James Baldwin - Burn Artist

“Oh,” Vassily said. “How very wizardly.”

“Absolutely sorcerous.” I zipped my vest up to the neck. “So, before I’m burned at the stake… Have you gotten something for Rodion yet?”

“I’ve got my eye on something,” Vassily replied. “I managed to find this painting called ‘The Road to Happiness’ by James Dean. Has his signature and everything. He’ll like that, won’t he?”

“I have no doubt of it.” It was better than anything I was going to be able to get him in such a short window of time, short of Maslak’s head. “The question is, are you going to be able to get it before tomorrow night?”

Vassily wagged a finger. “Hey now, Mister ‘I don’t tell you how to do your job’. Of course I can get it. That’s what credit cards are for.”

“They must be quite a hefty credit card if you can buy a… what? Ten-thousand-dollar painting, plus express air freight?”

Vassily sniffed, affronted. “Twenty-five, thank you very much. And they’re not MY credit cards.”

I sighed, turning to face him. “I can’t believe you’re doing this while you’re on remand. You know the Fed is watching you, don’t you?”

“The Fed can kiss my ass,” Vassily said. “With tongue.”

“You’re being reckless.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Perhaps a little. But we both know that this kind of work involves risk.”

“It sure does. So you’re gonna let me drive, right?”

“No!” I threw my hands up and stalked out of the bedroom. “You’re not equipped to fight another mage if it comes down to a confrontation. Stay here and just… don’t end up in jail again, you idiot.”

“Your mom’s an idiot!” He called after me in English. “And so is your face!”

How gratifying to know my sworn-brother’s sense of humor hadn’t changed since he was twelve.

There weren’t quite a million scrapyards in the greater New York City-New Jersey metropolis, but there were still a lot of them. Some in Brooklyn, some in Long Island, some in Trenton or Newark. My instincts said East. Way east. The sounds I’d heard in the background, the glimpses of rusted metal towers and mountains of metal shred pointed me straight at one of the largest scrapyards in the state: Kozlowski and Sons.

K&S was a sprawling complex in Babylon, Long Island, a cancerous dustbowl the size of a baseball stadium. There was an abrupt transition from clapboard houses set among gardens and trees to this yellow-dirt industrial wasteland, with its broken roads, factories, and warehouses.

I parked off-road at the factory across the road from the main scrapyard, leaving my car behind a stand of chokecherry shrubs. The clouds were low and the roads still had patches of damp, but there was no rain tonight – only a wind that tickled the hairs on the back of my neck and forearms with ghostly, humid fingers.

The size of K&S was a problem. The complex spanned five acres across two sites. Number One had nearly everything: an office, warehouse, a weigh-in center for cars, then the shredder and the huge piles of scrap waiting to be churned through it into tiny shards of recyclable metal. Then there was the autowrecking site, a junkyard with all that entailed. Sheds and a processing line, a crusher, cranes, and tons and tons of buses and cars in various states of operation. The third site was at the railyard, where the shredded metal was loaded into train cars… cars which inevitably ended up at AEROMOR and other similar companies to be shipped overseas.

I turned into the wind and tuned into the great radio silence that hung in the air, filtering the taste and smell of the air. I didn’t really know what I sensed, exactly… something like a tug out from my tongue and my eyes. As I immersed in the invisible flow of energy, the raucous call of ravens from the north-west and swiveled toward the sound, eyes still closed. When I opened them, I saw birds lift from the roof of the shredder, wheeling around in agitation. Lot number one it was then.

The gate was open. When Big K and his kids closed for the day, they took all the cash and locked up all the non-ferrous metal, the really valuable stuff. I kept an eye out for junkyard dogs and security as I jogged into the dusty yard, pistol drawn. I found the dog around the first towering pile of scrap. It was burned black, skin split from heat, its lips pulled back over its half-bare skull. The smell of cooked meat was fresh, and when I crouched to hold a hand over it, warmth radiated through the leather of my glove.

As I stood, something occurred to me… a vague, unformed theory on how the other mage had worked such an energetically intense spell from a distance. Animal sacrifice. Death was a potent fuel for magic. Revelation, birth and death… three of the most powerful events in existence, when it came to curses and wards.

I set off for the shredder, warier and quieter now that I was on the approach. The huge machine was an awkward tower with several jutting conveyor belts and a central crane-like ‘office’ where the overseer could monitor the procession of hulks that were pulled up the largest belt, fed into the shredder, and then sorted along different belts that ran out from underneath the tower. There was a huge engine shed underneath. The door was ajar, the padlock and chain hanging loose from the rusted iron handle.

My sense of unease only grew. The first thing I did was look up: when you were dealing with animals or the supernatural, ‘up’ was always a potential site of ambush. When I was satisfied that there were no pyromaniac demons hanging from the rafters, I drew up to the side of the door, the pistol cupped and ready to fire, and tuned into my full range of senses. The shredder was turned off, and would have been turned off since four thirty in the afternoon, but the air billowing from the entry to the engine room complex was distinctly warmer than the outside. There was no sound. I drew a deep breath, then spun around the doorway gun-first, staring down the sight.

My boot crunched down on something gritty and hot.

I paused, breaking the trance of trigger discipline to look down. A triangle-within-a-circle of iron filings twisted apart under my sole. I frowned for a moment before the shock of adrenaline hit me, and rapidly backpedaled out of the engine room, turning quickly as the nearest pile of shredded steel ignited with a loud phwoompf , the sound of a gas pilot lighting a heating element, but larger. Much larger.

Fire caught the thin flakes of steel alight with weird, eerie blue flames. As I watched, the scrap flashed orange and white as it rapidly ignited, liquefied, and flowed together into a vaguely humanoid shape. It was lean and angular, the metal cracking and setting into brittle blades in the places where it wasn’t under pressure from the intense, hot magic. Its joints spurted flame, flowing with molten metal.

As I fumbled to bring the extinguisher around – a tool that suddenly felt a lot less useful than I’d imagined – the fire elemental rushed me in a cloud of boiling heat.

I blasted a cloud of frosty white gas into the face of the thing before it got within ten feet. It screeched like broken metal rubbing against itself as its charge slowed, but then a gout of flame lashed past me like a whip. It took the sleeve of my t-shirt off in a cloud of fibers and ash, scalding the skin beneath.

I didn’t bother to check what had happened to it: I turned tail and ran, dodging broken strollers and aluminum siding and car doors, fleeing heedlessly toward open ground and away from the combustible piles of shred.

Who the hell had Maslak hired that was capable of summoning an elemental? No names came to mind as fire tore over my head and splashed to the ground, roaring across the dirt gravel before extinguishing. I dodged from side to side, ducking and covering as we careened toward a dark complex of open sheds. Crushed cars were stacked up in huge piles, while others waited on suspension platforms waiting to be drained and compacted. I pelted into the darkness of the nearest shed and turned a corner, heaving for breath, and used the moment of reprieve to furiously sketch a ward against spirits on the blank sketchpad I’d bought. I got the design down, but not the charge. I heard a deep-bodied rumble from somewhere outside, and the elemental roared on the other side of the wall, too close for comfort. I needed to start running again.