Firestorm (Smoke & Ashes Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “You’re not going to die, silly. Nobody’s going to die. You’re gonna be just fine,” I promised her again. But she could tell I was lying—she could always tell when I was full of shit.

  “It hurts so fucking much,” she said, before letting out another scream.

  “For fuck’s sake, drive f—” I shouted, but Feather Girl slammed on the brakes and the car came to a halt.

  “We’re here,” she said, and I didn’t even mind that Chelsea had slammed against the back of the driver’s seat. Pain meant nothing so long as she was still alive.

  Feather Girl helped me get Chelsea out of the backseat, and I didn’t bother to look around, to see where we even were. The street wasn’t that crowded, but the people walking by all stopped and stared at us while Chelsea grunted and screamed and moaned in pain.

  When Feather Girl started slamming her fist on the glass of a wide brown door, it confused me for a second. Then, lights inside the building turned on, and I could see Lexar walking toward us, barefoot, not nearly as surprised as he should have been.

  He moved so fast, I completely missed his steps until he was right in front of us, pulling the door open.

  “She’s been bitten by a werewolf,” I said with half a heart, part of me suddenly terrified that he was going to laugh in my face and turn me away.

  “Let’s get her inside,” he said without hesitation, and he didn’t ask or wait for approval. He simply leaned down and took Chelsea in his arms.

  “Let me go,” she murmured, moving her head from one side to the other. “Let me…argh!” I was tempted to cover my ears. Her screams were poking holes in my fucking brain.

  Lexar moved like he couldn’t even tell that he had a person in his arms. He took us to the end of the long hallway and the only half open door there. If there were people watching us, I couldn’t tell. All I could do was follow, hands clenched in fists at my sides, afraid I’d accidentally catch fire. To say I didn’t have a good grip on my emotions right now would be putting it mildly, and my fire reacted to emotions more than to my calls.

  Everything felt surreal—when we entered the apartment, which was almost completely empty, save for a couch half the size of mine, and a kitchen behind it, dishes drying by the sink. There was no TV, no carpet, no curtains—it felt completely naked.

  Lexar put Chelsea on the couch gently. “Hold still,” he said, like he couldn’t see the pain written all over Chelsea’s yellowing skin, and the sheen of sweat covering her.

  “Demon blood,” I said to Lexar, kneeling in front of Chelsea. “She needs demon blood, right now.”

  “She might not need it. How old?” Lexar said, turning Chelsea’s arm to the side so he could trace her blue veins down to her wrist. There wasn’t much he could see over the blood, but Chelsea’s screams said she didn’t like being touched right now.

  “Twenty-five. How fast can you get down there, Lexar?”

  His pitch-black eyes looked confused. “You want me to—”

  “I don’t have access, remember?” I grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him to me. “She can’t die, do you hear me? Chelsea cannot die. Demon blood will give her a better chance, and you’re going to get it for her.” His mouth opened, and for whatever reason, he looked like he was about to pass out. Why the hell were people so complicated? Why couldn’t he see what it was like in my chest, in my mind? “I’ll give you anything you want. Please.”

  Suddenly, both his hands were on my face, framing it. He came closer, the shade falling over his eyes making him look like he was about to fucking smite me with his lightning. Instead, he whispered.

  “Breathe. She’s going to be okay, Sassy. Just breathe.”

  Fuck breathing. “She can’t die. She just can’t die.” Not on my watch. Attacked in my goddamn apartment because I’d been stupid enough to leave her alone and think nobody would dare go in there. She was my best friend, my family, the only person in the world I truly loved with all my heart.

  “She won’t die,” Lexar said, and for all his faults, he was a much better liar than I would ever be. “Stay here. I’ll be back. Put something cold on her forehead and try to clean up the wound. I’ll be back, okay?”

  My eyes closed involuntarily as if they thought that the whole thing was over. That Chelsea was okay and I wasn’t here, on my knees, begging Lexar to save her life.

  Rage suddenly burned within me, hotter than my fire, because it wasn’t over. Nothing was over. I kept my eyes on Lexar until he slipped out the door. This was only the beginning.

  12

  Watching Chelsea lying there, eyes closed, breathing uneven, fever burning her up—it was a whole new kind of torture for me. I’d seen my mother get slaughtered at the age of eleven, and nothing really got to me anymore, but this…this did. It tore me wide open.

  And as if the pain and the incredible guilt wasn’t enough, the fucking phoenix in me had been restless for the past two hours. It wanted out, it wanted to take over, do something to ease the pain it felt coming from me. Holding it back was getting harder by the second.

  It happened about once a month. The firebird clawed at my chest from the inside for hours on end, wanting to be let out, and holding it back was like pushing a five-thousand-pound rock down my throat every time I breathed. It didn’t just burn me, it consumed me entirely, messed with my head so masterfully that, sometime, its thoughts felt like my own. It tried to convince me that giving in to the shift was a good idea, and if it wasn’t for my father’s bracelet, I’d have lost the fight a long time ago. The crystals pushed her back, kept her from breaking out, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel every ounce of pain that came with it.

  In the beginning, I hadn’t been able to hold back at all. Every time she tried to come out, all I could do was pass out. Now, I kept control for as long as I needed to. Sometimes it was over ten hours. Sometimes only two. There was no rhyme or reason to it, but right now I’d have given everything to make it stop.

  Feather Girl was the only distraction I had since Lexar left. She kept pacing around the nearly empty living room, biting her fingernails, looking genuinely concerned for Chelsea. Everything about her was so…normal. It freaked the fuck out of me, to be honest. She was literally a creature from Hell.

  But then again, so was I.

  When she turned around and looked at the door all of a sudden, I let go of Chelsea’s hand and stood up. Heart in my throat, I waited, not even brave enough to speak and ask, because if it wasn’t Lexar, I was going to lose it.

  The door opened, and Lexar walked in, looking every bit the son of Hell that he was.

  “Did you get it?” I asked breathlessly, even before he closed the door.

  He nodded and my knees shook. “How is she?”

  “Burning up,” Feather Girl said. “She’s been asleep for the past hour.”

  “Where is it? Let me see.” I looked down at some sort of a black fabric in his hands. What the hell had he done, stripped a demon of his skin to take his blood?

  Not that I would have even minded, but that wasn’t it. He unfolded the fabric and took out a syringe with thick liquid inside, so dark it looked almost completely black.

  I took it from his hand and inspected it. Five milliliters of disgusting demon blood that was going to give Chelsea a much better chance of surviving the wolf’s bite.

  The next second, I was on my knees next to the couch, and I touched Chelsea’s face gently.

  “Chelsea, wake up,” I said, so excited now I could barely feel the pressure of the phoenix in my chest. Lexar was right next to me, checking Chelsea’s underarm, then inspecting the wound I’d cleaned when he left. Her flesh was still completely torn, but I hadn’t dared to put a bandage over it. At least she was only bleeding a little bit now.

  No matter. Once she drank the demon blood, it was going to be okay. I just needed her to wake up and take it.

  “The change should have started by now,” Lexar said. “This doesn’t look like it’s healing.”


  “It will,” I insisted. “It will heal. Chelsea, wake up. C’mon,” I said a bit louder, and when she didn’t respond, I shouted even more.

  Eventually, her head moved to the side, as if she wanted to get away from me, but she couldn’t. When her eyes opened, they were completely bloodshot. Her pupils were dilated, and she looked at me like she couldn’t even recognize who I was.

  I put the syringe in her mouth. “Drink, Chelsea. Drink.”

  I didn’t need her to tell me how it tasted—I got a pretty good idea when she tried to spit it out with all the strength in her body. Thankfully, it wasn’t much, so I was able to push her chin up and close her mouth until she swallowed. She began to mumble what I assumed were curse words, but I couldn’t make any word out. For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t even raise her hand up.

  It drove me nuts.

  “We need chains,” Lexar suddenly said. I couldn’t look away from Chelsea’s face, the empty syringe still in my hand.

  Her eyes were closed now, and she wasn’t mumbling, just moaning and moving her head from one side to the other.

  “Why isn’t it working?” Lexar hadn’t tricked me, had he? That had been demon blood.

  So why the hell wasn’t she coming to?

  “Give it some time, Sassy. We need to—” He grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me to my feet, but I jerked away.

  “No. It’s going to work. You’ll see. It’s going to work.” Because it had to. Chelsea couldn’t die.

  “I know it is, but you need to help me get her in the bedroom. And we need chains, right now.”

  “What the hell do we need chains for?” I asked, just to say something because I couldn’t really focus on anything other than Chelsea’s sweat-covered face.

  “To chain her. If she shifts—”

  “When,” I corrected. When she shifted.

  “When she shifts, she’s not going to be able to control herself. You know this,” Lexar said, and this time, when he pulled me up, I didn’t complain.

  He was right. Shapeshifters didn’t turn into their animal halves until puberty hit them, but even then, they were really hard to control. Chelsea would be even worse, especially since there was no shifter here to guide her, and she was not a teenager. She was human.

  Not anymore.

  “I’ll go get chains. And she also needs electrolytes,” Feather Girl said, raising her hand, palm up, toward us. “I need money for some Gatorade.”

  Before I could even move, Lexar put a couple bills in her hand. She avoided his eyes but didn’t even try to hide the flinch.

  “I’ll be back,” she said and walked out the door in a heartbeat.

  “I’m going to carry her to the bedroom, then we need to figure out what to chain her to,” Lexar said, slowly putting his arms under Chelsea’s body. I squeezed my eyes shut as the phoenix tried to gain control of my momentary distraction. I pushed it back so hard, my entire body was shaking as I followed Lexar down the short hallway and into the first room on the left.

  Just like the living room, his bedroom was almost completely empty, save for a bed with grey sheets, one nightstand to its side, and a brown wardrobe that looked like it was having a really hard time not falling apart—just like me.

  Lexar put Chelsea down on the mattress like he was putting a child to bed. I’d never seen him be so gentle with anything before, and for a moment, I was genuinely impressed. Chelsea was mumbling again, hissing when he put her hands over her stomach, then inspected her wound once more.

  “It should start healing soon,” he whispered, and even though I heard the concern in his voice for the fact that it hadn’t started healing yet, I chose to ignore it.

  I sat on the bed by Chelsea and looked at her. I couldn’t bring myself to look away just yet.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Lexar asked, coming to stand in front of me.

  “Feather Girl and I went to see the Witch Alliance. When we came back, two shifters were in my apartment. One of them got away—I don’t know what it was, it jumped through the window just as I walked in. The other was a werewolf, and he was trying to kill Chelsea.”

  “Did you catch him?” I nodded. “Is he dead?” Another nod. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Excuse me if I wasn’t able to think clearly when I saw Chelsea on the floor, screaming.” My eyes closed involuntarily. I knew I should have let that werewolf live so I could question him. Ask him who the hell had sent him there because I didn’t think he’d just happened to come to my apartment and try to kill my best friend out of boredom. Someone had sent him there, and by God, I was going to find out who. And I was going to burn them from the inside out, too.

  “Has this happened before? Were you ever attacked at home?” Lexar said, squatting in front of the bed so he could see me better.

  “Never,” I said and looked away. “Everybody in the city knows who I am.”

  And maybe not everybody was afraid of me, but those who weren’t, were afraid of my dad. As much as I hated that fact, I couldn’t deny that it felt good to be able to relax in my home without fearing an attack.

  So much for that now.

  “It was the witch,” I said as the thought crossed my mind. “She sent them.” Call it instinct or rage or just the need to know who to blame for this, but I believed wholeheartedly that it had been that witch who’d sent those shifters after me. “She knows I’m looking for her, and she wanted to kill me before I found her again.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lexar said. “They were shifters. They would have known you weren’t in the apartment by the scent alone. They would have known Chelsea was in there.”

  I gritted my teeth. “So, they wanted to kill her.”

  To send me a message? To throw me off my game? To intimidate me?

  Whatever the reason, it wouldn’t change my response.

  “A warning,” Lexar offered. “Through shifters. Your friend Hank swore she didn’t have contact with anyone in this city.”

  “My friend Hank is either a fucking liar, or he really didn’t know.” And as soon I got my hands on him…

  “Hey, calm down,” Lexar said, and his hand was suddenly on my thigh. “Why did you go to the Alliance? I told you I spoke to them. They didn’t know anything useful.”

  But before I could answer, the door to the apartment opened and Feather Girl came in. I only knew it was her because of the chains rattling with every step she took.

  She came into the room, a plastic bag full of Gatorades in her hand, and the chain over her shoulder, going down her back and dragging a few feet behind her.

  “Where did you get all that chain?” Lexar asked. It certainly didn’t look new.

  “Stole it,” was all she said, then dumped the chain on the floor. She looked tired, a bit breathless, too, yet her hair hadn’t moved from place. Curiouser and curiouser.

  Lexar went to get the chain, and Feather Girl stepped away like he was on fire.

  “Catch,” she said and threw a Gatorade at me. “She needs that. She must be completely dehydrated from all that fever.”

  We’d tried giving Chelsea water, but she’d spit it out right away. I hadn’t been as persistent with it as with the demon blood, though, but this time, I didn’t give her a choice. Pushing up her chin, I forced her to swallow three mouthfuls of the Gatorade, and she liked it. She didn’t complain.

  Ten minutes later, I watched as the liquid fire pouring from my fingers melted the metal of the chain and welded it together. Lexar had used his fist to make a hole in the wall extending a couple feet from the bedroom door, and we’d put the chain all around the studs and the door frame. It was long enough, thankfully, and as much as I hated the sight of Chelsea with chains wrapped around her arms and legs, I reminded myself that it was for her own good. There was no telling what she’d be like when she turned.

  Because she was going to turn. And live. She most definitely was not going to die.

  For now, though, she remained completely calm, moving
her head sometimes, mumbling words, moaning. Still burning up. She heated up the wet kitchen towels we put on her forehead within seconds, but Lexar assured me that it was all normal. Her body was trying to fight the infection, and once it realized it couldn’t and the virus took over, it was going to mend any damage the fever was doing to her body now.

  “You need to change,” Lexar said, pointing at the burned sleeves of my hoodie and my jeans. They had plenty of holes in them, too. And blood from the werewolf, but that was nothing new.

  “I’m good,” I said, but he was already by the door.

  “Come on, I’ve got a delivery for you.”

  Oh?

  “And drink this,” Feather Girl said, throwing another Gatorade at my face. It would have slammed me on the nose if my reflexes hadn’t intervened. “Go, I’ll be right here.”

  This girl was something else. And, yes, I realized she was a maggot, but I trusted her to be with Chelsea for a second. Switching the sides of the kitchen towel on her forehead, I gave Chelsea a kiss on the cheek and left the room. The door remained open, so I’d hear everything.

  The Gatorade going down my throat was like a shock to my system. It felt like I had been sleepwalking until now, and I was suddenly awake.

  “Here,” Lexar said and threw something at me. I almost dropped the bottle to catch it, but I refrained from commenting.

  “What the hell is this?” It was the black piece of fabric he’d had in his hands when he first came back from…you know, Hell. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but it had a zipper.

  It had a hood, too apparently. It was a hoodie—exactly like the ones I owned, size and all, except the fabric. It was almost like leather turned inside out, except it had a different feel to it under my fingers, and sometimes, when the light hit it right, it shimmered a bit.

  “It’s a gift from your dad,” Lexar said. “Try it on, it’s not gonna eat you.”

  “Sure about that?” My dad had never given me anything except the bracelet on my wrist. Why the hell would he give me a hoodie, unless it was to mess with me in some way? We didn’t exactly have a healthy relationship. I expected anything from him.