Three demons
“My dad’s hidden in a water park in South Dakota? Is this some kind of joke?”
Brooks frowned. “Three demons. That’s nothing. We can totally take them.” She tapped her fingers on her chin one at a time like she was counting. “Today is the twentieth, right? So that gives us four full days.”
Rosie appeared on the playa just then, slinking over all chill like. She lowered her head, tucked back her ears, and let out a little whine. It was impossible for me to stay mad at her. Brooks was right—hunting was part of my dog’s nature.
I’d been trying to retrain Rosie for the last seven months, and no matter what I tried, she refused to obey me, especially when it came to the commands for turning her flame throwing on and off. Ixtab had taught her to breathe fire every time she heard the word dead. It was handy whenever I needed to borrow some of Rosie’s flames. But it wasn’t so great when the word came up in casual conversation….
Rosie spat out a Milk Dud–size fireball and knocked it my way with her nose as a peace offering.
Snatching it up, I launched it down the beach. She raced after it so fast, she looked like a black streak of lightning.
“She’s the best hellhound I’ve ever seen,” Brooks said. “I mean, her speed is, like, off the charts, and the way she can expand fire? Did you see how Rosie almost incinerated that bird? And while she was swimming!” Brooks looked at me, smiling like a proud mom at an art competition her kid had just won. She’d come a long way since the day she’d first met Rosie. “She’s ready…and you’re ready, Zane. We got this. You got this.”
“Right,” I lied. I imagined my dad worming around some tiny dark space, getting weaker and weaker, and it made me sick with guilt.
“I know you’ve been struggling with the fire thing. Maybe you’ve been trying too hard,” Brooks said, digging a tube of mint ChapStick from her pocket and applying some. She smacked her lips together. “Or maybe you have to be, like, stressed out or in danger or something. Do you want me to shift into a hawk and attack you?”
“Uh—nice offer and all, but I’m good.”
“Fine,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To check out that invisible wall.” Then she became a hawk and flew away.
“I’ll…uh…just be here waiting.”
Rosie raced back with the fireball, groaned, and dropped the small flame at my feet. I reached up to scratch between her eyes (yes, she’s that tall). Thanks, girl, I said. A side benefit to Rosie being a hellhound (other than breathing fire) is that I can talk to her telepathically, too.
She knew I needed to try harder. The problem was, I couldn’t just make fire the way Rosie could. I’d practiced for hundreds of hours, trying the exact way Hurakan had taught me in our one and only lesson on that day in the Empty.
Being with him, in a place he had literally created from scratch, was so mind-blowing I can’t be totally sure, but I thought he’d said something about there coming a time when I wouldn’t need an exterior source of heat—I’d be able to create my own. (Dumb me had thought that would happen the moment he claimed me in front of the other gods. Nope.)
He’d motioned toward the sun. Draw on its power. Call it to you.
I’d focused on what I used to call my bum leg, the one that’s shorter than the other and carries all my godborn power. Hurakan was right. When I isolated my thoughts to this one part of me, what he called my “serpent leg,” a strange energy had pulsed through my entire body. Of course, I’d been a jaguar in that moment, which may have had something to do with it.
Now feed the flame with your life source, he’d said.
When I’d tried, a terrible heat had overtaken me. Smoke came out of my nose. The burning snaked its way through me at unimaginable speed. I totally panicked.
Things hadn’t gotten much better since then.
Rosie rolled the fireball onto her snout and tossed it to me. I caught the flame and spun it, letting it dance across my fingertips.
The moment felt tight as I let the heat seep beneath my skin so I could feed it with the power that pulsed in my leg. That was the only way to make fire bigger, stronger.
Rosie let out an encouraging whimper.
I focused hard until the flame grew to the size of a lemon. Sweat trickled down my neck. I took a deep breath, knowing concentration was the key. My trembling hands were engulfed in the flames, but my skin didn’t burn.
I got this.
I got this.
I could still hear Hurakan’s voice tangled in the wind of that memory like it was just yesterday: The fire will destroy you if you don’t release its power.