Kelley Armstrong - Blood Lite

I was worried. The Champ knew how to drive, but he had never been known as Mr. Sunshine, and from what I could see, death hadn't made him any more outgoing.

"Media celebrity is part of the job now," I told him. "Making you famous is our best hope of getting a sponsor. Just give it a shot, Champ. And keep your sunglasses on."

He didn't like it much, but they assigned the jackman's wife to go along as his minder, and all week she walked him through that exhausting round of silly media ques­tions and avid racing fans. The Champ spent, a couple of hours a day in appearances, autographing a few hun­dred "Victor Northstar" hero cards for folks who thought that wearing a NASCAR firesuit made you somebody. He answered all the reporters' questions politely, but in as few words as possible, and when avid fans insisted on hugging him and getting him to pose for pictures with them, he put up with that, too, but his cardboard smile looked like he had put it on with a staple gun. He seemed a little baffled by the questions relating to his Cherokee heritage, as well he might be, but he would just say something vague, and everybody just nodded and went on, because I don't think TV interviewers really listen to people's answers anyhow. When the jackman's wife dropped him off at the hotel after the last day's round of appearances, the Champ flopped down on the chair next to the window, closed his eyes, and let out a bone-weary sigh. "I'm glad that's over," he said.

"Until next week it is," I told him. "J.P. intends to keep up this publicity blitz until you build up enough of a fan base to land us a sponsor. And after that, of course, you'll be in even more demand for these kinds of appearances, because the sponsor will expect you to keep their potential customers happy. So get used to it, Champ. This is a way of life. It's the new NASCAR."

He didn't say anything for the rest of the evening, and when I went down for supper, he was still sitting there in the chair by the window, staring at nothing.

Martinsville is a short track where a driver's skill can actually make a difference, so we had high hopes of a good showing in Sunday's race. He qualified well, because he knew the track and he'd always been good at it, so we thought this race was our best shot at reviving our hopes for the team.

Sure enough, in Sunday's race everything went well for about seventy-eight laps, and then all of a sudden the Champ went into a spin all by himself in Turn Four, and slammed the car against the outside wall with two more cars piling into him from behind. Those wrecked cars slid down the apron next to the infield wall, and the drivers climbed out, but the Champ's car stayed where it was. I looked over that infield wall in time to see little tongues of flame begin to spiral up from the underside of the car. The fuel line must have broken, gas was spilling all over the pavement.

"It's okay," said the crew chief, seeing my expression. "See? He put his window net down."

That's what drivers do after a wreck to signal that they are conscious and functioning: they unfasten the window netting on the driver's-side window. When they do that, you expect them to climb out of the car unassisted within a couple of seconds. But he didn't.

We watched and waited while the flames caught the gas from the leaking fuel line and leapt higher and higher, engulfing the back of the car. He didn't have much time left to escape. Soon the whole chassis would be a fireball. Yes, he was wearing a firesuit, but that term is misleading. Those things are fireproof for all of eight seconds, and after that you might as well be wearing your pajamas. Funny thing, but watching that fire melting thedecals off that race car and flicking toward the driver's seat just gave me chills.

I grabbed a headset from the nearest crewman. "Champ!" I yelled, not caring who heard me. "Get out of there now! The flames are almost to your roll cage. Get out!"

There was a little crackle in my headset, and then the Champ's voice, calm as ever, like he was already a long ways away. He said, " I'd rather be dead."

Well, that was the end of our hopes for the current sea­son. The car burned up so much they barely got enough of the driver out to bury. Our team made all the sports magazines for a week or so after the tragedy, and a few fan groups made up memorial T-shirts of Victor Northstar, but we were right back to square one as a team.

After that, I gave up on the thought of bringing any more of the great ones back to race again. They just couldn't handle the carnival aspect of the sport these days. It ain't much about driving anymore. So we're scouring the east Tennessee high schools for some good-looking kid who photographs well and talks like they do on the TV. Then we'll worry about teaching him how to drive. Even magic has its limits, you know.

The thief was examining another trapped doorway when I heard something—the tromp of approaching feet. The holy woman was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or something, but I held up my hand for silence and she obliged. I could hear twenty sets of feet, maybe more.

I let out a low growl and reached for my sword. "Com­ pany."

"Easy, my son," the holy woman said. "We don't even know who it is yet."

The ruined mausoleum was far enough off the beaten path to make it unlikely that anyone had just wandered in on us. The holy woman was dreaming if she thought that the company might be friendly. A moment later they appeared—the local magistrate and two dozen of his thugs.

"Always with the corrupt government officials," mut­tered the wizard from behind me. I glanced back at him and then looked for the thief. The nimble little minx was nowhere to be seen.

"You are trespassing!" boomed the magistrate. He had a big, boomy voice. "Leave this place immediately on pain of punishment by the Crown's law!"

"Sir!" replied the holy woman. "Our mission here is of paramount importance. The writ we bear from your own liege requires you to render aid and assistance in this mat­ter."

"But not to violate the graves of my subjects!" he boomed some more. "Begone! Before I unleash the nine fires of Atarak upon—"

"Enough talk!" I growled and threw my heavy dagger at his chest.

Propelled by my massive thews, the dagger hit him two inches below his left nipple—a perfect heart shot. It struck with enough force to hurl him from his feet. His men howled with surprised fury.

I drew the huge sword from my back, let out a leonine roar, and charged the two dozen thugs.

"Enough talk!" I bellowed, and whipped the twenty-pound greatsword at the nearest target as if it were a wooden yardstick. He went down in a heap.

"Enough talk!" I howled, and kept swinging. I smashed through the next several thugs as if they were made of soft wax. Off to my left, the thief came out of nowhere and neatly sliced the Achilles tendons of another thug. The holy woman took a ready stance with her quarterstaff and chanted out a prayer to her deities at the top of her lungs.

The wizard shrieked, and a fireball whipped over my head, exploding twenty-one feet in front of me, then spread out in a perfect circle, like the shockwave of a nuke, burning and roasting thugs as it went and stopping a bare twelve inches shy of my nose.

"Oh, come on!" I said. "It doesn't work like that!"

"What?" demanded the wizard.

"It doesn't work like that!" I insisted. "Even if you call up fire with magic, it's still fire. It acts like fire. It expands in a sphere. And under a ceiling, that means that it goes rushing much farther down hallways and tunnels. It doesn't just go twenty feet and then stop."

"Fireballs used to work like that," the wizard sighed. "But do you know what a chore it is to calculate exactly how far those things will spread? I mean, it slows every­thing down."