Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “I am not afraid of you,” Feather Girl said under her breath.

  What a turn of events. Putting my knife away, I turned around and looked at the basement while they resolved their differences. I needed to think. I needed to find out where the witch had gotten all those crystals in the first place because the why was perfectly clear to me already. She’d summoned an evil spirit and had actually succeeded. While I was at it, I found all my knives, too, and stuffed them in my pockets.

  I said it before, evil spirits are very powerful. The damage they could do up here was unimaginable. That witch was still alive, and that evil spirit coming out of her was really powerful. How much more powerful could he get before I found her again?

  “I didn’t have a—” Feather Girl was saying when I turned to them again.

  “You there,” I said, and she looked at me. “Yes, you. How did you find this witch? Do you know who she is?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, moving her eyes to Lexar quickly. “I tracked her down. I know her scent.”

  See, now that could be very useful to me.

  I looked at her mouth, but there were no fangs there. She wasn’t in hunting mode. Vampires were the only maggots who could track things down by scent, but I’d never actually known a bloodsucker who used feathers for weapons. I guess even I am not all-knowing.

  “How old are you?” Lexar asked her, but she didn’t want to answer him.

  “Just stand back,” she repeated, probably for the fiftieth time.

  “Again, it was just a question, no need to—”

  “I don’t trust you,” she spit, and honestly, she was kind of making me fall in love with her.

  “You, Feather Girl, have an impeccable sense of judgment.” Which was only part of the truth. Anyone, especially a maggot, who had the guts to send Lexar to hell like that, deserved a few hours of life up here. Also, if she found the witch once, who was to say she couldn’t find her again? “You’re coming with me.”

  I made for the stairway, which was halfway ruined now. The evil spirit must have slammed into it at some point.

  But Lexar stepped in front of me, his lightning bolts still sizzling around his arms. Showoff.

  “You’re going to let an infernal live now?” he asked me, arching a brow like he was challenging me.

  “Yep.”

  “Just because she doesn’t trust me?”

  “Yes. As you know, great minds think alike.”

  “And you’re going to go out like that? I can see your panties.”

  Oh, shit. The left side of my hoodie, and my jeans were burned to a crisp. The hole was big enough to see my blue panties underneath.

  I tried not to blush, but no idea if I succeeded. “So?”

  “And what’s next? Because that witch alone was a big enough problem. Add the dybbuk to the mix and it’s not a problem anymore—it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.

  I narrowed my brows. “What the hell is a dybbuk?”

  The asshole rolled his eyes, and I could see it perfectly because the biggest source of light in the room was coming right from him. “You call them evil spirits, if I remember correctly. The world calls them dybbuks.”

  Right. Well… “I’m going to find the evil spirit and the witch, and I’m going to kill them both.” Simple plan. Good plan. I pointed at Feather Girl. “And you’re coming with me.”

  I continued toward the stairway. The clock was ticking. We needed to find that witch fast, and luckily with my new, temporary partner, it was going to even be easy. Finding her, that is. Now, killing her was another story, but I was already excited to think about it. I loved making up stories in my head in perfect detail—and granted, things seldom worked out in real life like they did in my daydreams, but it would help in making sure I was prepared for the worst when the real thing happened.

  “Sassy, you’re in over your head here. You need me,” Lexar said as he came after me. Feather Girl was right behind me, too. I didn’t bother to speak at all until we got out of that freaking house that gave me the creeps now more than it had before.

  Fresh air. Sunlight. No evil spirits or crystals or wit—

  Wait.

  Sunlight.

  I turned and looked at Feather Girl. Wasn’t she a bloodsucker? Those couldn’t walk out in daylight at all, unless they wanted to burst into flames, but she had no trouble with it. There was no fire on her skin even though the sun fell on her face directly. And her eyes were brown indeed, a warm brown, like melted chocolate.

  “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

  “Why would I be dead?” She sounded confused.

  “What exactly are you?” I looked down at her hands, but her colorful feathers were gone. Then Lexar walked out the door, and she immediately moved to my other side.

  “I’m a sprite, technically. But I’ve also been cursed by a demon a couple years ago,” the girl said, and though she was looking at me, her whole attention was on Lexar. Then she showed me her hand. “So now I sprout feathers randomly and at will.” Her skin sort of opened, or maybe just stretched to the sides to leave way for something coming from underneath it. That something grew bigger and bigger, and then sort of tore from the skin and gained colors, until it became a five-inch-long feather. I stared at it for a long second before I could even blink again.

  “Wow, that’s cool.” Feathers coming out of skin? Seriously? “I had no idea maggots could do that. And demons can curse?” I was almost a hundred percent sure I’d never heard about that.

  “Maggots?” Feather Girl asked, but Lexar didn’t let me answer.

  “It’s going to take more than feathers and hellfire to kill a dybbuk, Sassy Pants,” he said. “I told you in the beginning—it’s best if—”

  “Not going to happen,” I cut him off. “I am not working with you again, dove. And if you think I can’t take him, find him yourself and kill him then.”

  “I would, but I have the ability to think without letting my pride get in the way. I can’t take him out alone either.” He clenched his jaws. I heard it, saw it, then my attention drifted to his lips, and I wanted to slap my stupid face. Why did I even have to be attracted to this guy? Why the hell did he have to be so good-looking? Asshole.

  “So, call for backup,” I said and headed for my car.

  “I’m not going to call for backup from Downstairs,” he said with a smile, like what I’d suggested was ridiculous.

  “Your pride is in the way.”

  “You could make this real easy for the both of us. You know this place better than I do. You can find her faster and I can help,” he said as they both came after me.

  “Why in the world would I want to make anything easy for you?” It was a serious question.

  “To spite me?” he offered.

  It wasn’t all that bad a reason, to be honest.

  I wanted to keep doing this, but the truth was, it wasn’t going to lead us anywhere. I liked to keep up this act for as long as possible, but even I got tired sometimes. So, I stopped and faced him, which surprised him more than I thought it would.

  “Look, Nevermore, I can’t do this with you right now. That witch is dangerous, and I need to find her asap. This is my city and I’m not going to let anybody here die at her hands if I can help it. So, please, just be on your way and do your own thing and let me do mine.”

  If he was surprised seconds ago, Lexar looked shocked now.

  “Okay, Sassy Pants,” he said, taking a step back. I could no longer see my reflection in his pitch-black eyes. Shame. “We’ll do it your way. I do love the sight of you begging.”

  If he thought I was going to beg for his help later, he was in for a surprise.

  He didn’t even look at Feather Girl again before he turned around and walked left. I could see his bike was parked at the beginning of the street, which meant he’d replaced the tire I’d stabbed to death earlier. Not that I had been feeling bad about it or anything.

  But now that he was out of my hair, I could
focus again. I walked to the car with Feather Girl in tow. “Get in,” I told her, and she climbed in the passenger seat right away.

  “Thanks for letting me tag along. Sassy, was it?” She sounded really friendly now that Lexar was gone.

  “Yep. What about you? Tell me everything—starting with your name.” I turned the ignition on and pulled out of the lot. In the side mirror, I could see Lexar on his bike already, putting on his helmet. Even in the distance, I could feel his aura surrounding him with every movement of his body.

  Luckily, Feather Girl spoke, and it was a nice distraction.

  “Annabelle Hutchins, twenty-four years old, dead for the past three. I lived here in Philly with my family—all of them human. Dad’s a karate instructor, Mom’s a painter. Two older brothers—both assholes,” she said in a rush. “I snuck out of Hell about three days ago and have just been living in the streets, tracking the bitch—I mean, witch.”

  I looked at her and grinned. I really did like this maggot. “What the hell did she do to you?”

  “She tricked me. I was a law student, but I also wanted to be a piano player, and it was really tough to find the time to practice. A friend of a friend of mine heard about Darynda Olensen—you know, that she could grant wishes and all that bullshit—and my friend insisted we go see her. So…I did.”

  My, my, she spoke as fast as I did. The regret in her voice was evident. It filled the car and even made me feel bad about her for a second.

  “She said she could make it possible for me to understand music in a way that I wouldn’t even need to practice. That the piano would speak to me, that I’d be able to play anything I wanted perfectly by just reading the keys.”

  Uh-oh. “And she lied.”

  “Nope. She didn’t—that’s the thing. It worked perfectly. I went home and I could play Liszt’s Little Bell like I fucking wrote it!” she cried.

  “And that’s like…a big deal?”

  “A very big deal. It’s almost impossible to play Little Bell properly—unless you’re Lang Lang or something.”

  Right. Because I knew exactly who Lang Lang was. “So, what went wrong?”

  She slammed her hands on her knees. “I sold her my soul for it. I mean—technically, I didn’t even believe it would work. Obviously. Selling your soul to this strange-looking woman to play the piano? C’mon. Impossible.”

  Impossible—my favorite word. I just loved the look on people’s faces when they realized that it was bullshit. Anything was possible. Anything at all.

  “And?”

  “And I died two weeks later. Two weeks!” Feather Girl said, raising two fingers at my face.

  “Let me guess: you didn’t specify the time of death, did you?”

  Selling souls to witches wasn’t a common thing. Not many knew what the hell to do with souls in the first place, and those who did usually steered clear of them. Souls were no joke. They were…well, souls. But technically, you didn’t sell souls to witches. You sold them to demons—the witch was just the intermediary. She did a spell on you for whatever you wanted, took your soul and offered it to some demon for whatever favor she was looking for, and that was that. When you died, your damned soul would belong to the demon, and the witch would get her favor and call it a day.

  Now, doing things like improving skills or giving people an actual talent they didn’t possess—that was some serious shit. I had never actually heard of anyone being able to do that until now. That witch was good. Really good.

  “Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t even know…I didn’t know anything! I thought it was just some stupid old lady and found it really weird when she didn’t want me to pay her. She said my soul burned really brightly and that it would be payment enough—the bitch. She never said I would die in two weeks. She promised me that I was going to have the best career in the world and that nobody was ever going to play the piano as well as I did. That I was going to go down in history as the best. Gah!” She slammed her fists on the dashboard hard. Just then, a feather sprouted from between her second and third knuckle. It just popped out of her skin, like, here, I’m just gonna come out of here real quick, no big deal. She took it between her hands for a second, and it disappeared instantly.

  “Whoa, take it easy. This is my car,” I said in a breath, gently caressing the dashboard. She seemed really pissed off, but it wasn’t my poor car’s fault. “Did she kill you?”

  “I don’t know. I was walking home from college one day and a drunk driver ran over me. It killed me on the spot.”

  Oooh. I did not want to be this girl right now.

  “And you’ve been stuck in Hell since then.”

  “Yeah. I served my demon for three years before I struck a deal with another demon and came back here to get my revenge. That bitch is going to pay for what she did to me, one way or the other.”

  “Here’s what I don’t get. If you wanted to be a piano player, why go to law school at all?”

  I caught the flinch from the corner of my eye. “My parents, they…” She looked down at her lap and sighed. “Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. Now I need to kill her and take her soul down there to finish my deal with the demon, and I’ll be free.”

  “Free…as in, free to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Except I’m going to kill you right after I kill her.” I thought she had this clear.

  “That’s okay. I can come back. I can live somewhere else if you don’t want me here. It doesn’t have to be Philly, but I’m not serving that demon for the rest of eternity, and this is the only place where he can’t follow me.”

  In that case… “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

  9

  I was trying to remember what I knew about sprites while I showered. Feather Girl was in my living room, and I only realized that hadn’t been a smart move when I locked myself in the bathroom and started to take off my scorched clothes. If she tried something while I was in the shower, I was going to kill her twice.

  But it did make me hurry up.

  When I got out of the bathroom, all clean and wearing unburned clothes, I found her just like I left her. She hadn’t touched a thing. She hadn’t even sat down as far as I could tell. She’d stood right there, just like I told her to, though I hadn’t really meant it that literally.

  But try as I might, I couldn’t think of any place I’d read that said sprites had an enhanced sense of smell. They were technically spirits, too, but they weren’t evil. Normally, born sprites hung out in woods, but a made sprite?

  “How exactly did you become a sprite if you were human?” I asked Feather Girl when I went to the kitchen to get some snacks. I had a cabinet full of crackers because I liked to munch on them all day. My body ached a bit from the fight. It would take no time at all to gather back my energy, but I would still need at least a couple of hours of rest.

  “I don’t know. The demon who owns me told me that all humans have predispositions to become one thing or the other when in contact with enough magic. Some become vampires, some become goblins or whatever, most become succubi or incubi.” True, because even after all these years of evolution, the emotion that is most likely to fully control a creature’s mind and body is lust. That made lust very powerful as food for paranormals.

  “What do you feed on?” I sat down on the couch in my living room—an old blue thing that had seen much better days, but it was so comfortable, I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. It knew my body and my body knew it perfectly. I knew exactly how to sit and lie down to make myself perfectly comfortable. Plus, the thick armrests were perfect for my snacks.

  “Positive emotions, mostly. I didn’t get much of them down there, but the past few days, I’ve been feeling the tug more every day. I’m drawn to laughter mostly.”

  I grinned. “So, you suck the good out of people. You’re a Feel Good Leech. How nice.” Just another reason in the Why All Maggots Must Die list. They fed off things—from lust to blood to memories—and they couldn
’t be allowed to roam around freely, just like that.

  “It wasn’t a choice,” she said with a shrug, arms crossed in front of her as she looked around my living room. It wasn’t big, but it was perfect. There were so many things in it, I was really glad I wouldn’t have to move. Packing would be a nightmare.

  “Sure, it was. You gave that witch your soul willingly; otherwise the deal wouldn’t have worked,” I reminded her.

  She flinched. “Yeah,” she breathed, then mumbled: “Bitch.”

  “What’s the story behind the feathers, anyway?” I really wanted to hear it, though by now I should have been talking to her about tracking down the witch. Just one more story wasn’t going to hurt anybody.

  Unless the witch was already on a killing spree…

  “I tricked a demon,” she said, like it was no big deal at all. But it was. Demons weren’t stupid. It took skill to trick them. “Can I have one of those? I haven’t eaten anything up here yet.”

  “No.” My crackers were mine. “You can get your own in the cupboard.”

  She didn’t hesitate. Five seconds later, she sat next to me on the couch, her box of crackers in her hand. Surreal. Me, sitting in my apartment, eating crackers with a maggot.

  See? There’s no such thing as impossible.

  “Let’s see…so I was trying to get a day off from my demon, to research the bitch—I mean witch—and he said he’d give me one if I got something for him from the Damned Circle.”

  Damned Circle, Damned Circle…ah. I knew what that was. It was this huge building in hell, Daddy said, that was forbidden to demons and lesser creatures. You could find all kinds of magic in there, all kinds of creatures that weren’t allowed to roam freely even in Hell. It was like a prison, a safe, and a treasure—all rolled into one.

  “To get in the Circle, I needed one of the demon guards, but he refused to go in and steal the book my demon was looking for. Naturally, I decided to possess him to get in there myself. I’d learned this spell from another infernal—a vampire who’s serving my demon’s best buddy, right? And he said it had worked twice for him, so I thought I’d give it a try. I promised the demon guard some blood of a virgin—my demon had plenty of it—if he loaned me one of his fingernails for a few minutes. That’s all I needed for the spell—his fingernail, and bam! I was in his body for like an hour. Plenty of time to go in the Circle, find the book, and come out.” She shrugged, putting an entire cracker in her mouth. “He got a little pissed at me for using his body, so he cursed me.”