Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1)

by Jessie Thomas

  According to the folklore, if you laid your palm flat against the roughened brick, you could still feel the white-hot heat of the flames on your skin. The memory of Hellfire forever embedded into the ruins. I’d never done it—it was a touristy thing and most people could live their whole lives here without having anything to do with those—but I wondered now if that legend was true. Jodi had said that Hellfire could burn for an eternity. Wouldn’t a fire like that, called up from the deepest pits of Hell itself by demons, leave a permanent scar?

  I couldn’t help but see The Raze differently now that I’d been let in on the secret. There was another world lurking in every shadow, every spark of flame. How many of these people indulged in casual pyromancy on the weekends? Or watched as their fire spread out of control and now existed as an unsolved arson? How many were incendiaries walking around pretending to be human?

  The sun blazed a streak across my back, heating up the gray PFFD T-shirt I’d paired with my jeans. I turned down Lafayette Avenue to my apartment building, my calves protesting from all of the exertion. The Raze was a good trek especially in the heat, but after doing it for so long it was nothing more than an afterthought. I couldn’t wait for my traitorous muscles to work themselves back into shape. Days later and the fatigue from being bed bound in the hospital hadn’t quite left.

  Fire escapes zigzagged down the side of the pale red brick, a few potted plants left out in the sun, their spring green vines dangling over a landing. A rainbow pride flag hanging from one of the windows a few floors above me unfurled in the warm afternoon breeze. I hiked up a slight incline, wary of the uneven cobblestones, to reach the wide front doors. Unlike the business district’s copious Art Deco façades, the front doors to my apartment building were more Art Nouveau. Painted a shade of rose pink, rounded edges and elegant stained glass complemented the ornate, vine-like carvings.

  In another life this old building had housed a turn of the century factory, though none of us knew what for. Its once abandoned, derelict rooms had been granted historic landmark status nevertheless, saved from demolition and renovated into trendy and affordable apartments. What we lacked in central air conditioning we made up for in commiserating about it. And the fact that there was a coffee shop on the bottom floor of the building where Wi-Fi and Netflix passwords had turned into a form of currency. Plus, the top floors had decent views of the waterfront when it wasn’t shrouded in fog.

  After fighting with my stubborn front door key, I stepped into the lobby, a cross breeze from the open windows fluttering through my hair. Music and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifted in, lazy, inviting, from around the corner. The interior, like most of the apartments above, had exposed brick walls preserved from the original building and gray roughhewn wood floors. Catching notes of cinnamon and mocha, I passed the community bulletin board that had all but disappeared behind event flyers, job listings, audition notices, and business cards. Part of the wall had been covered with chalkboard paint, a mess of broken chalk pieces left in a pile on the table in front of the board. Among the flirtatious scrawls, messages of positivity and motivation, and crude drawings from the building’s residents, I found one for me.

  We miss you, Nix!!! Wishing you the speediest of recoveries. The message was surrounded by a circle of pink hearts and a rainbow of x’s and o’s.

  I picked up a remnant of pale purple chalk and wrote underneath it.

  Thank you… I’m back.

  In a physical sense, at least. Mostly. The rest was, so far, debatable.

  I added a smiley face for good measure.

  The walk up four floors seemed to take longer than usual. That beautiful cross breeze abandoned me somewhere on the staircase, the hot air rising to greet me on my floor. I worried about the chocolate chips and M&Ms in those cookies. They had to be half-melted and gooey by now. I’d have to toss them in the fridge and hope for the best.

  The fourth floor hallway had a permanent weed smell that I was pretty sure had seeped into the brick. It was just one of those things you got used to, like the noise from the clubs and bars that coasted through the open windows until 4AM or someone tripping the fire alarm with their shitty cooking at least once a month. This wasn’t the only hall in the building that often reeked of pot. I’d become immune to it.

  While digging out the right key, I found the door to my apartment plastered in messages from my neighbors. The door itself had been hidden underneath a colorful mosaic of well wishes and condolences. Post-It notes in every neon shade, cards, and other handwritten letters were framed by a gorgeous arrangement of fake flowers adhered to the wood. I shook my head, if only to fight off the sudden weight on my chest and the prickling at the back of my throat. We were nothing if not a tight-knit community, that was for damn sure.

  Once I got the cookies stowed in my fridge and left my duffle bag wherever it dropped, I sent a quick text to Aunt Meg. Home safe.

  The air was stale in the apartment—everything had been stagnant, frozen in time without me. I flicked on the large ceiling fan in the living room and one of the stand-up fans before opening some of the windows. There were two floors above mine; being on one of the upper levels gave me an okay breeze and a great view of the lake from the bedroom on the sunniest days. Like most of the building, my apartment had pale red brick left exposed in the renovation, some of it in better condition than other patches that were whitewashed or still had plaster clinging to it. The same gray hardwood floors continued except in the bathroom where there was old fashioned black and white tile. My furniture was an eclectic assortment of secondhand and new pieces, with my favorite being the dusky blue velvet couch I’d bought at an antique place down by the waterfront three summers ago.

  I heard Aunt Meg’s reply from across the room and scooped up my phone from where I dropped it on the table in front of the couch. Take it easy, she warned. And check your duffle bag. Love you.

  My eyebrows knit together as I read the text again and lowered to one knee where my duffle sat in the middle of the floor. Unzipping it, I saw a small white envelope sitting on top of my clothes. It wasn’t sealed. A photograph had been tucked inside, rendered in black and white though it hadn’t been all that old. My parents’ faces grinned at me among the others standing with them, nameless, unknown except for Jodi. Not all of them wore a firefighter’s uniform—my mother included, a shadow of a baby bump where my father’s hand rested.

  A caption had been written on the back, the black ink faded and a little smudged, the script unfamiliar. Narrow, thin lines with elegant loops and flourishes, a delicate blend of cursive and neat printing. Nearly archaic in style. There was no date given, but I could take a guess.

  Val, Xander, and baby Phoenix with the team.

  I remembered my parents mostly through other people’s eyes, other people’s memories replacing my own as the decades passed. I’d only had them for the first eight years of my life, and while that time seemed significant, they felt more like a dream. Like they’d always been ghosts. But I recognized myself in them every time I saw their faces. I had my father’s eyes, of course, and his mischievous grin. And I saw my mother’s regal jawline and graceful nose, the swell of her cheeks reflected in my own. Her hair was dark like mine, though she’d kept hers at a longer length, a cascade of waves swept over one shoulder.

  Looking at them here, it was still hard to believe the secret life they’d led beyond the reach of the department’s corruption. My mother could’ve belonged in the glossy pages of a fashion magazine, but it satisfied me to know she’d once fought Hellfire-wielding demons in the streets of the city.

  My phone alerted me to another text, the high-pitched note echoing over the hum of the fans. I thought it was Aunt Meg fussing about me again, but Jodi’s name appeared instead.

  If you’re really in this, I need to know sooner rather than later.

  8

  It happens on a loop.

  Memory blending with fiction until neither can be pried apart, until the details tha
t once were so glaring are lost in a haze of dove grey smoke. It feels a little like what I imagine Purgatory to be—a slow, continuous torture. A life sentence. Trapped in the same moment every time my eyes close and I finally surrender to an uneasy sleep. Grief in stasis. Moretti’s hand slips from mine. We fall through blackening smoke and embers and flames that blister my flesh. I can feel it even in my dreams.

  We keep falling.

  I lose sight of him, the two of us dropping through an eternity. An abyss. He’s already gone when my body hits the dirt. Only it isn’t dirt. The ashes are gritty against my exposed skin, sticking to my face, coating my hair. Ashes upon ashes upon ashes. Too many to be just his. The room around me is blue—the dark midnight blue that swathes everything after the sun has sunk below the horizon. Somewhere, a fire is still burning. I see the flicker of orange light across the walls, hear the crackling, smell the pungency of brimstone.

  The stranger materializes in a burst of sparks and heat. He wades through the dirt that isn’t dirt, dragging his feet toward me until he lowers to one knee inches from my face. Scooping up a handful of ashes, he lets them sift through his fingers, all callous, homicidal grin and cold fire in his dead, dead eyes. I watch him, frozen, rage building in my veins but nothing to show for it. When he gathers another fist of ashes, they catch flame, so hot that they burn bright blue. Then they’re spreading, reaching for me, the stranger’s eyes seeking out my soul, my body joining the ashes—

  A cry forced its way through my lips as I jolted awake. Not exactly a scream or a sob, but an ugly, choked noise of panic that, thankfully, wouldn’t have been loud enough to disturb my neighbors. I’d felt like I was falling, my body rousing me from the grips of a nightmare out of some sense of self-preservation. I laid there on the couch where I didn’t remember exactly when I’d fallen asleep, listening to the whir of the fans and the pulse of a bassline from a distant street. A few wisps of hair that’d escaped my French braid stuck to the sweat on my cheek. My tank top was nearly soaked through, and my heart jackhammered so loud I thought it might spring free from my chest.

  Maybe I’d be better for it.

  “Shit.” I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the couch. Planting my bare feet flat on the cool hardwood, grounding myself, I rested my elbows on my knees and dragged my palms over my sweaty, flushed face. When did I fall asleep? What godforsaken hour was it?

  Time hadn’t made much sense since I got back to my apartment days ago. How many days ago, I couldn’t tell you, really. It’d been mostly a blur of crappy sleep cycles, insomnia, Netflix, half-finished takeout food, and a growing list of ignored texts and phone calls. I sometimes remembered to take pain meds. When I didn’t, I let the muscle aches, the bruises, the sting of my wound settle in like it was my self-imposed punishment. The empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s judged me from the table. I couldn’t remember when I’d run out. Before or after I’d polished off the last of Aunt Meg’s homemade cookies?

  Peeling off my tank top as I crossed the apartment to my bedroom, I let it fall in a gross heap wherever it landed. I found another one—an artifact from my academy days, an old PFFD shirt with the sleeves cut off—to go with the questionable pair of jeans that I found in a pile shoved halfway under the bed. The lamps in the living room flickered perilously as I slid my phone into a pocket.

  Perdition Falls suffered frequent power outages and complete blackouts, the grid constantly overloaded from residents trying to survive the heat. Now that I knew this place was literally Hell, all of the miserable quirks just made so much more sense.

  I wondered if I would still have power when I got home.

  There was a practiced stealth in avoiding the late night coffee shop crowd. In a matter of days I’d become something of an expert. I knew these avoidance tactics weren’t good for me, but the condolences and stares and questions gave everything an immediate awkwardness and I didn’t have the energy to deal with it right now. It was bad enough dodging the pitiful looks my unwashed hair and zombie-esque shuffle earned every time I had to open the door for all the takeout that would eventually be retired to the back of the fridge.

  Of course I woke up with an empty stomach and a craving for everything sweet and salty that didn’t come in a slightly grease-stained cardboard box.

  The slap of my flip flops ricocheted off the cobblestones. Some degree of risk always came with wearing them, since they were the first to succumb to the heat below if you happened to hit a hot spot on the pavement. But they were cheap and easy and the first thing I remembered before hobbling out the door.

  Truly a wonder that we didn’t all spontaneously combust.

  After I’d taken a right at the end of the street and walked about six blocks—past a guy busking with a trumpet and someone who gave out free hugs in a fuzzy Devil costume every evening between seven and midnight—I was tired by the time I got to the corner store. I had no recollection of when I’d last taken any meds. The ache in my side was less of an ache and more of a sharp, stabbing problem. As usual, I clenched my jaw and carried on to the parking lot where cold florescent light spilled a greenish tinge over the fading lines. An employee leaned against the painted brick, one shoe pressed flat to the wall behind her, cigarette smoke wafting from between her fingers. A couple of college kids burst through the doors, fumbling with spare change and overloaded plastic bags.

  I barely noticed the thin figure loitering where the light from the store’s awning didn’t reach. It was easy to miss them. They all but disappeared into the shadows, the hood of their black jacket hiding any trace of an identity, their clothes rendering them formless. I didn’t think anything of it. My sleep-addled brain thought maybe it was kind of weird, but not an abnormal weird. There weren’t any immediate alarm bells, so I breezed through the door into the oppressive glare of sickly light. The cashier and I had crossed paths with enough frequency that he didn’t judge me for my late night purchases, though buying Gatorade and a snack and a box of tampons after shift didn’t exactly compare to the absolute garbage I went scavenging for tonight.

  While I deliberated the merits of Oreos over Chips Ahoy, a smudge of black caught the edge of my vision. I found it when I looked up—the thin figure in black reflected in the mirror above, standing in the intersection of aisles behind me. Deathly still. I heard the crunch of broken Oreos when the package slipped from my hand as I spun around. The end of my fraying braid smacked me in the cheek. The exhale that left me was louder than I thought, ragged and laced with pain.

  The aisles were empty.

  It left a lingering unease in my guts. A prickling on every nerve ending. I didn’t even want to consider the possibility of who—or what, since incendiaries were only people in appearance—it was. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. Real or not real.

  But if it’s him…

  The assortment of candy and chocolate and junk food scattered across the counter when I emptied my laden arms. Every time I heard the beep of the scanner, I felt like I lost a shred of control over myself, a piece of whatever dignity was left. It wasn’t until he was almost done ringing up my purchases and I’d dissociated completely that I recognized the feeling that had settled in. The coil of ancient, blistering power.

  And a hint of sulfur in the air.

  It was still here, still close by.

  Bolting for the door, I ignored the barrage of confused, exasperated shouting behind me. Almost immediately, I knew that I’d made a mistake running full speed without a dose of meds to buffer the pain. I skidded to a halt at the edge of the parking lot, doubled over, a hand clutching my side like I was afraid the wound would rip open again. A shadow moved at the corner of the building. Not the employee, whose cigarette glowed red in the dark. I caught it just before it disappeared, a blur of motion that dissolved into the narrow street adjacent to the backlot of the store.

  Fuck it, I guess. I ran after them, down a paved road—in an abstract sense, because those uneven patches were murder on my hurting body.
It opened up into an unlit labyrinth of backlots and more broken asphalt, the old cobblestones gone. My flip flops struck a sharp, precarious rhythm on the street. Not the best choice of footwear for a chase, but I hadn’t planned to encounter a demon on my late night depression snack run. The figure darted ahead, faster with far more elegance than pathetic my effort. They made an abrupt stop and turned around to face me. A shock of silky, pale hair caught the weak city light.

  That was the moment before the flames blossomed in their hand. The fire soared across the distance between us, flickering blue. With precise aim. Right at me.

  Damn it, again?

  I should’ve stayed home.

  I threw myself behind a car parked on the side of the street, the jolt tearing a cry from my throat. Pressing my back against the rear bumper, I crouched low and then dropped to one knee when my legs swayed. Hellfire skittered over the pavement, throwing off sparks until it fizzled out. I stared down at my useless, trembling hands, and curled them into tight fists. Where was the fire from before? The embers in my veins?

  The Hellfire had left a scar across the asphalt, a gouge where the flames had melted it away.

  I peeked around the bumper of the car in time to see another blaze careening toward me.

  “Shit!”

  When I pushed off the end of the car, I wasn’t thinking of pain, of limitations, just escape. I dropped to the pavement, rolling over onto my side—the injured side, of course, because I didn’t have that kind of luck—as Hellfire shattered the windshield. The car went up in flames like a goddamn Roman candle. The heat of the explosion hit me even as I was sprawled on the ground, a shower of broken glass raining down all over the street. The popping of the engulfed car and the pings of metal and glass hitting asphalt set off a nearby car alarm. I lifted my head and cracked open one eye to find the street illuminated by the ethereal glow of blue fire.

  The incendiary wasn’t finished yet.