The lounge hadn’t exactly cleared out. There was a bottleneck going up the stairs. A handful of stragglers had stayed behind to watch and risk getting hit by a rogue pyro blast. Some of the incendiaries who didn’t seem to be all too important decided to leave, disappearing in shimmers of heat and embers.
With her attention drawn to the pyros guarding the mezzanine raining down fire on us—and their incendiary cohorts watching with interest—Gemma didn’t see the pyro creeping out of the dark to take a shot at her back. But I did. I saw the calculating, smug grin on his lips, the burst of orange lighting his face.
“Gemma, watch it!”
She was too slow.
And my reaction time had been blown to shit.
But the pyro was sucker-punched by a dense line of fire that shot from behind him like flamethrower. It peeled the clothes right off his back, the skin underneath already shiny and blistering red as he limped away. I’d never seen pyromancer fire like it. Such a concentrated, sustained blast instead of the fire bombs Javier and I trained with. I coughed on the heavy, dark gray smoke it left behind.
Gemma straightened from her prone position and I ducked out from under the table to see who’d just saved both our asses.
The musician.
He jumped over a table, skirting the top of it with his hip, and took cover behind the rounded velvet couch separating me and Gemma.
“Looked like you could use some help.”
“Thanks,” I told him. I made quick introductions while Gemma’s wards glimmered and knitted patterns in the air, catching anything that tried to come through.
“Ozias,” the musician greeted. “I play here all the time. Been a few fights in the past, nothing like this. I hope they still pay me after the smoke clears.”
“That was a neat trick,” Gemma said.
“You’re not so bad yourself. I’m surprised as you are that it worked,” Ozias said. “I’m a little rusty. Don’t get to flex these muscles often. Bad time to ask what the hell’s going on?”
“Our intrepid hero over there thought it was a brilliant idea to go after an incendiary,” Gemma explained. I shot her a look even though I’d earned her contempt.
“It’s a long story,” I added. “You should get out while you can. We’ll watch your back.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” Ozias answered. “Not after these shitheads torched my babies. They’re gonna pay for it now. Someone’s got to.”
“That’s my fault,” I said. “I’m the one who provoked them.”
“Do you work for the demons?” he asked, despite knowing the answer was obvious.
“No.”
“I thought not,” he answered, offering a bright grin that made the dimples in his cheeks crease. “Then it looks like we’re on the same side, aren’t we? It’s a damn shame my babies were caught in the crossfire. We’ll talk about that later.”
“I’m going to find Santos.”
I picked myself off the sticky floor into a low crouch and tried to shield my face from the torrent of flame passing overhead.
How were we ever going to make it out of here? Of course this place was a giant fire hazard, sunk deep underground. No other exits. Just a single, circular staircase jammed with drunk revelers. I didn’t even see any signs of a service entrance for employees. Nothing but that secret pocket door on the mezzanine, and that was probably off-limits unless we had an immediate death wish.
It was pretty easy for incendiaries to forget basic safety measures when they couldn’t fucking die.
I headed for the bar to gain a better vantage point. A strong gust of flames shattered a table next to me, littering the floor with glass that crunched under my heels. I felt a few shards scrape my arms and my knuckles as they flew in all directions. One nicked my cheek, deep enough that a warm trickle of blood oozed down my face.
With a careless toss of white-hot fire, I made a dash for the bar. Pain tore at the back of my shoulder, stinging, the flames hissing as they scalded me through my blouse. I grunted, the abrupt hit knocking me slightly off course. Before I could recover, a strong hand wrapped around my wrist. My pulse thundered against my temples, panic rearing its ugly head, until I met Javier’s warm brown eyes.
“Let’s go.”
We couldn’t take the long route behind the bar. More glass bit into my legs as we jumped up and slid over the countertop—still intact, despite the fire bombs and blasts that had broken just about every single bottle on the shelves. Whenever the flames pinged a bottle, it exploded, igniting as the fire found another accelerant. Javier and I landed nearly on top of each other in a nest of broken glass and spilled alcohol.
I sat up and chanced at look at the back of my shoulder. The pyro fire had ripped right through my blouse, the skin beneath shining red. A blistering burn. Javier had his back against the wall, one hand clutching at his abdomen while he struggled to pull himself off the soaked floor.
He drew a ragged breath. “Son of a bitch.”
His hand hovered where the flames had eaten holes in his waistcoat and the shirt underneath. It was a bad burn, the skin seared raw and angry, blood flecking the charred fabric.
Guilt hit me straight in the ribs. I grabbed his hand, settling mine on top when I tugged it away from the blistering wound. “We have to get you out of here.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Not as bad as it looks.”
“We both know that’s bullshit.”
The stinging in my shoulder had progressed to a sharp throb, so I couldn’t imagine what burn across his stomach felt like. I’d had minor burns before on the job, but this was something else. Worse than the accidental hit that Javier had landed in training, more direct than a graze. Pyro fire seemed to reach deeper, to wound harder.
“Can you make it off the floor? If I have to carry you out of here, I’ll do it. You know I can.”
Javier groaned as he pushed himself up. “Yeah, I know you would.” His eyes flittered from his burned clothes to the shredded back of my blouse, where the blackened edges of it curled. “Jesus, your shoulder…”
He reached for my upper arm, maybe to assess the damage done, but a flash overhead startled both of us. I ducked with a yelp, my arms cradling my head to protect myself from more falling glass. Javier did the same and leaned over me, his chin resting on the crown of my head, his arms attempting to shield both of us. When everything had settled, I untangled myself from him and peered over the countertop of the bar to find Gemma and Ozias. Faceless shapes moved in the dark smoke. A few pyros continued to fight while the incendiaries conducted business in the middle of the firestorm. They’d pinned us down behind the bar while Gemma and Ozias worked in tandem to shake the flames zinging around the lounge.
I found the whole thing bizarre. How they didn’t seem to even flinch when the fire sizzled out, a great whoosh blowing hot air onto their tables, disturbing their perfect hair, their pristine clothes. But if I happened to be the most powerful creature in the room, then maybe I wouldn’t be so pressed about some fireworks, either.
If only we could still lure one of them out, I thought. There were too many of them, now, and no more opportunities to be stealthy about it. That ship has, unfortunately, sailed. Nice going, dumbass.
It’d put everyone in enough danger tonight.
“Good news,” I said to Javier. “The traffic on the stairs looks okay, so we might have a chance. But—I’m guessing it’s the owner of the place? He sounds peeved.” An irate, masculine voice bellowed down the staircase. I only heard his booming tones and not his exact words, but as with everything else, his incendiary associates looked indifferent.
“I’d be, too.” Javier’s hollow laugh devolved into a groan. “Don’t know, Nix, maybe he’ll send you a bill.”
I huffed a sigh. “He’s not going to let us out of here.”
“We’re not gonna give him a choice.”
A screaming burst of flame nearly hit my fingers curled over the edge of the counter. I yanked the
m back just in time, the fire seeking out a pool of overturned drinks for fuel. In seconds, the countertop became a wall of crackling flame and doused me and Javier in golden light. I lifted my hands, wincing at the stinging throb in my shoulder, and called the embers to me. This time to destroy, not create.
The embers climbed up my arms, igniting my veins as it went, slivers of reddish-orange peeking through my blouse. I didn’t run as hot as I had last time. The pyro’s flames felt no worse than a bonfire, a minor inconvenience. Warm air swirled around us, the temperature rising just before the flames sputtered out. Thin coils of light gray smoke stood between me and the remaining pyromancers. One of them had watched the whole thing and now gaped in my direction, her mouth hanging open like a fish. She bolted for the stairs.
Several incendiaries’ heads turned, their interest drawn back to our scuffle. Their curious stares found me, the source of the strange, inexplicable power that I knew they would be able to sense burning hot through the lounge. Just like the silver-tongued incendiary had, without me even showing off. I didn’t know if their curiosity would last, or if it would curdle into something else, like fury. Maybe they’d see me as a threat. So far their flagrant attention, their exchanged whispers, felt worse.
What would they do if they found out there were two of us?
“Gemma,” I whisper-yelled over the smoking bar, “We have to go. Now.”
We finally outnumbered the pyros—and the two or so left looked tired and probably a little too wasted to keep this going for much longer—but the incendiaries’ dark glances made me uneasy. Ozias’ line of fire crackled and snapped at the pyros’ feet, tracing a boundary between them across the floor.
“Right,” she hollered back. “Like I hadn’t figured that out fifteen minutes ago.”
“Santos is hurt,” I told her. “We have to get him up the stairs first.”
“I can walk,” Javier protested. “And I’m not leaving ‘til everybody else does.”
I’d heard Javier, but Gemma hadn’t. “All right,” her hands moved as if she was conducting a piece of music to an orchestra. “This should hold long enough for us to hightail our asses up the stairs. You’re coming, too, Ozias.”
Neither of us missed his woeful glance in the direction of the smoldering corpses that used to be his guitars.
Gemma knitted her wards like delicate lace between her and Ozias and the pyros, her eyes closed as she worked quickly to create a barrier. Though the wisps of red, smoky light may have looked brittle, they were anything but. The pyros would likely get bored of the wards annihilating their fire, missing their targets.
“Move!” Gemma shouted.
I hooked my arm around Javier’s back to help him off the floor. He leaned into me as we pushed through the swinging door of the bar—with Javier swearing a litany of Spanish the whole way—and met Gemma and Ozias on the stairs. Elbowing past the small group of spectators, hushed words ricocheting all around us, we climbed the staircase as fast as we could manage.
Ozias grabbed Javier from the other side once we hit the landing, one of his arms corded with muscle supporting Javier’s back. “Shit, man. That looks rough.”
A man in a scarlet suit with hawkish eyes and a square jaw rounded on us while we shoved past the crowd to the front doors. I assumed he was the proprietor of this fine demonic establishment. He looked seconds away from burning his own place to the ground with his fury alone, violent power radiating from somewhere in the depths of his soul, if he had one. The four of us continued to the doors, his barrage of grievances rolling off our backs.
“Asshole,” Gemma muttered once we were out of earshot, once again among the sweltering festivities of Hell’s Gate. “Should we find Zahira?”
“No,” Javier and I answered almost in unison.
“I don’t feel like getting a lecture from Jodi,” I said. “Not right now.”
“We can go back to my house,” Javier said through gritted teeth. The cobblestones weren’t helping in the least.
“It’s too far,” I said. “You can’t make it all that way like this.”
“The hell I can’t,” Javier growled.
“My place is just a few blocks down,” Ozias offered. “Unless you wanna get to a hospital, I’ve got something that’ll help those burns.”
“We’ve already dragged you through enough of our crap,” Gemma said.
“Look, all I’m saying is, there’s gotta be one damn good explanation for whatever happened back there. You owe me a story. I’ve already been through the shit, Gemma. I’ve been in it since the day I was born with pyromancer’s blood. You think that’s the first time I’ve seen what the demons have done to the city? We’re all in it.”
We left the rowdiness of Hell’s Gate behind.
“Damn fine way to make new friends, though.”
17
One of the elegant brownstone homes arranged in an immaculate row outside of The Raze belonged to Ozias. Night cast the beige and brown earth tones of their angular façades in darker shades of midnight blue. Ozias raced up the stone steps and knocked on the door of a brownstone instead of fumbling around for his key. Ivy and vines dripped from the stark window boxes. They were lush despite the inhospitable climate, on a city street without the scrubby rock gardens that were a fixture the suburbs.
The front door creaked open on its hinges. A woman in a silk robe appeared in the foyer, buttery light spilling down the steps from behind her, casting a glow against her dark brown skin. Paws clicked lightly on a tile floor before the nosy snout of a yellow Labrador retriever poked around her to sniff us out for any danger. The dog whined and paced loops through the woman’s legs but didn’t bark.
She heaved a long sigh. There was an affectionate smile on her lips. “What sort of trouble did you bring home this time?” she asked Ozias.
“Just the usual.” Ozias kissed her, then stooped to ruffle the dog’s fur on his way into the house. “Made some friends.”
“I see that,” she said, slowly, assessing us. “Come on in.”
Ozias introduced us as we hobbled up the steps and into the narrow front hall. Javier slung his arm across my lower back, doubled over, grimacing. Sweat soaked through his shirt.
Everything was bright and airy inside despite the late hour, and I squinted against the sudden change from the gloomy lounge.
“This is my lovely and incredibly patient wife, Michelle,” Ozias said.
He led us past a gleaming white staircase and through a lavish front room inundated with green plant life and a shiny, black grand piano. A side hallway guided us to the back of the house, the light pouring over black and white tile and wainscoting. I’d never been in one of these brownstones but I’d always wondered what their interiors looked like. The rooms were narrow and square-shaped. Framed black and white photographs lined the walls in the hallway of Ozias and Michelle in their travels. They’d posed in front of famous international landmarks and other places. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. New Orleans’ French Quarter. Nashville, Tennessee.
“Oz can’t help himself,” Michelle said.
She flicked on the light in a back room, illuminating the sleek electric guitars mounted on burnt orange walls, framed newspaper articles, and more black and white photographs. A wall of white bookshelves housed an incredible collection of vinyl records.
“He likes to bring home strays. Can’t tell you how many pyros we’ve had pass through this house who’ve been in a tight spot. You’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last.”
“Make yourselves comfortable,” he said. “Hang in there. I’ve got medicine that’ll take care of those pyro burns. Shelly, any painkillers left?”
“They’re right where they always are.” Michelle’s voice trailed off back down the hall as she followed her husband. “Baby, what happened to your gear?”
I helped ease Javier down on a leather couch and winced even though he kept his pained grunting to a minimum. Guilt twisted my
insides into a fierce knot. So much had gone wrong tonight, so much reckless damage in under an hour. I hadn’t meant for it end this badly. It was as if I’d been on autopilot the moment I caught sight of the incendiary’s dead eyes.
“Well, that went about as good as I expected.” Gemma clapped her hands together from where she’d perched on the arm of a leather chair. “I don’t know about you all, but I had loads of fun. Go, team.”
I offered her a withering look.
“It’s not a party in PF unless you come home smelling like burnt flesh and tequila,” Javier remarked, resting his head back on the leather cushions. His eyes were already closed. “And I didn’t even drink tequila.”
I sunk into the opposite end of the couch, one hand on my forehead as I massaged my temples between my thumb and middle finger. Now that we were far removed from the nosy lounge, my head drummed its own aching rhythm. Somewhere further into the house, the dog’s paws continued to clack on the tile.
“I screwed up.”
The admission was muffled into my hands. It didn’t help to lessen the shame. I wanted to crawl under the couch and stay there. Or, better yet, find the nearest sinkhole in this godforsaken city and let it eat me alive.
I leaned over my knees and raked my fingers through my hair, hissing when the cuts on my knuckles came in contact with the disheveled strands. Adrenaline had been a great painkiller, but now that I was sobering up, the lacerations and burns stung like hell. I hadn’t realized until then that the pyro had hit the same shoulder where the massive bruise had just started to fade.
So much for that. The twinge in my side felt worse than it had in weeks, but I sat in agonized silence because I damn well deserved it. Every mistake I’d made clattered around my skull.
“Oh, babe. Screw ups are for mistakes that can’t get people killed,” Gemma said. “What you did requires a much stronger word.”
“At least you’re owning your fuck up,” Javier said. “That counts for something.”
Does it, really? Because it doesn’t feel like it.
Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1) Page 19
