Raising Fire by James Bennett

Author:James Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary, Fiction / Fantasy / Urban
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2017-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

In the months of his absence, not much had changed. While Jia took a shower, Ben had a look around, relieved to find that the house had sat undisturbed. The bedrooms were pristine and empty. The large framed Blake print, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, still hung over the mantelpiece in the living room. Jack, sweet Jack, was waiting in the fridge. Dust covered everything as usual, a shroud for the sham of an ordinary life, and he had to wipe the TV with his sleeve to see the images on the screen.

Putting his feet up, the soles calloused and black, he swigged from a freshly opened bottle and watched the evening news.

The Middle East imploding. The icecaps melting. Refugees fleeing, starving, drowning. Oil spills and earthquakes. Bigots grinning on platforms. The usual circus of human existence, parading with all due pomp and ceremony towards the cliff edge of civilisation.

Ben sighed. Why did he care for them so much, the humans? Was it their fleeting natures that spoke to him, moved him to protect them? He could no longer kid himself that the sentiment was mutual, and his hope—already stretched—was wearing thin. As if a blindfold had been torn from his eyes, he was staring the times directly in the face. Against all his wishes, humans, like Remnants, had become the cause of their own downfall.

Despair was nibbling at the edges of his duty, his pact, filling him with doubt. With no official body to guide him (save the one that wanted his head on a plate), where did that leave him? He couldn’t turn to the envoy for help and there was no lover to soothe him, make the fight seem worthwhile.

He had lost his way. The Sola Ignis was alone, as ever, but the fire was guttering, about to go out. The Fay had abandoned the Remnants long ago. The humans looked to dangerous science or silent gods. The Remnants were dropping like flies.

And in the end, what’s in it for you?

At another time, guilt would have followed on the heels of this thought. He’d have chastised himself for selfishness and gone about drinking himself downstream, away from the problem. But—

An electrical bolt, a detonation of nerves, speared his body, his spine arching against the couch. Veins stood out on his neck, his teeth clenching. Blood bubbled from his trapped tongue, his eyes rolling up in his head as the spasm took hold. The bottle of Jack fell from his hand, thudding on the floorboards and chugging whiskey. Crimson eddied under his skin, scales blooming and retreating, his instincts thrown into confusion, a transformation beyond his control. As he gasped for breath, the room around him fell away, the walls slipping into endless black. The couch under him vanished, the curtain of the real ripped back to reveal the nether, a vision into nothingness. Wires, thin and hot, shot through his physique, a drawstring pulling in tight.

Before him, a giant emerged from the darkness, the dome of its head rising from the deep, a pale sun blazing in the dark.

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