Page 52 of The Fire Went Wild

They’re right where I left them in the grass, and thankfully it’s cold enough today that I don’t hear any flies buzzing yet. The bodies still look decent—decent enough to throw into my freezer while I decide what I want to do with them, anyway.

I start with the first man I killed. I throw his balaclava into the start of a burn pile and take a minute to study his head, trying to get a feel for him. He has a scar across his cheek and three black teardrop tattoos dripping out of his left eye. I’ve no doubt he was someone dangerous before I got ahold of him.

The second one I killed doesn’t really have a head to speak of, not anymore. I’ll need to saw off what’s left of it, extract the teeth and the balaclava, and then throw the meat out into the swamp where it can decay into nothingness. Without a head, the second one is a bit harder to get a read on. He’s a little skinnier than the first man, and I suspect a little younger. His hands are smooth, although there are tattoos across his knuckles. Sigils of some kind, it looks like. Magic. Occultism. Nothing to do with my gods, though.

Thanks to Charlotte, I know the two of them are connected to my last victim, Dennis Randall. I knew his name, of course, but I never think of them by their names. I think of them in pictures, because that’s how my Guardian sends them to me. Faces. Maps. Bolts of electricity shooting through my veins.This one.

“Who are these men?” I ask in the language of the gods. The air shimmers as I speak.

Not your concern, answers the Unnamed.Your concern is the woman.Then I see Charlotte in my thoughtsas I throw the first victim’s head into the freezer. She’s still asleep under the covers.

“They’re a threat,” I respond. More to my Guardian than the Unnamed, assuming it’s around, and listening.

Neither of them answer. I sigh in frustration and grab my bone saw from its place on the wall so I can go back out in the chilly morning and get to work.

There’s something meditative about cutting up a dead body. The careful, mindless repetition as you split through skin and ligament and bone. There’s no squirming or screaming. No suffering. It’s just meat and manual labor, shoving through the rigor mortis until everything’s in pieces.

And that makes it easier to think.

I was still in a revival daze when I killed both of them. I did it on instinct and strength, like an animal protecting its home and (even though I know shouldn’t think of Charlotte like this) its mate. I didn’t think about who they were, what they were doing here, how they got in. I was vaguely aware that the power was out since the house generator kicked in right as I killed the first one. Charlotte told me before her shower that she had flipped the breakers, but those were just the ones to the house. I’m not a dumbass. I keep the fence on a separate system.

A system that’s still connected to the electrical wires strung up along Guillmar Road. They probably cut them. Which means the house’s main power supply is probably still out, too. I’ll have to call and report it.

And keep a close eye on Charlotte in the meantime. I can’t have her escaping?—

Pain tears through my head, and I shriek and drop the saw and fall backward on my ass, slapping my hands up to my face even though they’re covered in gore. The pain explodes outward and then fades to a dull, pounding throb, punctuated by the Unnamed’s harsh voice.

Don’t. Let. Her. Escape.

In the gods’ language, the words feel like knives stabbing at the spot behind my eye. I groan and fall backward in the cool grass and blink up at the pale, cloudy sky.

Awaken her. Break the binding.

“What binding?” I mutter. This was the same thing they had been bickering about earlier, and they hadn’t bothered to explain it.

She is bound by old magic. She must kill to break it.

Images flash through my head, courtesy of the Unnamed. Violent, bloody, fragmented, like I’m glimpsing them in a shattered mirror. Blood on a knife. Charlotte’s eyes, wide and furious. Blood splattering on a wall. Blood drenching her hands. Charlotte digging herself out of the dirt.

“Stop!” I shout in English, because with each image the pain comes back until vomit rises in my throat. I haven’t spoken English to the gods since I was a little boy, too young to know better.

SHOW HER, roars the Unnamed, and it’s like a bolt of lightning splits my head in two.

Then it’s gone. My head still throbs, but it feels like a typical headache, nothing a few Tylenol can’t knock out. I blink, eyes watering. A cloud of grackles passes overhead and cackle at each other.

“Show her what?” I mutter in the language of the gods. I don’t expect an answer, but I feel the presence of my Guardian nearby, slipping oily through my thoughts.

Take her with you,it whispers, low and staticky. And then it gives me a gift:

A new target.

It’s a big house. A mansion, really, with a circular driveway that winds around a glittering stone fountain, the whole thing tucked behind a veil of oak trees. The house itself looks likea time capsule from the 1970s: big plate glass windows, dark brown angular walls.

Here, my Guardian whispers, and I know with some certainty that the house is in Houston, in a rich neighborhood, and that living inside it is a man who must be sacrificed. He’s part of the same group of criminal occultists as Dennis Randall. As these men who trespassed on my property.

And then everything comes to me at once, the way it always does when my Guardian gives me a new project. I see the art that I will make with this man’s skin, the sculptures I will craft with his bones, the portraits I will paint with his blood.

A masterpiece.

---