Baptism of Fire (Playing With Hellfire Book 1)

by Jessie Thomas

Ozias returned, his hands laden with a box of gauze pads and medical tape and a few pill bottles. He handed the painkillers to Javier and gave me the rest, including a round plastic container that I couldn’t immediately identify the contents of. Javier unscrewed the cap and dry swallowed a couple of pills with impressive speed.

  “That’ll heal the pyro burns.” Ozias nodded at the plastic container, absently scratching behind the dog’s ears when it appeared from around the corner. “Stronger than anything you’ll get at a hospital. They don’t know how to treat pyro burns there. Never have. Michelle has a friend who makes this stuff herself—some recipe passed around pyro communities since the old days.” He lowered to a knee. The dog squinted at him while he dragged his fingers across their fur.

  Javier threw the bottle of painkillers to me before he hauled himself off the couch. “Thanks.”

  I got up as Javier tried to pry the container out of my hands. He was still bent over, and although he would likely put up a fight, I felt bad enough that maybe helping him would quell the guilt. Not all of it. But maybe at least a fraction.

  “Bathroom?” I asked Ozias.

  “Just down the hall. Right at the end, you can’t miss it.” The dog sniffed around our feet, trying to follow, and Ozias gave their collar a gentle tug. “Come on, Duke.”

  Javier sighed when I grabbed him around the arm, but didn’t make much of an effort to extricate himself from my hold, which wouldn’t have been difficult.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. Right on schedule.

  I juggled the first aid supplies in my hand after I slipped the bottle of painkillers into my pocket. “This is worse than a crooked tie, Santos.”

  The overhead lights in the bathroom flickered for the second time in a span of five minutes. We both stopped long enough to look up, wondering if the grid would hold. Or if it would go out sometime in the early morning hours, plunging the city into darkness and miserable anarchy.

  “Like we need a power outage right now,” Javier said. His waistcoat had been dropped carelessly over the edge of the lustrous claw foot tub where he’d settled. He started undoing the buttons on his ruined dress shirt as he moved gingerly.

  “Actually,” I said, shaking two pills into my palm, “a complete blackout would be the perfect end to this delightful evening.”

  Popping the pills into my mouth, I bent over the sink and shoved my face under the faucet to wash them down. I had water dribbling down my chin when I resurfaced and closed the tap. While I mopped it up with my sleeve in the most unflattering manner possible, I found Javier side-eyeing me with that gentle smirk. Whenever he turned it on me I tried everything to recoil away from it. Only because I didn’t know what I wanted to do about it, or what he wanted from it. Or what would happen when I finally figured it out.

  And if he kept staring at me like he did, the warmth reaching his eyes, making them sparkle with a certain kind of fondness, I knew our missions would be even more risky than they already were.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I know exactly how much of a mess I am right now. I don’t need you to judge me.”

  His eyes narrowed, that lopsided smirk slowly disappearing. “And I’m not? You forgetting who jumped over that damn bar with you?”

  I winced. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah.” He drew out the syllables. “If I can get this shirt off without taking my skin with it, maybe I’ll forgive you.”

  All right, I definitely deserved that one. Touché.

  He peeled the charred fabric away from the raw wound like he was tearing off a Band-Aid. Letting loose a groan, he threw the shirt on top of his waistcoat and glanced down at the blistering, red burn that marred the toned muscle of his lower abdomen. The burn was shaped like a smudged circle.

  “Ah, fuck. I hate pyro burns.”

  Better than the alternative.

  I unscrewed the container of mystery medicine. It had the consistency of aloe and sort of smelled like it. With an added hint of chamomile, lavender, and something else. The cream had an iridescent sheen, wavering between ivory and pearl under the lights.

  “This is…probably going to sting.”

  “It already stings. If the painkillers don’t hit soon, that stuff will.”

  I worked the cream into Javier’s blistered skin, my fingers massaging tentative circles over the nasty wound. His jaw was clenched against the sharp sting, his muscles tense under my fingertips.

  When I hit the raw and bloody patch of skin, he flinched, one hand gripping the edge of the bathtub.

  “Sorry.” I pulled away, giving him a moment to steel himself. The traces of anger were gone, replaced by exhaustion and hurt. “Almost done, I promise.”

  He nodded, his expression softening. It belied the tautness of muscle beneath my fingertips, the way he held his breath until the meds soothed the painful heat. I finally felt him relax and let out a long exhale. My eyes were drawn to the tattoo that wrapped around his side as I worked, bright blue and red and yellow and orange painting a figure in wild geometric shapes. The art style seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not immediately, anyway.

  “I used to have easy access to this stuff all the time,” he said after a while. “It was the first thing I thought of after you got hurt during training. Wished I had some lying around. I, uh—I dated a paramedic for about a year. He’d respond to patients with pyro burns, so many he’d lose count. He wasn’t a pyro himself, but he knew enough. Saw a lot. When things didn’t work between us anymore, he took the good stuff with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was, too. Didn’t blame him,” he answered. “This fight can be brutal on relationships.”

  I set the cream aside to cover the burn with gauze pads and tape. “I haven’t had a relationship that’s lasted longer than six months since the academy. But I don’t know if that’s just me or the career choice.”

  I secured the last bit of tape, dodging a glance from Javier. Before I overshared the details of my dating history, I attempted to divert elsewhere.

  “Who’s this guy?” I pointed to the vibrant tattoo.

  “What? Oh, him.” He glanced down at the artwork. “Xiuhtecuhtli, the Aztec god of fire. Got him after my first year on the job.”

  “A fire god for a firefighter.”

  “More like a fire god for a pyromancer,” Javier said. “I liked his whole deal, you know? Light in darkness.”

  I moved to set the box of gauze pads on the counter by the sink, but Javier grabbed it carefully from my hands.

  “Hold on,” he said. His dark brows pulled together. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your shoulder.”

  But I almost did, so distracted from my own pain smoldering up the back of my shoulder by the task in front of me. It seemed to be my default nowadays: gritting my teeth and pressing on. I’d worked through it without realizing. The stinging jabbed at my skin as if I’d awoken it again simply by remembering it was there.

  “And,” his thumb brushed along my jaw to my chin, tilting it up, “you’ve got a cut on your face. All that glass flying around, I’m surprised neither of us need stitches after the whole bar exploded on us.”

  “We were lucky, I guess.”

  He laughed, a low, sarcastic sound. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Javier used one of the gauze pads to wipe away the drying blood. I tried not to focus on the smell of iron and raw, fire-kissed skin, the scent that so often accompanied my nightmares and ripped me from sleep in a panic. Instead, I inhaled the earthy aroma that suffused the bright bathroom. A miniature garden sat near the window, lavender and mint and aloe spilling over the sides of the rectangular planter.

  “Turn around.”

  He took the cream off the closed toilet seat where I’d left it and worked from the edge of the bathtub. I felt him negotiating around whatever delicate fabric had been left to surround the burn. His fingers hesitated somewhere near my bra strap, which I was surprised had made it through the blast I’d took. It seemed like he hadn�
��t thought it would be an obstacle.

  “Are you…okay back there?”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “It’s fine,” I told him, my face dropping into my hands. I barely stifled a laugh, though I appreciated him asking first. “Just move it out of the way.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me as the cream soaked in and choked out the prickling heat that still ravaged my skin almost immediately. It felt like aloe, but with an extra ingredient that trickled into the wound, soothing the damage with a deft sort of precision.

  It was quiet for a long time before Javier spoke again, the pads of his fingers knocking down a fire of a different kind. I let my eyes close.

  “What happened to you back there, Nix?” He was quiet, just above a whisper, his words rumbling up my spine. “Never seen that look in your eyes before. Didn’t think you’d be the type to go rogue that quick. You almost had that incendiary at the bar licking your boot heel.”

  “I lost it,” I admitted. “As soon as I saw him, it was over. I forgot about everything else, forgot about Jodi. The team. It felt like it was just me and him, and all I wanted right there was to watch him go up in smoke.” My eyes fluttered open, but I kept them trained on the floor. “It was selfish.”

  “You’re allowed to be selfish when you’re grieving.”

  “Not if I get someone else hurt. It was irresponsible. I know better than that. I just…fell apart.”

  “We didn’t know he was gonna be there,” Javier said. “I’d be worried if you didn’t have that reaction to seeing his ugly face again. That’s what separates us from them, right?” I heard the shake of the box as he reached for the gauze and tape. “Thought I could snap you out of it, though. You scared the shit out of me. He could’ve killed you.”

  “But he didn’t,” I realized. “He had every opportunity. Waiting for me. I know he was waiting for me. He could’ve killed me a hundred times over and made a show of it. Why didn’t he? I think he had more fun provoking me. And then setting his Hellhounds on my ass.”

  “Hellhounds,” Javier considered. “That’s good. I like that one.”

  “The incendiary I was talking to, she didn’t know what to make of me.”

  He scoffed. “Didn’t look that way.”

  “Not like that,” I countered. “I mean, yeah. I know what she was after, I’m not that clueless, Santos. She couldn’t make sense of my power, but she could feel it.”

  Javier laughed. “I bet she did. They’re demons, Nix. They’ll tell you just about anything to seduce you. Works out better for them to manipulate new allies instead of making more enemies. Though they can have their fun with those, too, so hell if I know. Whatever we’ve got, they’re gonna want. ‘Til they find out exactly what we can do.”

  He tossed the box onto the counter. “You’re all good.”

  I spun around to face him. “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “What?”

  “That we’re so…different the demons don’t even know what’s up with us. That doesn’t freak you out at all?”

  “Nah.” He collected his clothes from the edge of the tub. “If they’re really not interested in killing us? It sounds like an advantage to me. We could use that.”

  Rapid, furious pounding on the door slammed through the relative quiet of the bathroom. Both of our heads turned, the hush of our conversation evaporating.

  “I hate to interrupt whatever you’ve got going on in there, kids,” Gemma shouted through the door, “but you’re going to want to see this. We have a huge problem.”

  Javier hastily pulled on his tattered shirt while we raced down the hall to the den, our shoes thudding on tile and alerting the dog, Duke, who let out a doleful whine. The clipped tones of a late-breaking newscast floated out into the hallway before we’d even reached the threshold. Gemma, Ozias, and Michelle wore expressions of wide-eyed, silent horror, and my stomach plummeted like a heavy stone in the lake. It only took a moment to register the headline and the fiery images being splashed across the television screen.

  “Zahira called a few minutes ago, wondering what happened to us,” Gemma said. “She was on her way to the scene. She doesn’t know for sure if—”

  “It’s him,” I finished. A fresh wave of nausea sucked all of the air out of the room. Lightheaded, everything starting to tilt on its axis, I sunk back down into the couch cushions. “He’s showing off now. He’s fucking with us. With me.”

  I knew exactly who the source of our problem was before I’d seen the headline. It hadn’t taken him long to unleash more destruction after he’d escaped the lounge, chaos trailing in his wake. And now there was another incendiary arson. Another inferno that had torn through a restaurant undergoing renovations on the outskirts of downtown. Reports of two firefighters taken to the hospital by ambulance, but I knew the truth.

  They were already dead.

  His personal message to me signed in blood and Hellfire.

  I turned away from the screen, but I couldn’t escape the reporter’s robotic tone.

  “With the recent string firefighters hurt or killed on the job in the past several weeks, tonight the question remains: how will the department respond to make conditions safer? The fire commissioner has already received backlash…”

  Javier’s hand clamped down on my uninjured shoulder, giving it a light, reassuring squeeze. “We’re gonna get him.”

  How could we ever catch a shadow?

  18

  I made the long walk back to my building in a daze, declining to take a cab that would drop me off as far as the streets would allow. Heat lightning rolled in luminous bursts across the night sky. While the smudge of charcoal clouds in the distance looked a little ominous, there wasn’t anything in the air that suggested an oncoming storm. The last of the rowdy partygoers wandered away from the bars and clubs in blur of sound and color. There were enough weekly incidents in Hell’s Gate—most of them innocuous, like bar fights and disorderly tourists—that ours would probably go unnoticed by the usual party scene.

  But I wondered how long we’d have to wait to show our faces there again.

  Not anytime soon, I guessed, unless we wanted to risk getting fried by some demon-sympathetic pyromancers. The incendiaries themselves were a different story. Javier hadn’t been too concerned about what they happened to think of our power, but I couldn’t shake the looks we’d gotten. The incendiary waiter who seemed to recoil. The glances of mild interest. That demon at the bar who wanted me in more ways than the one I’d assumed. There wasn’t any doubt that our brand of pyromancy was an advantage, but every unknown about it scared me shitless.

  The sticky night air followed me into the apartment building, though I was beginning to think this place had morphed into its own heat source. Maybe the building sat on a geyser of the Hellmouth, spewing oppressive, infernal air straight to the surface.

  With my luck, it seemed likely.

  It was hotter inside than it was out on the street. A trace of stale coffee and cinnamon lingered. There were still a few night owls in the coffee shop from what I could tell, seeking a jolt of caffeine after their nocturnal adventures. By the time I made it up the stairs to my floor, beads of sweat trickled down my neck and my ruined blouse stuck to my lower back. The hall was mostly silent except for the strains of music I heard muffled through a couple of doors. Someone had smoked weed recently. I fought the urge to ask around after the night I’d had, but I didn’t know yet whether I still wanted to keep my job with the department.

  If I’d had enough energy left, I would’ve said screw it.

  I just wanted to sleep.

  Once it was unlocked, I gave the door a halfhearted push, my sore muscles stinging with the effort. Almost immediately, my skin prickled from a surge of heat, tendrils of ancient power reaching for me from the dark. A flash of lightning revealed a figure sprawled across my couch. Long, pale legs and waves of silky blond hair and a necklace dripping
with black diamonds. Something that looked like a piece of my mail dangled from her fingertips. I froze in the doorway.

  “Would you mind shutting the door, darling?” The mail, whatever it was, drifted carelessly to the floor. “I’d hate for your neighbors to interrupt.”

  She’d followed me home from the lounge.

  I kicked the door closed, my veins flaring to life in the same breath. Embers glowed in the dark up the length of my forearm, flames hissing on the tips of my fingers. The incendiary laughed, a droll yet melodic sound. She rose from the couch with all the fluid grace of a dancer, a spark of Hellfire nestled in her palm.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you. I know you to be relatively smart.” She moved around the couch and toward me, hips swaying with a deliberate gait. “We wouldn’t want one mistake to turn this whole building to ash, now would we? We can be reasonable with each other, I think.”

  I gritted my teeth. “You better leave, now, or I’ll snuff you out.”

  “Not that I’m the least bit worried about your threat, but I must say, it would be rather fun to watch you try.”

  She extinguished the incendiary fire. A few of the blue embers floated over to me on a puff of sulfuric smoke. “I’m not interested in killing you, Fireblood. I’m only giving you what you said you wanted. An opportunity.”

  “I’m not interested.” My fingers curled, letting the flame burn a little brighter. “Get out.”

  “Subterfuge doesn’t hold any interest to you, then? No grandiose plans to undermine your place of work? That’s really too bad, you know. That might have been a good time.”

  With every step she took forward, I shrank back, inching toward the closed door.

  “How about catching an arsonist? I heard a little something about you being in the market for one.”

  The flames in my hand blew out, the warmth seeping from my veins. The corner of her lips, shining with gloss, lifted into a delicate, pleased smirk. Likely because she’d watched the anger rush out of me with the flame. She watched my face fall, a muddle of confusion and shock and annoyance, my mouth left hanging open.