of soul left over from the dying. Shreds of memory, personality, will. Whether it was yesterday, last month, twenty minutes, two hundred years ago. Doesn’t matter.

  You’re. Too. Late.

  Because ghosts? They don’t just happen. You’re not getting a ghost if Grandma strokes out taking a shit on the toilet. No, it takes trauma. Mental, physical, spiritual. It can be sudden, or take a lifetime to build.

  Suicides, homicides, accidents, gunshot wounds, stabbings, beatings, poisonings, car crashes, hangings, Colombian neckties, hacked to pieces by crazed cannibal killers. You get the idea.

  We necromancers get to experience it all in nightmare color and THX sound whether we want to or not. Sure, any schmuck with some talent can talk to the dead, but we’re born to it.

  There is no such thing as a pretty death. It doesn’t exactly paint a rosy picture of the human experience.

  Some of us don’t care. They’re the scary ones. You get some serious Patrick Bateman shit with them.

  Some of us care way too much. They’re the tragic ones. By thirty they’ve dug themselves into a hole, too afraid to keep living and terrified of dying because they know that’s not the end of things. There aren’t many necromancer suicides, is what I’m saying.

  Like doctors or morticians, most of us land somewhere in the middle. Dying’s tragic, but shit happens. Death is something that needs to be accepted. It’s not good, it’s not bad. It just is.

  But some deaths are a little harder to take than others.

  Burn victims, for example. The ones who go from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide don’t usually leave a ghost behind, but if they burn to death? Jesus fuck, it’s rough. It’s not just agonizing, messy, and loud, it can last anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more.

  First time I saw the Echo of a burn victim was a car accident on a back road that had happened three or four years before. Middle of nowhere. Guy inside slow roasted for almost an hour before he finally died. He was conscious for way too much of it.

  That’s what makes this particular Echo I’ve been watching for the past couple hours, a woman set on fire in a burned-out shell of a three-bedroom bungalow in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, so unusual.

  She starts at the door to the kitchen, becoming visible as she enters the living room. There’s panic on her face. Someone I can’t see shoots her in the back. Her legs go out from under her. She hits the ground screaming, but keeps dragging herself away.

  Then the flames kick in. I see flickers of their light shining across her skin, though I can’t see them, yet. They won’t be a part of this scene until they’re eating her alive.

  Doesn’t take long. They erupt around her in seconds, crawl up her legs as though she’s been dipped in liquid oxygen, bright blue flames dancing up her body, relentless, unforgiving.

  She catches fast when the flames touch her. Her skin already blackening and cracking. The fire sweeps over her like piranha devouring a cow. Bits and pieces shred away as ash and char. Conscious and screaming until there’s nothing left but a blackened corpse that’s more skeleton than person lying among the ruins. Ash drops in clumps from her body as pieces of her disintegrate.

  The scene disappears like a soap bubble, there one second, gone the next. I can still smell the stink of charred pork, hear the screams and the crackle of searing skin.

  Then it starts all over again. It’s the fourth time I’ve watched it. I crouch down to look at it from another angle, time it with my pocket watch. The moment the flames hit her she goes up like flash paper. From ignition to ash can be measured in seconds.

  Nobody burns that fast. Even knowing it’s obviously magic, it’s surprising how fast she goes from burning to ash.

  At least, it would be if I hadn’t seen it before.

  I take my phone out, dial a number. Hear a sleepy grunt when it picks up. “Hey,” I say, “it’s Eric. It’s happening.”

  “Can we all die in a horrible rain of fire after I’ve had coffee?” Gabriela says. Most people know her as the Bruja, and she’s at least as powerful a mage as I am. Maybe more so. We fought once. Called it a draw. To say we’re friends would be stretching things. A lot.

  “I think you got time for a cup.”

  “Oh, good. I’d hate to meet the apocalypse uncaffeinated.”

  “We should all be so lucky.”

  “All right. Spill. What’s going on?”

  “Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire.” I describe the scene to her. The man, the gunshot, the flames—particularly the flames.

  “Fuck me. You’re sure about the fire?” she says.

  “Well, I am standing in the burned-out shell of a house, so . . .”

  “I meant about what kind of fire. Are you sure it’s Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire? You’re the only one who’s seen it in action.”

  “Yeah,” I say, watching the flames consume the Echo in front of me one more time. The preternaturally blue flames turn it to char and ash in moments. “I’m sure. And I’m sure it’s Quetzalcoatl doing it.”

  “You can’t know that for sure,” she says.

  “He pretty much told me that this is exactly what he was going to do. Anyway, it gets better.”

  “How so?”

  “Last I saw him Q was a fifteen-foot-tall trash fire in the shape of a winged serpent. Not exactly in a position to hold a gun.”

  “He’s got a friend,” she says. “You see the shooter?”

  “No. Too far away. Didn’t get captured in the Echo.” Not that it probably would have, anyway. The shooter isn’t the one who died.

  “You piss off the best people,” she says.

  “What can I say? I’m a high achiever.”

  * * *

  —

  About five hundred years ago, give or take, a Spanish dickhead by the name of Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (a title he gets a little later), shows up on the Aztecs’ doorstep and proceeds to kick seven shades of shit out of them. It’s touch and go for a while. His attention’s split. He’s not the most popular guy with the Spanish government at the time. When they send troops after him he pretty much turns them into reinforcements.

  That out of the way, he turns his attention to not only conquering the Aztecs, but their gods, too. Cortés puts a lieutenant, guy named Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in charge of the invasion of the Aztecs’ thirteen heavens. The ace up Cabrillo’s sleeve is an eight-thousand-year-old D
jinn named Darius that Cortés loans him, and an alliance with the Aztecs’ own wind god, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, who’s turned traitor for fuck knows what reason. Gods fall like dominos; Tlaloc, Ixcuina, Citlalicue, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, Xiuhtecuhtli, Ometeotl, and on and on.

  Then they reach Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead, where its two rulers, Mictlantecuhtli and his wife, Mictecacihuatl, set a trap. Cue Epic God Battle. Doesn’t end well for anybody. The Conquistadores die, Quetzalcoatl is seriously wounded, Darius is trapped in his bottle, Mictlantecuhtli is turned to jade and trapped in a hole deep below Mictlan.

  The only survivor is Cabrillo, who limps back to the mortal world with Darius in his backpack. Quetzalcoatl does a runner to licks his wounds, and Mictecacihuatl tries to hold what’s left of Mictlan together. The thing with Mictecacihuatl is that she’s a survivor. Flexible, changes with the times. By the time I ran into her she’d restyled herself as a folk saint in Mexico by the name of Santa Muerte.

  She’s got other names. La Flaca. La Señora de Las Sombras. Saint Death. She’s a saint for the outsiders, the narcos, the disconnected. She’s not evil. She’s not good. She is death and blood, lust and love, vengeance and redemption and all the visceral things that make us human. She’s messy as life, inevitable as death. She is the Saint of Last Resort.

  And I had to go and marry her. I didn’t know that’s what was happening at the time. I pledged myself to her for help in finding my sister’s murderer. Should have read the fine print. That bond turned me into her husband.

  But as it turns out, the cosmos doesn’t like paradoxes. Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan. The King of Mictlan is married to Mictecacihuatl. I’m married to Mictecacihuatl. So, I’m the King of Mictlan. Except Mictlantecuhtli is the King of Mictlan . . .

  The universe’s solution is to swap Mictlantecuhtli and me. That little detail about Mictlantecuhtli being turned to jade is kind of important, because I find out real fast that green is so not my color. I’m turning to stone. Mictlantecuhtli is turning to flesh.