Then there’s another, and another, and another, and so many more I lose track and all that’s left is a two-mile wide, five-hundred-foot tall wall of flames that dances and shimmers in multiple colors lighting the night up brighter than daytime. Reds and oranges, greens and blues. All those toxic chemicals cooking off, blowing up into the air.

We all stand there watching the flames. Watching Vernon burn in stunned silence, letting the sounds of car alarms and sirens fill the space. Let’s be honest, it’s not a huge loss. I mean, it’s Vernon. You think about L.A., you don’t think Vernon. There are only a couple hundred people who live there. The same kind of blasts along Hollywood Boulevard would kill thousands.

I can’t see anything besides the flames, it’s still three miles away, but with the power of those blasts I can’t imagine there’s anything left standing. Buildings are going to be rubble, anyone inside them dead. Night workers, security, that one guy who just had to stay late to get the spreadsheets done. They’re nothing but burning paste spread across shattered concrete.

I wonder how bad it will get before the night is over. How many neighborhoods outside the blast are going to catch fire as burning debris rains down onto a city of tinder? How many foundations will have cracked a mile out from the shockwaves? How many fallen homes?

A massive twist clenches around my heart and squeezes, almost taking me to the floor. At first I think I’m having a heart attack, but it’s a familiar feeling. It’s so strong, stronger than I’ve ever felt, I don’t realize what it is for a moment.

Every necromancer I’ve met, at least the ones who didn’t try to kill me and I was able to ask, can feel when somebody nearby dies. It’s a twinge. Barely noticeable. We’re attuned to death the way a lawyer is to car accidents.

One death, enh, no big deal. Thirty or so, like what happened on a Metro train I was on a while back, that stings a bit.

This is hundreds.

I take deep breaths, let it wash through me. I almost have my breathing under control when I see it. A giant form in the flames that, if the normals noticed it and took a photo, would end up on a tabloid headline come morning. A winged snake of fire two hundred feet tall flows out of the flames and hovers there. I can’t tell for sure, because its eyes are just tears in the surface of flames, but fuck if he isn’t looking right at me.