Read Liquid Fire for Free Online

and blinked.
    The ticket lady hadn’t lied—we were right up front, the best seats in the house.
    I was glad Cinnamon wasn’t stuck behind someone taller, but as I seated myself, I heard a snort of disgust and turned to see a short elderly lady behind me, wrapped in some expensive fur that almost certainly wasn’t fake, scowling up at me and my Mohawk.
    To be nice, I offered her one of the four empty seats beside us, but the woman shook her head, holding herself so stiffly her whole body seemed to pivot. I looked over at Cinnamon, and she shrugged. With a grin at the scowling lady and her morbid fashion statement, I switched seats with Cinnamon so as not to be rude—and just as we got settled, the show started.
    Twin gouts of fire roared out of either side of the stage, tearing the air with sharp, spitting sounds, like the hisses of hidden dragons. The audience jerked back from the unexpected flash of heat and flare of light—and then the lights fell, leaving us in darkness.
    Something creaked. A drumbeat started. The trumpets of fire again flared, striking the welded iron pillars bracketing the stage. Delicate blue-white flames climbed their ornate sides. The pillars squealed, started to turn—and began throwing off drops of burning liquid.
    Cinnamon squealed in delight, and I laughed. The pillars were well designed—they spun just fast enough to throw the flaming drops off, but slow enough that the fiery spray of the fuel fell in wide catch-basins at the bottom of each pillar without hitting the audience.
    The turning pillars flared brightly, erupting in roiling gouts of flame that climbed up their ridged sides and rolled toward the ceiling in twin rings of fire. As the waves of heat and light faded, two young men became visible on the stage, as if by magic.
    Naked to the waist, hair slicked up into spikes, the men prowled to the front of the stage in diaphanous, beaded harem pants tied at the ankles. Each held aloft a black sword; in unison, they struck them against the pillars and the swords ignited, becoming glowing blades of fire.
    The beat of the music grew faster as the men whirled their blades in an elaborate dance of fire. At first, it was simple fan-blade spins and fencing thrusts; then it became more exotic, demonstrative, their sweaty bodies moving with the grace of wushu practitioners.
    They ranged the stage, then converged, leaping like acrobats, one flying over the other, their blades of fire spinning above and below them like twin helicopters as the pillars too flared. The sharp tang of the fuel nipped at my nostrils as the fiery acrobats flew apart.
    Between their parting blades, two taut young women appeared like genies, holding poi—knotted wicks on chains. The men lit the women’s poi, spun their own swords out—and seemed to disappear. The pillars dimmed too, leaving the stage lit only by the spinning balls of fire.
    The women wove across the stage, bodies slinking back and forth like belly dancers; but over the jingling of their costumes you could clearly hear the spinning balls of flame rushing through the air as the women wove circles and figure eights and flowers around themselves.
    At first, they danced together in unison; then they too broke out, ranging the stage as they performed elaborate tricks with the fireballs on their chains—fast, slow, arcs, flowers, spinning the balls so slowly they seemed to hang there—then even stopping them.
    My mouth opened as the audience gasped. The two women had made the flaming balls hang above their heads, eerily motionless; then they jerked their poi down, creating elaborate arcs in the air that were not tricks of the camera but real flowing comets of flame.
    The men reappeared, each with four poi, which they lit off the women’s flames; dark-garbed ninjas appeared and snatched the women’s poi away just as their flames were dying, and the women took the extra poi from the men and began a coordinated show.
    My eyes tightened; I hadn’t expected